Sovereignty of God

The Privileges of Divine Faith

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

Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises… – 2 Peter 1:4

The privileges of faith are, that we have given to us, “Exceeding great and precious promises.” …here we have promises which are so great, that they are not less than infinite, and so precious, that they are not less than divine…Note here, then, we have received by precious faith the promise and pardon. Hark thee, my soul, all thy sins are forgiven thee. He who hath faith in Christ hath no sin to curse him, his sins are washed away, they have ceased to be; they have been carried on the scapegoat’s head into the wilderness; they are drowned in the Red Sea; they are blotted out; they are thrown behind God’s back; they are cast into the depths of the sea. Here is a promise of perfect pardon. Is not this great and precious?-as great as your sins are; and if your sins demanded a costly ransom, this precious promise is as great as the demand.

Then comes the righteousness of Christ: you are not only pardoned, that is, washed and made clean, but you are dressed, robed in garments such as no man could ever weave. The vesture is divine. Jehovah Himself has wrought out your righteousness for you; the holy life of Jesus the Son of God, has become your beauteous dress, and you are covered with it…Then next comes reconciliation. You were strangers, but you are brought nigh by the blood of Christ. Once aliens, but now fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God. Is not this great and precious? Then comes your adoption. “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.” “And if children, then heirs, heirs of God, joint heirs with Jesus Christ, if we suffer with Him that we may be glorified together.” Oh, how glorious is this great and precious promise of adoption! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0551.cfm

 

Changed Lives by the Grace of God

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

Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord… – 2 Peter 1:2

Peter wished to see this divine life in a healthy and vigorous state, and therefore he prays that grace and peace may be multiplied. Divine power is the foundation of this life; grace is the food it feeds upon, and peace is the element in which it lives most healthily. Give a Christian much grace, and his spiritual life will be like the life of a man who is well clothed and nurtured; keep the spiritual life without abundant grace, and it becomes lean, faint, and ready to die; and though die it cannot, yet will it seem as though it gave up the ghost, unless fresh grace be bestowed. Peace, I say, is the element in which it flourishes most. Let a Christian be much disturbed in mind, let earthly cares get into his soul, let him have doubts and fears as to his eternal safety, let him lose a sense of reconciliation to God, let his adoption be but dimly before his eyes, and you will not see much of the divine life within him. But oh! if God shall smile upon the life within you, and you get much grace from God, and your soul dwells much in the balmy air of heavenly peace, then shall you be strong to exercise yourself unto godliness, and your whole life shall adorn the doctrine of God your Saviour.

Wherever true faith enters, though it be into the heart of a harlot or of a thief, what a change it makes! …I say, we boast of nothing which we now are, for by the grace of God we are what we are, yet the change is something to be wondered at. Has divine grace wrought this change in you? ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0551.cfm

 

According to His Divine Power

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

Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord,  according as His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue… – 2 Peter 1:2, 3

My brethren, you who are partakers of the divine nature, know that by nature you were dead in trespasses and sins, and would have continued so until this day if there had not been an interposition of divine energy on your behalf. There you lay in the grave of your sin, rotten, corrupt. The voice of the minister called to you, but you did not hear. You were often bidden to come forth, but ye did not and could not come. But when the Lord said, “Lazarus, come forth,” then Lazarus came forth; and when He said to you, “Live,” then you lived also, and the spiritual life beat within you, with joy and peace through believing. This we ought never to forget, because, let us never fail to remember, that if our religion is a thing which sprang from ourselves, it is of the flesh, and must die. That which is born of the flesh in its best and most favourable moments, is flesh, and only that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. “Ye must be born again.” If a man’s religious life be only a refinement of his ordinary life, if it be only a high attainment of the natural existence, then is it not the spiritual life, and does not prepare him for the eternal life before the throne of God… Now the implantation of this new principle, called the spirit, is a work of divine power. Divine power! What stupendous issues are grasped in that term, divine power! It was this which digged the deep foundations of the earth and sea! Divine power, it is this which guides the marches of the stars of heaven! Divine power! it is this which holds up the pillars of the universe, and which one day shall shake them, and hurry all things back to their native nothingness. Yet the selfsame power which is required to create a world and to sustain it, is required to make man a Christian, and unless that power be put forth, the spiritual life is not in any one of us.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0551.cfm

Like Precious Faith

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

…to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ… – 2 Peter 1:1

Be pleased to notice the word “righteousness.” It is a faith in the righteousness of our God and our Saviour. In these days, certain divines have tried to get rid of all idea of atonement; they have taught that faith in Jesus Christ would save men, apart from any faith in Him as a sacrifice. Ah, brethren, it does not say, “faith in the teaching of God our Saviour;” I do not find here that it is written, “faith in the character of God our Saviour, as our exemplar.” No, but “faith in the righteousness of God our Saviour.” That righteousness, like a white robe, must be cast around us. I have not received Jesus Christ at all, but I am an adversary and an enemy to Him, unless I have received Him as Jehovah Tsidkenu, the Lord our righteousness. There is His perfect life; that life was a life for me; it contains all the virtues, in it there is no spot; it keeps the law of God, and makes it honourable; my faith takes that righteousness of Jesus Christ, and it is cast about me, and I am then so beauteously, nay, so perfectly arrayed, that even the eye of God can see neither spot nor blemish in me. Have we, then, today a faith in the righteousness of God our Saviour? For no faith but this can ever bring the soul into a condition of acceptance before the Most High. ‘Why,” saith one, “these are the very simplicities of the gospel.” Beloved, I know they are, and thanks be to God, it is the simplicities which lie at the foundation; and it is rather by simplicities than by mysteries that a Christian is to try himself and to see whether he be in the faith or no. Put the question, brethren, have we, then, this like precious faith in God and our Saviour Jesus Christ? ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0551.cfm

Seek of God the Faith that Saves

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

Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. – Acts 16:31

Beloved friends, have we heartily and joyfully received Jesus Christ as God? My hearer, if thou hast not, I pray thee seek of God the faith that saves, for thou hast it not as yet, nor art thou in the way to it. Who but a God could bear the weight of sin? Who but a God shall be the “same yesterday, to-day, and for ever?” Concerning whom but God could it be said, “I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.” We have to do with Christ, and we should be consumed if He changed; inasmuch, then, as He does not change, and we are not consumed, He must be divine, and our soul rolls the entire burden of its care and guilt upon the mighty shoulders of the everlasting God…

Jesus Christ is our Saviour because He became a substitute for guilty man. He, having taken upon Himself the form of manhood by union with our nature, stood in the room, place, and stead of sinners. When the whole tempest of divine wrath was about to spend itself on man, He endured it all for His elect; when the great whip of the law must fall, He bared His own shoulders to the lash; when the cry was heard, “Awake, O sword!” it was against Christ the Shepherd, against the man who was the fellow to the eternal God. And because He thus suffered in the place and stead of man, He received power from on high to become the Saviour of man, and to bring many sons into glory, because He had been made perfect through suffering…Happy art thou, if thou hast laid thy hand upon the head of Him who was slain for sinners. Be glad, and rejoice in the Lord without ceasing, if today that blessed Redeemer who has ascended upon high has become thy Saviour, delivered thee from sin, passing by thy transgressions, and making thee to be accepted in the Beloved. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0551.cfm

Very God of Very God

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

…to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ… – 2 Peter 1:1

The word “through” in our translation, might, quite as correctly, have been rendered “in”-“faith in the righteousness of our God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.” True faith, then, is a faith in Jesus Christ, but it is a faith in Jesus Christ as divine. That man who believes in Jesus Christ as simply a prophet, as only a great teacher, has not the faith which will save him. Charity would make us hope for many Unitarians, but honesty compels us to condemn them without exception, so far as vital godliness is concerned. It matters not how intelligent may be their conversation, nor how charitable may be their manners, nor how patriotic may be their spirit, if they reject Jesus Christ as very God of very God, we believe they shall without doubt perish everlastingly. Our Lord uttered no dubious words when He said, “He that believeth not shall be damned,” and we must not attempt to be more liberal than the Lord Himself. Little allowance can I make for one who receives Jesus the prophet, and rejects Him as God. It is an atrocious outrage upon common sense for a man to profess to be a believer in Christ at all, if he does not receive His divinity. I would undertake, at any time, to prove to a demonstration, that if Christ were not God, He was the grossest impostor who ever lived. One of two things, He was either divine or a villain… He was the grossest of all deceivers, if He was not “very God of very God.” O beloved, you and I have found no difficulties here; when we have beheld the record of His miracles, when we have listened to the testimony of His divine Father, when we have heard the word of the inspired apostles, when we have felt the majesty of His own divine influence in our own hearts, we have graciously accepted Him as “the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father;” and, as John bear witness of Him and said, “The Word was in the beginning with God, and the Word was God,” even so have we received Him; so that at this day, He that was born of the virgin Mary, Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews, is to us “God over all, blessed for ever.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0551.cfm

The Character and Origin of Faith

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

“Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.”- 2 Peter 1:1

You have here a description of true saving faith. You have a description of its source. He says, “to them that have obtained like precious faith.” See, then, my brethren, faith does not grow in man’s heart by nature; it is a thing which is obtained. It is not a matter which springs up by a process of education, or by the example and excellent instruction of our parents; it is a thing which has to be obtained. Not imitation, but regeneration; not development, but conversion. All our good things come from without us, only evil can be educed from within us. Now, that which is obtained by us must be given to us; and well are we taught in Scripture that “faith is not of ourselves, it is the gift of God.” Although faith is the act of man, yet it is the work of God. “With the heart man believeth unto righteousness;” but that heart must, first of all, have been renewed by divine grace before it ever can be capable of the act of saving faith. Faith, we say, is man’s act, for we are commanded to “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,” and we shall be saved. At the same time, faith is God’s gift, and wherever we find it, we may know that it did not come there from the force of nature, but from a work of divine grace. How this magnifies the grace of God, my brethren, and how low this casts human nature! Faith. Is it not one of the simplest things? Merely to depend upon the blood and righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, does it not seem one of the easiest of virtues? To be nothing, and to let Him be everything-to be still, and to let Him work for me, does not this seem to be the most elementary of all the Christian graces? Indeed, so it is; and yet, even to this first principle and rudiment, poor human nature is so fallen and so utterly undone, that it cannot attain unto! Brethren, the Lord must not only open the gates of heaven to us at last, but He must open the gates of our heart to faith at the first…Have we a hope that we have been enabled through divine grace to cast away all our own righteousness and every dependence, and are we now, whether we sink or swim, resting entirely upon the person, the righteousness, the blood, the intercession, the precious merit of our Lord Jesus Christ? ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0551.cfm