salvation

An Individual and Personal Word

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

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. – Ezekiel 36:26

To me there is much charm in the thought that this text is an individual and personal word. The Lord means, “I will put My spirit within you”: that is to say, within you, as individuals. “I will put My spirit within you” one by one. This must be so since the connection requires it. Now, a new heart can only be given to one person. Each man needs a heart of his own, and each man must have a new heart for himself… “And I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh” -these are all personal, individual operations of grace. God deals with men one by one in the solemn matters of eternity, sin, and salvation. We are born one by one, and we die one by one: even so we must be born again one by one, and each one for himself must receive the Spirit of God. Without this a man has nothing. He cannot be caused to walk in God’s statutes except by the infusion of grace into him as an individual.

My dear hearers, you who have long been seeking salvation, but have not known the power of the Spirit-this is what you need. You have been striving in the energy of the flesh, but you have not understood where your true strength lieth. God saith to you, “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord”; and again, “I will put My spirit within you.” …Lift up your heart in prayer to God, and ask Him to pour upon you the Spirit of grace and of supplications. Plead with the Lord, saying, “Let Thy good Spirit lead me. Even me.” Cry, “Pass me not, my gracious Father; but in me fulfil this wondrous word of thine, ‘I will put My spirit within you.'” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

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

The Loving Angry Father

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

For whom the LORD loveth He correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth. – Proverbs 3:12

Has your father treated you badly lately? I have this word to you, then; your father loves you quite as much when he treats you roughly as when he treats you kindly. There is often more love in an angry father’s heart than there is in the heart of a father who is too kind. I will suppose a case. Suppose there were two fathers, and their two sons went away to some remote part of the earth where idolatry is still practiced. Suppose these two sons were decoyed and deluded into idolatry. The news comes to England, and the first father is very angry. His son, his own son, has forsaken the religion of Christ and become an idolater. The second father says, “Well, if it will help him in trade I don’t care, if he gets on the better by it, all well and good.” Now, which loves most, the angry father, or the father who treats the matter with complacency? Why, the angry father is the best. He loves his son; therefore he cannot give away his son’s soul for gold. Give me a father that is angry with my sins, and that seeks to bring me back, even though it be by chastisement. Thank God you have got a Father that can be angry, but that loves you as much when He is angry as when He smiles upon you. Go away with that upon your mind, and rejoice. But if you love not God and fear Him not, go home, I beseech you, to confess your sins, and to seek mercy through the blood of Christ. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0213.cfm

My Father!

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

For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. – Romans 8:14

And what is “the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father?” I cannot tell you; but if you have felt it you will know it. It is a sweet compound of faith that knows God to be my Father, love that loves Him as my Father, joy that rejoices in Him as my Father, fear that trembles to disobey Him because He is my Father and a confident affection and trustfulness that relies upon Him, and casts itself wholly upon Him, because it knows by the infallible witness of the Holy Spirit, that Jehovah, the God of earth and heaven, is the Father of my heart. Oh! have you ever felt the spirit of adoption? There is nought like it beneath the sky. Save heaven itself there is nought more blissful than to enjoy that spirit of adoption. Oh! when the wind of trouble is blowing and waves of adversity are rising, and the ship is reeling to the rock how sweet then to say “My Father,” and to believe that His strong hand is on the helm!-when the bones are aching, and when the loins are filled with pain, and when the cup is brimming with wormwood and gall, to say “My Father,” and seeing that Father’s hand holding the cup to the lip, to drink it steadily to the very dregs because we can say, “My Father, not my will, but Thine be done.”  “My Father!” Oh! there is music there; there is eloquence there; there is the very essence of heaven’s own bliss in that word, ” My Father,” when applied to God, and when said by us with an unfaltering tongue, through the inspiration of the Spirit of the living God.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0213.cfm

The Brotherhood in Christ

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

…Our Father… – Matthew 6:9

It does not say my Father, but our Father. It seems there are a great many in the family. “Our Father.” When you pray that prayer, remember you have a good many brothers and sisters that do not know their Father yet, and you must include them all; for all God’s elect ones, though they be uncalled as yet, are still His children, though they know it not.

When thou prayest to God put in the poor; for is he not the Father of many of the poor, rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom, though they be poor in this world. Come my sister, if thou bowest thy knee amid the rustling of silk and satin, yet remember the cotton and the print. My brother, is there wealth in thy hand, yet I pray thee, remember thy brethren of the horny hand and the dusty brow; remember those who could not wear what thou wearest, nor eat what thou eatest, but are as Lazarus compared with thee, while thou art as Dives. Pray for them; put them all in the same prayer and say, “Our Father.”

And pray for those that are divided from us by the sea-those that are in heathen lands, scattered like precious salt in the midst of this world’s putrefaction. Pray for all that name the name of Jesus, and let thy prayer be a great and comprehensive one. “Our Father, which art in heaven.” And after thou hast prayed that rise up and act it. Say not “Our Father,” and then look upon thy brethren with a sneer or a frown. I beseech thee, live like a brother, and act like a brother Help the needy; cheer the sick; comfort the faint-hearted; go about doing good, minister unto the suffering people of God, wherever thou findest them, and let the world take knowledge of thee, that thou art when on thy feet what thou art upon thy knees-that thou art a brother unto all the brotherhood of Christ, a brother born for adversity, like thy Master Himself. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0213.cfm

The Christian’s Joyous Privileges

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

And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ… – Romans 8:17

Time would fail me, if I were to attempt to read the long roll of the Christian’s joyous privileges. I am God’s child: if so, He will clothe me; my shoes shall be iron and brass; He will array me with the robe of my Saviour’s righteousness, for He has said, “Bring forth the best robe and put it on him,” and He has also said that He will put a crown of pure gold upon my head and inasmuch as I am a king’s son, I shall have a royal crown. Am I His child? Then He will feed me; my bread shall be given me, and my water shall be sure; He that feeds the ravens will never let His children starve. If the good Husbandman feeds the barn-door fowl, and the sheep and the bullocks, certainly His children shall not starve. Does my Father deck the lily, and shall I go naked? Does He feed the fowls of the heaven that sow not, neither do they reap, and shall I feel necessity? God forbid! My Father knoweth what things I have need of before I ask Him, and He will give me all I want. If I be His child, then I have a portion in His heart here, and I shall have a portion in His house above. for “if children then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ,” “If we suffer with Him, we shall be also glorified together.” And oh! brethren, what a prospect this opens up! The fact of our being heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ, proves that all things are ours-the gift of God, the purchase of a Saviour’s blood. Are there crowns? They are mine if I be an heir. Are there thrones? Are there dominions? Are there harps, palm branches, white robes? Are there glories that eye hath not seen? and is there music that ear hath not heard? All these are mine, if I be a child of God. “And it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” Talk of princes, and kings, and potentates- their inheritance is but a pitiful foot of land, across which the bird’s wing can soon direct its flight; but the broad acres of the Christian cannot be measured by eternity. He is rich, without a limit to his wealth. he is blessed, without a boundary to his bliss. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0213.cfm

Nothing Can Divide Us from His Heart

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

And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. – Galatians 3:29

Permit me to draw your attention to one encouraging thought that may help to cheer the downcast and Satan-tempted child of God. Sonship is a thing which all the infirmities of our flesh, and all the sins into which we are hurried by temptation, can never violate or weaken. A man hath a child; that child on a sudden is bereaved of its senses; it becomes an idiot. What a grief that is to a father, for a child to become a lunatic or an idiot, and to exist only as an animal, apparently without a soul! But the idiot child is a child, and the lunatic child is a child still; and if we are the fathers of such children they are ours, and all the idiocy and all the lunacy that can possibly befall them can never shake the fact that they are our sons. Oh! what a mercy, when we transfer this to God’s case and ours! How foolish we are sometimes-how worse than foolish! We may say as David did, “I was as a beast before Thee.” God brings before us the truths of His kingdom; we cannot see their beauty, we cannot appreciate them; we seem to be as if we were totally demented ignorant, unstable, weary, and apt to slide. But, thanks be unto God, we are His children still! And if there be anything worse that can happen to a father than his child becoming a lunatic or an idiot, it is when he grows up to be wicked. Ungodly, vile, debauched-a blasphemer! But mark, brethren: if he be a child he cannot lose his childship, nor we our fatherhood, be he who or what he may… The prodigal was his father’s son, when he was amongst the harlots, and when he was feeding swine; and God’s children are God’s children anywhere and everywhere, and shall be even unto the end. Nothing can sever that sacred tie, or divide us from His heart. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0213.cfm

Sonship

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

…Our Father which art in heaven… – Matthew 6:9

Here is sonship-“Our Father which art in heaven.” How are we to understand this, and in what sense are we the sons and daughters of God? Some say that the Fatherhood of God is universal, and that every man, from the fact of his being created by God, is necessarily God’s son, and that therefore every man has a right to approach the throne of God, and say, “Our Father which art in heaven.” …I have never been able to see that creation necessarily implies fatherhood. I believe God has made many things that are not His children… He made the angels, who stand in an eminently high and holy position, are they His children? “Unto which of the angels said He at any time, thou art My son?” I do not find, as a rule, that angels are called the children of God; and I must demur to the idea that mere creation brings God necessarily into the relationship of a Father… Those who can say, “Our Father which art in heaven,” are something more than God’s creatures: they have been adopted into His family. He has taken them out of the old black family in which they were born; He has washed them. and cleansed them, and given them a new name and a new spirit, and made them “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ;” and all this of His own free, sovereign, unmerited, distinguishing grace. And having adopted them to be His children, He has in the next place, regenerated them by the Spirit of the living God. He has “begotten them again unto a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” and no man hath a right to claim God as his Father, unless he feeleth in his soul, and believeth, solemnly, through the faith of God’s election, that he has been adopted into the one family of which is in heaven and earth, and that he has been regenerated or born again. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0213.cfm