salvation

Partakers of the Divine Nature

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

…they shall not depart from Me. – Jeremiah 32:40

The fear of God is kept alive in our hearts by the hearing of the Word, for faith cometh by hearing, and holy fear cometh through faith. Be diligent, then, in hearing the Word. That fear is kept alive in our hearts by reading the Scriptures; for as we feed on the Word, it breathes within us that fear of God which is the beginning of wisdom. This fear of God is maintained in us by the belief of revealed truth, and meditation thereon. Study the doctrines of grace and be instructed in the analogy of the faith. Know the gospel well and thoroughly, and this will bring fuel to the fire of the fear of God in your hearts. Be much in private prayer; for that stirs up the fire, and makes it burn more brilliantly. Seek to live near to God, to abide in Him; for as you abide in Him, and His words abide in you, you shall bring forth much fruit, and so shall you be His disciples.

Does the gift of grace make us partakers of the divine nature and cause us to escape the corruption which is in the world through lust? then let us have it. I pray that some here may desire salvation because it secures a life of holiness. The sweetmeat which tempted me to Christ was this-I believed that salvation was an insurance of character. In what better way can a young man cleanse his life than by putting himself into the holy hands of the Lord Jesus, to be kept from falling? I said, “If I give myself to Christ, He will save me from my sins.” Therefore, I came to Him, and He keeps me. Oh, how musical these words, “They shall not depart from Me!” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2108.cfm

This Perseverance of the Saints

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

…they shall not depart from Me – Jeremiah 32:40

There moves in our hearts a deep sense of grateful obligation. God is so good to me; how can I sin? He loves me so, how can I vex Him? He favours me so greatly from day to day that I cannot do that which is contrary to His will. Did you ever receive a choice and special mercy? It has often fallen to my lot; and when the tears have been in my eyes at the sight of so great a favour, I have felt that if a temptation came to me, it would come at a time when I had neither heart, nor eye, nor ear for it. Gratitude bars the door against sin. Great love received overthrows great temptation to wander. Our cry is, “The Lord bathes me in His love, He indulges me with the nearest and dearest fellowship with Himself, and how can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?” Loved of Him so specially, and united to Him by an everlasting covenant, how can we fly in the face of love so wonderful? Surely, we can find no pleasure in offending so gracious a God; but it is our joy to do His commandments, hearkening unto the voice of His word.

See, beloved, this perseverance of the saints, is perseverance in holiness: “They shall not depart from Me.” If the grace of God has really changed you, you are radically and lastingly changed…The work that is done in regeneration is not a temporary work, by which a man is, for a time, reformed; but it is an everlasting work, by which the man is born for heaven. There is a life implanted at the new birth, which cannot die, for it is a living and incorruptible seed, which liveth and abideth for ever. Grace will go on working in a man until it leads him to glory. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2108.cfm

What is this fear of God?

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

…I will put My fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from Me. – Jeremiah 32:40

The Lord saith, “I will put My fear in their hearts.” It would never be found there if He did not put it there. It will never spring up naturally in any heart. “I will put My fear in their hearts”; that is, regeneration and conversion. He makes us tremble before His law. He makes us feel the smart and bitterness of sin. He causes us to remember the God we once forgot, and to obey the Lord whom once we defied. “I will put My fear in their hearts” is the first great act of conversion, and it is continued throughout life by the perpetual working of the Spirit upon the heart. The work which commences at conversion is duly carried on in the converted ones; for the Lord still puts His fear into their hearts. How the Spirit of God works we cannot tell: He has ways of acting directly upon our minds which are all His own and cannot be understood by us. But without violating the freedom of our nature, leaving us men as we were before, He knows how to make us continue in the fear of God. This is God’s great holdfast upon His people, “I will put My fear in their hearts.”

What is this fear of God? It is a holy awe and reverence of the great God. Taught of God, we come to see His infinite greatness, and the fact that He is everywhere present with us; and then, filled with a devout sense of His Godhead, we dare not sin. Since God is near, we cannot offend. God is our Father, and we feel the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, “Abba, Father.” This child-like love kindles in us a fear to grieve Him whom we love, and therefore we have no desire to depart from Him. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2108.cfm

Securely Kept

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

…I will not turn away from them, to do them good… – Jeremiah 32:40

He hath given meat unto them that fear Him: He will ever be mindful of His covenant. – Psalm 111:5

If the Lord’s chosen and redeemed are cast away, where is the glory of His redemption? Will not the enemy say of the Lord, “He had not the power to carry out His covenant, nor the constancy to continue blessing them”? Shall that ever be said of God? Will He thus lose the glory of His omnipotence and immutability? I cannot believe that any purpose of the Lord can fail; neither can I conceive that He can withdraw His declarations of love to those with whom He is in covenant. The God whom we adore and reverence, the God of Abraham, the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, fainteth not, neither is weary. “He is in one mind, and who can turn Him?” “He will ever be mindful of His covenant.” Of our Lord Jesus we truly sing-

“His honour is engaged to save
The meanest of His sheep;
All that His heavenly Father gave,
His hands securely keep.”

Whether my arguments seem good to you or not, is of small consequence; for the text is the inspired Word of God, and it cannot be misunderstood or questioned. Thus saith the Lord, “I will not turn away from them, to do them good.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2108.cfm

His Sure Pledge

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

For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. – Romans 5:6

When God gave His Son, He gave us a sure pledge that He meant to finish His work of love. They say of a man that does not finish his work, “This man began to build, and was not able to finish”; but that shall never be said of the Lord Jehovah. The Lord God has laid out His whole Deity to save His people, and given His whole self in the person of the Well-beloved for our redemption; and can you believe that He will fail in it? Surely, the idea is blasphemous. Some of us have known too much love already to believe that it will ever cease to flow towards us. We have been so favoured that we dare not fear that His favour toward us will cease. So heavenly, so divine is the sense of the love of God, when it is revealed to the soul, that we cannot believe that it has been given to mock us. We have been carried away with such torrents of love, that we will never believe that they can be dried up. The Lord has communed with us so closely, that the secret of the Lord is with us, and He will for ever recognize that mystic token by which our union has been sealed. Like Paul, each one of us may say, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.” The cost to which our Lord has gone assures us that He will complete His designs of grace. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2108.cfm

Nothing More Glorious

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

And I will make an everlasting covenant with them… – Jeremiah 32:40

In the order of God’s working He always advances from the good to the better. The old law was put away because He found fault with it, and therefore the new covenant must last till a fault can be found with it, which will never be. This is the glory which excelleth: no brightness can exceed the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. There can be nothing more gracious, nothing more righteous, nothing more just to God or more safe to man, than the plan of salvation set forth in the covenant of grace. The moon gives way to the sun, and the sun gives way to a lustre which shall exceed the light of seven days; but what is to supersede the light of free grace and dying love, the glory of the love which gave the Only-begotten that we might live through Him? The covenant of grace made with us in Christ Jesus is the masterpiece of divine wisdom and love, and it is established on such sure principles that it must last for ever.

Who else could have thought of a covenant, “ordered in all things and sure,” to be made with guilty man? It was also divine in its carrying out, and therefore it shall endure. Who could have provided a Saviour like the Only-begotten of the Father? Who could have given Him for a covenant but the Father? The covenant is divine in its maintenance. Note well the word of the Lord: “I will make an everlasting covenant with them.” He does not say, “They shall make a covenant with Me”; but “I will make a covenant with them.” That God is the maker of the covenant is a reason for its certainty and everlastingness. The faithful God has given guarantees which fix it fast, even His promise and His oath; those two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie. Through these we have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to Christ Jesus. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2108.cfm

The Covenant According to Mercy

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, repentance, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit 9 Comments

And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good… – Jeremiah 32:40

The first covenant was conditioned upon the obedience of men. If they kept the law, God would bless them; but they failed through disobedience and inherited the curse. The divine sovereignty determined to deal with men, not according to merit, but according to mercy; not according to the personal character of men, but according to the personal character of God; not according to what men might do, but according to what the Lord Jesus would perform. Sovereign grace declares that He will have mercy upon whom He will have mercy and will have compassion on whom He will have compassion. This basis of sovereignty cannot be shaken. The covenant which saves men according to God’s will and good pleasure, is founded upon a rock; for God’s free grace is always the same, and God’s sovereignty is linked to immutability, even as it is written, “I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.” The slightest touch of merit puts perishable material into the covenant; but if it be of pure grace, then the covenant is everlasting.

It is necessary that a man, to be forgiven, should repent; but then the Lord Jesus is exalted on high to give repentance and remission of sins. It is necessary that a man, in order to be saved, should have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; but faith is of the operation of God, and the Holy Ghost worketh in us this fruit of the Spirit. It is needful, before we enter heaven, that we should be holy; but the Lord sanctifies us through the Word, and worketh in us to will and to do of His own good pleasure. All that is required is also supplied. If there be, anywhere in the Word of God, any act or grace mentioned as though it were a condition of salvation, it is in another Scripture described as a covenant gift which will be bestowed upon the heirs of salvation by Christ Jesus. So that the condition, which might seem to put the covenant in danger, is so surely provided for, that thence ariseth no flaw or fracture. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2108.cfm