Sovereignty of God

Like Our Head

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

…ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations… -1 Peter 1:6

It is a rule of the kingdom that all the members must be like the Head. They are to be like the Head in that day when He shall appear. “We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” But we must be like the Head also in His humiliation, or else we cannot be like Him in His glory. Now, you will observe that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ very often passed through much of trouble, without any heaviness. When He said, “Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head,” I observe no heaviness. I do not think He sighed over that. And when athirst He sat upon the well, and said, “Give Me to drink,” there was no heaviness in all His thirst. I believe that through the first years of His ministry, although He might have suffered some heaviness, He usually passed over His troubles like a ship floating over the waves of the sea. But you will remember that at last the waves of swelling grief came into the vessel; at last the Saviour Himself, though full of patience, was obliged to say “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death;” and one of the evangelists tells us that the Saviour “began to be very heavy.”…He had no longer His wonted courage, and though He had strength to say, “Nevertheless, not My will, but Thine be done;” still the weakness did prevail, when He said, “If it be possible let this cup pass from Me.” The Saviour passed through the brook, but He “drank of the brook by the way;” and we who pass through the brook of suffering must drink of it too. He had to bear the burden, not with His shoulders omnipotent, but with shoulders that were bending to the earth beneath a load. And you and I must not always expect a giant faith that can remove mountains: sometimes even to us the grasshopper must be a burden, that we may in all things be like unto our Head.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0222.cfm

 

If Need Be

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

…though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations.- 1Peter 1:6

“Though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness.” It does not say, “Though now for a season ye are suffering pain, though now for a season you are poor; but you are ‘in heaviness;'” your spirits are taken away from you; you are made to weep; you cannot bear your pain; you are brought to the very dust of death, and wish that you might die. Your faith itself seems as if it would fail you. That is the thing for which there is a needs be. That is what my text declares, that there is an absolute needs be that sometimes the Christian should not endure his sufferings with a gallant and a joyous heart; there is a needs be that sometimes his spirits should sink within him, and that he should become even as a little child smitten beneath the hand of God. Ah! beloved, we sometimes talk about the rod, but it is one thing to see the rod, and it is another thing to feel it; and many a time have we said within ourselves, “If I did not feel so low spirited as I now do, I should not mind this affliction;” and what is that but saying, “If I did not feel the rod I should not mind it?” It is just how you feel, that is, after all, the pith and marrow of your affliction. It is that breaking down of the spirit, that pulling down of the strong man, that is the very fester of the soreness of God’s scourging- “the blueness of the wound, whereby the soul is made better.” I think this one idea has been enough to be food for me many a day; and there may be some child of God here to whom it may bring some slight portion of comfort. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0222.cfm

 

Thunders of Praise to the Most High

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

Let every thing that hath breath praise the LORD. Praise ye the LORD. – Psalm 150:6

Beloved, be it noticed about the saints’ music that it always seems very poor to them. They feel that they must break out. There are some of David’s Psalms in which in the Hebrew the words are very much disconnected and broken, as though the poet had strained himself beyond the power of language; and how constantly do you find him calling upon others to help him praise God-not only to other saints, but as if he felt there were not enough of saints, he calls on all creatures that have breath to praise God. How frequently do you find holy men invoking the dwellers above the skies, and earth, and air, and sea, to help them lift high the praise of God, and, as if they were not content with all animated beings, you will hear them bidding the trees of the wood break out and clap their hands, while they invite the sea to roar and the fullness thereof to magnify the Most High. Devout minds feel as though the whole creation were like a great organ with ten thousand times ten thousand pipes, and we little men, who have God within us, come and put our little hands to the keys and make the whole universe echo with thunders of praise to the Most High, for man is the world’s priest, and the man that is blood-washed makes the whole earth his tabernacle and his temple, and in that temple doth every one speak of God’s glory. He lights up the stars like lamps to burn before the throne of the Most High, and bids all creatures here below become servants in the temple of the infinite majesty. Oh! brethren, may God give us to feel in this state of mind and, though we should think our praises are like to break down and feel how mean they are, compared with the majesty of Jehovah and His boundless love, yet shall we have praised Him acceptably.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3476.cfm

Singing Songs of Deliverance

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God 4 Comments

Surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him. Thou art my hiding place; Thou shalt preserve me from trouble; Thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. Selah. – Psalm 32:6,7

We ought to praise our Lord Jesus Christ, and sing to our well-beloved a song, particularly when we have had a remarkable deliverance. “Thou shalt compass me about,” says David, “with songs of deliverance.” Were you raised from a bed of sickness? Have you passed through a great pecuniary difficulty? Through God’s help has your character been cleared from slander? Have you been helped in some enterprise, and prospered in the world? Have you seen a child restored from sickness, or a beloved wife once more given back to you from the gates of the grave? Have you just experienced the light of Christ’s countenance in your own soul? Has a snare been broken? Has a temptation been removed? Are you in a joyous frame of mind? “Is any merry? Let him sing psalms.” Oh! give your Well-beloved a song now the sun shines and the flowers bloom. When the year begins to turn and fair weather comes, the birds seem to feel it, and they renew their music. Do so, oh! believer. When the winter is past, and the rain is over and gone, fill the earth with your songs of gratitude. But remember, O believer, that you should sing your Well-beloved a song chiefly when it is not so with you, when sorrows befall. He giveth songs in the night. Perhaps there is no music so sweet as that which comes from the lip and heart of a tried believer. It is real then. When Job blessed God on the dunghill, even the devil himself could not insinuate that Job was a hypocrite. When Job prospered, then the devil said, “Doth Job serve God for naught?” but when he lost his all, and yet said, “Blessed be the name of the Lord,” then the good man shone like a star when the clouds are gone. Oh! let us be sure to praise God when things go ill with us…I will give to my Well-beloved extra music from my heart. He shall be praised by me now. Though He slay me, yet will I praise Him.” This is the part of a Christian. God help us ever to act it.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3476.cfm

Do We Sing as Much as the Birds Do?

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, promises, Sovereignty of God 3 Comments

“I will sing to my Well-beloved a song.”- Isaiah 5:1

“I will bless the LORD at all times: His praise shall continually be in my mouth.” – Psalm 34:1

We don’t sing enough, my brethren. How often do I stir you up about the matter of prayer, but perhaps I might be just as earnest about the matter of praise. Do we sing as much as the birds do? Yet what have birds to sing about, compared with us? Think you, do we sing as much as the angels do? yet were they never redeemed by the blood of Christ. Birds of the air, shall ye excel me? Angels of heaven, shall ye exceed me? Ye have done so, but I do intend to emulate you henceforth, and day by day, and night by night, pour forth my soul in sacred song.

We may sometimes thank God not only by feeling thankfulness and living thankfulness, and speaking our thanks, but by that silent blessing of Him which consists in patient suffering and accepting the evil as well as the good from Jehovah’s hand. That is often better thanksgiving than the noblest psalm that the tongue could utter. To bow down before Him and say, “Not my will, but Thine be done,” is to render Him a homage equal to the Hallelujahs of cherubim and seraphim. To feel not only resigned, but acquiescent, willing to be anything or nothing, according as the Lord would have it-this is, in truth, to sing to our Well-beloved a song.

Now having put this before you, that there are some times when we cannot sing, but that, as a rule, our life should be praise, let me come to the text again by saying that sometimes on choice occasions appointed by providence and grace our soul will be compelled to say, “Now, now if never before, now beyond all other occasions, I will sing to my Well-beloved a song.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3476.cfm

In Very Deed and Truth, He Shall Come

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, prophecy, Sovereignty of God 3 Comments

He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen.- Revelation 22:20

Now, brethren, we are to expect, as long as this world lasts, that all things will shake that are to be moved. They will go on shaking. We call the world sometimes “terra firma”; it is not this world, surely, that deserves such a name as that; there is nothing stable beneath the stars; all things else will shake, and as the shaking goes on, Jesus Christ will, to those who know Him, become more and more their desire. I suppose, if the world went on, in some things mending and improving, and were to go up to a point, we should not want Christ to come in a hurry; we would rather that things should be perpetuated; but the shaking will make Christ more and more the desire of the nations…The Church will say, “Come, Lord Jesus.” She will say it with gathering earnestness; she will continue still to say it, though there are intervals in which she will forget her Lord, but still her heart’s desire will be that He will come; and at last He will surely come and bring to this world not only Himself, the desire of all nations, but all that can be desired, for those days of His, when He appeareth, shall be to His people as the days of heaven upon earth, the days of their honour, the days of their rest-the day in which the kingdoms shall belong unto Christ…Here is the great hope of that splendid building, the Church, which is desired. Her glory essentially lies in the Incarnate God, who has come into her midst. Her glory manifestly will lie in the second coming of that Incarnate God, when He shall be revealed from heaven to those that look and are waiting for and hasting unto the coming of the Son of God-looking for Him with gladsome expectation. And this is the joy of the Church…In propria persona-in very deed and truth, He shall come. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3442.cfm

What You Want is Christ

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God 6 Comments

Thus saith the LORD, thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; I am the LORD thy God which teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldst go. – Isaiah 48:17

All the world desires a way to God. Hence men set up priests and anoint them with oil, and smear them with I know not what, only that they may be mediators between them and God. They must have something to come between their guilt and God’s glorious holiness. Oh; if they knew it, what they want is Christ. You want no priest, but the great “Apostle and High Priest of our profession.” You want no mediator with God, but the one Mediator, the man Christ Jesus, who is also equal with God. Oh! world, why wilt thou gad about to seek this priest and that other deceiver, when He whom thou wantest is appointed by the Most High?

Earth wants a peacemaker, and it is He, Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews, and the friend of Gentiles, the Prince of Peace, who will make war to cease unto the ends of the earth…The fact is, it wants the Maker, who made it, to come in and put it to rights…it wants the Christ of God to turn the stream of His atoning sacrifice right through the whole earth, to sweep away the whole filth of ages, and it never will be done unless He does it. He is the one, the true Reformer, the true rectifier of all wrong, and in this respect the desire of all nations.

Ye, in the dark, are groping after Him, and know not that He is there.~ C.H.Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3442.cfm