repentance

The God of Lust Pulled Down

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, confession of sin, promises, repentance 1 Comment

Now when all this was finished, all Israel that were present went out to the cities of Judah, and brake the images in pieces, and cut down the groves, and threw down the high places and the altars… – 2 Chronicles 31:1

But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. – Matthew 5:28

Let me tell you of another god, which is to be pulled down as certainly by any man who worships Jehovah aright, and that is the god of lust; Oh! this world is not so good as it seems to be. You scarcely hear the minister in these days talk of whoremongers, adulterers, and such like: but they are not all dead. There are such to be found, such in every congregation, I fear. Our streets have not yet become such as Chastity might pace at midnight, nor are the chief places of the earth become clean and purified. There is much hidden pollution to be dragged forth, and cast into Kishon. Even in high places, sin is tolerated, men are respectable who have sent their fellow-creatures to hell, and are going there themselves; but once let grace come into the heart, and away with these: the most darling lust is given up, and that which was thought to be the greatest pleasure, is now looked upon with abhorence and detestation. If thou, my hearer, livest in lust, and yet dost make profession of religion, away with thy profession, for it is an awful lie. Away with that profession, for it is an empty vanity! away with it! It will but add to thy destruction, and cannot save thee from the dreadful doom of the man that goeth on in his iniquity. A happy thing it is for a man when he goes from the house of God, with the resolve that lust shall be abandoned, and every sinful pleasure cast away. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0238.cfm

The God of Bacchus Defeated by the Gospel

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, confession of sin, promises, repentance, salvation, Sovereignty of God 2 Comments

Thou shalt have no other gods before Me. – Exodus 20:3

There are other gods still worshipped in this world, to be execrated with unrelenting indignation. There is one which is certain to be broken, so sure as ever a man becomes a Christian: I mean Bacchus, that jolly god whom so many adored in days of yore with mad revelry, and who is still worshipped by tens of thousands of Englishmen. Perhaps he is the great god of Britain. I am certain he has many temples, for there is scarcely a corner of any street in which we do not behold his image, or see his votaries pouring out libations before him. He is a god that is worshipped with reeling to and fro, and staggering. Men become drunken in his presence, and so do him homage. Now, ye that are drunkards, if ye become Christians, that will turn your cup bottom upwards once and for ever. There will be no more inebriety for you now. By the grace of God you will say, “They that be drunken are drunken in the night, but let us who are of the day be sober. I renounce this practice of drunkenness, I can have nothing more to do with it.” Bless God there are many here present who have gone out of this hall to demolish this god… They have heard the gospel not in word only, but also in power, and now their home is a paradise, their house is made glad with prayer, their children are brought up in the fear of the Lord. We have seen the wife’s tear of gladness when she said, “The Lord be blessed for ever, and blessed be the name of the gospel, for a wretched woman has been made happy, and she who was but a drudge and a slave to one who was like a fiend, has now become the companion of one whom she reckons to be little short of an angel.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0238.cfm

The God of Self-Righteousness

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

“Now when all this was finished, all Israel that were present went out to the cities of Judah, and brake the images in pieces, and cut down the groves, and threw down the high places and the altars out of all Judah and Benjamin, in Ephraim also and Manasseh, until they had utterly destroyed them all.”- 2 Chronicles 31:1

“Thou shalt have none other gods before Me.” Every place is before God. Every thing is before His face and open to Him. Therefore by this command we understand that we are in no way, and in no sense to have another god, but the Lord our God. What! do you ask, are we a nation of idolaters? Can this text pertain to us?… Yea, all of us, until renewed by divine grace, worship gods which our own hands have made, and we do not fear, and love, and obey the living God with our entire and exclusive homage. Once however, let grace be received into the heart, let the soul be renewed by the Holy Spirit, once drink in the free life of Jesus, and these false gods must be broken in pieces at once.

The first god who is worshiped among us is one called self-righteousness. The Pharisees were the high priests of this god; they burnt incense every morning and every evening before him, but he has ten thousand times ten thousand worshipers still left. Among your respectable classes of society he is the received divinity. If a man be respectable, he thinks it all-sufficient. Among your moralists, this is the great god before which they bow down and worship… Until we are brought to know our own lost and ruined condition, self-righteousness is the god before which every one of us will prostrate ourselves. Oh, my dear friends… let us… aim a blow, by the help of God, at self righteousness; let us… prostrate ourselves before God, and cry-

“Vile and full of sin I am.”

“Lord, I confess before Thee, that I have no good works in which to trust, no self-righteousness on which I can rely. I cast my boastings away; I come to Thee as a poor, guilty, helpless sinner; ‘Lord, save, or I perish.'” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0238.cfm

A Gospel for All Ranks and Conditions of Men

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, confession of sin, promises, repentance, salvation 1 Comment

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. – Ephesians 2:9

If salvation had been by works, our Lord could not have said to the thief, dying at His side, “To day shalt thou be with Me in paradise.” That man could do no works. His hands and feet were fastened to the cross, and he was in the agonies of death. No, it must be of grace, all-conquering grace; and the modus operandi must be by faith, or else for dying men the gospel is a mockery. The man must look, and live. The expiring sinner must trust the expiring Savior. As life ebbs out, the penitent must find life in Jesus’ death. Is it not clear that the gospel of works is unsuitable in such a case as that? Now, a gospel which is unsuitable to anybody is not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Yes, I put it plainly. A gospel that does not suit everybody does not suit anybody; and if it suits any class and condition really and truly, it must suit all classes…The gospel of salvation by grace, through faith, is suitable for every class of persons that we have to deal with. Sinful habit has bound in iron fetters many of our fellow-citizens, and the gospel can free them. Be the habit drunkenness, or profanity, or what it may, the habit holds them fast… The forces of natural depravity, and the acquired habits of sin in many cases, I think you will grant it, put the doctrine of salvation by works out of court; and if out of court as to one, it is gone as to all; for there can be but one gospel. Go through your convict settlements; go through your jails; and just see what you can do with a doctrine of salvation by good works. You will come home disappointed, however earnest may be your address. But go there, and tell of free grace and dying love, and pardon bought with blood, and eyes that stream with tears, confessions of sin, and cries for pardon, will tell you that you have not spoken in vain.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2210.cfm

They Loved Much

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

O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.  – Romans 7:24, 25

It is very wonderful, but it is certainly true, that there are many persons in heaven in whom sin once abounded. In the judgment of their fellow-men, some of them were worse sinners than others. There was Saul of Tarsus, there was the dying thief, there was the woman in the city who was a sinner, a sinner in a very open and terrible sense. These, and many more of whom we read in the Scriptures, were all great sinners, and it was a great wonder of grace, in every instance, that they should be forgiven; but did they make poor Christians when they were converted? Quite the reverse; they loved much because they had been forgiven much. Amongst the best servants of God are many of those who were once the best servants of the devil. Sin abounded in them, but grace much more abounded when it took possession of their hearts and lives. They were long led captive by the devil at his will, but they never were such servants to Satan as they afterwards became to the living and true God. They threw all the fervor of their intense natures into the service of their Savior, and so rose superior to some of their fellow-disciples who did not so fully realize how much they owed to their Lord.

The same truth comes out if we think of what sin has done for us. O brethren, sin has infected the nature of man with a foul leprosy, a deadly disease, but Jesus has cured the disease, and given us a life of a holier kind than we ever knew before. Sin has robbed us; but Christ has restored to us more than sin ever took away from us. Sin has stripped us; but Christ has clothed us in a better robe than our natural righteousness could ever have been. Well do we sing of Jesus,-

“In Him the tribes of Adam boast
More blessings than their father lost.”

~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3115.cfm

 

The Power of Pardoning Love

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, promises, repentance, salvation, The Father 3 Comments

…and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin. – 1 John 1:7

Blessed be the name of the Lord, unless we are awfully deceived, we do desire to do that which is well-pleasing in His sight.

When the grace of God opens a man’s eyes to see his best actions as they appear in God’s sight, he sees that those actions are marred by sin. There is not anything that he has done which appears to him to be what it ought to be when he looks at it aright in the light of God’s Word. The most consecrated action of his life, the most devout communion with Christ, the most intense ardor after God, falls far short of what it ought to be, and has something in it which ought not to be there. When the grace of God is strong within us, it makes sin appear to abound even to our own vision; we see it in every hymn we sing, in every prayer we pray, in every sermon we preach. Not only do we see sin in our best things, but we also discover sin in our omissions. We were never troubled about that matter before, but now we recollect that what we do not do is often sinful; not merely the wrong that we commit, but the good that we omit, the good that we neglect or forget to do. There is much sin there. Then we begin to examine our thoughts, and our trivial utterances, and we see them all crusted over with sin. Well, what then? Why, then, this blessed text comes sweetly home to our hearts. “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” And now, how gloriously grace abounds! Now we prove the power of that precious blood which can wash us whiter than snow, so that God Himself shall say to each one of us, “There is no spot in thee.”

Beloved brethren and sisters in Christ, I do firmly believe that a deep and clear sense of sin is necessary to a right estimation of the power of pardoning love. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3115.cfm

 

But, Blessed Be God…

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

That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. – Romans 5:21

Men, after they are converted, and begin to examine themselves in the light of God’s Word, if they are at all like us, find sin everywhere within them;-sin in the affections, so that the hearts lusteth after evil things;-sin in the judgment, so that it often makes most serious mistakes, and honestly puts bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter-sin in the desires, so that though we try to curb them, they wander hither and thither, whither we would not; sin in the will… that he is still very proud, and wants to have his own way,-and is not willing to bow submissively to the will of God; sin in the memory, so that the most godly people can often recollect a snatch of a bad old song which they used to hear or to sing, far more readily than they can remember a text of Scripture; which they wish to treasure up in their memories, for memory has become unhinged, like all the rest of our faculties, and is quick to retain evil, and slow to retain that which is good. Brethren and sisters in Christ, in what part of our body does sin not dwell? Is there any single faculty, or power, or propensity that we have which will not lead us astray if we will let it do so? Are we not obliged to be always upon our guard against ourselves, and to watch ourselves as a garrison of soldiers would have to watch the natives of a country whom they had subdued, but who were anxious to throw off the yoke of the foreigners who had overcome them. In a similar fashion, grace is a foreigner in possession of our nature, and it holds by its own superior force what it has won; and only by its supernatural strength are we kept from regaining our former position.

Thus you see how sin abounds, even in the heart of a believer; but, blessed be God, grace doth much more abound there; for, although the will is still strong, there is a higher power that subdues and controls it so that our will is being gradually conformed to the will of God. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3115.cfm