Sovereignty of God

A Blessed Place Above

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

After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb. -Revelation 7:9-10

The bliss of the saved in glory teaches us to long for it. It is legitimate to long for heaven-not to long to escape from doing our duty here. It is idleness to be always wanting to have done with this world-it is clear sloth-but to be longing to be where Jesus is, is only natural and gracious. Should not the child long to go home from the school? Should not the captive pine for liberty? Should not the traveller in foreign lands long to see his native country? Should not the bride, the married wife, when she has been long away from her husband, long to see his face? If you did not long for heaven, surely you might question whether heaven belonged to you. If you have ever tasted of the joys of the saints, as believers do on earth, you will sing with full soul:

“My thirsty spirit faints
To reach the land I love
The bright inheritance of saints,
Jerusalem above.”

You may long for this…be patient until you get there. As it will be such a blessed place when you arrive, don’t trouble about the difficulties of the way. You know our hymn:

“The way may be rough, but it cannot be long.”

“Let us fill it with hope, and cheer it with song.”

~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3499.cfm

No Cares in Heaven

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God 3 Comments

They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. -Revelation 7:16

We no doubt can appreciate in some measure, though not to the degree which we should if we were in Palestine in the middle of summer, we can appreciate the words, “Neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat.” This signifies that nothing external shall injure the blessed. Take it literally. There shall be nothing in the surroundings of heavenly saints that shall cause glorified spirits any inconvenience. I think we may take it mainly in relation to the entire man glorified; and so let us say that on earth the sun lights on us and many heats in the form of affliction. What heats of affliction some here have passed through! Why there are some here who are seldom free from physical pain. There are many of the best of God’s children that, if they get an hour without pain, are joyful indeed. There are others that have had a great fight of affliction Through poverty they have fought hard. They have been industrious, but somehow or other God has marked them out for the scant tables and the thread-worn garments. They are the children of poverty, and the furnace heat is very hot about them. With others it has been repeated deaths of those they have loved. Ah! how sad is the widow’s case! How deep the grief of the fatherless! How great the sorrow of bereaved parents! Sometimes the arrows of God fly one after the other; first one falls and then another until we think we shall hardly have one left. These are the heats of the furnace of affliction… “Neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat.” No poverty, no sickness, no bereavement, no ingratitude-nothing of the kind. They for ever rest from affliction.

“Cast all your care on Him. for He careth for you.” But they have no cares in heaven. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3499.cfm

Live Near to Jesus

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

Therefore are they before the throne of God…For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them… -Revelation 7:15,17

Idle Christians are often unhappy Christians. I have met with many a spiritual dyspeptic always full of doubts and fears. Is there a young man here full of doubts and fears who has lost the light he once possessed, and the joy he once had? Dear brother, get to work. In cold weather the best way to be warm is not to get before a fire, but to work. Exercise gives a healthy glow, even amidst the frost. “I am doing something,” says one. Yes, with one hand; use the other hand. “Perhaps I should have too many irons in the fire,” says one. You cannot have too many. Put them all in, and blow the fire with all the bellows you can get. I do not believe any Christian man works too hard, and, as a rule, if those who kill themselves in Christ’s service were buried in a cemetery by themselves, it would be a long while before it would get filled. Work hard for Christ. It makes happy those who are in heaven to serve God day and night, and it will make you happy on earth. Do all you can. Another way is to have fellowship with Christ here. Read again this chapter. “He that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them-He shall feed them.” Oh! if you want to be happy, live near to Jesus. Poor men are not poor when Christ lives in their house. Truly, sick men have their beds made easy when Christ is there. Has He not said, ” I will make his bed in all his sickness”? Only get fellowship with Jesus, and outward circumstances won’t distress you. The sun will not light on you, nor any heat. You will be like the shepherd on Salisbury Plain, who said it was good weather, though it rained hard. “It is weather,” said he, “that pleases me.” “How so?” said a traveller to him. “Well, sir,” he said, “it pleases God, and what pleases God pleases me.” “Good day!” said one to a Christian man. “I never had a bad day since I was converted,” said he. “They are all good now since Christ is my Saviour.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3499.cfm

Why Some Foolishly Refuse Him

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, repentance, salvation, Sovereignty of God 7 Comments

For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them. -Galatians 3:10

Some refuse Him out of perfect indifference; the great mass of men have not a thought above their meat and their drink. Like the cock that found the diamond on the dunghill, they turn it over and wish it were a grain of barley. What care they for heaven, or the pardon of sin? Their mind does not reach to that. See that ye-that ye, none of you, are so sensuous as to “refuse Him that speaketh from heaven” for such a reason as this. Some reject Him because of their self-righteousness: they are good enough. Jesus Christ speaks against them, they say; He does not applaud their righteousness, He ridicules them rather; He tells them that their prayers are long prayers, and their many good works are, after all, a poor ground for reliance.” So as the Saviour will not patronize their righteousness, neither will they have to do with Him. Oh! say not ye are rich and increased in goods; ye are naked, and poor, and miserable. Say not ye can win heaven by your merits; ye have none; your merits drag you down to hell. Yet many will refuse the Saviour because of the insanity of their self-righteousness.  Some, too, reject Him because of their self-reliant wisdom. “Why,” they say, “this is a very thoughtful age.” …Nay, it is the thinking of Christ we have to think about; otherwise, our thinking may prove our curse…. While your souls are being lost, sirs, there is better employment for you than merely indulging in rhapsodies and inventions of your own supposed judgment. Take hold of this, the gospel of Jesus revealed of God, lest ye perish, and perish with a vengeance. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3492.cfm

The New Birth’s New Nature

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

Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. -John 1:13

Now, brothers and sisters, we were by nature, as many of us as have been saved, the heirs of wrath even as others. It does not matter how godly our parents were, the first birth brought us no spiritual life, for the promise is not to them which are born of blood, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but only to those who are born of God, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh”; you cannot make anything else and there it abides, and the flesh, or carnal mind, abideth in death; “it is not reconciled to God, neither indeed can be.” He who is born into this world but once, and knows nothing of the new birth, must place himself among the seed of the serpent, for only by regeneration can we know ourselves to be the true seed. How does God deal with us who are His called and chosen ones? He means to save us, and how does He work to that end? …He comes to us in mercy. That is the very first work of grace. There was peace between us and Satan once; when he tempted we yielded; whatever he taught us we believed; we were his willing slaves. But perhaps you, my brethren, can recollect when first of all you began to feel uneasy and dissatisfied; the world’s pleasures no longer pleased you; all the juice seemed to have been taken out of the apple, and you had nothing at all. Then you suddenly perceived that you were living in sin, and you were miserable about it, and though you could not get rid of sin yet you hated it, and sighed over it, and cried, and groaned…The Lord, in infinite mercy, dropped the divine life into your soul…Ah, then you saw how sin could be overthrown, did you not? As soon as your heart understood Christ then you saw that what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, Christ was able to accomplish, and that the power of sin and Satan under which you had been in bondage, and which you now loathed, could and would be broken and destroyed because Christ had come into the world to overcome it. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1326.cfm

 

 

The Conflict and the Conquest

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

And I will put enmity between…thy seed and her Seed; He shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel…. -Genesis 3:15

There was evidently to be in the world a Seed of the woman on God’s side against the serpent, and a seed of the serpent that should always be upon the evil side even as it is unto this day. The Church of God and the synagogue of Satan both exist. We see an Abel and a Cain, an Isaac and an Ishmael, a Jacob and an Esau; those that are born after the flesh, being the children of their father the devil, for his works they do, but those that are born again-being born after the Spirit, after the power of the life of Christ, are thus in Christ Jesus the Seed of the woman, and contend earnestly against the dragon and his seed. Here, too, the great fact of the sufferings of Christ is clearly foretold-“Thou shalt bruise His heel.” Within the compass of those words, we find the whole story of our Lord’s sorrows from Bethlehem to Calvary. “He shall bruise thy head”: there is the breaking of Satan’s regal power, there is the clearing away of sin, there is the destruction of death by resurrection, there is the leading of captivity captive in the ascension, there is the victory of truth in the world through the descent of the Spirit, and there is the latter-day glory in which Satan shall be bound, and there is, lastly, the casting of the evil one and all his followers into the lake of fire. The conflict and the conquest are both in the compass of these few fruitful words. They may not have been fully understood by those who first heard them, but to us they are now full of light. The text at first looks like a flint, hard and cold; but sparks fly from it plentifully, for hidden fires of infinite love and grace lie concealed within…Over this promise of a gracious God we ought to rejoice exceedingly. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1326.cfm

A Stronger Foundation than Merit

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

 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her Seed; He shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel. -Genesis 3:15

These words were not directly spoken to Adam and Eve, but they were directed distinctly to the serpent himself, and that  was of punishment to him for what he had done. It was a day of cruel triumph to him such joy as his dark mind is capable of had filled him, for he had indulged his malice, and gratified his spite. He had in the worst sense destroyed a part of God’s works, he had introduce sin into the new world, he had stamped the human race with his own image, and gained new forces to promote rebellion and to multiply transgression, and therefore he felt that sort of gladness which a fiend can know who bears a hell within him. But now God comes in, takes up the quarrel personally, and causes him to be disgraced on the very battle-field upon which he had gained a temporary success. He tells the dragon that He will undertake to deal with him; this quarrel shall not be between the serpent and man, but between God and the serpent. God saith, in solemn words, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, between thy seed and her Seed,” and He promised that there shall rise in fulness of time a champion, who, though He suffer, shall smite in a vital part the power of evil, and bruise the serpent’s head. This was the more, it seems to me, a comfortable message of mercy to Adam and Eve, because they would feel sure that the tempter would be punished, and as that punishment would involve blessing for them, the vengeance due to the serpent would be the guarantee of mercy to themselves. Perhaps, however, by thus obliquely giving the promise, the Lord meant to say, “Not for your sakes do I this, O fallen man and woman, nor for the sake of your descendants; but for My own name and honour’s sake, that it be not profaned and blasphemed amongst the fallen spirits. I undertake to repair the mischief which has been caused by the tempter, that My name and My glory may not be diminished among the immortal spirits who look down upon the scene.” …The divine sovereignty and glory afford us a stronger foundation of hope than merit, even if merit can be supposed to exist. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1326.cfm