Sovereignty of God

Openly Shaming Satan

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

Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ… – Ephesians 3:8

(One) reason why the Lord takes the vilest of men to make them the saintliest is, that He might openly triumph over Satan. How the devil must feel defeated when such a man as Saul is taken straight away from persecuting to preaching! Surely, it makes Satan bite his chains and gnash his teeth when he loses his servants so. Just when he has trained them up, and got them into fine condition for doing mischief, in comes the officer of divine grace, arrests them, and changes their hearts. You know none ever do the devil so much mischief as those who once did him service…All heaven rings with rapture when a great sinner is saved; and all hell howls with dismay when one of the arch host bows down to kiss the feet of Christ and receive the mercy of God. Glory be to God when He takes those that would have been deepest damned and sets them highest among the saved on earth to be priests and Levites unto Him. By these means also He secures another end: He encourages poor penitents; for when a sinner, under a sense of sin, meets with a brother in Christ, who was like himself once, but is now living near to God and serving Him acceptably, he is much encouraged. “Why,” he thinks to himself, “is this how God receives sinners when they turn to Him? Perhaps He will receive me.” And if he gets into conversation with one of those whom God has made priests and Levites, he says, “Tell me what the Lord has done for thy soul.” And the minister being a man of like passions, and having had like experience, delights to describe the works and ways of God with hardened sinners and old offenders and then the man who is seeking finds in the other a guide who is touched with the feeling of his infirmity, is very helpful to him, and much blessed of God to enter into the secrets of his heart and lead him to the cross. If there be here some great rebel against God, I think he ought to take encouragement thence to turn unto the Lord and live, for surely, when God so treats His most defiant enemies as to make them His most honored ministers, there should be some comfort for the great sinner to seek the Lord while yet He waits to be gracious. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0992.cfm

The Power of God’s Love

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I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.- Romans 9:15

Men who are tamers of wild beasts, will frequently, when they have subdued a lion, take a delight in showing to the people how obedient that lion will be to them, and how every word that the lion-tamer chooses to say, it will regard and pay attention to. Thus, when the Lord takes a great sinner, after He has tamed him, removed his heart of stone, and given him a heart of flesh, He desires to show how, without the use of the whip, without a threatening look or an angry word, He causes His enemy to become His diligent servant, His earnest friend. O brethren, it shows the power of love on a man when he is so broken down that the things he sneered at he now preaches with all his might. Surely it showed the power of divine grace when Paul avowed Christ openly and vehemently preached—exposing himself to persecution and death—that same gospel which his soul had previously nauseated; yea, which his zeal, full of bitterness, had kindled to exterminate. God takes great sinners and then appoints and qualifies them to be priests and Levites, in order that He might show the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe.

Divine grace, while it comes freely to us, is dispensed freely by God, according to the good pleasure of His will. I should like to hear that text thundered throughout Christendom: “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” No man hath any right to the mercy of God. We have all sinned ourselves into outlaw: all the rights we have are the right to be condemned, and the right to be cast into hell; all the rights of man that he can appeal to God for in equity are merged in the wrongs for which he is responsible. If the Lord have mercy, it is His own will to do it: He can withhold it if it pleases Him; so He selects the most degraded, those that have gone farthest from Him, and takes them into His church…He lifteth up the poor from the dunghill, and setteth him among princes, even among the princes of His people. His mercy, power, and sovereignty are displayed when He takes of them to be priests and Levites. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0992.cfm

God Chooses the Least Likely from Among Men

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

And I will also take of them for priests and for Levites, saith the LORD. – Isaiah 66:21

“I will also take of them,” the most unlikely and unfit, according to human judgment. “I will also take of them for priests and for Levites unto Me.” And where the service has not taken the form of preaching, we can remember some whom God hath made eminent in prayer. Never account prayer second to preaching. No doubt prayer in the Christian church is as precious as the utterance of the gospel. To speak to God for men is a part of the Christian priesthood that should never be despised. Surely, I have heard some prayers of those whom none would ever have expected to pray, such as I have not heard from those who, from their youth up, have been accustomed to the language of devotion—moved with energy and full of fervor, like Elijah. Or, shall I say it, they have become in spiritual force nerved as Samson was with physical strength. In their prayers they have seemed to take hold of the pillars of the temple of Satan and pull it down upon their enemies; they have been so mighty as to wrestle with God and prevail. God has taken of them—that is, even of the prayerless, and the careless, and the blaspheming—and He has made these to be priests and Levites unto Him. And in all other holy service I think I can recollect eminent men who out of weakness were made strong, from simpletons they were changed into sages, or, rescued from the dregs of infamy, they became paragons of virtue. In their unregeneracy as bitter fruit, apples of Sodom, that crumbled into dust and turned to ashes, yet so transformed by the renewing of their minds, that they bore the richest clusters of choicest fruit to the praise and glory of the Great Husbandman. “I will also take of them for priests and for Levites, saith the Lord.” There is the fact. You need not that I enlarge upon it. While a false priesthood still lives (and always will), God has His elect people, who are His royal priesthood among the sons of men, who are discharging regal functions and sacred offices among the sons of men in His name, and before His face; and these He oftentimes takes out from the least likely of mankind. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0992.cfm

He Makes Us Fit for Service

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

And I will also take of them for priests and for Levites, saith the LORD. – Isaiah 66:21

Observe, according to the text, men have nothing to do with the selection; for here it is said, “I will also take of them”—not “their parents shall bring them up to it;” not “those who shall be looked out as the most fit and proper men on account of some natural bent and bias, or gift and talent, but I will take.” God’s priesthood in the world is a priesthood of His own choosing, of His own setting apart, of His own anointing. “He hath made us kings and priests unto God.” The church is a royal priesthood, not of man, neither by man, nor of the will of man, nor of blood, nor of birth: it is of God’s choosing. This sacred and consecrated band of priests and Levites, and all that serve God effectually and acceptably, are men whom He has Himself chosen to the work. He Himself hath done it, and only His own will has been consulted in the matter. In their case, it appears from the text, that whatever was unfit in their character has been overcome by divine grace. “I will also take of them for priests and for Levites, saith the Lord.” If God takes them for Levites, He makes them Levites; if He chooses them for priests, He makes them priests. So, glory be to His name, when He chose you, my dear brother, when He chose you, my dear sister, to be His servants, to be His priests and His Levites, He gave you the grace you wanted. He found in you no natural fitness, no suitability, but in fitness for sin, a suitability to go astray, and to become a brand for the burning; but if there be a fitness in you to serve Him on earth and in heaven, it is His grace that has done it. It is His grace speaking in all its wondrous majesty—”I will take of them for priests and for Levites”—which has effected in you the great transformation, making in you all things new, and thus qualifying you to become the servants of the Most High. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0992.cfm

Made to be Honored and Faithful Servants

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

And I will also take of them for priests and for Levites, saith the LORD. – Isaiah 66:21

Priests and Levites had two works to do: something to do towards God for men, and something to do towards men for God. They were engaged to do something towards God for men, and so they offered the sacrifices that were brought to the door of the tabernacle, whether according to the general ordinances, or to any special vows. Spiritually minded, they were much engaged in intercession for the rest of Israel. So there is a people to be found this day who offer unto God acceptable prayer and praise, and in answer to their prayer, unnumbered blessings come down upon the sons of men. I trust there are some here that have power with God in prayer. Ye are the king’s remembrancers; ye make mention of His name and keep not silence; ye cry to God for Sodom, and yet more hopefully ye cry to God for Jerusalem: your prayer ceaseth not, and God’s grace and favor always follow it. In this sense God is constantly taking out, even from amongst the vilest of the vile, a people whom He makes to be priests and Levites for men towards Himself. Another part of their office consisted in speaking for God to the people; “For the priest’s lips should keep knowledge.” As for the Levites, they were as ushers in the schools and tutors in the families of Israel. Amongst the Levites were found those scribes who became the instructors of the people, the copyists of the law, and the expounders of its statutes and ordinances; ministers who opened up to the people, as Ezra did, the knotty points of the old covenant, and expounded the word. So not all of us in the same degree, but all of us in a measure, are to be teachers of God’s revealed truth, even as He has taught us; and He has in this place, and throughout the world, taken out a certain company whom He has made to speak as His mouth to the sons of men—men of His own choosing, and His own sending, who are as priests and Levites for His name…Now, that is parallel to the fact that God does take some of the most unlikely persons, who seem to be the most unsuitable of all, and make these to be His faithful and honored servants among the sons of men. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0992.cfm

Made Near to God

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

And I will also take of them for priests and for Levites, saith the LORD. – Isaiah 66:21

The priests and the Levites enjoyed the privilege of drawing near to God—nearer than the rest of the people in that typical dispensation. While the people stood without, the Levites were busy inside. One of them, the chief of the tribe, and the High Priest before the Lord for all the tribes, was permitted and commanded to go into the most holy place within the veil; and you know that the holy places made with hands are figures of the true, even of heaven itself. In like manner there is a people to be found on earth at this day whom God has chosen to draw near unto Him. In Christ Jesus they who sometimes were afar off, are made nigh by the blood of Christ. The same precious blood that is applied to their conscience is sprinkled on the mercy-seat; therefore, they have access to the Father. Oh! happy they, who, like the priests and Levites, love dwelling in the Lord’s house, and praising Him, who can say—

“Here, Lord, I find settled rest
While others go and come;
No more a stranger or a guest,
But like a child at home.”

Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations: we are a people near unto Thee made nigh by affinity with the Son of God, brought nigh by the blood, led nigh by the Spirit of God, kept nigh, and rejoicing to be nigh—for herein is our honor and comfort, to be near unto God; made priests and Levites, because claimed as God’s portion, prepared for God’s service, and admitted to a near familiarity with Him. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0992.cfm

Set Apart for Divine Service

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God 2 Comments

And I will also take of them for priests and for Levites, saith the LORD. – Isaiah 66:21

Now, the priests or Levites were persons set apart to be God’s peculiar property. When the firstborn were spared in Egypt, God claimed the firstborn to be His own, and He took the tribe of Levi to represent the firstborn; they were to be the Lord’s. Though all Israel belonged to God, yet the tribe of Levi was especially selected and particularly appointed to do the service of the tabernacle of the congregation; and of this tribe of Levi, chief among them the house of Aaron, to minister in the sanctuary as priests. So now, glory be to God, He takes out of all nations a people that are to be peculiarly His own—His own by election, as He chose them—His own by redemption, as He bought them—His own by endowment through the regenerating and sanctifying operations of the Holy Spirit. “They shall be Mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up My jewels;” His own, therefore, before time, and after time shall close. “I will take of them for priests and for Levites, saith the Lord.” Being thus set apart as the Lord’s property, the priests and Levites lived only for divine service. While others were engaged with their trade or upon their farm, the Levites were attending to the tabernacle or temple, and the priests in their courts were slaughtering bullocks and lambs, and offering them to God; or they had other duties of a kindred order, by reason of the charge given them of all the hallowed things of the children of Israel. Anyhow, it was in sacred things that they were occupied; so now, it is the duty of every man to serve the Lord; but, alas! man will not; and therefore God takes unto Himself a people out of all nations, and kindreds, and tongues, and He ordains them to stand before Him continually, to wait on His commands, and to do His bidding. Thus, He puts upon their shoulders His easy yoke and weights them with His light burden, and they become His willing servants—that their life may be for His glory, and that their desire, as well as their duty, may be to serve Him with heart and strength so long as they have any being. In this sense, then, happy is the man who is set apart to the divine service, a priest and a Levite unto God. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0992.cfm