salvation

At Perfect Peace

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

…be content with such things as ye have: for He hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. – Hebrews 13:5

Some years ago, under the apprehension of divine wrath, we were unhappy and troubled, so that we could find no rest; but now we are blessed in Christ so greatly that we are at perfect peace, and our soul has dropped its anchor in the haven of content. Our joy is usually as great as formerly our sorrow used to be. We feared our sorrow would kill us: we now sometimes think that our joy is more likely to do so, for it becomes so intense that at times we can scarcely bear it, much less speak it. As we could get no rest before, so now, by faith, we feel as if we never lost that rest, for we are so quiet of heart, so calm, so settled, that we sing, “My heart is fixed, O God; my heart is fixed!” …Getting God’s blessing upon everything, we have learned to be content, and something more: we joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We used to fret before we knew Him; but His love has ended that. We thought we could do things better than God could, and we did not like His way of managing; but He has taught us to be like children, pleased with whatever our Father provides; and therefore we joyfully declare, “My soul is even as a weaned child: I have nothing to wish for. I want nothing but what my Father pleases to give me.” …Unto us who believe, Christ is precious-both treasure and honor in one: in fact, Christ is all. It is a delightful calm of mind which the believer enjoys when he dwells in Christ. Humble faith puts the soul into the guardian hand of the Redeemer, and leaves it there in the restfulness of entire trust. Grace baptizes us into blessedness. It plunges us into that sea of everlasting rest in which we hope for ever to bathe our weary souls. Yes, blessed be His name, the Lord Jesus has made life worth living! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2187.cfm

Blessed in Christ

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

His name shall endure forever: His name shall be continued as long as the sun: and men shall be blessed in Him…- Psalm 72:17

We believe and faith grasps the first blessing-that we have received a great blessing in Christ by the removal of a curse which otherwise must have rested upon us. That curse did overshadow us once, for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the Book of the Law to do them.” We could not keep the law: we did not keep it: we gave up all hope of keeping it. Therefore, the dark thunder-cloud of that tremendous sentence hung over us, and we heard the voice of justice speaking out of it, like a volley of the dread artillery of God in the day of tempest. The thunder of the curse rolled heavily over our heads and hearts. How some of us cowered down and trembled! We can never forget the horror of our soul under the near apprehension of divine wrath. To be cursed of God meant all woes in one. Some of us were brought very low indeed by the frown of a guilty conscience…But now that curse is taken from us, and we do not dread its return, for He was made a curse for us, of whose name we are speaking now-even He “who knew no sin, but was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” No curse now remaineth: only blessing abideth. Hallelujah! If our Lord had done nothing else for us but the rolling away of the curse, He would have blessed us infinitely, and we would have blessed Him forever. If He had accomplished nothing but the bearing away of our sin into the wilderness-as the scapegoat of old bore away the iniquity of Israel-He would have done enough to set our tongues forever praising Him. He has lifted from the world the weight of the eternal curse; therefore, let all the bells of our cities ring out His honor, and all the voices of the villages sing forth His praise. O ye stars of light, shine to His glory; for He is blessed beyond all earthly measure! Let our grateful hearts in silence mean and muse His praise. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2187.cfm

To Bless, and to Be Blessed

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

“Men shall be blessed in Him: all nations shall call Him blessed.”- Psalm 72:17

To bless, and to be blessed, is the noblest sort of fame; and yet how few have thought it worth the seeking! Full many a name in the roll of fame has been written there with a finger dipped in blood. It would seem as if men loved those most who have killed the most of them. They call those greatest who have been the greatest cutthroats. They make their greatest illuminations over massacres of their fellows, calling them victories. To be set aloft upon a column, or represented by a public statue, or to have poets ringing out your name, it seems to be necessary to grasp the sword, and to hack and slay your fellow-men. Is it not too sadly true that when men have been cursed by one of their leaders they henceforth call him great? 

There is one name that will last when all others shall have died out; and that name is connected with blessing, and only with blessing. Jesus Christ came into the world on purpose to bless men. Men, as a race, find in Him a blessing wide as the world. While He was here He blessed, and cursed not. All around Him, both by speech, and act, and glance, and thought, He was an incarnate blessing. All that came to Him, unless they willfully rejected Him, obtained blessings at His hands…To bless men, He labored. To bless men, He parted with everything, and became poor. To bless men, at last He died. Those outstretched hands upon the cross are spread wide in benediction, and they are fastened there as if they would remain outstretched till the whole world is blessed. Our Lord’s resurrection from the dead brings blessings to mankind. Redemption from the grave, and life eternal, He has won for us. He waited on earth a while, until He ascended, blessing men as He went up. His last attitude below the skies was that of pronouncing a blessing upon His disciples. He is gone into the glory; but He has not ceased to bless our race. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2187.cfm

Our Heart’s Cry

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

And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. – Galatians 4:6

Our heart and our flesh crieth out for God, for the living God, and this is the cry, “Abba, Father, I must know Thee, I must taste Thy love, I must dwell under Thy wing, I must behold Thy face, I must feel Thy great fatherly heart overflowing and filling my heart with peace.” the most of this crying is kept within the heart, and does not come out at the lips. Like Moses, we cry when we say not a word. God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, whereby we cry, “Abba, Father.” You know what I mean: it is not alone in your little room, by the old arm-chair, that you cry to God, but you call Him “Abba, Father,” as you go about the streets or work in the shop. The Spirit of His Son is crying “Abba, Father,” when you are in the crowd or at your table among the family. I see it is alleged as a very grave charge against me that I speak as if I were familiar with God. If it be so, I make bold to say that I speak only as I feel. Blessed be my heavenly Father’s name, I know I am His child, and with whom should a child be familiar but with his father? 0 ye strangers to the living God, be it known unto you that if this be vile, I purpose to be viler still, as He shall help me to walk more closely with Him. We feel a deep reverence for our Father in heaven, which bows us to the very dust, but for all that we can say, “truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.” No stranger can understand the nearness of the believer’s soul to God in Christ Jesus, and because the world cannot understand it, it finds it convenient to sneer, but what of that? Abraham’s tenderness to Isaac made Ishmael jealous, and caused him to laugh, but Isaac had no cause to be ashamed of being ridiculed, since the mocker could not rob him of the covenant blessing. Yes, beloved, the Spirit of God makes you cry “Abba, Father,” but the cry is mainly within your heart, and there it is so commonly uttered that it becomes the habit of your soul to be crying to your Heavenly Father. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1435.cfm

A Babe’s Lisping

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

For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. – Romans 8:15

There are seasons when doubts and fears abound, and so suffocate us with their fumes that we cannot even raise a cry, and then the indwelling Spirit represents us, and speaks for us, and makes intercession for us, crying in our name, and making intercession for us according to the will of God. Thus does the cry “Abba, Father” rise up in our hearts even when we feel as if we could not pray and dare not think ourselves children. Then we may each say, “I live, yet not I, but the Spirit that dwelleth in me.” On the other hand, at times our soul gives such a sweet assent to the Spirit’s cry that it becometh ours also, but then we more than ever own the work of the Spirit, and still ascribe to Him the blessed cry, “Abba, Father.”

God hath sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, and that Spirit cries in us exactly according to the cry of the Son. If you turn to the gospel of Mark, at the fourteenth chapter, thirty-sixth verse, you will find there what you will not discover in any other evangelist (for Mark is always the man for the striking points, and the memorable words), he records that our Lord prayed in the garden, “Abba, Father, all things are possible unto Thee; take away this cup from Me: nevertheless not what I will, but what Thou wilt.” So that this cry in us copies the cry of our Lord to the letter-“Abba, Father.” “Abba” is not a word, somehow, but a babe’s lisping. Oh, how near we are to God when we can use such a speech! How dear He is to us and dear we are to Him when we may thus address Him, saying, like the great Son Himself, “Abba, Father.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1435.cfm

The Spirit’s Cry Within Us

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

God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. – Galatians 4:6

Where the Holy Ghost enters there is a cry. “God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son, crying, ‘Abba, Father.'” Now, notice, it is the Spirit of God that cries-a most remarkable fact. Some are inclined to view the expression as a Hebraism, and read it, He “makes us to cry;” but, beloved, the text saith not so, and we are not at liberty to alter it upon such a pretence. We are always right in keeping to what God says, and here we plainly read of the Spirit in our hearts that He is crying “Abba, Father.” The apostle in Romans 8:15 says, “Ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father,” but here he describes the Spirit Himself as crying “Abba, Father.” We are certain that when he ascribed the cry of “Abba, Father” to us, he did not wish to exclude the Spirit’s cry, because in the twenty-sixth verse of the famous eighth of Romans he says, “Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” Thus he represents the Spirit Himself as groaning with unutterable groanings within the child of God, so that when he wrote to the Romans he had on his mind the same thought which he here expressed to the Galatians,-that it is the Spirit Himself which cries and groans in us “Abba, Father.” How is this? Is it not ourselves that cry? Yes, assuredly; and yet the Spirit cries also. The expressions are both correct. The Holy Spirit prompts and inspires the cry. He puts the cry into the heart and mouth of the believer. It is His cry because He suggests it, approves of it, and educates us to it. We should never have cried thus if He had not first taught us the way. As a mother teaches her child to speak, so He puts this cry of “Abba, Father” into our mouths; yea, it is He who forms in our hearts the desire after our Father God and keeps it there. He is the Spirit of adoption, and the author of adoption’s special and significant cry. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1435.cfm

Sonship Sealed by the Indwelling Spirit

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

“God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts.” – Galatians 4:6

Note, that it does not say into your heads or your brains. The Spirit of God doubtless illuminates the intellect and guides the judgement, but this is not the commencement nor the main part of His work. He comes chiefly to the affections, He dwells with the heart, for with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and “God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts.” Now, the heart is the centre of our being, and therefore doth the Holy Ghost occupy this place of vantage. He comes into the central fortress and universal citadel of our nature, and thus takes possession of the whole. The heart is the vital part; we speak of it as the chief residence of life, and therefore the Holy Ghost enters it, and as the living God dwells in the living heart, taking possession of the very core and marrow of our being. It is from the heart and through the heart that life is diffused. The blood is sent even to the extremities of the body by the pulsings of the heart, and when the Spirit of God takes possession of the affections, He operates upon every power, and faculty, and member of our entire manhood. Out of the heart are the issues of life, and from the affections sanctified by the Holy Ghost all other faculties and powers receive renewal, illumination, sanctification, strengthening, and ultimate perfection.

This wonderful blessing is ours “because we are sons;” and it is fraught with marvellous results. Sonship sealed by the indwelling Spirit brings us peace and joy; it leads to nearness to God and fellowship with Him; it excites trust, love, and vehement desire, and creates in us reverence, obedience, and actual likeness to God. All this, and much more, because the Holy Ghost has come to dwell in us. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1435.cfm