promises

In the Likeness of God

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises Leave a comment

I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness. -Psalm 17:15b

One thought here ought not to be forgotten; and that is, the Psalmist says we are to wake up in the likeness of God. This may refer to the soul; for the spirit of the righteous will be in the likeness of God as to its happiness holiness, purity, infallability, eternity, and freedom from pain; but specially, I think, it relates to the body because it speaks of the awaking. The body is to be in the likeness of Christ. What a thought! It is-and alas! I have had too many such to-night-a thought too heavy for words. I am to awake up in Christ’s likeness. I do not know what Christ is like, and can scarcely imagine…Oh! what a change it will be, when some of us get to heaven! There is a man who fell in battle with the word of salvation on his lips, his legs had been shot away, and his body had been scarred by sabre thrusts; he wakes in heaven, and finds that he has not a broken body, maimed and cut about, and hacked and injured, but that he is in Christ’s likeness. There is an old matron, who has tottered on her staff for years along her weary way; time has ploughed furrows on her brow; haggard and lame, her body is laid in the grave. But oh! aged woman, thou shalt arise in youth and beauty. Another has been deformed in his life-time, but when he wakes, he wakes in the likeness of Christ.

Whatever may have been the form of our countenance, whatever the contour, the beautiful shall be no more beautiful in heaven than those who were deformed. Those who shone on earth, peerless, among the fairest, who ravished men with looks from their eyes, they shall be no brighter in heaven than those who are now passed by and neglected: for they shall all be like Christ.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0025.cfm

The Faith to Say, I Shall!

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, prophecy 3 Comments

As for me, I shall behold Your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with Your likeness. – Psalm 17:15

“I will behold Thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake up in Thy likeness.” If some men should say so now, they would be called fanatics, and it would be considered presumption for any man to say, “I will behold Thy face, I shall be satisfied;” and I think there are many now in this world who think it is quite impossible for a man to say to a certainty, “I know, I am sure, I am certain.” But, beloved, there are not one or two, but there are thousands and thousands of God’s people alive in this world who can say with an assured confidence, no more doubting of it than of their very existence, “I will behold Thy face in righteousness. I shall be satisfied, when I awake in Thy likeness.” It is possible, though perhaps not very easy, to attain to that high and eminent position wherein we can say no longer do I hope, but I know; no longer do I trust, but I am persuaded; I have a happy confidence; I am sure of it; I an certain; for God has so manifested Himself to me that now it is no longer “if” and “perhaps” but it is positive, eternal, “shall.” “I shall be satisfied when I awake in Thy likeness.”

Oh! if ye are talking like that, ye must expect to have trouble, for God never gives strong faith without fiery trial; He will never give a man the power to say that “shall” without trying him; He will not build a strong ship without subjecting it to very mighty storms; He will not make you a mighty warrior, if He does not intend to try your skill in battle. God’s swords must be used; the old Toledo blades of heaven must be smitten against the armor of the evil one, and yet they shall not break, for they are of true Jerusalem metal, which shall never snap. Oh! what a happy thing to have that faith to say “I shall.” Some of you think it quite impossible, I know; but it “is the gift of God,” and whosoever asks it shall obtain it: and the very chief of sinners now present in this place may yet be able to say long before he comes to die, “I shall behold Thy face in righteousness.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0025.cfm

Our Most Merciful God

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, promises 3 Comments

The LORD is good to all: and His tender mercies are over all His works. -Psalm 145:9

This is God’s complaint against Ephraim. It is no mean proof of His goodness, that He stoops to rebuke His erring creatures; it is a great argument of His gracious disposition, that He bows His head to notice terrestrial affairs. He might, if He pleased, wrap Himself with might as with a garment; He might put the stars around His wrist for bracelets, and bind the suns around His brow for a coronet; He might dwell alone, far, far above this world, up in the seventh heaven, and look down with calm and silent indifference upon all the doings of His creatures; He might do as the heathens supposed their Jove did, sit in perpetual silence, sometimes nodding His awful head to make the fates move as He pleased, but never taking thought of the little things of earth, disposing of them as beneath His notice, engrossed with His own being, swallowed up within Himself, living alone and retired; and I, as one of His creatures, might stand by night upon a mountain-top, and look upon the silent stars and say, “Ye are the eyes of God, but ye look not down on me; your light is the gift of His omnipotence, but your rays are not smiles of love to me. God, the mighty Creator, has forgotten me; I am a despicable drop in the ocean of creation, a sear leaf in the forest of beings, an atom in the mountain of existence. He knows me not; I am alone, alone, alone.”

But it is not so, beloved. Our God is of another order. He notices every one of us; there is not a sparrow or a worm but is found in His decrees. There is not a person upon whom His eye is not fixed. Our most secret acts are known to Him. Whatsoever we do, or bear, or suffer, the eye of God still rests upon us, and we are beneath His smile-for we are His people; or beneath His frown-for we have erred from Him.

Oh! how ten-thousand-fold merciful is God, that, looking down upon the race of man, He does not smite it out of existence! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0015.cfm

I Have Come Safe to Land

Sherry Attributes of God, promises, salvation 3 Comments

(F)or I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day. -2 Timothy 1:12

There was an evil hour when I once shipped the anchor of my faith; I cut the cable of my belief; I no longer moored myself hard by the coasts of Revelation; I allowed my vessel to drift before the wind; I said to reason, “Be thou my captain;” I said to my own brain, “Be thou my rudder;” and I started on my mad voyage. Thank God, it is all over now; but I will tell you its brief history. It was one hurried sailing over the tempestuous ocean of free thought. I went on, and as I went, the skies began to darken; but to make up for that deficiency, the waters were brilliant with coruscations of brilliancy. I saw sparks flying upward that pleased me, and I thought, “If this be free thought, it is a happy thing.” My thoughts seemed gems, and I scattered stars with both my hands; but anon, instead of these coruscations of glory, I saw grim fiends, fierce and horrible, start up from the waters, and as I dashed on, they gnashed their teeth, and grinned upon me; they seized the prow of my ship and dragged me on, while, in part, gloried at the rapidity of my motion, but yet shuddered at the terrific rate with which I passed the old landmarks of my faith. As I hurried forward, with an awful speed, I began to doubt my very existence; I doubted if there were a world, I doubted if there was such a thing as myself. I went to the very verge of the dreary realms of unbelief. I went to the very bottom of the sea of Infidelity. I doubted everything. But here the devil foiled himself: for the very extravagance of the doubt, proved its absurdity. Just when I saw the bottom of that sea, there came a voice which said, “And can this doubt be true?” At this very thought I awoke. I started from that death-dream, which, God knows might have damned my soul, and ruined this, my body, if I had not awoke. When I arose, faith took the helm; from that moment I doubted not. Faith steered me back; faith cried, “Away, away!” I cast my anchor on Calvary; I lifted my eye to God; and here I am, “alive, and out of hell.”

Therefore, I speak what I do know. I have sailed that perilous voyage; I have come safe to land. Ask me again to be an infidel! No; I have tried it; it was sweet at first, but bitter afterwards. Now, lashed to God’s gospel more firmly than ever, standing as on a rock of adamant, I defy the arguments of hell to move me; for “I know in whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0015.cfm

Entirely Free From Envy

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises 4 Comments

As for me, I will behold Your face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Your likeness. -Psalm 17:15

Now, what should you think is the spirit of these words? “As for me, I will behold Thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness.”

(T)hey breathe the spirit of a man entirely free from envy. Notice, that the Psalmist has been speaking of the wicked. “They are enclosed in their own fat: with their mouth they speak proudly.” “They are full of children, and leave the rest of their substance to their babes.” But David envies them not. “Go,” says he, “rich man, in all thy riches-go, proud man, in all thy pride-go, thou happy man, with thine abundance of children; I envy thee not; as for me, my lot is different: I can look on you without desiring to have your possessions. I can well keep that commandment, ‘Thou shalt not covet,’ for in your possessions there is nothing worth my love; I set no value upon your earthly treasures; I envy you not your heaps of glittering dust; for my Redeemer is mine.”

Oh! beloved, it is a happy thing to be free from envy…Envy is accursed of heaven; yea, it is Satan’s first-born-the vilest of vices… But give me freedom from envy; let me be content with what God has given me, let me say, “Ye may have yours, I will not envy you-I am satisfied with mine,” yea, give me such a love to my fellow creatures that I can rejoice in their joy, and the more they have the more glad I am of it. My candle will burn no less brightly because theirs outshines it. I can rejoice in their prosperity.

Envy! oh! may God deliver us from it! But how, in truth, can we get rid of it so well as by believing that ye have something that is not on earth, but in heaven? If we can look upon all the things in the world and say, “As for me, I will behold Thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied by-and-bye!” I look upon the low places of this earth with contempt. I envy not your greatness, ye mighty emperors; I desire not your fame, ye mighty warriors; I ask not for wealth, O Croesus; I beg not for thy power, O Caesar; as for me, I have something else, my portion is the Lord.” The text breathes the spirit of a man free from envy. May God give that to us! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0025.cfm

As For Me

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, promises 3 Comments

“As for me, I will behold Thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness.”- Psalm 17:15

It would be difficult to say to which the gospel owes most, to its friends or to its enemies. It is true, that by the help of God, its friends have done much for it; they have preached it in foreign lands, they have dared death, they have laughed to scorn the terrors of the grave, they have ventured all things for Christ, and so have glorified the doctrine they believed; but the enemies of Christ, unwittingly, have done no little, for when they have persecuted Christ’s servants, they have scattered them abroad, so that they have gone everywhere preaching the Word…

So with the book of Psalms: had not David been sorely tried by enemies, had not the foemen shot their arrows at him, had they not attempted to malign and blast his character, had they not deeply distressed him, and made him cry out in misery, we should have missed many of those precious experimental utterances we here find, much of that holy song which he penned after his deliverance, and very much of that glorious statement of his trust in the infallible God… Had it not been for David’s enemies, he would not have penned his Psalms; but when hunted like a partridge on the mountains, when driven like the timid roe before the hunter’s dogs, he waited for awhile, bathed his sides in the brooks of Siloa, and panting on the hill-top a little, he breathed the air of heaven and stood and rested his weary limbs. Then was it that he gave honour to God, then he shouted aloud to that mighty Jehovah, who for him had gotten the victory… “As for me,” says the once shepherd boy, who was soon to wear a royal diadem-“As for me, I will behold Thy face in righteousness, I shall be satisfied, when I awake with Thy likeness.”~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0025.cfm

You Shall Be A Jewel in His Crown

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, The Father Leave a comment

“Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof.”-Ecclesiastes 7:8

Look at David’s Lord and Master; see His beginning. He was despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Would you see the end? He sits at His Father’s right hand, expecting until His enemies be made his footstool. “As He is, so are we also in this world.” You must bear the cross, or you shall never wear the crown; you must wade through the mire, or you shall never walk the golden pavement. Cheer up, then, poor Christian. “Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof.” See that creeping worm, how contemptible its appearance! It is the beginning of a thing. Mark that insect with gorgeous wings, playing in the sunbeams, sipping at the flower bells, full of happiness and life; that is the end thereof. That caterpillar is yourself, until you are wrapped up in the chrysalis of death; but when Christ shall appear you shall be like Him, for you shall see Him as He is. Be content to be like Him, a worm and no man, that like Him you may be satisfied when you wake up in His likeness. That rough-looking diamond is put upon the wheel of the lapidary. He cuts it on all sides. It loses much-much that seemed costly to itself. The king is crowned; the diadem is put upon the monarch’s head with trumpet’s joyful sound. A glittering ray flashes from that coronet, and it beams from that very diamond which was just now so sorely vexed by the lapidary. You may venture to compare yourself to such a diamond, for you are one of God’s people; and this is the time of the cutting process. Let faith and patience have their perfect work, for in the day when the crown shall be set upon the head of the King, Eternal, Immortal, Invisible, one ray of glory shall stream from you. “They shall be Mine,” saith the Lord, “in the day when I make up My jewels.” “Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

http://bible.christiansunite.com/Morning_and_Evening/chme1230.shtml