Sovereignty of God

Yield to the Sovereignty of the Holy Ghost

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, promises, repentance, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit 5 Comments

It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. – John 6:63

Religion, and the truth of it, is not to be learnt by the head. Years of reading, hours of assiduous study, will never make a man a Christian. “It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.” Oh! art thou destitute of the Spirit of the living God? For oh! I charge thee to remember this my hearer: if in thy soul mysterious and supernatural influence of the Holy Spirit has never been shed abroad, thou art an utter stranger to all the things of God. The promises are not thine; heaven is not thine, thou art on thy road to the land of the dead, to the region of the corpse, where their worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched. Oh that the Spirit of God may rest upon you now! Bethink you, you are absolutely dependent upon His influence. You are in God’s hand today to be saved or to be lost-not in your own hands, but in His. You are dead in sins; unless He quickens you, you must remain so. The moth beneath your finger is not more absolutely at your mercy than you are now at the mercy of God. Let Him but will to leave you as you are, and you are lost; but oh! if mercy speaks and says, “Let that man live,” you are saved. I would that you could feel the weight of this tremendous doctrine of sovereignty. It is like the hammer of Thor, it may shake your heart however stout it be, and make your rocky soul tremble to its base.

“Life, death, and hell, and worlds unknown,
Hang on His firm decree.”

Yield to the sovereignty of the Holy Ghost; and He shall assuredly prove to you that, in that very yielding, there was a proof that He had loved you; for He made you yield; He made you willing to bow before Him in the day of His power. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0315.cfm

The Holy Ghost Teacheth Sovereignly

Sherry Character of Jesus, promises, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit 7 Comments

But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth… – John 16:13

The Holy Ghost teaches sovereignly. He teaches whom He pleases. He takes the fool and makes him know the wonders of the dying love of Christ, to bring aspiring wisdom low and make the pride of man humble and abase itself. And as the Spirit teaches whom He wills, so He teaches when He wills. He has His own hours of instruction, and He will not be limited and bound by us. And then again He teaches as He wills-some by affliction, some by communion; some He teaches by the Word read, some by the Word spoken, some by neither, but directly by His own agency. And so also the Holy Spirit is a sovereign in that He teaches in whatever degree He pleases. He will make one man learn much, while another comprehends but little. Some Christians wear their beards early-they come to a rapid and high degree of maturity, and that on a sudden, while others creep but slowly to the goal and are very long in reaching it. Some Christians in early years understand more than others whose hairs have turned grey. The Holy Ghost is a sovereign. He does not have all His pupils in one class, and them all the same lesson by simultaneous instruction; but each man is in a separate class, each man learning a separate lesson. Some beginning at the end of the book, some at the beginning, and some in the middle-some learning one doctrine and some another, some going backwards and some forwards. The Holy Spirit teacheth sovereignly, and giveth to every man according as He wills, but then, wherever He teaches at all, He teaches effectually. He has never failed to make us learn yet…We instruct the ear, and the ear is far removed from the heart; He teaches the heart itself, and therefore His every word falleth upon good soil, and bringeth forth good and abundant fruit-He teaches effectually…Put thyself daily under His teaching, and thou shalt never learn a word amiss, nor a thought awry, but become infallibly taught, well taught in the whole truth as it is in Jesus.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0315.cfm

We Must be Taught God

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

…He shall teach you all things… – John 14:26

God is to be heard in every wind, and seen in every cloud, but not all of God. God’s goodness, and God’s omnipotence, the world clearly manifesteth to us in the works of creation, but where do I read of His grace, where do I read of His mercy, or of His justice? There are lines which I cannot read in creation. Those must have ears indeed who can hear the notes of mercy or of grace whispering in the evening gale. No, brethren, these parts of God’s attributes are only revealed to us in this precious Book, and there they are so revealed that we cannot know them until the Spirit opens our eyes to perceive them. To know the inflexibility of Divine justice, and to see how God exacts punishment for every jot and tittle of sin, and yet to know that that full-justice does not eclipse His equally full-mercy, but that the two move around each other, without for a single instant coming into contact, or conflict, or casting the slighest shallow one or the other; to see how God is just and yet the justifier of the ungodly, and so to know God that my spirit loves His nature, appreciates His attributes, and desires to be like Him-this is a knowledge which astronomy cannot teach, which all the researches of the sciences can never give to us. We must be taught God, if we ever learn of Him-we must be taught God, by God the Holy Ghost. Oh that we may learn this lesson well, that we may be able to sing of His faithfulness, of His covenant love, of His immutability, of His boundless mercy, of His inflexible justice, that we may be able to talk to one another concerning that incomprehensible One, and may see Him even as a man seeth his friend; and may come to walk with Him as Enoch did all the days of our life. This, indeed, must be an education given to us by the Holy Ghost. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0315.cfm

He Convicts the Lost Man

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, repentance, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit, the unbelieving life 2 Comments

And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment. – John 16:8

The Spirit teaches us the total ruin, depravity, and helplessness of self. Men pretend to know this by nature, but they do not know it; they can only speak the words of experience as parrots speak like men. But to know myself utterly lost and ruined; to know myself so lost, “that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing,” is a knowledge so distasteful, so hateful, so abominable to the carnal intellect, that man would not learn it if he could, and if he hath learnt it, it is a clear proof that God the Holy Spirit has made him willing to see the truth, and willing to receive it. When we sometimes hear great preachers telling us that there is something grand left in man yet, that when Adam fell he might have broken his little finger, but did not ruin himself entirely, that man is a grand being, in fact a noble creature and that we are all wrong in telling men they are depraved, and thundering out the law of God at them-am I astonished that they should speak thus? Nay, my brethren, it is the language of the carnal mind the whole world over, and in every age. No wonder that a man is eloquent upon this point, every man needs to be eloquent when he has to defend a lie. No wonder that glorious sentences have been uttered, and flowery periods poured forth from a cornucopia of eloquence upon this subject. A man need exhaust all logic and all rhetoric to defend a-falsehood; and it is not a wonder that he seeks to do it, for man believes himself to be rich, and increased in goods, and to have need of nothing, till the Holy Ghost teaches him that he is naked, and poor, and miserable.

Your destiny hangs there now; and will you rebel against the God in whose hand your soul’s eternal fate now rests? Will you lift the puny hand of your rebellion against him who alone can quicken you-without whose gracious energy you are dead, and must be destroyed? Will you go this day and sin against light and against knowledge? …Obey the divine command, believe on Christ and live! Hear thou the voice of Jehovah, who cries, “This is the commandment, that ye believe in Jesus Christ whom He hath sent.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

The Subtle Spiritual Power

Sherry Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you. – Acts 1:8

There is a more secret, subtle power still, spiritual power, wherein, in the spiritual world, a man is made a prince with God, and hath power with God; and learning how to prevail with God for men, he catches the art of prevailing with men for God. He is first a wrestler alone by Jabbok; then he becomes a wrestler in the midst of the host of sinners, conquering them for Christ, taking them captive in the name of the Most High. Power in prayer is the highest form of power; and, communion with God is power; and holiness, above all things, is a great power among the sons of men.

This spiritual power makes a man influential, in a sense very different from that in which the world uses the word “influential”-a disgraceful use of the word. We want men who have influence in the divinest sense… In their presence men cannot do what they are accustomed to do elsewhere; when these men are in any company, they check sin without a word, they incite to righteousness almost without a sentence. They carry everything before them, not by might, nor by power, but by the Spirit of the Lord who dwells in them. Have I not seen some, decrepit and bedridden, yet ruling a house, and influencing a parish? Have I not seen some tottering old woman who, nevertheless, has been a very queen in the circle in which she moved? Have I not seen some poor, humble rustic from the plough who, nevertheless, has worn a coronet in the midst of his fellow-men by the holiness of his life, and the spiritual power that God the Holy Ghost had imparted to him? …Power must go with the word that is preached or taught if any large result is to follow; and that power must first be in the man who speaks that word. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2330.cfm

We Want the Holy Ghost

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

Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? …It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in His own power. But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. – Acts 1:6-8

The Savior said to the eleven that they were to wait at Jerusalem till they had received power by the Holy Ghost coming upon them. This is what we want; we want the Holy Ghost. We often speak about this; but, in truth, it is unspeakable, the power of the Holy Ghost, mysterious, divine. When it comes upon a man, he is bathed in the very essence of the Deity. The atmosphere about him becomes the life and power of God. There is an old proverb that knowledge is power; Christ has taken away the knowledge that is not power. He said, “It is not for you, child; it is not for you.” But He gives you the knowledge that is power; or, rather, that power which is better than all knowledge, the power of the Holy Spirit. Gotthold, in his parables, speaks of his little child who wanted to come into his room; but he was doing something there which he did not wish the child to see, and so he went on with his work, when, to his horror and surprise, he found that his child had in some way climbed up outside the window, and was standing on the sill trying to look in to see what his father was doing hazarding his life in the attempt. You may guess that it was not long before that child was taken down with a pat, and something more, to teach him not to pry into his father’s secrets. It is so with some of us; we need just a little pat, and perhaps more than that, to keep us from looking into things that do not belong to us. We may be comforted even if we do not know the times and the seasons, for we may get something vastly better, namely, the Holy Spirit to give us real power for our life-work. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2330.cfm

The Future is in the Father’s Power

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, prophecy, Sovereignty of God, The Father 1 Comment

When they therefore were come together, they asked of Him, saying, Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? …It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in His own power. – Acts 1:6, 7

The future is all in God’s hand. No prophecy will lack its mate. No word of God will fall unfulfilled to the ground. Possess your souls in patience: the things that are foretold are sure to happen. “Though the vision tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.” I am persuaded that God never is before His time, but He never is too late. He never failed to keep tryst with His people to the tick of the clock. The future is in the Father’s power….He must arrange it rightly; He must arrange it in infinite love to us. It cannot be that, in some dark hour yet to come, He will forget us. He is our Father; will He forget His children? If the times could be in my hand, how earnestly would I pray that Christ would take them into His hand, or that the Father would take away from me the dangerous power, and wield it all Himself!

“All my times are in Thy hand,
All events at Thy command”

The time of birth, the time of the new birth, the time of a sore trial, the time of the death of your beloved one, the time of your sickness, and how long it shall last, all these times must come, and last, and end, as shall please your Father. It is for you to know that your Father is at the helm of the ship, and therefore it cannot be wrecked. It may rock and reel to and fro; but, since He rules the waves, the vessel will not have one more tossing than His infinite love permits….The Father hath it in His own hands, and there we wish it to be. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2330.cfm