salvation

The Most Obscure Saints Are Well Cared For

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

How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare. – Luke 15:17

If we could call forth from his seat a weak believer in God, who is almost unknown in the church, one who sometimes questions whether he is indeed a child of God, and would be willing to be a hired servant so long as he might belong to God, and if I were to ask him, “How, after all, has the Lord dealt with you?” what would be his reply? You have many afflictions, doubts and fears, but have you any complaints against your Lord? When you have waited upon Him for daily grace, has He denied you? When you have been full of troubles, has He refused you comfort? When you have been plunged in distress, has He declined to deliver you? The Lord Himself asks, “Have I been a wilderness unto Israel?” Testify against the Lord, ye His people, if ye have aught against Him. Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, whosoever there be in God’s service who has found Him a hard task-master, let him speak. Amongst the angels before Jehovah’s throne, and amongst men redeemed on earth, if there be any one that can say He hath been dealt with unjustly or treated with ungenerous churlishness, let him lift up his voice! But there is not one. Even the devil himself when he spoke of God and of his servant Job, said, “Doth Job serve God for nought?” Of course he did not: God will not let His servants serve Him for nought; He will pay them superabundant wages, and they shall all bear witness that at His table there is “bread enough and to spare.” Now, if these still enjoy the bread of the Father’s house, these who were once great sinners, these who are now only very commonplace saints, surely, sinner, it should encourage you to say, “I will arise and go to my Father,” for His hired servants “have bread enough and to spare.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1000.cfm

Grace for the Most Guilty of Sinners

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, promises, repentance, salvation, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare… – Luke 15:17

The very worst of sinners that have come to Christ have found grace “enough and to spare,” and the very least of saints who dwell in the house of the Lord find love “enough and to spare.” Take, then, the most guilty of sinners and see how bountifully the Lord treats them when they turn unto Him. Did not some of you, who are yourselves unconverted, once know persons who were at least as bad, and perhaps, more outwardly immoral, than yourselves? Well, they have been converted, though you have not been, and when they were converted, what was their testimony? Did the blood of Christ avail to cleanse them? Oh, yes; and more than cleanse them, for it added to beauty not their own. They were naked once; was Jesus able to clothe them? Was there a sufficient covering in His righteousness? Ah, yes! and adornment was superadded; they received not a bare apparel, but a royal raiment. You have seen others thus liberally treated; does not this induce you also to come? Some of us need not confine our remarks to others, for we can speak personally of ourselves. We came to Jesus as full of sin as ever one can be and felt ourselves beyond measure lost and ruined; but, oh, His tender love! I could sooner stand here and weep than speak to you of it. My soul melts in gratitude when I think of the infinite mercy of God to me in that hour when I came seeking mercy at His hands. Oh! why will not you also come? May His Holy Spirit sweetly draw you!

Come along, come along, poor guilty one; come along, there is room enough for thee. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1000.cfm

Made Fit for Heaven by the Holy Spirit

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

The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life. – Job 33:4

Sinner, thou needest a new life and thou needest holiness, for both of these are necessary to make thee fit for heaven. Is there a provision for this? The Holy Spirit is provided and given in the covenant of grace; and surely in Him there is enough and to spare. What cannot the Holy Spirit do? Being divine, nothing can be beyond His power. Look at what He has already done. He moved upon the face of chaos and brought it into order (Genesis 1:2); all the beauty of creation arose beneath His moulding breath. We ourselves must confess with Elihu, “The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life.” Think of the great deeds of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, when men unlearned spake with tongues of which they knew not a syllable aforetime, and the (tongues like as) flames of fire upon them were also within them, so that their hearts burned with zeal and courage to which they hitherto had been strangers. Think of the Holy Spirit’s work on such a one as Saul of Tarsus. That persecutor foams blood, he is a very wolf, he would devour the saints of God at Damascus and yet, within a few moments, you hear him say, “Who art Thou, Lord?” and yet again, “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” His heart is changed; the Spirit of God has newly created it; the adamant is melted in a moment into wax. Many of us stand before you as the living monuments of what the Holy Ghost can do, and we can assure you from our own experience, that there is no inward evil which He cannot overcome, no lustful desire of the flesh which He cannot subdue, no obduracy of the affections which He cannot melt. Is anything too hard for the Lord? Is the Spirit of the Lord straitened? Surely no sinner can be beyond the possibilities of mercy when the Holy Spirit condescends to be the agent of human conversion. O sinner, if thou perish, it is not because the Holy Spirit lacks power, or the blood of Jesus lacks efficacy, or the Father fails in love; it is because thou believest not in Christ, but dost abide in wilful rebellion, refusing the abundant bread of life which is placed before thee. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1000.cfm

Bread Enough and to Spare

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

And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! – Luke 15:17

Ah! the master proof that in Christ Jesus there is “bread enough and to spare,” is the cross. Will you follow me a moment, will you follow Him, rather, to Gethsemane? Can you see the bloody sweat as it falls upon the ground in His agony? Can you think of His scourging before Herod and Pilate? Can you trace Him along the Via Dolorosa of Jerusalem? Will your tender hearts endure to see Him nailed to the tree, and lifted up to bleed and die? This is but the shell; as for the inward kernel of His sufferings no language can describe it, neither can conception peer into it. The everlasting God laid sin on Christ, and where the sin was laid there fell the wrath. “It pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief.” Now He that died upon the cross was God’s only begotten Son. Can you conceive a limit to the merit of such a Savior’s death? I know there are some who think it necessary to their system of theology to limit the merit of the blood of Jesus: if my system of theology needed such a limitation, I would cast it to the winds. I cannot, dare not, allow the thought to find a lodging in my mind; it seems so near akin to blasphemy. In Christ’s finished work I see an ocean of merit; my plummet finds no bottom, my eye discovers no shore. There must be sufficient efficacy in the blood of Christ, if God had so willed it, to have saved not only all this world, but ten thousand worlds, had they transgressed the Maker’s law. Once admit infinity into the matter, and limit is out of the question. Having a divine person for an offering, it is not consistent to conceive of limited value; bound and measure are terms inapplicable to the divine sacrifice. The intent of the divine purpose fixes the application of the infinite offering but does not change it into a finite work. In the atonement of Christ Jesus there is “bread enough and to spare;” even as Paul wrote to Timothy, “He is the Savior of all men, specially of those that believe.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1000.cfm

Look Into His Heart

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

Who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. – Titus 2:14

Oh, when I think of sin, I cannot understand how a sinner can be saved; but when I think of God, and look into His heart, I understand how readily He can forgive. “Look into His heart,” saith one; “how can we do that?” Hath He not laid bare His heart to you? Do you enquire where He has done this? I answer, yonder, upon Calvary’s cross. What was in the very center of the divine heart? What, but the person of the Well-beloved, His only begotten Son? …He spared not His Son, but He spares the sinner; He poured out His wrath upon His Son and made Him the substitute for sinners, that He might lavish love upon the guilty who deserved His anger. O soul, if thou art lost, it is not from any want of grace, or wisdom, or power in the Father; if thou perish, it is not because God is hard to move or unable to save. If thou be a castaway, it is not because the Eternal refused to hear thy cries for pardon or rejected thy faith in Him. On thine own head be thy blood, if thy soul be lost.

Jesus who came from heaven for our redemption was…very God of very God, in the beginning with the Father. And does such a One come to redeem? Is there room to doubt as to His ability, if that be the fact? I do confess this day, that if my sins were ten thousand times heavier than they are, yea, and if I had all the sins of this crowd in addition piled upon me, I could trust Jesus with them all at this moment now that I know Him to be the Christ of God. He is the mighty God, and by His pierced hand the burden of our sins is easily removed; He blotteth out our sins, He casts them into the depths of the sea. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1000.cfm

God’s Mercy Endureth For Ever

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

For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive; and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon Thee. – Psalm 86:5

Whosoever shall rightly consider the Father will at once perceive that there can be no stint to mercy, no bound to the possibilities of grace. What is the nature and character of the Supreme? “Is He harsh or loving?” saith one. The Scripture answers the question, not by telling us that God is loving, but by assuring us that God is love. God Himself is love; it is His very essence. It is not that love is in God, but that God Himself is love. Can there be a more concise and more positive way of saying that the love of God is infinite? You cannot measure God Himself; your conceptions cannot grasp the grandeur of His attributes, neither can you tell the dimensions of His love, nor conceive the fullness of it. Only this know, that high as the heavens are above the earth, so are His ways higher than your ways, and His thoughts than your thoughts. His mercy endureth for ever. He pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of His heritage. He retaineth not His anger for ever, because He delighteth in mercy. “Thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive: and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon Thee.”

If divine love alone should not seem sufficient for your salvation, remember that with the Father to whom the sinner returns, there is as much of wisdom as there is of grace. Is thy case a very difficult one? He that made thee can heal thee. Are thy diseases strange and complex? He that fashioned the ear, can He not remove its deafness? He that made the eye, can He not enlighten it if it be blind? No mischief can have happened to thee, but what He who is thy God can recover thee from it. Matchless wisdom cannot fail to meet the intricacies of thy case. “Thy mercy is great above the heavens.” “The Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1000.cfm

These Two Kindred Spiritual Facts

Sherry Attributes of God, prayer, promises, salvation, The Father Leave a comment

And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! Luke 15:17

When the prodigal came to himself he was shut up to two thoughts. Two facts were clear to him, that there was plenty in his father’s house, and that he himself was famishing. May the two kindred spiritual facts have absolute power over all your hearts, if you are yet unsaved; for they were most certainly all-important and pressing truths. These are no fancies of one in a dream; no ravings of a maniac; no imaginations of one under fascination: it is most true that there is plenty of all good things in the Father’s house, and that the sinner needs them. No where else can grace be found or pardon gained; but with God there is plenitude of mercy; let none venture to dispute this glorious truth. Equally true is it that the sinner without God is perishing. He is perishing now; he will perish everlastingly. All that is worth having in his existence will be utterly destroyed, and he himself shall only remain as a desolation; the owl and the bittern of misery and anguish shall haunt the ruins of his nature for ever and for ever. If we could shut up unconverted men to those two thoughts, what hopeful congregations we should have. Alas! they forget that there is mercy only with God, and fancy that it is to be found somewhere else; and they try to slip away from the humbling fact of their own lost estate, and imagine that perhaps there may be some back door of escape; that, after all, they are not so bad as the Scripture declares, or that perchance it shall be right with them at the last however wrong it may be with them now. Alas! my brethren, what shall we do with those who wilfully shut their eyes to truths of which the evidence is overwhelming, and the importance overpowering? I earnestly entreat those of you who know how to approach the throne of God in faith, to breathe the prayer that He would now bring into captivity the unconverted heart and put these two strong fetters upon every unregenerate soul; there is abundant grace with God, there is utter destitution with themselves. Bound with such fetters, and led into the presence of Jesus, the captive would soon receive the liberty of the children of God. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1000.cfm