Sovereignty of God

On This We Must Agree

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

“For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep.”- Act 13:36

It is remarkable that David should say, in the sixteenth Psalm, “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption,” and yet that Paul should say concerning him, when preaching at Antioch, that he “saw corruption.” The key to this apparent contradiction is the fact that David did not speak of himself, but of his Lord. Peter, in his memorable sermon on the day of Pentecost, quotes the words of the psalmist, applies them to his risen Redeemer, and distinctly affirms that, in the Psalm, “David speaketh concerning Him.”

It is worthy of notice that Peter and Paul both use the same argument about this statement of David. These two apostles did not always agree; but however much they might differ about other matters, they were of one mind about the resurrection of Christ. I hope that whatever differences there may be among true preachers of the gospel, they will always be one in declaring the resurrection of our Lord. This corner-stone of the gospel must never be displaced or dishonoured. The good news we are commissioned to declare is the same that Paul received and delivered, “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.” Chief among the Scriptures fulfilled by the resurrection of Christ stands this word, which David, inspired by the Holy Ghost, wrote so long before the event: “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.” The resurrection of Christ is the top-stone of our faith. Because “He, whom God raised again, saw no corruption,” Paul was able to say this to his hearers, “Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: and by Him all that before are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2243.cfm

Fitting Work

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

Now, behold, in my trouble I have prepared for the house of the LORD…Now set your heart and your soul to seek the LORD your God; arise therefore, and build ye the sanctuary of the LORD God… – 1 Chronicles 22:14,19

What I have to say here is this: DAVID’S WORK FITS ON TO THE WORK OF ANOTHER. That should be a great joy to some of you who do not see much coming of what you are doing. Your work is going to fit on to somebody else’s work. This is the order of God’s providence for His Church. It does not happen that He gives a whole piece of work to one man; but He seems to say to him, “You go and do so much; then I will send somebody else to do the rest.” How this ought to cheer some of you up, the thought that your work may be no failure, though in itself it may seem to be so, because it fits on to the work of somebody else who is coming after you, and so it will be very far from a failure! You have sometimes seen a man take a contract to put in the foundations of a house, and to carry it up to a certain height. He has done that; he will not be the builder of that house; that will be the work of the next contractor, who carries up the walls, and puts on the roof, and so forth. Yes, but he who did the foundation-work did a great deal, and he is as much the builder of the house as the man who carries up the walls. So, if you go to a country town or village, and you preach the gospel to a few poor folk, you may never have seemed very successful; but you have been preparing the way for somebody else who is coming after you.

 You will notice how one shall do his work, which shall be necessary to some larger work that somebody else will do after him. This is God’s way, so that the second man, the Solomon coming after David, may do his work all the better because of what his father has done before him…I daresay that Solomon often thought gratefully of his father David, and what he had done; and you and I, if God blesses us, ought always to think with thanksgiving of the Davids who went before us. It is the way of God in providence to set one man to do part of a work which pieces on to that of another man. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2261.cfm

Thou Shalt See the Glory of God

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

Jesus said to her, “Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?” – John 11:40

Faith is but the work of a moment. Believe and live. Thou hast nothing to do; thou needest no preparations: come as thou art, without a single plea, but that He bids thee to come. Come now, even now. If Christ were far away, the time that is left to some of you might be too short to reach Him; if there were many things which first of all you had to do, your life might close before they were half done; if faith had to grow strong before it received salvation, you might be in the place of eternal despair before your faith had time to be more than a mere mustard seed. But Christ is not far away; He is in our midst; He is by your side. You have nothing to do before you trust Him, He has done it all; and, however weak your faith, if it but comes in contact with Christ, it will convey you to instant blessing. Even now you may be saved for ever; for-

“The moment a sinner believes,
And trusts in His crucified God,
His pardon at once he receives,
Redemption in full, through His blood.”

Christ Jesus says to thee that, if thou wilt but believe, thou shalt see the glory of God…I desire earnestly that He would set the bells of heaven ringing because sinners have returned, and heirs of glory have been born into the family of grace. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2249.cfm

Aged Sinners, it is Never Too Late for Christ to Save You

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

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?” – John 11:25.26

For some of you, the time is late, very late; yet it is not too late. You are getting into years, my friend. I want you to believe that even now Christ can save you. I am glad to see the aged saints; but amongst so many elderly people, no doubt, there are some unsaved sinners, whose grey hairs are not a crown of glory, but a fool’s cap. But however old you are, though you are sixty, seventy, eighty or even ninety years of age, yet even now Christ can give you life. Blessed be God for that! But it is not altogether the years that trouble you; it is your sins. If you have gone to the very extremity of sin, you may believe that, after all those years of wandering, the arms of free grace are still open to receive you even now. There is an old proverb, “It is never too late to mend.” It is never too late for us to mend ourselves, but it is never too late for Christ to mend us. Christ can make us new, and it is never too late for Him to do it. If you come to Him, and trust Him, He will receive you even now.

By the longsuffering of God, there is a time left to you, in which you may turn to Him. What a thousand mercies it is that even now is a time of mercy to you: it might have been the moment of your everlasting doom! You have been in accidents; you have been within an inch of the grave many times; you have been ill, seriously ill; you have been well-nigh given up for dead; and here you are yet alive, but still an enemy to God! Plucked by His hand from the fire and flood, and, mayhap, from battle; delivered from fever and cholera, and still ungrateful, still rebelling, still spending the life that grace has lent you in resisting the love of God! …O God, strike many a man down, as Thou did Saul of Tarsus, and change their hearts by Thine own supreme love, as Thou canst do it, even now, on the very spot where they sit or stand. Amen. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2249.cfm

Seek Such Faith

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

“But even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You.” – John 11:22

Like Jacob at Jabbok, may we lay hold of God, saying, “I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me.” To such faith the Lord will give a quick response. He that will not be denied shall not be denied. My friend, Hudson Taylor, who has done such a wonderful work for China, is an instance of this. Brought up in a godly home, he, as a young man, tried to imitate the lives of his parents, and failing in his own strength to make himself better, he swung to the other extreme, and began to entertain skeptical notions. One day, when his mother was away from home, a great yearning after her boy possessed her, and she went up to her room to plead with God that “even now” He would save him. If I remember aright, she said that she would not leave the room until she had the assurance that her boy would be brought to Christ. At length her faith triumphed, and she rose quite certain that all was well, and that “even now” her son was saved. What was he doing at that time? Having half an hour to spare, he wandered into his father’s library, and aimlessly took down one book after another to find some short and interesting passage to divert his mind. He could not find what he wanted in any of the books, so, seeing a narrative tract, he took it up with the intention of reading the story, and putting it down where the sermon part of it began. As he read, he came to the words “the finished work of Christ”, and almost at the very moment in which his mother, who was miles away, claimed his soul for God, light came into his heart. He saw that it was by the finished work of Christ that he was to be saved; and kneeling in his father’s library, he sought and found the life of God. Some days afterwards, when his mother returned, he said to her, “I have some news to tell you.” “Oh, I know what it is!” she answered, smiling, “You have given yourself to God.” “Who told you?” he asked in astonishment. “God told me,” she said, and together they praised Him, who, at the same moment, gave faith to the mother, and life to the son, and who has since made him such a blessing to the world…Seek such faith even now, I beseech you, “even now.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2249.cfm

The Gospel is for the Hopeless

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

Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” – John 11:39

Though you cannot reach your son, or your daughter, Christ can meet with them. “The Lord’s hand is not shortened, that He cannot save; neither is His ear heavy, that He cannot hear.” Though your prodigal boy or your wandering girl be at the end of the earth, Christ can reach them, and save them. Have faith in God. Even now Christ can aid you.

“Faith, mighty faith, the promise sees,
And looks to God alone,
Laughs at impossibilities,
And says, ‘It shall be done.'”

There was a brother here, who is now in heaven, a good, earnest Christian man, whose son had treated him very shockingly indeed, and the father, justly indignant, felt it right to give his son up. He had often tried to help him, but the young man was so scandalous a scapegrace that I did not wonder that the old man turned him away. But one night, as I was preaching here, I spoke in something like the same way in which I have spoken now; and the next morning the old man’s arm was about his child’s neck. He could not help himself; he felt he must go and find his son out and seek again to reclaim him. It seemed to have been the appointed time for that boy’s salvation, for it pleased God that within a few months that son died, and he passed away with a good hope, through grace, that he had been brought to his Saviour’s feet by his father’s love. If any of you have a very bad son, go after him, seeking, until by the grace of God, you shall find him. And you that have grown hopeless about your relatives, you must try not to give them up. If other people cast them off, you must not, for they are allied to you by the ties of blood. Seek them out. You are the best person in the world to seek them, and the most likely to find them, if you can believe that even now, when the worst has come to the worst, even now almighty grace can step in, and save the lost soul. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2249.cfm

Christ Can Save the Most Vile

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

Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of him who was dead, said to Him, “Lord, by this time there is a stench, for he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?” – John 11:39,40

There are persons alive in the world, who are just masses of living putridity. It is a shocking thing that there are men and women, made in the image of God, with talents and ability, with capacity and conscience, who, nevertheless, seem to live for nothing else but to indulge their licentious passions, and to lead others into vices which else they had never known. There must come an awful day of reckoning to such when the Christ of God shall sit upon the throne and shall weigh before all men the secret doings of libertines, of debauched men, and depraved women. If any of you have such a one related to you, can you believe that even now Christ can raise that one? Yours is just the same sort of case as Martha had. She said, “Brother is buried; worse than that, he stinketh.” She did not like to say that of dear Lazarus, her own brother, but she could not help saying it. And there are some men of whom we are compelled to say, no matter how much our love seeks to shield them, that their character stinks. But can you still believe that, even now, there is hope that God can intervene, and that grace can save? Why, my dear friend, you and I know that it is so! I do believe it; we must all believe it. If it comes to a case very near and dear to you, and you begin to be a little bit staggered, recollect what you used to be yourselves-not openly so depraved, perhaps, but inwardly, quite the same, and take hope for these foul men and women from the remembrance of what you were: “and such were some of you; but ye are washed.”…I think while there is breath in the body of some of us, we must go on telling the gospel; for, if it saved us, it can save the worst of sinners. We are bound to believe that even now Christ can save even the most horrible and the most vile. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2249.cfm