The Father

O impenitent man, I plead with thee!

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

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” – Mark 1:15

“He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned. – Mark 16:16

If you were in God’s stead, could you bear to be treated as you have treated Him? If you were all goodness and tenderness, and had borne with a creature now for thirty or forty years, how would you bear to see that creature still stand out, and even draw an inference from your gentleness to encourage him in his rebellion? Would you not say, “Well, if my longsuffering makes him think little of sin, I will change my hand. If tenderness cannot win him, I must leave him; if even my love does not affect him, I will let him alone. He is given unto his evil ways-I will cease from him and see what his end will be”? Oh that hearts may be touched with pity for their slighted Saviour, that they may seek His face! Here is the way of salvation: “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” You know how the Master bade us put it. “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature: he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” First, we are to preach faith, whereby we lay hold on Christ; then baptism, whereby we confess that faith, and own that we are dead and buried with Christ that we may live with Him in newness of life. Those are the two points He bids us set before you, and I do set them before you. Weary, but not quite wearied out, O impenitent man, I plead with thee! Though thou hast so often been pleaded with in vain, once more I speak with thee in Christ’s stead, and say-Repent of thy sin, look to thy Saviour, and confess thy faith in His own appointed way. If “the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance,” then be sure of this, that the goodness of God will receive thee when thou dost repent, and thou shalt live in His sight as His well-beloved and forgiven child. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1714.cfm

Yield to God’s Sweet Leading

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

…not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? – Romans 2:4

I want you to notice that the text does not say, “The goodness of God calleth thee to repentance,” but “leadeth thee.” This is a much stronger word. God calls to repentance by the gospel; God leads to repentance by His goodness. It is as though He plucked at your sleeve and said, “Come this way.” His goodness lays its gentle hand on you, drawing you with cords of love and bands of a man. God’s forbearance cries, “Why wilt thou hate Me? What wrong have I done thee? I have spared thee; I have spared thy wife and children to thee; I have raised thee up from the bed of sickness; I have loaded thy board; I have filled thy wardrobe; I have done thee a thousand good turns; wherefore dost thou disobey Me? Turn unto thy God and Father and live in Christ Jesus.”

If, on the other hand, you have not received rich temporal favours, yet the Lord still leads you to repentance by a rougher hand; as when the prodigal fain would have filled his belly with husks, but could not, and the pangs of hunger came upon him; those pains were a powerful message from the Father to lead him to the home where there was bread enough and to spare. “The goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance.” Oh, that thou wouldest yield to its sweet leading, and follow as a child follows the guidance of a nurse. Let thy crosses lead thee to the cross; let thy joys lead thee to find joy in Christ.

Do you not think that all this should encourage you to repent, since God himself leads you that way? If God leads you to repentance He does not mean to cast you away…Follow His gracious leading till His divine Spirit shall lead you with still greater power and still greater efficacy; till at last you find that He has wrought in you both repentance and faith, and you are saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1714.cfm

God’s Riches Despised?

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, Sovereignty of God, The Father Leave a comment

Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering..? – Romans 2:4

Our apostle adds to goodness and forbearance the riches of “longsuffering.” We draw a distinction between forbearance and longsuffering. Forbearance has to do with the magnitude of sin; longsuffering with the multiplicity of it: forbearance has to do with present provocation; longsuffering relates to that provocation repeated and continued for a length of time. Oh, how long doth God suffer the ill manners of men! Forty years long was He grieved with that generation whose carcasses fell in the wilderness. Has it come to forty years yet with you, dear hearer? Possibly it may have passed even that time, and a half-century of provocation may have gone into eternity to bear witness against you. What if I should even have to say that sixty and seventy years have continued to heap up the loads of their transgressions, until the Lord saith, “I am pressed down under your sins; as a cart that is full of sheaves I am pressed down under you.” Yet for all that, here you are on praying ground and pleading terms with God; here you are where yet the Saviour reigns upon the throne of grace; here you are where mercy is to be had for the asking, where free grace and dying love ring out their charming bells of invitation to joy and peace! Oh, the riches of His goodness, and forbearance, and longsuffering. Three-fold is the claim: will you not regard it? Can you continue to despise it? …If God were a tyrant, if He were unrighteous or unkind, it were not so much amiss that men stood out against Him; but when His very name is love, and when He manifests the bowels of a Father towards His wandering children it is shameful that He should be so wantonly provoked…Every single minute of our life is cheered with the tender kindness of God, and every spot is gladdened with His love. I wonder that the Lord does not sweep away the moral nuisance of a guilty race from off the face of earth. Man’s sin must have been terribly offensive to God from day to day, and yet still He shows kindness, love, forbearance. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1714.cfm

The Plainly Written Truth of God

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

 …who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen. – Romans 9:4,5

“Israel is my first-born,” says God…They had the first hold of all the spiritual gifts which the Lord bestowed upon the sons of men. They had, as it were, a monopoly of Light and Truth among them. The Jewish people had been singularly favored—they had seen God revealing His Son to them by types, by priests, by sacrifices, by the temple, by a thousand signs and marks. Verily the kingdom of God had come very near to them. But the privileges of the Jews were not greater than the privileges of men and women who hear the Gospel in these days, for Christ is not so well seen in bleeding bulls and rams and hyssop and scarlet wool as He is seen in the preaching of the Gospel! In the Gospel, God has torn the veil and made bare His heart to us in the Person of His dying Son.

You have no longer to search for the mind of God by mysterious hieroglyphs—it is written in plain letters and the wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein! You have but to hear it and with the exercise of an ordinary understanding, the letter of its meaning may be comprehended. And if there is a willing heart, no matter how small the capacity of the mind, there is intellect enough to receive the saving Truth of God! You do not now live in the moonlight of the Jewish dispensation, but you bask in the noontide sunlight of the Truth of God! God, who spoke to our fathers by the Prophets, has, in these last days, spoken to us by His Son who is the express image of His Person and the brightness of His Glory! “See that you refuse not Him that speaks.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1425.cfm

The Gatherings

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

The LORD doth build up Jerusalem: He gathereth together the outcasts of Israel. – Psalm 147:2

The Lord Jesus has several ways of gathering together the outcasts. He gathers them to hear the Gospel. Preach Jesus Christ and they will come! Both outcast saints and outcast sinners will come to hear the charming sound of His blessed name! They cannot help it. Nothing draws like Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ next gathers them to Himself. The parable of the wedding feast is repeated again, “Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in, that My house may be filled.” “Bring in here the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind.” In this sort, the Lord Jesus Christ gathers multitudes where He is faithfully preached. He gathers all sorts of characters and especially the odds and ends of society—the despised of men and the despised of themselves. He gathers them to Himself.

And oh, what a blessed gathering place that is where there is cleansing for their filthiness, health for their disease, clothing for their nakedness and all-sufficient supplies for their abundant necessities! He gathers them to Himself—which is to gather them to God—to gather them to blessedness and peace through reconciliation with the Father. “To Him shall the gathering of the people be.”

When He has done that, He gathers them into the Divine family. He takes the outcasts and makes them children of God—heirs with Himself. From the dunghill He lifts them and sets them among princes! He takes them from the swine trough and puts the ring on their fingers and the shoes on their feet—and they sit down at the Father’s table to feast and to be glad! Jesus Christ, as the good Shepherd, gathers the lost sheep, the lame, the halt, the diseased and feeds them. He makes them to lie down and restores their souls and, finally, He leads them to the rich pastures of the Glory Land. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1302.cfm

He Came to the Common People

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

“He gathers together the outcasts of Israel.”- Psalm 147:2

Does not this show us the great gentleness and infinite mercy of God? Should it not charm us to remember that when He came on earth, He did not visit kings and princes, but He came unto the humble and simple folk? He did not seek out Pharisees, wrapped up in their own supposed righteousness, but He sought out the guilty, for He said, “They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick.” The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost! It would have seemed natural that our Lord Jesus, when He came here, should, first of all, have addressed Himself to the most respectable people He could find and should have sent His message to the rabbis of Jerusalem, to the senators at Rome, to the philosophers of Greece. But instead, the common people heard Him gladly and He rejoiced in spirit while He said, “I thank You, O Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because You have hid these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight.”

I think you may judge of a man’s character by the persons whose affection he seeks. If you find a man seeking only the affection of those who are great, depend upon it, he is ambitious and self-seeking. But when you observe that a man seeks the affection of those who can do nothing for him, but for whom he must do everything, you know that he, himself, is not seeking, but that pure benevolence sways his heart. When I read in the text that the Lord gathers together the outcasts of Israel—and when I see that the text is truly applicable to the Lord Jesus Christ, because this is just what He did—I see another illustration of the gentleness of His heart, who said, “Take My yoke upon you, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and you shall find rest unto your souls.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1302.cfm

Jesus Loves Men to Himself

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

Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world… – John 18:36

Suppose the Lord Jesus had been made a king and had marshaled an army? He might have set up an established Church and have maintained it by the power and wealth of the State. A temple might have been built in every parish in the Roman empire and the heathen might have been compelled to pay tithes for the support of the ministry and Apostleship. By the help of imperial prestige and patronage, nominal professors of the faith would have been multiplied by millions and, outwardly, religion would have prevailed! Would it not have been as great a blessing as our Established Church is to us? But the Lord Jesus Christ did not choose this method, for His Kingdom is not to be set up by any force than by that of truth and love! It was His purpose to die for men, but not to lift the mailed hand of power, or even the jeweled finger of rank to bring them into subjection. Jesus loves men to Himself—Love and Truth are His battle-ax and weapons of war. Thus, He overcame the world which was in that most insidious form of worldliness—the suggestion to make alliance with it and set up a mongrel society, a kingdom at once earthly and heavenly, a State Church, a society loyal both to God and Mammon, fearing the Lord and serving the High Court of Parliament! It might have appeared to us to be the readiest means to bless the world—but it was not His Father’s way, nor the way of holiness—and, therefore, He would not follow it but overcame it! No force may be put on conscience. The altar of God must not be polluted by forced offerings. Caesar must not step beyond his province. However great the proffered benefit, the Lord never did evil that good might come! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3285.cfm