salvation

Our God Forgives Us All

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, promises, repentance, salvation, Sovereignty of God 7 Comments

In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace… – Ephesians 1:7

If Thou wantest a platform on which to erect a monument of infinite grace, that men shall stand and wonder, and angels shall gaze on it with astonishment, Lord, here am I. If Thou wantest emptiness, here is one who is all emptiness. If Thou as the good physician wantest a bad case, a glaring case, a desperate case, to operate on, Thou wilt never have a worse case than mine. O God, turn aside and have pity upon me, and show Thy mighty power.” This is the way to plead. Not your merits-they will never get a hearing, but your misery, your sin, your guiltiness before God-these are the arguments. And then if faith can come in and plead the blood, and say, “Didst Thou not send Thy Son to save sinners?” Has He not said He came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance? Is it not written that the Son of Man is come to seek and to save not the good, but that which was lost? Oh! if you can plead the blood in that fashion, you will not fail. His name is the Savior-He came to save His people from their sins. He died for the ungodly, He justifieth the ungodly-the unrighteous He makes righteous through His own merits. If you can plead this, oh, then, you shall not long wait, for though God does not deliver till we cry, yet He does deliver when we cry. “He will deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper.” Oh, what a mercy it is when the tide is ebbed right out, and there is nothing left. It will turn now, it will turn now. The streams of grace will turn now. When you are empty, when you are overwhelmed, when you are like a dish wiped out, and there is not anything good left in you-now will God come to you. The darkest part of the night is that which precedes the dawn of the day. When God has killed you, He will make you live. When He has wounded you through and through, He will come to your healing.

May it be so now, for His name’s sake. Amen. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1037.cfm

The Pleading Prayer

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

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you… – Matthew 7:7

The Lord loves to hear the prayers of His people, and He sometimes keeps them waiting at the posts of His door, that they may pray more. It is always a blessing for us to pray as well as to get the answer to prayer. Prayer is in itself a blessing. When the Lord hears us knock faintly at the door, He does not open; we may knock and knock again-He likes us to knock; it does us good to knock. But when it comes to this, that it is all knocking with us, and our very soul and body seem to knock, and our heart and flesh cry after God, the living God: when we shall thus come to appear before God, and open our mouth and pant vehemently for the mercy He has promised, then it will come. When thou canst not take a denial, thou shalt not have a denial. The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force. There is none so violent as the man who is in desperate need…Poor soul, go and plead your need before God. Plead your sin, tell Him you are wretched and undone without His sovereign grace. Use the strange argument which David used, the strangest in all the world, “For Thy name’s sake, O Lord! pardon mine iniquity, for it is great.” Plead the very greatness of your sin as a reason for mercy; the damnable character of your sin; the certainty that you will soon be cast into hell, the fact that He might justly drive you from His presence for ever; plead all that before Him; and say, “Lord, if ever the heights and depths of Thy grace might be seen in saving an undeserving soul, I am just that one. If Thy mercy wants to honor itself by saving the most undeserving, ill deserving, hell deserving sinner that ever lived, Lord, I am the man. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1037.cfm

The Poor Man’s Friend

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

He shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy. He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence: and precious shall their blood be in His sight. – Psalm 72:13, 14

There shall always be a gracious limit put to the blows that come from Jehovah’s hand for His own people. Oh, what a mercy to be amongst His poor ones, and to feel that He will spare us; He spared not His own Son, but He will spare us, the poor and needy; He smote Him with the blows of avenging justice, but concerning us it is written, “The mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed, but the covenant of My love shall not depart. As I have sworn that the waters shall no more go over the earth; so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee.” He wilt spare His people; He will bring them safely through, and, meanwhile, He will not let the waters be deep enough to overwhelm them.

“He shall redeem their souls from deceit and violence.” Redemption belongs to the Lord’s poor people. He bought with a price His poor ones, and as the ransom has all been paid, they belong to Christ, and none shall take them out of His hand. He that redeemed them by price will redeem them by power…”Heaven and earth may pass away, but His word shall never pass away.” He would sooner shake the heavens themselves than suffer one of His children to famish, or utterly to perish, rest assured of that. Oh, what glorious comfort there is in all this! We shall be spared, we shall be redeemed, we shall be delivered, we shall be saved, we shall be revenged and cleared before the judgment-bar of God; and, all because the great King has made the poor and needy the special objects of His love. Oh! my soul revels in this. I cannot speak out the thoughts I feel, much less the joy that arises out of them; but what a mercy it really is, that the great King, the King who rules from the river to the ends of the earth, is the poor man’s friend. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1037.cfm

Brought Safely Through the Perils that Threaten You

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

He shall judge the poor of the people, He shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor. – Psalm 72:4

The Lord’s people are like sheep among wolves, the wolves treat them injuriously. Christ Himself was oppressed and afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth. His people may expect to be oppressed too; but they have this for their comfort, that Christ will surely deliver them, and He will break their oppressors in pieces. Are you oppressed by Satan? Have you things laid to your charge by him that you know not of, and doth conscience oppress you with the remembrance of sins which have been forgiven? Have you ever believed concerning them in the atonement of Christ? Well, bow your head meekly, and go to the mercy-seat once again, pleading the precious blood, and He shall break in pieces the oppressor. There is no answer for Satan like the blood! and there is no answer for conscience but the blood.

“He shall deliver the needy.” Deliver them! You are brought into great troubles; you shall be delivered out of them. You are just now the subject of many fears: you shall be delivered from your fears. It seems as though the enemy would soon exult over you, and put his foot upon your neck, and make an end of you; you shall be delivered. You are like a bird taken in the fowler’s net, and he is ready to wring your neck and take the breath out of you; but you shall be delivered out of the hand of the fowler, and brought safely through the perils that threaten you. Oh, that we all had faith! Oh, that we all could exercise faith when in deep waters. It is a fine thing to talk about faith on land, but we want faith to swim with when we are thrown into the flood. May you get such a grip of this precious word that you may take it before the Lord and say, “I am poor and needy, and have no helper. O God, deliver my soul now.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1037.cfm

It Is All of the Grace of God

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

Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He shall lift you up. – James 4:10

In choosing to bless the poor and needy by His grace, the Lord finds for Himself warm friends, those who will give Him much praise, contend earnestly for His reign and for His sovereignty, and endure much obloquy for very love to His dear name. Why if the Lord were to save the Pharisees, they would hardly say, “thank you,” they are so good themselves. They reckon themselves to be so excellent, that if they had salvation they would take it as a matter of course, and, like the lepers, they would never return to thank Him that healed them. But when the Lord saves a great sinner, a man that feels there is nothing good in him; oh, how that man talks of it and tells it to others. He cannot take any praise to himself, he knows that he had nothing to do with it, that it is all of the grace of God. And, oh, see that man how he will stand up for the doctrines of grace!…They are dear to him as his own life. “What,” says he, “is not God the giver of salvation? Is not salvation all of God, from first to last? I know it is,” saith he…”for unless it is grace from first to last, I am a lost man; and, if I be indeed a child of God, then can I contend for the doctrines of grace, and will do till I die.”

Dear objects of Almighty love, He finds you on the dunghill, but He lifts you from it. He finds you in the dust, but is not this the song of Hannah and the song of Mary too-“He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and He hath exalted them of low degree: He hath filled the hungry with good things, but the rich He hath sent empty away?” It is God’s way of dealing with the poor and lost; rejoice at it, it is full of encouragement to you. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1037.cfm

Wise Mercy Seeks Out Chief Misery

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

But He giveth more grace. Wherefore He saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. – James 4:6

We see in the poor, and the needy, and the helpless, a reason for God’s grace. They are the persons who are most willing to accept it, for they are the persons who most require it. Your generosity will not stand to be dictated to, but, at the same time, you usually prefer to give to those who want most. Wise mercy seeks out chief misery, and God therefore delights to give His blessings to those who need them most, not to those who fancy they deserve them-they shall have none of them, but those who need them, they shall have all of them.

When a soul is made to feel its own poverty, it does not set itself up in rivalry with Christ; it does not pretend to be able to help itself; it has no disputing about the terms of the gospel. A sinner, when he is thoroughly famished, has such an appetite that he eats such things as God’s mercy sets before him, and he raises no question. A proud Pharisee will say, “I will not submit to this, to be saved by faith alone-I will not have it. To accept mercy as the absolute gift of heaven, irrespective of my character, I cannot endure it.” The high soul of a Pharisee, I say, kicks at it. But when God has brought a man low, till like the publican he cries, “God be merciful to me a sinner,” he is glad to be saved in God’s way, and no matter however humbling the plan of grace, nor how the sinner is debased and Christ exalted, the poor sinner loves to have it so. It is a way suitable to his own wants, a way which he accepts for the very reason that God has adapted it to his position. Hence, if there be reasons they lie here, not in man’s merit but on the Lord’s mercy. The fact that bare misery, when touched and guided by the Spirit of God, makes the soul to open its mouth like the hard chapped soil to drink in the rain, as soon as the rain descends from above, is an argument why grace so commonly flows in this course. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1037.cfm

When the Chariot of the Eternal Comes

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

“In Me ye shall have peace.” -John 16:33

For He shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper. -Psalm 72:12

The trials of God’s servants are sometimes extremely severe. Not a few are literally as well as spiritually poor. Hunger, privation, and embarrassment haunt their steps. And when you once come to be poor, how often does it happen that you have no helper. In the summer of prosperity your friends and acquaintances are numerous as the leaves of the forest, but in the winter of your losses and distresses, your friends are few indeed; your neighbors stand aloof, your old mates desert you, for like the wind your trials have borne them all away as sere leaves, and you cannot find them.

But, do not think that the Lord has cast you off, because He is thus chastening you with the rod of men; take it as an exercise of your faith, and go to Him and plead this promise, “He shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper.”

When the chariot of the Eternal comes from above, He bids it roll far downward from the skies; He passes by the towers of haughty kings; He leaves the palaces of princes and the halls of senates, and down to the hovels of cottagers the chariot of His grace descends, for there He sees with joy and delight the objects of His everlasting love. “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion,” is the word of divine sovereignty, and God makes it true by taking the poor and the needy, and them that have no helper. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1037.cfm