The Father

Christ Alone Saves the Sinner

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

And Moses said unto Aaron, Take a censer, and put fire therein from off the altar, and put on incense, and go quickly unto the congregation, and make an atonement for them: for there is wrath gone out from the LORD; the plague is begun. – Numbers 16:46

Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. – 1 John 4:10

You who know not Christ, hear this! You are lost and ruined by the fall. Wrath is gone out from God against you. That wrath will consume you to the lowest hell, unless some one can propitiate God on your behalf. You cannot do it. No man can do it, no prayers of yours, no sacraments, nay, though you could sweat a bloody sweat, it would not avail, but Christ is able to make propitiation. He can do it, and He alone, He can stand between you and God, and turn away JEHOVAH’s wrath, and He can put into your heart a sense of His love.

Oh, I pray you, trust Him, trust Him. You may not be ready for Him, but He is always ready to save, and indeed I must correct myself in that last sentence, you are ready for Him. If you be never so vile, and never so ruined by your sin, their needs no preparation and no readiness. It was not the merit of the people that saved them, nor any preparation on their part, it was the preparedness of the high priest that saved them.

Trust Him, and you shall not find need for delay. Rely upon Him, and you shall not find that He has to go a day’s journey to save you, “He is able to save unto the uttermost them that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them.” He is prepared. He stands on the behalf of those who believe on Him. Would that you would now believe on Him and trust your soul in His hands, and oh, believe me, your sins which are many shall be all forgiven, the plague shall be stayed, nor shall God’s wrath go out against you, but you shall be saved. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

The High Priest Standing Between the Dead and the Living

An Incense Incomparable

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And Aaron took as Moses commanded and ran into the midst of the congregation; and behold, the plague was begun among the people: and he put on incense, and made an atonement for the people. – Numbers 16:47

…to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel… – Hebrews 12:24

(Jesus’) incense, as we know, consists first of all of His positive obedience to the divine law. He kept His Father’s commands, He did everything man should have done, He kept to the full the whole law of God and made it honorable.

Then mixed with this is His blood—an equally rich and precious ingredient. That bloody sweat—the blood from His head, pierced with the crown of thorns, the blood of His hands as they were nailed to the tree, the blood of His feet as they were fixed to the wood, and the blood of His very heart—richest of them all—all mixed together with His merits—these make up the incense—an incense incomparable—an incense peerless and surpassing all others.

Not all the odors that ever rose from tabernacle or temple could for a moment stand in rivalry with these. The blood alone speaketh better things than that of Abel, and if Abel’s blood prevailed to bring vengeance, how much more shall the blood of Christ prevail to bring down pardon and mercy! Our faith is fixed on perfect righteousness and complete atonement, which are as sweet frankincense before the Father’s face. ~ C.H Spurgeon

The High Priest Standing Between the Dead and the Living

He Cheerfully and Joyfully Laid Down His Life

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

And Aaron took as Moses commanded and ran into the midst of the congregation… – Numbers 16:47

Aaron as a lover of the people of Israel deserves much commendation, from the fact that it is expressly said, he ran into the host. I am not just now sure about Aaron’s age, but being older than Moses, who must have been at this time about ninety years of age, Aaron must have been more than a hundred, and probably, a hundred and twenty or more.

It is no little thing to say that such a man, clad no doubt in his priestly robes, ran, and that for a people who had never shown any activity to do him service, but much zeal in opposing his authority. That little fact of his running is highly significant, for it shows the greatness and swiftness of the divine impulse of love that was within.

Ah! and was it not so with Christ? Did He not haste to be our Savior? Were not His delights with the sons of men? Did He not often say, “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished.” His dying for us was not a thing which He dreaded. “With desire have I desired to eat this passover.”

He had panted for the moment when He should redeem His people. He had looked forward through eternity for that hour when He should glorify His Father, and His Father might glorify Him. He came voluntarily, bound by no constraint, except His own covenant engagements, and He cheerfully and joyfully laid down His life—a life which no man could take from Him, but which He laid down of Himself. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

The High Priest Standing Between the Dead and the Living

The Generous Love of the Aggrieved

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But on the morrow all the congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron, saying, Ye have killed the people of the LORD…And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Get you up from among this congregation, that I may consume them as in a moment. And they fell upon their faces. And Moses said unto Aaron, Take a censer, and put fire therein from off the altar, and put on incense, and go quickly unto the congregation, and make an atonement for them: for there is wrath gone out from the LORD; the plague is begun… And he stood between the dead and the living; and the plague was stayed. – Numbers 16:41,44-46,48

Aaron must have felt grief when he saw Korah there and the two hundred and fifty men, all of them with their censers, that the plot was against him, that they wished to strip from him his mitre, to take from him his embroidered vest, and the glittering stones that shone upon his breast, that they wished to reduce him to the position of a common Levite, and take to themselves his office and his dignity. Yet, forgetting himself, he does not say, “Let them die, I will wait awhile till they have been sufficiently smitten.” But the old man with generous love hastened into the midst of the people, though he was himself the aggrieved person.

Is not this the very picture of our sweet Lord Jesus? Had not sin dishonored Him? Was He not the Eternal God, and did not sin therefore conspire against Him as well as against the Eternal Father and the Holy Spirit? Was He not, I say, the one against whom the nations of the earth stood up and said, “Let us break His bands asunder, and cast His cords from us.” Yet He, our Jesus, laying aside all thought of avenging Himself, becomes the Savior of His people.

Oh! generous Christ, forgetting the offenses which we have committed against You, and making atonement by Your own blood for sins which were perpetrated against Your own glory! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

The High Priest Standing Between the Dead and the Living

Come to the Gate of Life

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

…we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. – 2 Corinthians 5:20

“We pray you in Christ’s stead.” Since Jesus died in our stead we, His redeemed ones, are to pray others in His stead; and as He poured out His heart for sinners in their stead, we must in another way pour out our hearts for sinners in His stead. “We pray you in Christ’s stead.” Now if my Lord were here how would He pray you to come to Him? I wish, my Master, I were more fit to stand in Your place at this time. Forgive me that I am so incapable. Help me to break my heart, to think that it does not break as it ought to do, for these men and women who are determined to destroy themselves, and, therefore, pass You by, my Lord, as though You were but a common felon, hanging on a gibbet! O men, how can you think so little of the death of the Son of God? It is the wonder of time, the admiration of eternity. O souls, why will you refuse eternal life? Why will ye die? Why will ye despise Him by whom alone you can live? There is one gate of life, that gate is the open side of Christ; why will you not enter, and live? “Come unto Me,” says He; “Come unto Me.” I think I hear Him say it: “Come unto Me all that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” I think I see Him on that last day, the great day of the feast, standing and crying, “If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink.” I hear Him sweetly declare, “Him that cometh to Me I will no wise cast out.” I am not fit to pray you in Christ’s stead, but I do pray you with all my heart. Do come and accept the great sacrifice and be reconciled to God. You that hear me but this once, I would like you to go away with this ringing in your ears, “Be ye reconciled to God.” I have nothing pretty to say to you; I have only to declare that God has prepared a propitiation, and that now He entreats sinners to come to Jesus, that through Him they may be reconciled to God. Father, draw them! Father, draw them! Eternal Spirit, draw them, for Jesus Christ Your Son’s sake! Amen. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

The Heart of the Gospel

A Display of His Divine Sovereignty

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For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. – 2 Corinthians 5:21

In the appointment of the Lord Jesus Christ to be made sin for us, there was first of all a display of the Divine Sovereignty. God here did what none but He could have done. It would not have been possible for all of us together to have laid sin upon Christ; but it was possible for the great Judge of all, who giveth no account of His matters, to determine that so it should be. He is the fountain of rectitude, and the exercise of His divine prerogative is always unquestionable righteousness. That the Lord Jesus, who offered Himself as a willing surety and substitute, should be accepted as surety and substitute for guilty man was in the power of the great Supreme. In His Divine Sovereignty He accepted Him, and before that sovereignty we bow. If any question it, our only answer is, “No but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God?” …They say that this is not a God of love. I answer, it is a God of love, pre-eminently so. If you had upon the bench today a judge whose nature was kindness itself, it would behove him as a judge to execute justice, and if he did not, he would make his kindness ridiculous; indeed, his kindness to the criminal would be unkindness to society at large. Whatever the judge may be personally, he is officially compelled to do justice. And “shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? ” You speak of the Fatherhood of God. Enlarge as you please upon that theme, even till you make a heresy of it; but still God is the great moral Governor of the universe, and it behoves Him to deal with sin in such a way that it is seen to be an evil and a bitter thing. God cannot wink at wickedness. I bless His holy name and adore Him that He is not unjust in order to be merciful, that He does not spare the guilty in order to indulge His gentleness. Every transgression and disobedience has its just recompense of reward. But through the sacrifice of Christ He is able justly to pardon. I bless His holy name that to vindicate His justice He determined that, while a free pardon should be provided for believers, it should be grounded upon an atonement which satisfied all requirements of the law. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

The Heart of the Gospel

He Felt the Weight of Our Sin

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For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. – 2 Corinthians 5:21

…nevertheless not My will, but Thine, be done. – Luke 22:42

Sin pressed our great Substitute very sorely. He felt the weight of it in the Garden of Gethsemane, where He “sweat as it were great drops of blood falling to the ground.” The full pressure of it came upon Him when He was nailed to the accursed tree. There in the hours of darkness He bore infinitely more than we can tell. We know that He bore condemnation from the mouth of a man, so that is written, “He was numbered with the transgressors.” We know that He bore shame for our sakes. We know that He bore pains innumerable of body and mind: He thirsted, He cried out in the agony of desertion, He bled, He died. We know that He poured out His soul unto death and yielded up the ghost. But there was at the back, and beyond all this, an immeasurable abyss of sufferings”: probably to us they are unknowable sufferings. He was God as well as man, and the Godhead lent an omnipotent power to the manhood, so that there was compressed within His soul, and endured by it, an amount of anguish of which we can form no conception. 

The Lord made the perfectly innocent one to be sin for us: that means more humiliation, darkness, agony, and death than you can conceive. It brought a kind of distraction and well-nigh a destruction to the tender and gentle spirit of our Lord. I do not say that our substitute endured a hell, that were unwarrantable. I will not say that He endured either the exact punishment for sin, or an equivalent for it; but I do say that what He endured rendered to the justice of God a vindication of His law more clear and more effectual than would have been rendered to it by the damnation of the sinners for whom He died. The cross is under many aspects a more full revelation of the wrath of God against human sin than even Tophet, and the smoke of torment which goeth up for ever and ever. Who would know God’s hate of sin must see the Only Begotten bleeding in body and bleeding in soul even unto death…Oh, depth of terror, and yet height of love! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

The Heart of the Gospel