salvation

Have You That Evidence?

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

And last of all He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time. For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am… – 1 Corinthians 15:8-10

How do we know that Paul was born again, and that he was called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ?

See how he confessed his sin and forsook it. He that covereth his sins shall not prosper; but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.” Are you, dear friend; willing now to confess your sin? Do you turn from it with loathing. Do you desire, henceforth, to be delivered entirely from it? Well, then, your repentance is another sure evidence that you are born again. If you have seen Jesus taking your sin upon Himself and suffering its dread penalty; if you have confessed your sin, and by faith laid it upon Him as your Sacrifice and Substitute, you are born again, though you may have been, in a certain sense, “born out of due time.”

I am sure he was converted, also, because he praised the grace of God. Read the 10th verse: “By the grace of God I am what I am.” Even when he truthfully says, “I labored more abundantly than they all;” he humbly adds, “yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.” It is a sure sign of conversion when a man knows that he is saved by grace alone, and does not, attribute it to his own merit, or his own work, but praises and adores the sovereign mercy and grace of God. Have you that evidence, dear friend? Then are you born aright, even though “born out of due time.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2663.cfm

He Was Seen of Me

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

And last of all He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time. – 1 Corinthians 15:8

Though Paul was, in a spiritual sense, “born out of due time,” he was truly born again; and those persons, who have been converted at singular times, and under strange circumstances, have been really converted. How do we know that Paul was born again, and that he was called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ?

I answer, because he had seen the Lord. After mentioning those who saw the risen Christ, he says, “Last of all He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.” The first, evidence that he was an apostle was that he had actually beheld the Lord. Now, in a spiritual sense, one of the marks of a true believer is that he has seen the Lord. My dear friend, if you have looked to Christ for forgiveness…if you have by faith seen Jesus on the cross, and truly trusted Him, you are as much saved as the man is who believed in Christ fifty years ago. Looking to Jesus is the evidence that we are born again; and happy is everyone who can truthfully say, concerning Christ.” He was seen of me also.” “I looked to Him; He looked on me; and we were one for ever. I trusted to Him, and therefore I am saved.” If you can say that from your heart and the Holy Spirit bears witness that what you say is true, you. need, not raise any question about your new birth. If thou art trusting in Jesus, it is well with thy soul in time and to eternity. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2663.cfm

It is Never Too Late

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

He that is our God is the God of salvation; and unto GOD the Lord belong the issues from death. – Psalm 68:20

And last of all He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time. – 1 Corinthians 15:8

I should like to encourage any very aged person who is still unsaved to drive away altogether the notion that it is too late to seek the Lord. It never is too late so long as life lasts and there is the power to repent of sin and to turn to the Lord. I will not quote cases, but I have a vivid recollection of a good many persons who have been saved at the age of seventy or eighty. We have had persons, past both of those periods, baptized upon profession of their newly found faith. The world’s proverb says, “It is never too late to mend:” ‘but Christ would tell you, if He were here in bodily presence, that it is never too late for Him to mend you, or rather, for Him to make you anew, for that is the work He undertakes to do. It is never too late for Him to stretch out His pierced hand and help the man, who is tottering on his staff, to become a babe in Christ.

Many of you have not yet come of old age, yet, if God should save you, you would be as those who are “born out of due time,” because you are on the very brink of the grave. Consumption has laid its cruel hand upon you and pulled down all your strength. In all probability, you will not be long in this world…O my dear young friend, wherever you may be, it is a sad, sad thing to be carrying about with you your death-warrant, as you certainly are doing, and yet to have no warrant to believe that, when you die, it will be well with you! Oh, I pray you, do not let Satan tempt you with the idea that, now, when sickness is upon you, there is no hope for you! Come to Jesus, however consumptive you look. Come to Jesus, young man, with that chest that scarcely allows you to breathe. Come unto Him, for He will not cast you away. I beseech any of you, who are in a similar condition, do not put off seeking the Lord, but hasten to find Him even now. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2663.cfm

In the Infinite Mercy of God

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

…as of one born out of due time. – 1 Corinthians 15:8

There have been some dear friends who may be said to have been “born out of due time,” for they have been converted to God after it seemed impossible that they ever should be. I recollect reading of one who imbibed sceptical notions and became exceedingly furious against the preaching of the Word. One day, in Edinburgh, he heard it said that a certain eminent minister of the gospel intended, if he met him, to speak with him about his soul; whereupon the man uttered some very strong expressions, and, amongst other wicked things, he said, “I shall never be converted unless I lose my senses.” All who were acquainted with him, and who knew how desperately he was set against the gospel, thought that his was indeed a hopeless case; but, in the infinite mercy of God, it turned out to be quite the opposite. He began to suffer from great incoherence of thought, his mind gradually wandered, when he was trying to speak, he often spoke utter nonsense. He became unfit for business and had to be put into the custody of someone who watched him as his keeper. Reason was not actually gone, but it was reeling upon its throne; and while he was in that sad state, the case of Nebuchadnezzar came to his mind, and he wondered whether God had given him up, altogether, on account of what he had said, -that he would never be converted while he was in his senses. He turned his mind, all shipwrecked and battered as it was, towards God and out of the depths of his half-bewildered spirit, he cried unto the Lord as Nebuchadnezzar did, and his mind returned to him, and he became a humble, gentle, holy believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you not think, dear friends, that he also was “one born out of due time”? ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2663.cfm

Grace’s Almighty Power

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

…as of one born out of due time. – 1 Corinthians 15:8

When Puritanism seemed to be trodden under foot in the reign of James I, the king issued the Book of Sports, and gave commandment that every clergyman was to read from the pulpit, on Sunday, that, it was the royal will and pleasure that the young people should play at football, cricket, and other games and pastimes on the Lord’s-day afternoon. One of the ministers thought it would be well to do as the king ordered, and to say something beside, so, when the Sunday came for reading the Book of Sports to the people, he said, “I am commanded by the king and the authorities to read to you the following document, but it grieves my heart and conscience to have to read it. I know it is wicked, and wrong, and shameful, and abominable to desecrate the Sabbath as you are invited to do, and I wonder what will become of my country when even from the church itself Sabbath-breaking is recommended.” It happened that there was in the congregation, that day, a young man who had always been a ringleader in the Sabbath sports; he was no sooner out of church than he was on the village green…but, when he heard that Book of Sports read, he said to himself, “well, I acted in that way on my own account, and it, was wrong enough for me to do so; but now I say with the minister, “What is to become of all the country if everybody is to be as bad as I have been? What will happen to the nation if this kind of thing is to go on?” The thought struck him so forcibly that he became first a serious character, and then a true seeker after God, and afterwards a genuine believer in the Lord Jesus Christ…Very often, where sin has abounded, grace does much more abound; and when the Word of God seems to grow scarce, and the candle of the gospel burns but dimly, we may pray and expect that even then, some may be “born out of due time” to the praise of the glory of that grace which saves as it wills, and often selects the very chief of sinners to be the subjects of its almighty power. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2663.cfm

Never Despair Over a Lost Soul

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

…I received letters unto the brethren, and went to Damascus, to bring them which were there bound unto Jerusalem, for to be punished... suddenly there shone from heaven a great light round about me. – Acts 22:5,6

I remember being in Dr. John Campbell’s house, one day, when he told me that a minister was preaching at Whitefield’s old Tabernacle in Moorfields. One evening, when there were present, under very strange circumstances, two young men who had fallen into dissipated habits, and who had made an appointment with each other for the commission of some gross sin that very night…They were passing by the Moorfields Tabernacle and as they wanted to know the time at which they were to meet for this unholy purpose, one of them said to the other, “Go in, and see the time; there is sure to be a clock in there.” But the clock was not fixed as it is here, at the back of the preacher, but the other way; so, the young man had to go some little distance further in than he intended, in order to see the clock. If I remember rightly, the preacher that night was Matthew Wilks, and he was just uttering some quaint remark, something that arrested the young man’s attention, and held him fast in the aisle. His companion waited, outside for a time, but it was cold, so he thought he had better go in, and look at the clock himself, and fetch his friend out. He went in; the arrows of the Lord pierced the heart of both of them, and the second of those young men was John Williams, the famous missionary, and at last the martyr of Erromanga…You would not have thought it possible that those men should become, as they did, preachers of the gospel, when they were, at that very time, desperately set on the commission of a great sin against God, and their hearts were wholly given up to the pleasures and follies of this world; but so it happened, and our Lord still knows how to stop men as he stopped Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus…After such a triumph of divine grace, let us never despair of any sinner, however far he may have gone, into, sin. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2663.cfm

God’s Timing

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit 2 Comments

And last of all He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time. – 1 Corinthians 15:8

Mr. Tennant, a famous American minister of Whitefield’s time, one of the most earnest and seraphic men who ever proclaimed the gospel of Jesus Christ, had a hearer, who remained unmoved under many a score of his most faithful sermons. Others were saved, but not this man; he seemed unmoved and immovable; but it came to pass, on a certain Sabbath, that a very unusual thing happened. Mr. Tennant had prepared his sermon with great, care, it was what we are wont to call a laborious discourse, into which he had put all the thought and all the pains possible; but he had not been preaching long before his memory completely failed him, his mind refused to work, and, after floundering about for a while, he was obliged to sit down in great confusion, and say that, he could not preach to the people that day. The man I have mentioned, who had never before been impressed under Mr. Tennant’s ministry, was that day called by sovereign grace, as “one born out of due time,” for he was led to see that there was a spiritual and supernatural force which had usually helped the pastor to preach, and that, when this divine influence was withdrawn, he was as weak as other men, and could not speak with power: as he had been accustomed to do. This truth, somehow or other, -for human minds are strangely constituted, and things which have no effect upon certain people very greatly affect others who are present at the same time;- this truth, I say, induced the man to think; thinking, he was led to believe in God, and to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for the salvation of his soul. He was, without doubt, one “born out of due time.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2663.cfm