Sovereignty of God

Sweetly Drawn to Salvation in Christ

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

In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace… – Ephesians 1:7

There are some who, like Lydia, have their hearts opened not by the crowbar of conviction, but by the pick-lock of divine grace. Sweetly drawn, almost silently enchanted by the loveliness of Jesus, they say, “Draw me, and I will run after Thee.”
And now you ask me the question-“Why has God brought me to Himself in this gentle manner? “Again I say-there are some questions better unanswered than answered. God knows best the reason why He does not give you these terrors; leave that question with Him. But I may tell you an anecdote. There was a man once who had never felt these terrors and he thought within himself-“I never can believe I am a Christian unless I do.” so he prayed to God that he might feel them, and he did feel them, and what do you think is his testimony? He says, “Never, never do that, for the result was fearful in the extreme.” If he had but known what he was asking for, he would not have asked for anything so foolish. I knew a Christian man once who prayed for trouble. He was afraid he was not a Christian, because he had no trouble; but when the trouble came, he soon discovered how foolish he was to be asking for a thing which God in mercy had kept back from him. O be not foolish enough to sigh for misery. Thank God that you go to heaven along the walls of salvation; bless the Master that He does not call you in the cloudy and dark day, but brings you gently to Himself; and be content, I pray you, to be called by the music of the voice of love. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0313.cfm

The Comforting Remedy

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

But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name -John 1:12

Sinners distressed on account of sin, and bowed down with terror, there is a way of salvation for thee, a way open and accessible -accessible now. Thou mayest now have all thy griefs assuaged, and all thy sorrows may flee away. Hear thou then the remedy, and hear it as from the lips of God, and take care that thou availest thyself of it now, for the longer thou tarriest, the harder will it be to avail thyself of it. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” Do you understand me? Trust Christ and you are saved; trust Him now and all your sins are gone; there is not one left. Past, present, and to come, all gone. “Am I to feel nothing?” No, not as a preparation for Christ; trust Jesus and thou art saved. “Are there no good works required of me?” None, none; good works shall follow afterwards. The remedy is a simple one; not a compound mixture of thy things and Christ; it is just this-the blood of Jesus Christ. There is Jesus on His cross. His hands are bleeding; His heart is bursting; His limbs are tortured; the powers of His soul are full of agony. Those sufferings were offered to God in the place of our sufferings, and “Whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” Believe on Him now. “But I may not,” says one. Thou mayest, nay, not only thou mayest, but thou art condemned if thou dost not believe Him now. “I cannot,” saith one. Canst not believe thy Lord? Is He a liar? Canst thou not believe His power to save? The Son of God in agony, and yet no power to save?! “I cannot think He shed His blood for me,” saith such an one. Thou art commanded to trust Him. Come just as thou art; naked, lost, ruined, helpless, poor. If thou art so bad that I cannot describe thee, and thou canst not describe thyself, yet come. Mercy’s free, mercy’s free….There is the remedy, by the power of the Holy Spirit; avail thyself of it. Now God help thee and thou art fully saved. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0313.cfm

No Condemnation

Sherry Christian Life, promises, repentance, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit 6 Comments

For day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me… -Psalm 32:4

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. -Romans 8:1 

I am one of those poor souls who for five years led a life of misery, and was almost driven to distraction; but I can heartily say, that one day of pardoned sin was a sufficient recompense for the whole five years of conviction. I have to bless God for every terror that ever seared me by night, and for every foreboding that alarmed me by day. It has made me happier ever since; for now, if there be a trouble weighing upon my soul, I thank God it is not such a trouble as that which bowed me to the very earth, and made me creep like a very beast upon the ground by reason of heavy distress and affliction. I know I never can again suffer what I have suffered; I never can, except I be sent to hell, know more of agony than I have known; and now, that ease, that joy and peace in believing, that “no condemnation” which belongs to me as a child of God, is made doubly sweet and inexpressibly precious, by the recollection of my past days of sorrow and grief. Blessed be Thou, O God, for ever, who, by those black days like a dreary wind, hath made these summer days all the fairer and the sweeter! The shore is never so welcome as when you mount it with the foot of a shipwrecked mariner just escaped from the sea; food never so sweet as when you sit at the table after days of hunger; water never so refreshing as when you arrive at the end of a parched desert and have known what it is to thirst.

Do you not think I have just driven the nail home here? Do you not feel in your spirit, that if Jesus would forgive you, you would do everything for Him? ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0313.cfm

Satan’s Advancement

Sherry Christian Life, prayer, promises, repentance, salvation, Sovereignty of God 4 Comments

Thou art my hiding place; Thou shalt preserve me from trouble; Thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. Selah. -Psalm 32:7

Satan is now busy upon you. He sees that God is wounding you and he does not wish that those wounds shall heal; he therefore trusteth in his fangs, and teareth open the flesh, and trieth if he cannot pour his poison into that very flesh which God has been wounding with the sword. “Now,” saith he, “that God is against him will I be against him too. God is driving him to sadness; I will drive him farther still, and urge him to despair. God has brought him to the precipice, to the edge of his self-righteousness, and bidden him look down and see the yawning gulf. Now,” says Satan, “one push more, and over he will go.” He has come forth, therefore, with all his strength, hoping that the hour of your conviction shall be also the hour of your condemnation. He will tempt you, perhaps, as he did Job, till you say, “My soul chooseth strangling rather than life.” He will seek to bring you low, like Jeremiah, until you are ready to wish you had never been born, rather than that you should suffer like this.

Oh! pray against Satan! Cry aloud to your God to deliver you from this fiend, for he is the cause of much of your distress; and if you were rid of him, it may be that your wound would soon heal, and you would find peace. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0313.cfm

God’s Smites Are of Grace

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

For day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me… -Psalm 32:4

You tell me you are sore troubled by reason of conviction, and that your convictions of sin are attended by the most terrible and gloomy thoughts, I am not at a loss to tell you why it is.

Do you wonder, then, that when He smites, His blows fell you to the ground? Are you astonished that when He wounds, His wounds are deep and hard to heal? Besides, remember it is an angry God that you have to deal with; One who has had patience with you in your sins these thirty, forty, or fifty years, and now He has come forth Himself to compel you to throw down the weapons of your rebellion, and to take you captive by His justice, that He may afterwards set you free by His grace. Is it any marvel, then, that when an angry God-a God who has restrained His anger these many years-comes out in battle against you, you find it hard to resist Him, and that His blows bruise you and break your bones, and make your spirit feel as if it must verily die…Be not astonished at all your terrors; God on Sinai, when He came to give the law, was terrible; but God on Sinai, when He comes to bring the law into the conscience, and to strike it home, must be more terrible far.

Oh! ye need not wonder that your pains are fearful, when God thus smites you on the tenderest part of a conscience which He has made tender by His grace. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0313.cfm

Convicted

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, confession of sin, prayer, promises, repentance, salvation, Sovereignty of God 3 Comments

When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day, and night Thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. -Psalm 32:3-4

 David here describes a very common experience amongst convinced sinners. He was subjected to extreme terrors and pangs of conscience. These terrors were continual; they scared him at night with visions, they terrified him all day with dark and gloomy forebodings….His pain was so extreme, that when he resorted to prayer he could scarcely utter an articulate word. There were groanings that could not be uttered within his spirit; and hence he calls his prayer a “roaring all the day long.” Wherever he was, his spirit seemed to be always sighing, sending a full torrent of melancholy groans upwards towards God.  So far did this groaning proceed, that at last his bodily frame began to show evidences of it. He grew old, and that not merely in the lines of the countenance and the falling in of the cheeks, but his very bones seemed as if they partook of the suffering…here was a man who did not show merely externally, but even internally, the heavy pressure of grief, on account of sin…So intimate is the connection between the body and the soul, that when the soul suffers extremely, the body must be called to endure its part of grief…We gather from what David says in this Psalm, and indeed in all these seven penitential Psalms, that his convictions on account of his sin with Bathsheba, and his subsequent murder of Uriah, were of the deepest and most poignant character, and that the terrors he experienced were indescribable, filling his soul with horror and dismay.

…Remember, sinner, it is God that is dealing with you; when you lay dead in your sins He looked on you, and now He has begun not only to look, but to smite; He is now wounding you with the design of afterwards making you whole; He is killing you that He may afterwards make you spiritually alive. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0313.cfm

 

It Is A Settled Matter with God

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

Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord – Hebrews 12:14

“Without holiness, no man shall see the Lord;” that is to say, no man can have communion with God in this life, and no man can have enjoyment with God in the life to come, without holiness. “Can two walk together except they be agreed?” If thou goest with Belial, dost thou think that Christ will go. with thee? Will Christ be a companion for thee? Dost thou expect to take the Lord of love and mercy with thee to the haunts of sin? Professor, dost thou think the just and holy One will stand at thy counter to be co-trader with thee in thy tricks? What thinkest thou, O man! wouldst thou make Christ a sharer of thy guilt? and yet He would be so if He had fellowship with thee in it. Nay, if thou wilt go on in acts of unrighteousness and unholiness, Christ parts company with thee, or, rather, thou never didst have any fellowship with Him. Thou hast gone out from us because thou wert not of us; for, if thou hadst been of us, doubtless thou wouldst have continued with us. And as to heaven, dost thou think to go there with thine unholiness? God smote an angel down from heaven for sin, and will He let man in with sin in His right hand? God would sooner extinguish heaven than see sin despoil it. It is enough for Him to bear with thine hypocrisies on earth; shall He have them flung in His own face in heaven? What, shall an unholy life utter its licentiousness in the golden streets? Shall there be sin in that higher and better paradise? No, no; God has sworn by His holiness-and He will not, He cannot lie, -that those who are not holy, whom His Spirit has not renewed, who have not been, by the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, made to love that which is good, and hate that which is evil, shall never stand in the congregation of the righteous. Sinner, it is a settled matter with God that no man shall see Him without holiness. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2902.cfm