Sovereignty of God

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

The Lord is in the Midst of Her

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

And I will shake all nations..and I will fill this house with glory, saith the LORD of hosts. – Haggai 2:7

“I will shake all nations.” The apostle says that this signifies the things that can be shaken; that the things that cannot be shaken will remain, and that the desire of all nations must be put down as a thing that cannot be shaken. The Church, then, shall never be shaken, and the precious things that the Church gives to her God shall not be shaken. Time will change many things. Great princes will be considered mere beggars by-and-by in the esteem of men who know how to judge by character. Great men will shrivel into very small things-when they come to be tried, even by posterity. And the judgement-day-ah! how will that try the great ones of this earth? But the Christian Church-the very gates of hell shall not prevail against her. Time shall not be able so much as to chip one of her polished stones. Her treasures of faith, and what not, the rich things that God hath given her-these things shall never be stolen: they can never be shaken. And then the crown of all is, “I will fill this house with My glory,” saith the Lord. This is the reason, the great charm of it all. God Himself dwells, as He dwells nowhere else, in His glory…God is known in the Jerusalem below, as well as in the Jerusalem above. Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined. God is in the midst of her: she shall not be moved; and though the kings gather together for her destruction, yet His presence is the river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God. Yes, glorious things may well be spoken of Zion when we have such stones as precious men, such gifts as precious graces, such abiding character as God gives, and such a presence as the presence of God Himself.~ C.H. Spurgeon

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

The Desirable Ones

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

…the desire of all nations shall come… – Haggai 2:7

To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious… -1 Peter 2:4

The choice men, the pick, the best of all men shall come and constitute the true temple of God. Not the kings and princes, not the great and noble after the flesh-these are but the choice of men after the manner of man’s choice; but not many great men after the flesh, not many mighty are chosen and called; but still, those whom God chooses must be the choice ones of mankind. They will not claim to be so by nature; on the contrary, they will repudiate any idea of any natural betterness in themselves. But God sees them as what they are to be, as what He intends them to be, as what He makes them to be, and in this respect they are the desire, they are the choice of all nations. To God, His people are His royal treasure, His secret jewels, the treasury of kings-they are very precious in His sight. Their very death is precious. He keeps record of their bones, and will raise their dust at the last day. If the nation did but know it, the saints in a nation are the aristocracy of that nation. Those who fear God are the very soul, and marrow, and backbone of a nation. For their sakes God has preserved many a nation. For their sakes He gives unnumbered blessings. “Ye are the salt of the earth”: the earth were putrid without them. “Ye are the light of the world”: the world would be dark without them. They are the desire, I say, though often the world treats them with contempt, and would cast them out. It has ever been thus with the blind world-to treat its best friends worst, and its worst enemies often receive the most royal entertainment. Now what a joy it is to us to think that God has been pleased to make unto Himself a people according to His own sovereign will and good pleasure, and that He has made these to be the desirable ones out of all nations-that with these choice and elect ones He will build up His Church. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

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

The True Spiritual Temple

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

“And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of Hosts.”- Haggai 2:7

The second temple was never intended to be as magnificent as the first. The first was to be the embodiment of the full glory of the dispensation of symbols and types, and was soon to pass away. This comparative feebleness had been proved by the idolatry and apostasy of the people Israel, and when they returned to Jerusalem they were to have a structure that would be sufficient for the purposes of their worship, but they were not again to be indulged with the splendours of the former house which God had erected by the hand of Solomon…The reason seems to me to be this: in the second temple, during the time it should stand, the dispensation of Christ was softly melted into the light of spiritual truth. The outward worship was to cease there. It seems right that it should cease in a temple that had not the external glory of the first. God intended there to light up the first beams of the spiritual splendour of the second temple, namely, His true temple, the Church, and He would put a sign of decay on the outward and visible in the temple of the first. Yet He declares by His servant, Haggai, that the glory of the second temple should be greater than the first. It certainly was not so as in respect of gold, or silver, or size, or excellency of architecture; and yet it truly was so, for the glory of the presence of Christ was greater than all the glory of the old temple’s wealth; and the glory of having the gospel preached in it, the glory of having the gospel miracles wrought in its porches by the apostles and by the Master, was far greater than any hecatombs of bullocks and he-goats-the glory of being, as it were, the cradle of the Christian Church, the nest out of which should fly the messengers of peace, who, like doves, should bear the olive branch throughout the world. I take it that the decadence of the old system of symbols was a most fitting preparation for the incoming of the system of grace and truth in the person of Jesus Christ. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

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

 

Jesus’ Gracious Work in the Hearts of Men

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

Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. 2 Peter 1:2-4

Well may we receive Christ joyfully since He works such wonderful changes in us, and so beneficent. He cheers the grievous past. It was all black and threatening with the memory of our provocations. He sprinkles His blood upon it, and now it becomes bright and beaming with mementoes of the loving-kindnesses and tender mercies of the Lord. He illuminates the present. There was nought but gloom and blank despair till He shone as the light of life in our dwelling. Then life and salvation dawn upon us like the dayspring from on high. He disperses the clouds that hung over the future. The outlook was dark and threatening till Jesus came, bright and glorious, and discovered a hereafter. Beyond the black river of death we now discern the gleaming of the spirit-land, and the place of meeting where we shall see His face. Thus, when Jesus comes into the heart, the three realms of the past, the present, and the future, all glow with light. When the sun rises, the hills, and valleys, and rivers, above and beneath, are all sown with orient pearl.

Right joyfully do we receive Christ because He comes into our hearts with such gracious offices. He came as a priest to put away sin; who could but be glad? He came as a king; who would not receive such a monarch with sound of trumpets and flaunting of banners? He came to us as a shepherd; shall not the flock of His pasture be glad of the sight of Him? He came as a dear and tender friend; does not His sweet sympathy excite any joy? Think, too, of the yet more endearing relationship in which He came. He came as a husband, and our souls are married unto Him. Blessed bridegroom! Thou adorable Saviour! Thou hast engrossed our heart and won our love. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3487.cfm