Sovereignty of God

Have Confidence in God

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

“He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now if He will have Him; for He said, ‘I am the Son of God.’ ” – Matthew 27:43

It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man. – Psalm 118:8

If you trust in men, the best of men, you are likely to be lowered by your trust. We are apt to cringe before these who patronize us. If your prosperity depends upon a person’s smile, you are tempted to pay homage even when it is undeserved. The old saying mentions a certain person as “knowing on which side his bread is buttered.” Thousands are practically degraded by their trusting in men. But when our reliance is upon the living God, we are raised by it, and elevated both morally and spiritually. You may bow in deepest reverence before God, and yet there will be no fawning. You may lie in the dust before the Majesty of heaven, and yet not be dishonoured by your humility; in fact, it is our greatness to be nothing in the presence of the Most High.

This confidence in God makes men strong. I should advise the enemy not to oppose the man who trusts in God…When a believer stands out against evil, he may be sure that the Lord of hosts will not be far away. The enemy shall hear the dash of His horse-hoof and the blast of His trumpet and shall flee before Him. Wherefore be of good courage, and compel the world to say of you, “He trusted in the Lord that He would deliver him.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

Let Him Deliver Him Now

A Most Reasonable Thing

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

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding… – Proverbs 3:5

It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man. – Psalm 118:8

Let a man trust in God; not in fiction but in fact, and he will find that he has solid rock under his feet. Let him trust about his own daily needs and trials, and rest assured that the Lord will actually appear for him, and he will not be disappointed. Such a trust in God is a very reasonable thing; its absence is most unreasonable. If there be a God, He knows all about my case. If He made my ear He can hear me; if He made my eye He can see me; and therefore, He perceives my condition. If He be my Father, as He says He is, He will certainly care for me and will help me in my hour of need if He can. We are sure that He can, for He is omnipotent. Is there anything unreasonable, then, in trusting in God that He will deliver us? I venture to say that if all the forces in the universe were put together, and all the kindly intents of all who are our friends were put together, and we were then to rely upon those united forces and intents, we should not have a thousandth part so much justification for our confidence as when we depend upon God, whose intents and forces are infinitely greater than those of all the world beside. “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man; it is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes.” If you view things in the white light of pure reason, it is infinitely more reasonable to trust in the living God than in all His creatures put together.

Certainly, dear friends, it is extremely comfortable to trust in God. I find it so and therefore speak. To roll your burden upon the Lord, since He will sustain you, is a blessed way of being quit of care. We know Him to be faithful, and as powerful as He is faithful; and our dependence upon Him is the solid foundation of a profound peace. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

Let Him Deliver Him Now

 This Practical Faith

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

He trusted on the LORD that He would deliver (Him): let Him deliver (Him), seeing He delighted in (Him). – Psalm 22:8

David, in the twenty-second Psalm, represents the enemies as saying of our Lord-“He trusted on the Lord that He would deliver Him.” This practical faith is sure to be known wherever it is in operation, because it is exceedingly rare. Multitudes of people have a kind of faith in God, but it does not come to the practical point of trusting that God will deliver them. I see upon the newspaper placards, “Startling New! People in the Planets!” Not a very practical discovery. For many a day there has been a tendency to refer God’s promises and our faith to the planets, or somewhere beyond this present every-day life. We say to ourselves, “Oh yes, God delivers His people.” We mean that He did so in the days of Moses, and possibly He may be doing so now in some obscure island of the sea. Ah me! The glory of faith lies it its being fit for every-day wear. Can it be said of you, “He trusted in God, that He would deliver him”? Have you faith of the kind which will make you lean upon the Lord in poverty, in sickness, in bereavement, in persecution, in slander, in contempt? Have you a trust in God to bear you up in holy living at all costs, and in active service even beyond your strength? Can you trust in God definitely about this and that? Can you trust about food, and raiment, and home? Can you trust God even about your shoes, that they shall be iron and brass, and about the hairs of your head that they are all numbered? What we need is less theory and more actual trust it God.

Come, beloved, have you such a faith in the living God? Do you trust in God through Christ Jesus that He will save you? Yes, you poor, unworthy one, the Lord will deliver you if you trust Him. Yes, poor woman, or unknown man, the Lord can help you in your present trouble, and in every other, and He will do so if you trust Him to that end. May the Holy Spirit lead you to first trust the Lord Jesus for the pardon of sin, and then to trust in God for all things. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

Let Him Deliver Him Now

The Treatment of Our Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross

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

“He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now if He will have Him; for He said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” – Matthew 27:43 (see also: Psalm 22:7,8)

It is very painful to the heart to picture our blessed Master in His death-agonies, surrounded by a ribald multitude, who watched Him and mocked Him, made sport of His prayer and insulted His faith. Nothing was sacred to them: they invaded the Holy of Holies of His confidence in God and taunted Him concerning that faith in Jehovah which they were compelled to admit. See, dear friends, what an evil thing is sin, since the Sin-bearer suffers so bitterly to make atonement for it! See, also, the shame of sin, since even the Prince of Glory, when bearing the consequences of it, is covered with contempt! Behold, also, how He loved us! For our sake He “endured the cross, despising the shame.” He loved us so much that even scorn of the most cruel sort He deigned to bear, that He might take away our shame and enable us to look up unto God.

Beloved, the treatment of our Lord Jesus Christ by men is the clearest proof of total depravity which can possibly be required or discovered. Those must be stony hearts indeed which can laugh at a dying Saviour, and mock even at His faith in God! Compassion would seem to have deserted humanity, while malice sat supreme on the throne. Painful as the picture is, it will do you good to paint it. You will need neither canvas, nor brush, nor palette, nor colours. Let your thoughts draw the outline, and your love fill in the detail; I shall not complain if imagination heightens the colouring. The Son of God, whom angels adore with veiled faces, is pointed at with scornful fingers by men who thrust out the tongue and mockingly exclaim, “He trusted on the LORD that He would deliver Him: let Him deliver Him, seeing He delighted in Him.” May the Holy Spirit help us in our meditation, so that we may more ardently love our Lord, who suffered for us. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

Let Him Deliver Him Now

Christ, the Dread Division

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

And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. – Revelation 20:15

The hour is coming when our wills and wishes shall have no force. God will divide the righteous from the wicked then, and Christ shall be the dread division. I say, are we prepared to be separated eternally? There the righteous clad in white, in songs triumphant glorified with Him, and there the lost, the unbelieving, the fearful, the abominable. What divides them from yon bright host? Nothing but the person of the Son of Man, on whom they look, and weep, and mourn, and wail because of Him. That is the impenetrable barrier that shall shut out the damned from eternal bliss. The gate which may let you in now will be the fiery gate which shall shut you out hereafter. Christ is the door of heaven, oh, dreadful day when that door shall be shut, when that door shall stand before you, and prevent you entering into the felicity which you shall then long for, when you cannot enter into it.

Oh! on which side shall I be, when all these transitory things are done away with, when the dead have risen from their graves, when the great congregation shall stand upon the land, and upon the sea, when every valley, and every mountain, and every river, and every sea, shall be crowded with multitudes standing in thick array? Oh! when He shall say, “Separate My people, thrust in the sickle, for the harvest of the world is ripe,” my soul, where shall you be? Shall you be found among the lost? Shall the dread trumpet send you down to hell, while a voice that rends your ear, shall call after you, “Depart from Me, depart from Me, you workers of iniquity into everlasting fire in hell, prepared for the devil and his angels.” Oh that now the grace of God were poured upon you, that you might come unto Jesus. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

The High Priest Standing Between the Dead and the Living

The Great Divider

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

And he stood between the dead and the living; and the plague was stayed. – Numbers 16:48

Aaron the anointed one stands here, on that side is death, on this side life, the boundary between life and death is that one man. Where his incense smokes the air is purified, where it smokes not the plague reigns with unmitigated fury. There are two sorts of people here, and these are the living and the dead, the pardoned, and the unpardoned, the saved and the lost. The one division, the one great division between those who are God’s people and those who are not, is Christ. A man in Christ is a Christian, a man out of Christ is dead in trespasses and sins. “He that believeth on the Lord Jesus Christ is saved, he that believeth not is lost.” Christ is the only divider between His people and the world.

What divides the true Christian from the unbeliever? Some think it is that the Christian takes the sacrament, the other not. That is no division, there be men who have gone to hell with sacramental bread in their mouths; others may imagine that baptism makes the difference, and indeed it is the outward token, the baptismal pool is the means by which we show to the world that we are buried in Christ’s grave, in type that we are dead to the world and buried in Christ, we rise up from it in testimony that we desire to live in newness of life by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

On which side then, are you today, my hearer? Please remember, brothers and sisters, that as Christ is the great divider now, so will He be in the day of judgment. Do you never think of that, He shall divide them the one from the other, as the shepherd divides the sheep from the goats. It is the Shepherd’s person that divides the sheep from the goats. He stands between them, and in that last day of days for which all other days were made, Christ shall be the great divider. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

The High Priest Standing Between the Dead and the Living

Saved but Not by Our Own Merits

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

They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. – Romans 3:12

And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven: And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me? – Acts 9:3-4

There is no difference between the glorified in heaven and the doomed in hell, except the difference that God made of His own sovereign grace. Whatever difference there may be between Saul the apostle and Elymas the sorcerer, has been made by infinite sovereignty and undeserved love. Paul might still have remained Saul of Tarsus and might have become a damned fiend in the bottomless pit, had it not been for free sovereign grace, which came out to snatch him as a brand from the burning.

Oh, sinner, you say, “There is no reason in me why God should save me,” but there is no reason in any man. You have no good point, nor has any man. There is nothing in any man to commend him to God. We are all such sinners, that hell is our deserved portion, and if any of us be saved from going down into the pit, it is God’s undeserved sovereign bounty that does it, and not any merits of ours. Jesus Christ is a most gracious Savior…He asks you not to do anything, you say, “I have no merits.” Man, He does not want any, if you would help Christ, you will be lost, but if you will leave Christ to do it all, you shall be saved. Come now, the very plan of salvation is this, to take Christ to be your all in all; He will never be a part-Savior, He never came to patch our ragged garments, He will give us a new robe, but He will never mend the old one… “He came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” “He is able to save unto the uttermost them that come unto God by Him.”~ C.H. Spurgeon

The High Priest Standing Between the Dead and the Living