salvation

A Real Heart Change

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

Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. – Matthew 3:8

There is no going to heaven by following the road to hell. There is no finding pardon while continuing in sin. Depend upon it, Mr. Drunkard, you will not be forgiven for your drunkenness if you still go on with your drinking. Don’t let the man who is immoral imagine that he can go on with his sin and yet be forgiven. Don’t let the thief dream that there is any pardon for him unless he quits his evil course, and tries to make restitution as best he can to those whom he has wronged.  There must be repentance…evidences of true repentance is a new life. It is no use feeling sorry for yourself and crying, and praying a prayer of salvation with a lie in your right hand, and then going home to swear and drink, or to avoid Sunday worship, and to live as you like, and all the while still hoping to enter heaven. No, sin and you must part, or else Christ and you can never keep company. Do you remember that message that John Bunyan thought he heard in his head when he was playing sports on Sunday morning. He suddenly stood still with the stick in his hand, for he thought he heard a voice saying to him, “Will you turn away from your sins, and go to heaven, or keep your sins, and go to hell?” That is the alternative which both the law and the gospel put before men and women. “Flee from the coming wrath;” but there is no fleeing from wrath except by repentance of sin, which will be evidenced by the fruits of repentance: a real change of heart and life. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

http://www.biblebb.com/files/spurgeon/2704.htm

 

 

Flee from the Wrath to Come!

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

Who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us. -Hebrews 6:18

Sinner, you cannot endure the wrath of God. If your ribs were made of granite, and your nerves were made of brass, you could not endure the wrath of the Almighty; no, not even for a moment. If a man had a toothache, how dreadful it would seem to him to have to bear that pain for twelve months, even if he knew that there would be an end to it then; but what must the anger of God be like when He comes to deal with our entire life of sin, and to punish our sin for ever and ever? We cannot bear it; we must flee from it. What does this mean? How do we flee from the coming wrath?

A man who flees for his life does not want any indirect, roundabout roads, he takes short cuts, he jumps over hedges and ditches that he may get where he wants to be in the shortest possible time. So going straight to Jesus is the only direction for you…Some people will recommend that you read books, which I am certain you cannot understand, for no living soul can; or perhaps you should meet with persons who want to explain to you some wondrous mystery. Listen to them, if you like, after the great business of your salvation is over; but right now you do not have any time for mysteries, you have no time for puzzles, you have no time to be confused and perplexed; the one thing you have to do right now is to run straight to Jesus, straight to Jesus. You are a sinner, and He is the only Savior for sinners; so, trust Him- God help you to trust Him- and thus to find immediate salvation! You have a severe sin problem, thus you must flee straight to Christ. The plan of salvation is not a thing that is hard to understand. “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; and they will never be condemned; for they have passed from death to life.”

You have no time for anything else, and you have no need of anything else; so flee, “flee from the coming wrath.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

http://www.biblebb.com/files/spurgeon/2704.htm

 

Repent, Sinner!

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, The Holy Spirit 3 Comments

If a man does not repent, He will sharpen His sword; He has bent His bow and made it ready. -Psalm 7:12

Because the wrath of God is not instantly poured out against an evil deed, therefore men and women say, “We need not trouble ourselves. God doesn’t see our sins, or if He does He doesn’t care about them. He winks at our iniquities; He counts them as mere trifles. No harm will come to us because of them.” I can only reply to these foolish people, “Oh, if you are prepared to throw away the Bible, I can understand a little why you would talk like that; but if you really believe that the Scriptures are the Word of God, you know what the consequences of your sin must be…Even if you are so foolish as to throw away your Bibles, yet, unless you think of yourselves as nothing more than a mere animal that will turn back into dust when you die, and totally cease to exist, then you must expect that there will be another state of existence in which right will be vindicated and wrong will be punished. It seems to lie upon the very conscience of men and women, in the unwritten code of intuitive knowledge, or of knowledge handed down from our fathers, that there must come a time in which God will surely expose every secret sin, and pour out His judgment on the proud and the arrogant sinner, and vindicate the rights of men and women and the rights of His own throne. It must be so; and even though the wrath is delayed for a while, it will surely come.

Oh, if God the Holy Spirit will make you feel your imminent danger, you will want to fly to Christ with the swiftness of the lightning-flash; you will not be satisfied to linger as you are even for another hour. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

http://www.biblebb.com/files/spurgeon/2704.htm

God’s Loving Patience

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

But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. -Matthew 12:36

If there is a God, He cannot let sin go unpunished. If He is really God, and the Judge of all the earth, He must have an utter abhorrence of all evil. It cannot be possible that He would think the same of the honest and the dishonest, of the moral and the immoral, of the sober and the drunken, of the truthful and the lying, of the gracious and the depraved. Such a god as that would be one whom men and women might rightly despise; but the true God, if we understand correctly who He is, must hate and abhor all sin. All evil must be utterly abhorrent to His pure and holy soul; and it is not only because He can do it, but because He must do it, that He will, one of these days, let loose the fury of His wrath against sin…This is the inevitable consequence of sin; there is nothing arbitrary about such a result. It is fixed, in the very nature of things, and every man and woman “…will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken”  and for every sinful action, they must appear before Jesus Christ—the Judge of the living and the dead…Heaven and earth will pass away, but not one jot or tittle of God’s law can pass away until it is all fulfilled, and one part of that law requires that God punish all transgression, iniquity, and sin.

…To sin against the patience of Almighty God, is to sin with a vengeance. You do, as it were, defiantly put your finger into the very eye of God when you know that He sees you sin, and yet you go on sinning because He does not immediately take vengeance upon you for all your evil deeds. It is in great love that He restrains His wrath, for He is “slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.” …Do not play with that patience of God which is allowing you time to seek the salvation of your soul. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

http://www.biblebb.com/files/spurgeon/2704.htm

 

The Only Way of Escape

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

Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? -Matthew 3:7

“Whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son” [John 3:18]; and yet again, “Whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him” [John 3:36]…This “coming wrath” will in part fall upon men and women at their death, but more fully at the day of judgment, and it will continue to flow over them for ever and ever.

Oh, this blessed plan of salvation by substitution—that Christ would take a poor, guilty sinner, and set him up there in the place of acceptance and joy at the right hand of God, and that, in order to be able to do so, Christ would say, “Here comes the great flood of almighty wrath; I will stand right where it is coming, and let it flow over Me” And you know that it did overflow Him until He sweat, as it were, great drops of blood, and more, until He cried aloud, “My God, my God why have you forsaken Me?” and still more, until He cried, “It is finished,” and He bowed His head, and gave up His spirit.

“He bore, that you might never bear, His Father’s righteous ire;” —

and so, suffering in your place, and putting you into the place of acceptance which He Himself so well deserves to occupy, He saves you from “the coming wrath.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

http://www.biblebb.com/files/spurgeon/2704.htm

Our Praises for God’s Grace

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

Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise. – Galatians 4:28

Ask the legalist, “You do good works; you have repented, you say; you are keeping the law, and you have no need to repent. Now, where did you get your strength from?” Perhaps he says, “Grace;” but if you ask him what he means, he says that he used it; he had grace, but he used it. Then the difference is, you used your grace, and others did not. Yes. Well, then, it is your own doing. You may call it grace, or you may call it mustard; it was no grace after all, for it was your using, you say, that made the difference. But ask poor Isaac how he has kept the law, and what does he say? Very badly, indeed. Are you a sinner, Isaac? “Oh! yes, an exceedingly great one; I have rebelled against my father times without number; I have often gone astray from him.” Then you do not think yourself quite as good as Ishmael, do you? “No.” But yet there is a difference between you and him after all. What has made the difference? “Why, grace has made me to differ.” Why is not Ishmael an Isaac? Could Ishmael have been an Isaac? “No,” says Isaac, “it was God who made me to differ, from the first to the last; He made me a child of promise before I was born, and He must keep me so.”

“Grace all the work shall crown
Through everlasting days;
It lays in heaven the topmost stone,
And well deserves the praise.”

~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0069.cfm

The Bullying Legalist

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, The Holy Spirit 3 Comments

But, as he who was born according to the flesh then persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, even so it is now. – Galatians 4:29

Beloved, the legalist is a great deal older than the Christian. If I were a legalist to-day, I should be some fifteen or sixteen years older than I am as a Christian, for we are all born legalists. Speaking of Arminians, Whitfield said, “We are all born Arminians.” It is grace that turns us into Calvinists, grace that makes Christians of us, grace that makes us free, and makes us know our standing in Christ Jesus. The legalist must be expected, then, to have more might of argument than Isaac; and when the two boys are wrestling, of course Isaac generally gets a fall, for Ishmael is the biggest fellow. And you must expect to hear Ishmael making the most noise, for he is to be a wild man, his hand against every man, and every man’s hand against him; whereas Isaac is a peaceful lad. He always stands up for his mother, and when he is mocked, he can go and tell his mother that Ishmael mocked him, but that is all that he can do; he has not much strength. So you notice now-a-days. The Ishmaelites are generally the strongest, and they can give us desperate falls when we get into argument with them. In fact, it is their boast and glory that the Isaacs have not much power of reasoning-not much logic. No, Isaac does not want it, for he is an heir according to promise, and promise and logic do not much consist together. His logic is his faith; his rhetoric is his earnestness. Never expect the gospel to be victorious when you are disputing after the manner of men; more usually look to be beaten. If you are discoursing with a legalist, and he conquers you, say, “Ah! I expected that; it shows I am an Isaac, for Ishmael will be sure to give Isaac a thrashing, and I am not at all sorry for it.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0069.cfm