salvation

The Promise

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

And I will give you rest. – Matthew 11:28

Notice the promise spoken, “I will give you rest.” “I will give.” It is a rest that is a gift; not a rest found in our experience by degrees but given at once…We come to Jesus; we put out the empty hand of faith, and rest is given us at once most freely. We possess it at once, and it is ours forever. It is a present rest, rest now; not rest after death; not rest after a time of probation and growth and advancement; but it is rest given when we come to Jesus, given there and then. And it is perfect rest too; for it is not said, nor is it implied, that the rest is incomplete. We do not read, “I will give you partial rest,” but “rest,” as much as if there were no other form of it. It is perfect and complete in itself. In the blood and righteousness of Jesus our peace is perfect.

Jesus promises and Jesus performs. Did not all your rest, when first your sin was forgiven, come from Him? The load was gone, but who took it? The yoke was removed, but who lifted it from off the shoulder? Do you not give to Jesus, this day, the glory of all your rest from the burden of guilt? Do you not praise His name with all your soul? Yes, I know you do. And you know how that rest came to you. It was by His substitution and your faith in that substitution. Your sin was not pardoned by a violation of divine justice; justice was satisfied in Jesus; He gave you rest. The fact that He has made full atonement is the rest of your spirit. I know that deep down in your conscience, the calm which blesses you springs from a belief in your Lord’s vicarious sacrifice. He bore the unrest that you might have the rest, and you receive rest this day as a free gift from Him. You have done now with servile toils and hopeless burdens, you have entered into rest through believing; but all the rest and deliverance still comes to you as a gift from His dear hands, who purchased with a price this blessing for your souls. I earnestly wish that many who have never felt that rest, would come and have it; it is all they have to do to obtain it- to come for it; just where they now are, if God enables them to exercise a simple act of faith in Jesus, He will give them rest from all their past sins, from all their efforts to save themselves, a rest which shall be to His glory and to their joy. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0969.cfm

A Simple Word Full of Meaning

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

Come unto Me… – Matthew 11:28

“Come unto Me,” “Come.” A simple word, but very full of meaning. To come is to leave one thing and to advance to another. Come, then, ye laboring and heavy laden, leave your legal labors, leave your self-reliant efforts, leave your sins, leave your presumptions, leave all in which you hitherto have trusted, and come to Jesus, that is, think of, advance towards, rely upon, the Saviour. Let your contemplations think of Him who bore the load of human sin upon the cross of Calvary where He was made sin for us. Let your minds consider Him who from His cross hurled the enormous mass of His people’s transgressions into a bottomless sepulchre where it was buried forever. Think of Jesus, the divinely appointed substitute and sacrifice for guilty man. Then, seeing that He is God’s own Son, let faith follow your contemplation; rely upon Him, trust in Him as having suffered in your stead, look to Him for the payment of the debt which is due from you to the wrath of God. This is to come to Jesus. Repentance and faith make up this “Come”-the repentance which leaves that place where you now stand, the faith which comes into reliance upon Jesus.

Observe, that the command to “Come” is put in the present tense, and in the Greek it is intensely present. It might be rendered something like this: “Hither to Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden!” It is a “Come” which means not “Come to-morrow or next year,” but “Now, at once.” Advance, ye slaves, flee from your taskmaster now! Weary ones, recline on the promise now and take your rest! Come now! By an act of instantaneous faith which will bring instantaneous peace, come and rely upon Jesus, and He will now give you rest. Rest shall at once follow the exercise of faith. Perform the act of faith now. O may the eternal Spirit lead some laboring heavy laden soul to come to Jesus, and to come at this precise moment! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0969.cfm

The Ones Who Are Invited

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

Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28

There are to be found many who are actively engaged in seeking salvation; they believe that if they obey the precepts of the law they will be saved, and they are endeavoring to the utmost to do them; they have been told that the performance of certain rites and ceremonies will also save them, they are performing those with great care; the yoke is on their shoulders, and they are laboring diligently. Some are laboring in prayer, some are laboring in sacraments, others in self-denials and mortifications, but as a class they are awakened to feel the need of salvation, and they are intensely laboring to save themselves…Very speedily those who are active in self-righteously working for salvation fall into the passive state and become burdened; their labor of itself becomes a burden to them. Besides the burden of their self-righteous labor, there comes upon them the awful, tremendous, crushing burden of past sin, and a sense of the wrath of God which is due to that sin. A soul which has to bear the load of its own sin, and the load of divine wrath, is indeed heavily laden…The acute anguish of their souls will often be increased in proportion as their endeavors are increased; and while they hope at first that if they labor industriously they will gradually diminish the mass of their sin, it happens that their labor adds to their weariness beneath its pressure; they feel a weight of disappointment, because their labor has not brought them rest; and a burden of despair, because they fear that deliverance will never come. Now these are the persons whom the Saviour calls to Himself- those who are actively seeking salvation, those who are passively bearing the weight of sin and of divine wrath. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0969.cfm

All Are Bidden to Come

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

“Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. – Matthew 11:28

The word “all” first demands attention: “All ye that labor.” There was need for the insertion of that wide word. Had not the Saviour said a little before, “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 to babes?” Someone who had been listening to the Saviour, might have said, “The Father, then, has determined to whom He will reveal the Christ; there is a number chosen, according to the Father’s good pleasure, to whom the gospel is revealed; while from another company it is hidden!” The too hasty inference, which it seems natural for man to draw from the doctrine is, “Then there is no invitation for me; there is no hope for me; I need not listen to the gospel’s warnings and invitations.” So the Saviour, as if to answer that discouraging notion, words His invitation thus, “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden.” Let it not be supposed that election excludes any of you from the invitation of mercy; all of you who labor, are bidden to come. Whatever the great doctrine of predestination may involve, rest assured that it by no means narrows or diminishes the extent of gospel invitations. The good news is to be preached to “every creature” under heaven, and in this particular passage it is addressed to all the laboring and heavy laden.

O you who feel your unworthiness, who have been seeking salvation earnestly, and suffering the weight of sin, Jesus will freely give to you what you cannot earn or purchase, He will give it as an act of His own free, rich, sovereign mercy; and He is prepared, if you come to Him, to give it to you now, for so has He promised, “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0969.cfm

A Tried and Blessed People

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

But the salvation of the righteous is of the LORD: He is their strength in the time of trouble. – Psalm 37:39

I think I hear some saying, “Ah, I see these believers are a very tried people, who would wish to be one of them?” Hearken, friend, and I will tell thee something. Joseph was not the only person in prison, and the righteous are not the only people who are afflicted. The chief butler was in prison, and the chief baker, too…There is this difference between them and Joseph, that the Lord is not with them, but He is with Joseph, and that makes a vast difference. If God is in the prison with Joseph, Joseph is happy, but it is not so with you tried worldlings. I wonder, O butler and baker, whether you have had any dream; I wonder what has passed through your minds this morning. Wherefore look you so sadly to-day? I am no interpreter of dreams, but perhaps I can unriddle yours. Was a vine before you in your dream? That true and living vine? Did it bud and blossom, and bring forth fruit before your eyes, and did you take of its clusters, and present its pure blood to the King? If so, you will be set free, your dream means salvation: for there is a vine of the Lord’s own planting whose wine maketh glad the heart of man, and he who takes of its living fruit is accepted. Dost thou know how to take those clusters and to squeeze them out? If so, the King will rejoice in thee, for nothing is so dear to Him as the fruit of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus. But hast thou dreamed of cakes which thou hast made by thine own skill? Not fruits from a vine, living and full, but mere cakes, sweetened with thine own self-righteousness, baked in the oven of thine own zeal and industry, and dost thou hope to set these before the King? The birds of the air already peck at them, thou beginnest now to feel that thy works are not altogether what thou thoughtest them to be. Oh, if this be thy dream I tremble for thee, for thou wilt come to an ill end. 

Salvation is of the Lord; whether for butler, or baker, or Joseph, redemption is by Jesus only. Trust ye in the Lord for ever, for in the Lord Jehovah there is everlasting strength, and they that trust in Him shall never be ashamed or confounded, world without end. Amen. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1277.cfm

This Thing is From Me

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

Thus saith the LORD…this thing is from Me… – 1 Kings 12:24

I do not know what some people believe, for they seem to try to do without God altogether; but I believe that God is in all things, -that there is neither power, nor life, nor motion, nor thought, nor existence apart from Him. “In Him we live, and move, and have our being.” By Him all things exist and consist. Like foam upon the wave, all things would dissolve away did not God continue them, did not God uphold them. I see God in everything, from the creeping of an aphis upon a rosebud to the fall of a dynasty. I believe that God is in the earthquake and the whirlwind; but I believe Him to be equally in the gentlest zephyr, and in the fall of the sere leaf from the oak of the forest. Blessed is that man to whom there exists nothing in which he cannot see the presence of God.

Notice, dear friends, that God is in events which are produced by the sin and the stupidity of men. This breaking up of the kingdom of Solomon into two parts was the result of Solomon’s sin and Rehoboam’s folly; yet God was in it: “This thing is from Me, saith the Lord.” God had nothing to do with the sin or the folly, but in some way which we can never explain, in a mysterious way in which we are to believe without hesitation, God was in it all. The most notable instance of this truth is the death of our Lord Jesus Christ; that was the greatest of human crimes, yet it was foreordained and predetermined of the Most High, to whom there can be no such thing as crime, nor any sort of compact with sin. We know not how it is, but it is an undoubted fact that a thing may be from God, and yet it may be wrought, as we see in this case, by the folly and the wickedness of men; neither does this in the least degree interfere with human agency in its utmost freedom…I believe in the free agency of men, in their responsibility and wickedness, and that everything evil cometh of them; but I also believe in God, that “this thing” which, on the one side of it, was purely and alone from men, on another side of it was still from God, who rules both evil and good, and not only walks the garden of Eden in the cool of a summer’s eve, but walks the billows of the tempestuous sea, and ruleth everywhere by His sovereign might. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2476.cfm

The Power of God’s Word

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

“Thus saith the Lord, Ye shall not go up, nor fight against your brethren the children of Israel: return every man to his house; for this thing is from Me.”- 1 Kings 12:24

What power was possessed by God’s prophets under the Old Testament. Here is one Shemaiah,-some of you never heard of him before, perhaps you will never hear of him again; he appears once in this history, and then he vanishes; he comes, and he goes,-only fancy this one man constraining to peace a hundred and eighty thousand chosen men, warriors ready to fight against the house of Israel, by giving to them in very plain, unpolished words, the simple command of God: “Thus saith the Lord, Ye shall not go up, nor fight against your brethren, the children of Israel: return every man to his house;” and it is added, “they hearkened therefore to the Word of the Lord, and returned to depart, according to the Word of the Lord.” Why have we not such power? Peradventure, brethren, we do not always speak in the name of the Lord or speak God’s Word as God’s Word. If we are simply tellers out of our own thoughts, why should men mind us? If we speak the word which we ourselves have fashioned, what is there in our anvil that it should command respect for what we make upon it? But if we can rise to the height of this great argument, and speak the truth as messengers of God, and there leave it, believing in it ourselves, and expecting great results from it, I wot that there will come more from our ministries than we have ever seen as yet. When the apostle Peter spoke to the lame man at the temple gate, he said, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk;” and he did rise up and walk because the name of Jesus Christ was relied upon; and we have need to preach the gospel, not as though our suasion, much less our oratory, were to prevail with men, but believing that there is an intrinsic power in the gospel, and that God the Holy Ghost will go with it to work the divine purpose, and accomplish the decrees of the Most High. We have need to stand near to God, and to be more completely overshadowed by His presence, and to be ourselves more fully believers in the Divine Majesty, and then shall we see greater things than these. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2476.cfm