salvation

Rejoice in His Joy

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

Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness: therefore God, Thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows. – Psalm 45:7

You children of God, be as glad as ever you can be. I would to God that a sacred gladness rang through this house like a marriage peal: yet for all that, do not forget that Jesus has joy above you all. You may be very glad, but He is gladder still. You may sing His praises, but He leads the sacred orchestra of heaven. “In the midst of the congregation will I praise thee,” saith He. Rejoice in His joy. I have often thought it did not matter any more what became of me so long as He is victorious. A soldier in battle, sorely wounded, lies bleeding in a ditch, but he hears the sound of the trumpets, and they tell him the commander is coming along, the King for whom his loyal heart is willing to bleed, and he enquires, “Have they won the day?” “Oh, yes,” they say “he has won the day, and the enemy are flying before him.” The soldier exclaims, “Thank God, I can die.” It is the soldier’s joy to die with victory ringing in his ears. Our Lord is glad, and therefore we are glad.

“Let Him be crowned with majesty
Who bowed His head to death,
And be His honor sounded high
By all things that have breath.”

May this joy be yours. Amen. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1273.cfm

Gladness in Jesus’ Name

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

“Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” – Acts 4:12

There is gladness in His very name:

“Exult all hearts with gladness
At sound of Jesus’ name;
What other hath such sweetness,
Or such delight can claim?”

What gladness He created when here below. His birth set the skies ringing with heavenly music and made the hearts of expectant saints to leap for joy. In after days a touch of the hem of His garment made a woman’s heart glad when she felt the issue of her blood staunched, and a word from His lips made the tongue of the dumb to sing. For Him to lay His hand upon the sick was to raise them from their beds of sickness and deliver them from pain and disease. His touch was gladness then, and a spiritual touch is the same now. To-day to preach of Him is gladness, to sing of Him is gladness, to trust Him is gladness, to work for Him is gladness, to have communion with Him is gladness. To come to His table, and there to feast with Him, is gladness; to see His image in the eyes of His saints is gladness; to see that image only as yet begun to form in the heart of a young convert is gladness. Everything about Him is gladness. All His garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia. Nothing comes within a mile of Him but what it makes you glad to think that He has been so near it. The very print of His foot has comfort in it, and the wounds in His hands are windows of hope. I have known some who have had to carry a cross for His dear sake, and they have kissed and hugged that cross, and gloried in their tribulations because they were borne for Him. Fellowship with Him has turned the bitterest potion into generous wine. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1273.cfm

Entering Into the Joy of Our Lord

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

…enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. – Matthew 25:21

My brethren, the joy of our Lord Jesus Christ now that He knows His beloved are securely His, and no longer the slaves of sin and heirs of wrath, is too great to be measured. He has redeemed unto Himself a people in whom His soul delights. For them the price is fully paid, for them the penalty has been completely endured, for them all chains are broken, and for them the prison house is razed to its foundation: for them hath He bruised the serpent’s head, for them hath He by death destroyed death, and led captive him that had the power of death, even the devil.

He now continues to receive into His joy the multitudes whom the Spirit brings to Him, for whom of old He shed His precious blood. You cannot conceive the gladness of Christ. If you have ever brought one soul to Christ you have had a drop of it, but His gladness lies not only in receiving them, but in actually being the author of salvation to every one of them. The Savior looks upon the redeemed with an unspeakable delight, thinks of what they used to be, thinks of what they would have been but for His interposition, thinks of what they now are, think of what He means to make them in that great day when they shall rise from the dead; and as His heart is full of love to them He joys in their joy, and exults in their exultation. Their heavens swell their Mediator’s heaven, and their myriad embodiments of bliss, each one reflects His own felicity, and so (speaking after the manner of men) increases it, for He lives ten thousand lives by living in them, and joys unnumbered joys in their joys. I speak with humblest fear lest in any word I should speak amiss, for He is God as well as man, but this is certain, that there is a joy of our Lord into which He will give His faithful ones to enter, a joy which He has won by passing through the shame and grief by which He has redeemed mankind. The oil of gladness is abundantly poured on that head which once was crowned with thorns. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1273.cfm

The Lord’s Delight

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

Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness: therefore God, Thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows. – Psalm 45:7

The Son of God delighted in the work which His Father had given Him to do. This delight He declared as God, in the old eternity! “Lo I come; in the volume of the book it is written of Me, I delight to do Thy will, O God.” …We read that when the time came that He should be received up, He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem. His frequent allusions to His own decease by a shameful death, all showed that He viewed with intense satisfaction the great object after which He was reaching. Once, indeed, His joy flowed over so that others could see it, when He said, “I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.” “At that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit.” Let it never be forgotten that we must not expect to see in the life of Christ great ebullitions of manifest exultation, because He was sent on purpose to bear our sicknesses, and to be “stricken of God and afflicted.” …Now, if He had not possessed great stores of secret joy His spirit would have been famished for want of sustenance. You would have found Him constantly sighing and weeping; His words and tones would have become a terror to those around Him, and His whole appearance would have appeared melancholy and depressing to the last degree, whereas His manner was cheerful and attractive. Let the little children who thronged around Him bear witness to that. He was a man of sorrows, but He was not a preacher of sorrows, neither do His life or His discourses leave an unhappy impression upon the mind. The fact, probably, is, that He was both the greatest rejoicer and the greatest mourner that ever lived, and between these two there was an equilibrium of mind kept up, so that wherever you meet Him, with the exception of His agony in the garden, He is peaceful and serene…His peace is like a river, and His heart abides in the Sabbath of God. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1273.cfm

The Spirit’s Peculiar Office

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit 1 Comment

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon Me; because the LORD hath anointed Me to preach good tidings unto the meek; He hath sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound… – Isaiah 61:1

“And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord; And shall make Him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord: and He shall not judge after the sight of His eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of His ears: But with righteousness shall He judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth.” (Isaiah 11:2-4) The Holy Spirit also had a peculiar interest in Jesus’ resurrection, for He was “declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead.” He was “put to death in the flesh but quickened by the Spirit.” That same Spirit wrought even more fully when the Lord ascended up on high, and led captivity captive; then, succeeding His ascension, the gifts of the cloven tongues of fire and the rushing mighty wind were witnessed by His disciples, for the Spirit of God was given abundantly to the Church in connection with the ascension of the Redeemer. Oh, how sweetly doth the Spirit co-operate with Christ at this very day, for it is He that takes of the things of Christ and reveals them unto us. He is the abiding witness in the Church to the truth of the gospel, and the worker of all our gifts and graces. Jesus gives repentance, but the Spirit works it; faith fixes upon Christ, but the Spirit of God first creates faith and opens the eye which looks to Jesus. The whole of this dispensation through it is the peculiar office of the Spirit of God to be revealing Christ to His people, and Christ in His people, and Christ in the midst of an ungodly and gainsaying generation, for a testimony against them. Blessed be the name of the Holy Spirit, that He is the divine anointing, and so proves His hearty assent to the great plan of redemption. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1273.cfm

If You Want to Glorify Christ…

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

“He will glorify Me…” – John 16:14

How, then, does the Holy Spirit glorify Christ? It is very beautiful to think that He glorifies Christ by showing Christ’s things. If you wanted to do honor to a man, you would perhaps take him a present to decorate his house. But here, if you want to glorify Christ, you must go and take the things out of Christ’s house, “the things of Christ.” Whenever we have to praise God, what do we do? We simply say what He is. “Thou art this, and Thou art that.” There is no other praise. We cannot fetch anything from elsewhere and bring it to God; but the praises of God are simply the facts about Himself. If you want to praise the Lord Jesus Christ, tell the people about Him. Take of the things of Christ, and show them to the people, and you will glorify Christ.

Again, I think that the blessed Spirit glorifies Christ by showing us the things of Christ as Christ’s. Oh, to be pardoned! Yes, it is a great thing; but to find that pardon in His wounds, that is a greater thing! Oh, to get peace! Yes, but to find that peace in the blood of His cross! Brethren, have the blood-mark very visibly on all your mercies. They are all marked with the blood of the cross; but sometimes we think so much of the sweetness of the bread, or of the coolness of the waters, that we forget whence these came, and how they came, and then they lack their choicest flavour. That it came from Christ is the best thing about the best thing that ever came from Christ. That He saves me is, somehow, better than my being saved. It is a blessed thing to go to heaven; but I do not know that it is not a better thing to be in Christ, and so, as the result of it, to get into heaven. It is Himself, and that which comes of Himself, that becomes best of all, because it comes of Himself. So, the Holy Ghost shall glorify Christ by making us see that these things of Christ are indeed of Christ, and completely of Christ, and still are in connection with Christ; and we only enjoy them because we are in connection with Christ. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/nkjv/jhn/16/14/s_1013014

The Blood of God

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

To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood… – Revelation 1:5

I think that if there could be one sight more wonderful than the love of Christ, it would be the blood of Christ. It is the climax of God. I do not know of anything more divine. It seems to me as if all the eternal purposes worked up to the blood of the cross, and then worked from the blood of the cross towards the sublime consummation of all things. Oh, to think that He should become man! God has made spirit, pure spirit, embodied spirit; and then materialism; and somehow, as if He would take all up into one, the Godhead links Himself with the material, and He wears dust about Him even as we wear it; and taking it all up, He then goes, and, in that fashion, redeems His people from all the evil of their soul, their spirit, and their body, by the pouring out of a life which, while it was human, was so in connection with the divine, that we speak correctly of “the blood of God.” Turn to the twentieth chapter of the Acts and read how the apostle Paul puts it: “Feed the church of God, which He hath purchased with His own blood.” …It was a wonderful sacrifice that could absolutely obliterate, annihilate, and extinguish sin, and all the traces that could possibly remain of it; for “He hath finished the transgression, made an end of sins, made reconciliation for iniquity, and brought in everlasting righteousness.” Ah, dear friends! you have seen this, have you not? but you have to see more of it yet; and when we get to heaven, we shall then know what that blood means, and with what vigor shall we sing, “Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood”! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2213.cfm