“God be merciful to me a sinner”

“And the publican, standing afar off would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.”- Luke 18:13

Our Saviour, being desirous of setting before us the necessity of humiliation in prayer, has not selected some distinguished saint who was famed for his humility, but He has chosen a tax-gatherer, probably one of the most extortionate of his class, for the Pharisee seems to hint as much; and I doubt not he cast his eye askance at this publican, when he observed, with self-gratulation, “God, I thank Thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.” Still, our Lord, in order that we might see that there was nothing to predispose in the person, but that the acceptance of the prayer might stand out, set even in a brighter light by the black foil of the publican’s character, has selected this man to be the pattern and model of one who should offer an acceptable prayer unto God…  But so it happened, that the Spirit of the Lord met with the publican; and had made him think upon his ways, and their peculiar blackness: he was full of trouble, but he kept it to himself, pent up in his own bosom, he could scarcely rest at night nor go about his business by day, for day and night the hand of God was heavy upon him. At last, unable to endure his misery any longer, he thought of that house of God at Zion, and of the sacrifice that was daily offered there. “To whom, or where should I go,” said he, “but to God?-and where can I hope to find mercy, but where the sacrifice is offered.”

At last his stifled feelings found utterance; yet that utterance was a groan, a short prayer that must all be comprehended in the compass of a sigh: “God be merciful to me a sinner.” It is done; he is heard; the angel of mercy registers his pardon, his conscience is at peace; he goes down to his house a happy man, justified rather than the Pharisee, and rejoicing in the justification that the Lord had given to him. Well then, my business is to invite, to urge, to beseech you to do what the publican did, that you may receive what he obtained.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0216.cfm

Christ Will Save Thee

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God… – Ephesians 2:8

“By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.” God’s gifts are like Himself, immeasurably great. Perhaps some of you think you would be content with crumbs or bones from God’s table. Well, if He were to give me a few crumbs or a little broken meat, I would be grateful for even that, but it would not satisfy me; but when He says to me, “Thou art My son, I have adopted thee into My family, and thou shalt go no more out for ever;” I do not agree with you that it is too good to be true. It may be too good for you, but it is not too good for God; He gives as only He can give. If I were in great need, and obtained access to the Queen, and after laying my case before her, she said to me, “I feel a very deep interest in your case, here is a penny for you,” I should be quite sure that I had not seen the Queen, but that some lady’s maid or servant had been making a fool of me. Oh, no! the Queen gives as Queen, and God gives as God; so that the greatness of His gift, instead of staggering us, should only assure us that it is genuine, and that it comes from God… So, sinner, go to the great God, with your great sin, and ask for great grace that you may be washed in the great fountain filled with the blood of the great sacrifice, and you shall have the great salvation which Christ has procured, and for it you shall ascribe great praise for ever and ever to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God grant that it may be so, for Jesus’ sake! Amen.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3278.cfm

Pure in God’s Sight

I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels. – Isaiah 61:10

Some of you have to live in smoky, grimy London, but the smoke and the grime cannot discolour the spotless robe of Christ’s righteousness. In yourselves, you are stained with sin; but when you stand before God, clothed in the righteousness of Christ, the stains of sin are all gone… The believer in Christ is as pure in God’s sight at one time as he is at another. He does not look upon the varying purity of our sanctification as our ground of acceptance with Him; but He looks upon the matchless and immutable purity of the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, and He accepts us in Christ, and not because of what we are in ourselves. Hence, when we are once “accepted in the Beloved,” we are permanently accepted; and being accepted in Him, we are “whiter than snow.”

Further, the whiteness of snow is, after all, only created whiteness. It is something which God has made, yet it has not the purity which appertains to God Himself; but the righteousness which God gives to the believer is a divine righteousness, as Paul says, “He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” And remember that this is true of the very sinner who before was so black that he had to cry to God, “Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3278.cfm

Whiter Than Snow

Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. – Psalm 51:7

What a beautiful sight it was, this morning, when we looked out, and saw the ground all covered with snow! The trees were all robed in silver; yet it is almost an insult to the snow to compare it to silver, for silver at its brightest is not worthy to be compared with the marvelous splendour that was to be seen wherever the trees appeared adorned with beautiful festoons above the earth which was robed in its pure white mantle. If we had taken a piece of what we call white paper, and laid it down upon the surface of newly-fallen snow, it would have seemed quite begrimed in comparison with the spotless snow. This morning’s scene at once called the text to my mind: “Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” You, O black sinner, if you believe in Jesus, shall not only be washed in His precious blood until you become tolerably clean, but you shall be made white, yea, you shall be “whiter than snow.” When we have gazed upon the pure whiteness of the snow before it has become defiled, it has seemed as though there could be nothing whiter. I know that, when I have been among the Alps, and have for hours looked upon the dazzling whiteness of the snow, I have been almost blinded by it. If the snow were to lie long upon the ground, and if the whole earth were to be covered with it, we should soon all be blind. The eyes of man have suffered with his soul through sin, and just as our soul would be unable to bear a sight of the unveiled purity of God, our eyes cannot endure to look upon the wondrous purity of the snow. Yet the sinner, black through sin, when brought under the cleansing power of the blood of Jesus, becomes “whiter than snow.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3278.cfm

A Great Atonement Has Saved So Many Great Sinners

For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. – Romans 5:19

It must have been a great atonement which has safely landed such multitudes of sinners in heaven, and which has saved so many great sinners, and transformed them into such bright saints. It must be a great atonement which is yet to bring innumerable myriads into the unity of the faith, and into the glory of the church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven. It is so great an atonement, sinner, that if thou wilt trust to it, thou shalt be saved by it however many and great thy sins may have been. Art thou afraid that the blood of Christ is not powerful enough to cleanse thee? Dost thou fear that His atonement cannot bear the weight of such a sinner as thou art? I heard, the other day, of a foolish woman at Plymouth who, for a long while, would not go over the Saltash Bridge because she did not think it was safe. When, at length, after seeing the enormous traffic that passed safely over the bridge, she was induced to trust herself to it, she trembled greatly all the time, and was not easy in her mind until she was off it. Of course, everybody laughed at her for thinking that such a ponderous structure could not bear her little weight. There may be some sinner who is afraid that the great bridge which eternal mercy has constructed, at infinite cost, across the gulf which separates us from God, is not strong enough to bear his weight. If so, let me assure him that across that bridge of Christ’s atoning sacrifice millions of sinners, as vile and foul as he is, have safely passed, and the bridge has not even trembled beneath their weight, nor has any single part of it ever strained or displaced… It is well that you should have a vivid realization of the weight of your sins, but at the same time you should also realize that Jesus Christ, by virtue of His great atonement, is not only able to bear the weight of your sins, but He can also carry-indeed, He has already carried upon His shoulders the sins of all who shall believe in Him right to the end of time; and He has borne them away into the land of forgetfulness, where they shall not be remembered or recovered for ever. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3278.cfm

A Great Atonement At So Great A Price

Much more then, being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. – Romans 5:9

The power of the cleansing blood of Jesus must also lie in the intense sufferings which He endured in making atonement for His people. Never was there another case like that of our precious Saviour. In His merely physical sufferings there may have been some who have endured as much as He did, for the human body is only capable of a certain amount of pain and agony, and others beside our Lord have reached that limit; but there was an element in His sufferings that was never present in any other case. The fact of His dying in the room, and place, and stead of His people, the one great sacrifice for the whole of His redeemed, makes His death altogether unique, so that not even the noblest of the noble army of martyrs can share the glory with Him. His mental sufferings also constituted a very vital part of the atonement, the sufferings of His soul were the very soul of His sufferings. If you can comprehend the bitterness of His betrayal by one who had been His follower and friend, and of His desertion by all His disciples, His arraignment for sedition and blasphemy before creatures whom He had Himself made; if you can realize what it was for Him, who did no sin, to be made sin for us, and to have laid upon Him the iniquity of us all; if you can picture to yourself how He loathed sin and shrank from it, you can form some slight idea of what His pure nature must have suffered for our sakes. We do not shrink from sin as Christ did because we are accustomed to it, it was once the element in which we lived, and moved, had our being; but His holy nature shrank from evil as a sensitive plant recoils from the touch. But the worst of His sufferings must have been when His Father’s wrath was poured out upon Him as He bore what His people deserved to bear, but which now they will never have to bear. For His Father to have to hide His face from Him so that He cried in His agony, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” must have been a veritable hell to Him. This was the tremendous draught of wrath which our Saviour drank for us to its last dregs so that our cup might not have one drop of wrath in it for ever. It must have been a great atonement that was purchased at so great price. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3278.cfm

Infinite Value in the Atonement

…we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement. – Romans 5:11

The Power of Jesus to cleanse from sin must lie, first, in the greatness of His person. It is not conceivable that the sufferings of a mere man, however holy or great he might have been, could have made atonement for the sins of the whole multitude of the Lord’s chosen people. It was because Jesus Christ was one of the persons in the Divine Trinity, it was because the Son of Mary was none other than the Son of God, it was because He who lived, and laboured, and suffered, and died and was the great Creator, without whom was not anything made that was made, that His blood has such efficacy that it can wash the blackest sinner so clean that they are “whiter than snow.” The death of the best man who ever lived could not make an atonement even for his own sins, much less could it atone for the guilt of others; but when God Himself “took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men,” and “humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross,” no limit can be set to the value of the atonement that He made. We hold most firmly the doctrine of particular redemption, that Christ loved His Church, and gave Himself for it; but we do not hold the doctrine of the limited value of His precious blood. There can be no limit to Deity, there must be infinite value in the atonement which was offered by Him who is divine. The only limit of the atonement is in its design, and that design was that Christ should give eternal life to as many as the Father has given Him; but in itself the atonement is sufficient for the salvation of the whose world, and if the entire race of mankind could be brought to believe in Jesus, there is enough efficacy in His precious blood to cleanse everyone born of woman from every sin that all of them have ever committed.

The Lord knows exactly what your sin is, therefore do not try to use polite terms about it. Tell Him what it is, that He may know that you know what it is. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3278.cfm