promises

Trust the Lord Jesus and Be Saved

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God, the unbelieving life 1 Comment

If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. – 1 Corinthians 15:19

“What will become of you?” said an infidel once to a Christian man, “supposing there should be no heaven?” “Well,” said he, “I like to have two strings to my bow. If there be no hereafter I am as well off as you are, and if there be I am infinitely better off. But where are you? Where are you?” Why then we must read this text in the future (tense)-“If in this life there be indeed a hope of a life to come, then you shall be in the next life of all men most miserable.” Do you see where you will be? Your soul goes before the great Judge and receives its condemnation and begins its hell. The trumpet rings; heaven and earth are astonished; the grave heaves; yonder slab of marble is lifted up, and up you rise in that very flesh and blood in which you sinned, and there you stand in the midst of a terrified multitude, all gathered to their doom. The Judge has come. The great assize has commenced. There on the great white throne sits the Savior who once said, “Come unto Me, ye weary, and I will give you rest;” but now He sits there as a Judge and opens with stern hand the terrible volume. Page after page He reads, and as He reads, He gives the signal, “Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire,” and the angels bind up the tares in bundles to burn them. There stand you, and you know your doom; you already begin to feel it. 

O that ye would be wise and consider your latter end! O that ye would reflect that this life is but a span, and the life to come lasts on for ever!..Look to the bleeding Savior; see there His five wounds, and His face bedewed with bloody sweat! Trust Him, trust him, and you are saved. The moment that you trust Him your sins are gone. His righteousness is yours; you are saved on the spot, and you shall be saved when He cometh in His kingdom to raise the dead from their graves. O that the Lord might lead us all thus to rest on Jesus, now and ever. Amen. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0562.cfm

A Hope Beyond the Grave

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit 1 Comment

But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time…and in the world to come eternal life. – Mark 10:30

To speak against preaching the future as though it would make people neglect the present is absurd. It is as though somebody should say, “There, take away the moon, and blot out the sun. What is the use of them-they are not in this world?” Precisely so but take away the moon and you have removed the tides, and the sea becomes a stagnant, putrid pool. Then take away the sun, and light, and heat, and life; everything is gone. What the sun and moon are to this natural world, the hope of the future is to the Christian in this world. It is his light; he looks upon all things in that light and sees them truly. It is his heat; it gives him zeal and energy. It is his very life: his Christianity, his virtue would expire if it were not for the hope of the world to come. Do you believe, my brethren, that apostles and martyrs would ever have sacrificed their lives for truth’s sake if they had not looked for a hereafter? In the heat of excitement, the soldier may die for honor, but to die in tortures and mockeries in cold blood needs a hope beyond the grave. Would yon poor man go toiling on year after year, refusing to sacrifice his conscience for gain; would yon poor needle-girl refuse to become the slave of lust if she did not see something brighter than earth can picture to her as the reward of sin? O my brethren, the most practical thing in all the world is the hope of the world to come, for it is just this which keeps us from being miserable; and to keep a man from being miserable, let me say, is to do a great thing for him…The man who has a hope of the next world goes about his work strong, for “the joy of the Lord is our strength.” Through the Spirit of God, the hope of another world is the most potent force for the product of virtue; it is a fountain of joy; it is the very channel of usefulness. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0562.cfm

The Music to which Christians Dance

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

If we suffer (with Him), we shall also reign with Him… – 2 Timothy 2:12

With all God’s people their worst grief is sin. I would not care for any sorrow, if I could live without sinning. Oh! if I were rid of the appetites of the flesh and the lusts thereof, and the desires which continually go astray, I would be satisfied to lie in a dungeon and rot there, so as to be delivered from the corruption of sin. Well, brethren, we shall soon attain unto perfection. The body of this death will die with this body. There is no temptation in heaven, for the dog of hell can never cross the stream of death; there are no corruptions there, for they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb; there shall by no means enter into that kingdom anything which defileth. Methinks as I hear the joyous song of the glorified, as I catch floating down from heaven the sound of that music which is like many waters and like the great thunder, and as I hear the harmony of those notes which are sweet as harpers harping with their harps, my soul desireth to stretch her wings, and fly straight to yonder worlds of joy. I know it is so with you, my brethren in the tribulation of Christ. As you wipe the sweat off your brow, is not this the comfort: “…there is rest for the people of God.” As you stand out against temptation and suffer for Christ’s sake, is not this your comfort: ” If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him.” When you are slandered and despised by men, is not this your hope: “He will remember me when He cometh into His kingdom. I shall sit upon His throne, even as He has overcome, and sitteth down upon His Father’s throne.” Oh! yes, this is the music to which Christians dance; this is the wine which maketh glad their hearts; this is the banquet at which they feast. There is another and a better land, and we, though we sleep with the clods of the valley, shall in our flesh see God, when our Redeemer shall stand in the latter days upon the earth. Our hope in Christ for the future is the mainstay of our joy. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0562.cfm

A Rest for the People of God.

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

There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. – Hebrews 4:9

Oh! happy truth, there remaineth a rest for the people of God. ” They rest from their labors, and their works do follow them.” Others of you are always in the field of battle; you are so tempted within, and so molested by foes without, that you have little or no peace. I know where your hope lies. It lies in the victory, when the banner shall be waved aloft, and the sword shall be sheathed, and you shall hear your Captain say, “Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast fought a good fight; thou hast finished thy course: henceforth wear thou the crown of life which fadeth not away.” Some of you are tossed about with many troubles; you go from care to care, from loss to loss: it seems to you as if all God’s waves and billows had gone over you; but you shall soon arrive at the land of happiness, where you shall bathe your weary soul in seas of heavenly rest, You shall have no poverty soon; no mud-hovel, no rags, nor hunger. “In My Father’s house are many mansions,” and there shall you dwell, satisfied with favor, and full of every blessing. You have had bereavement after bereavement; the wife has been carried to the tomb, the children have followed, father and mother are gone, and you have few left to love you here; but you are going to the land where graves are unknown things, where they never see a shroud, and the sound of the mattock and the spade are never heard; you are going to your Father’s house in the land of the immortal, in the country of the hereafter, in the home of the blessed, in the habitation of God Most High, in the Jerusalem which is above, the mother of us all. Is not this your best joy, that you are not to be here for ever, that you are not to dwell eternally in this wilderness, but shall soon inherit Canaan? ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0562.cfm

There is Another World to Come

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises 2 Comments

If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. – 1 Corinthians 15:19

There is a poor lunatic in Bedlam, plaiting straw into a crown which he puts upon his head, and calls himself a king, and mounts his mimic throne and thinks that he is monarch over all nations and is perfectly happy in his dream. Do you think that I would undeceive him? Nay, verily, if I could, I would not. If the delusion makes the man happy, by all means let him indulge in it; but, dear friends, you and I have been undeceived; our dream of perfect bliss beneath the skies is gone for ever; what then if there be no world to come? Why then it is a most sorrowful thing for us that we have been awakened out of our sleep unless this better thing which we have chosen, this good part which shall not be taken from us, should prove to be real and true, as we do believe it is…The Christian has learned to think of eternity, of God, of Christ, of communion with Jesus, and if indeed it be all false, he certainly has dreamed the most magnificent of all mortal visions. Truly, if any man could prove it to be a vision, the best thing he could do would be to sit down and weep for ever to think it was not true, for the dream is so splendid, the picture of the world to come so gorgeous, that I can only say, if it be not true, it ought to be; if it be not true, then there is nothing here worth living for, my brethren, and we are disappointed wretches indeed-of all men most miserable.

My brethren, it is the most unhappy piece of knowledge which a man can acquire, to know that this world is vain, if there be not another world abundantly to compensate for all our ills. But O my brethren, if there be a world to come, as faith assures us there is, how joyous it is to be weaned from the world, and to be ready to depart from it! To be with Christ is far better than to tarry in this vale of tears. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0562.cfm

Joy Unaffected by Circumstances

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God 1 Comment

But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when His glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy. – 1 Peter 4:13

I would not change five minutes of the excessive joy my soul has sometimes felt for a thousand years of the best mirth that the children of this world could give me. O friends, there is a happiness which can make the eye sparkle and the heart beat high, and the whole man as full of bounding speed of life as the chariots of Amminadib. There are raptures and high ecstasies, which on festival days such as the Lord allotteth to His people, the saints are permitted to enjoy. I must not fail to remind you that the Christian is the happiest of men for this reason, that his joy does not depend upon circumstances...A rightly cultivated mind, under the power of divine grace and the exercise of a benevolent disposition affords a ground of satisfaction that is not to be affected by “heres” and “theres.” Every Christian will bear you his witness that he has found his sad times to be his glad times, his losses to be his gains, his sicknesses a means to promote his soul’s health. Our summer does not depend upon the sun, nor our flood-tide upon the moon. We can rejoice even in death. We look forward to that happy hour when we shall close our eyes in the peaceful slumbers of death, believing that our last day will be our best day. Even the crossing of the river Jordan is but an easy task, for we shall hear Him say, “Fear not; I am with thee: be not dismayed, I am thy God; when thou passest through the rivers I will be with thee, and the floods shall not overflow thee.” We dare to say it, then, very boldly, we are not of all men most miserable: we would not change (our joy) with unconverted men for all their riches, and their pomp, and their honor thrown into the scale. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0562.cfm

A Lasting Peace of Mind and Joy

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

The righteous shall be glad in the LORD and shall trust in Him; and all the upright in heart shall glory. – Psalm 64:10

Among all men there are none who enjoy such a constant peace of mind as believers in Christ. Our joy is not like that of the sinner, noisy and boisterous. You know what Solomon says- “The laughter of fools is as the crackling of thorns under a pot”-a great deal of blaze and much noise, and then a handful of ashes, and it is all over. “Who hath woe, who hath redness of the eyes? They that tarry long at the wine-men of strength to mingle strong drink.” The Christian, in truth, does not know much of the excitement of the bowl, the viol and the dance, nor does he desire to know; he is content that he possesses a calm deep-seated repose of soul. “He is not afraid of evil tidings, his heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord.” He is not disturbed with any sudden fear: he knows that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.” He is in the habit in whatever society he may be, of still lifting up his heart to God; and therefore, he can say with the Psalmist, “My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed: I will sing and give praise.” “There is a river the streams whereof make glad the city of God.” Believers drink of that river and thirst not for carnal delights. They are made “to lie down in green pastures,” and are led “beside the still waters.” Now this solid, lasting joy and peace of mind sets the Christian so on high above all others, that I boldly testify that there are no people in the world to compare with him for happiness. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0562.cfm