prophecy

Divine Grace

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, prophecy, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

And I will put My spirit within you… – Ezekiel 36:27

Who but the Lord could speak after this fashion? Can one man put the Spirit of God within another? Could all the church combined breathe the Spirit of God into a single sinner’s heart? To put any good thing into the deceitful heart of man is a great achievement; but to put the Spirit of God into the heart, truly this is the finger of God. Nay, here I may say, the Lord has made bare His arm, and displayed the fulness of His mighty power. To put the Spirit of God into our nature is a work peculiar to the Godhead, and to do this within the nature of a free agent, such as man, is marvellous. Who but Jehovah, the God of Israel, can speak after this royal style, and, beyond all dispute, declare, “I will put My spirit within you?” Men must always surround their resolves with conditions and uncertainties; but since omnipotence is at the back of every promise of God, He speaks like a king; yea, in a style which is only fit for the eternal God. He purposes and promises, and He as surely performs. Sure, then, is this sacred saying, “I will put My spirit within you.” Sure, because divine. O sinner, if we poor creatures had the saving of you, we should break down in the attempt; but, behold the Lord Himself comes on the scene, and the work is done! All the difficulties are removed by this one sentence, “I will put My spirit within you.” We have wrought with our spirit, we have wept over you, ‘and we have entreated you; but we have failed. Lo, there cometh One into the matter who will not fail, with whom nothing is impossible; and He begins His work by saying, “I will put My spirit within you.” The word is of grace and of God; regard it, then, as a pledge from the God of grace.

Glory be to God, who gives to sinners the indwelling of His Spirit. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2200.cfm

A Word of Grace

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

And I will put My spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments, and do them. Ezekiel 36:27

To call this text a golden sentence would be much too commonplace: to liken it to a pearl of great price would be too poor a comparison. We cannot feel, much less speak, too much in praise of the great God who has put this clause into the covenant of His grace. In that covenant every sentence is more precious than heaven and earth; and this line is not the least among His choice words of promise: “I will put My spirit within you.”

I would begin by saying that it is a gracious word. It was spoken to a graceless people, to a people who had followed “their own way,” and refused the way of God; a people who had already provoked something more than ordinary anger in the Judge of all the earth; for He Himself said (verse 18), “I poured My fury upon them.” These people, even under chastisement, caused the holy name of God to be profaned among the heathen, whither they went. They had been highly favoured, but they abused their privileges, and behaved worse than those who never knew the Lord. They sinned wantonly, wilfully, wickedly, proudly and presumptuously; and by this they greatly provoked the Lord. Yet to them He made such a promise as this-” I will put My spirit within you.” Surely, where sin abounded grace did much more abound.

Clearly this is a word of grace, for the law saith nothing of this kind…The law proclaims the statutes; but the gospel alone promises the spirit by which the statutes will be obeyed. The law commands and makes us know what God requires of us; but the gospel goes further, and inclines us to obey the will of the Lord, and enables us practically to walk in His ways. Under the dominion of grace the Lord worketh in us to will and to do of His own good pleasure. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2200.cfm

By Much Prayer We Shall Be Victorious!

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, prayer, promises, prophecy Leave a comment

Pray without ceasing. – 1 Thessalonians 5:17

Mrs. Berry used to say, “I would not be hired out of my closet for a thousand worlds.” Mr. Jay said, “If the twelve apostles were living near you, and you had access to them, if this intercourse drew you from the closet, they would prove a real injury to your souls.” Prayer is the ship which bringeth home the richest freight. It is the soil which yields the most abundant harvest. Brother, when you rise in the morning your business so presses, that with a hurried word or two, down you go into the world, and at night, jaded and tired, you give God the fag end of the day. The consequence is, that you have no communion with Him. The reason we have not more true religion now, is because we have not more prayer. Sirs, I have no opinion of the churches of the present day that do not pray. I go from chapel to chapel in this metropolis and I see pretty good congregations; but I go to their prayer-meetings on a week evening, and I see a dozen persons. Can God bless us, can He pour out His Spirit upon us, while such things as these exist? He could, but it would not be according to the order of His dispensations, for He says, “When Zion travails she brings forth children.” Go to your churches and chapels with this thought, that you want more prayer… We must have an outpouring of real devotion, or else what is to become of many of our churches? O! May God awaken us all, and stir us up to pray, for when we pray we shall be victorious. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0016.cfm

He Was Moved with Compassion in His Terrible Death

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, prophecy, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Father 4 Comments

And He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore His arm brought salvation unto Him; and His own righteousness, it sustained Him. – Isaiah 59:16

While He tarried in the world, a man among men, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, He was constantly moved with compassion; for He felt all the griefs of mankind in Himself. He took our sicknesses and carried our sorrows: He proved Himself a true brother, with quick, human sensibilities. A tear brought a tear into His eye; a cry made Him pause to ask what help He could render. So generous was His soul, that He gave all He had for the help of those that had not. The fox had its hole, and the bird its nest, but He had no dwelling-place. Stripped even of His garments, He hung upon the cross to die. Never one so indigent in death as He, without a friend, without even a tomb, except such as a loan could find Him. He gave up all the comforts of life-He gave His life itself; He gave His very self to prove that He was moved with compassion. Most of all do we see how He was moved with compassion in His terrible death…Must the elect of God be condemned for their sins? No; Jesus is moved with compassion. He steps in, He takes upon Himself the uplifted lash, and His shoulders run with gore; He bares His bosom to the furbished sword, and it smites the Shepherd that the sheep may escape. “He looked, and there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor; therefore, His arm brought salvation.” He trod the wine- press alone, and “bore, that we might never bear, His Father’s righteous ire.”~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3438.cfm

In Very Deed and Truth, He Shall Come

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

He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen.- Revelation 22:20

Now, brethren, we are to expect, as long as this world lasts, that all things will shake that are to be moved. They will go on shaking. We call the world sometimes “terra firma”; it is not this world, surely, that deserves such a name as that; there is nothing stable beneath the stars; all things else will shake, and as the shaking goes on, Jesus Christ will, to those who know Him, become more and more their desire. I suppose, if the world went on, in some things mending and improving, and were to go up to a point, we should not want Christ to come in a hurry; we would rather that things should be perpetuated; but the shaking will make Christ more and more the desire of the nations…The Church will say, “Come, Lord Jesus.” She will say it with gathering earnestness; she will continue still to say it, though there are intervals in which she will forget her Lord, but still her heart’s desire will be that He will come; and at last He will surely come and bring to this world not only Himself, the desire of all nations, but all that can be desired, for those days of His, when He appeareth, shall be to His people as the days of heaven upon earth, the days of their honour, the days of their rest-the day in which the kingdoms shall belong unto Christ…Here is the great hope of that splendid building, the Church, which is desired. Her glory essentially lies in the Incarnate God, who has come into her midst. Her glory manifestly will lie in the second coming of that Incarnate God, when He shall be revealed from heaven to those that look and are waiting for and hasting unto the coming of the Son of God-looking for Him with gladsome expectation. And this is the joy of the Church…In propria persona-in very deed and truth, He shall come. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3442.cfm

All Men Need Christ

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, prophecy, salvation, Sovereignty of God, the unbelieving life 3 Comments

To whom He said, This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing: yet they would not hear. – Isaiah 28:12

Why is it that all men do not receive Christ joyfully? This is our first question. They need Him, all of them. There is no difference in this respect. Whether Jews or Gentiles, they are all sold under sin. God has concluded the whole race of man in unbelief. He has shut them all up in condemnation. There is no escape from the universal doom except by the way of the cross. Jesus Christ comes to save; comes with pardon in His hands, with messages of love, with tokens of favour; yet most men bar the doors of their hearts against Him. There is no cry heard in their souls, “Lift up your heads, O ye gates! and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, that the King of Glory may come in!” Instead thereof, there is a sullen cry, “Come prejudice; come unbelief; come hardness of heart; come love of sin; bar ye the doors and barricade the gates lest, perhaps, the King of Glory should force an entrance!” Men treat the Saviour as they would treat an invader who attacked their country. They seek to drive Him away; they would fain be rid of Him. They cannot endure His presence. Nay, they can scarce endure, some of them, to hear about Him in the street. Why is this? The chief reason lies in the depravity of man’s nature. You never know how bad man is till he comes in contact with the Cross.

Oh! Human Nature, how blind must be thy heart, how seared thy conscience, not to see the beauties of Christ! How base must thou be to despise the love and tenderness of such a Saviour!~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3487.cfm

A Glorious Purpose

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

“Behold, I make all things new.” And He said unto me, “Write: for these words are true and faithful.”- Revelation 21:5

It is the purpose and intention of the Lord Jesus to make this world entirely new. You recollect how it was made at first, pure and perfect. It sang with its sister-spheres the song of joy and reverence. It was a fair world, full of everything that was lovely, beautiful, happy, holy. And if we might be permitted to dream for a moment of what it would have been if it had continued as God created it, one might fancy what a blessed world it would be at this moment. Had it possessed a teeming population like its present one, and if, one by one, those godly ones had been caught away, like Elijah, without knowing death, to be succeeded by pious descendants-oh! what a blessed world it would have been! …But there came a serpent, and his craft spoiled it all. He whispered into the ears of a mother Eve; she fell, and we fell with her, and what a world this now is! …Devils could not be worse than men when their passions are let loose. Dogs would scarce tear each other as men do. Men of intellect sit down, and put their fingers to their foreheads, racking their brains to find out new ways of using gunpowder, and shot, and shell, so as to be able to blow twenty thousand souls into eternity as easily as twenty might be massacred by present appliances…. It is a dreadful world. But Jesus Christ, who knew that we should never make this world much better, let us do what we would with it, designed from the very first to make a new world of it. Truly, truly, this seems to me to be a glorious purpose. To make a world is something wonderful, but to make a world new is something more wonderful still.

Jesus Christ, coming in the form of a man, revealing Himself as the Son of God, determines to make all things new; and be assured, brethren and sisters, He will do it. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3467.cfm