The Father

Fruitful Unto His Praise

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

Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. – Matthew 13:8

What a difference there is between what the believer was by nature and what the grace of God has made him! Naturally, we were like the waste howling wilderness, like the desert which yields no healthy plant or verdure. It seemed as if we were given over to be like a salt land, which is not inhabited; no good thing was in us or could spring out of us. But now, as many of us as have known the Lord are transformed into gardens; our wilderness is made like Eden, our desert is changed into the garden of the Lord. “I will turn unto you,” said the Lord to the mountains of Israel when they were bleak and bare, “I will turn unto you, and ye shall be tilled and sown;” and this is what He said to the barrenness of our nature. We have been enclosed by grace, we have been tilled and sown, we have experienced all the operations of the divine husbandry. Our Lord Jesus said to His disciples, “My Father is the husbandman,” and He has made us to be fruitful unto His praise, full of sweetness where once there was no fruit, and nothing that could give Him delight.

In the good ground mentioned by our Lord in the parable of the Sower, the good seed did not all bring forth a hundredfold, or even sixty-fold; there were some parts of the field where the harvest was as low as thirty-fold, and I fear that there are some of the Lord’s gardens which yield even less than that. Still, there are the fruits and there are the flowers, in a measure; there is a good beginning made wherever the grace of God has undertaken the culture of our nature. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2475.cfm

Our High Dignity

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

“Fellow citizens with the saints.”-Ephesians 2:19

What is meant by our being citizens in heaven? It means that we are under heaven’s government. Christ the king of heaven reigns in our hearts; our daily prayer is, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The proclamations issued from the throne of glory are freely received by us: the decrees of the Great King we cheerfully obey. Then as citizens of the New Jerusalem, we share heaven’s honours. The glory which belongs to beatified saints belongs to us, for we are already sons of God, already princes of the blood imperial; already we wear the spotless robe of Jesus’ righteousness; already we have angels for our servitors, saints for our companions, Christ for our Brother, God for our Father, and a crown of immortality for our reward. We share the honours of citizenship, for we have come to the general assembly and Church of the first-born whose names are written in heaven. As citizens, we have common rights to all the property of heaven. Ours are its gates of pearl and walls of chrysolite; ours the azure light of the city that needs no candle nor light of the sun; ours the river of the water of life, and the twelve manner of fruits which grow on the trees planted on the banks thereof; there is nought in heaven that belongeth not to us. “Things present, or things to come,” all are ours. Also, as citizens of heaven we enjoy its delights. Do they there rejoice over sinners that repent-prodigals that have returned? So do we. Do they chant the glories of triumphant grace? We do the same. Do they cast their crowns at Jesus’ feet? Such honours as we have we cast there too. Are they charmed with His smile? It is not less sweet to us who dwell below. Do they look forward, waiting for His second advent? We also look and long for His appearing. If then, we are thus citizens of heaven, let our walk and actions be consistent with our high dignity. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

What is this fear of God?

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Father, The Holy Spirit 1 Comment

…I will put My fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from Me. – Jeremiah 32:40

The Lord saith, “I will put My fear in their hearts.” It would never be found there if He did not put it there. It will never spring up naturally in any heart. “I will put My fear in their hearts”; that is, regeneration and conversion. He makes us tremble before His law. He makes us feel the smart and bitterness of sin. He causes us to remember the God we once forgot, and to obey the Lord whom once we defied. “I will put My fear in their hearts” is the first great act of conversion, and it is continued throughout life by the perpetual working of the Spirit upon the heart. The work which commences at conversion is duly carried on in the converted ones; for the Lord still puts His fear into their hearts. How the Spirit of God works we cannot tell: He has ways of acting directly upon our minds which are all His own and cannot be understood by us. But without violating the freedom of our nature, leaving us men as we were before, He knows how to make us continue in the fear of God. This is God’s great holdfast upon His people, “I will put My fear in their hearts.”

What is this fear of God? It is a holy awe and reverence of the great God. Taught of God, we come to see His infinite greatness, and the fact that He is everywhere present with us; and then, filled with a devout sense of His Godhead, we dare not sin. Since God is near, we cannot offend. God is our Father, and we feel the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, “Abba, Father.” This child-like love kindles in us a fear to grieve Him whom we love, and therefore we have no desire to depart from Him. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2108.cfm

Securely Kept

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

…I will not turn away from them, to do them good… – Jeremiah 32:40

He hath given meat unto them that fear Him: He will ever be mindful of His covenant. – Psalm 111:5

If the Lord’s chosen and redeemed are cast away, where is the glory of His redemption? Will not the enemy say of the Lord, “He had not the power to carry out His covenant, nor the constancy to continue blessing them”? Shall that ever be said of God? Will He thus lose the glory of His omnipotence and immutability? I cannot believe that any purpose of the Lord can fail; neither can I conceive that He can withdraw His declarations of love to those with whom He is in covenant. The God whom we adore and reverence, the God of Abraham, the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, fainteth not, neither is weary. “He is in one mind, and who can turn Him?” “He will ever be mindful of His covenant.” Of our Lord Jesus we truly sing-

“His honour is engaged to save
The meanest of His sheep;
All that His heavenly Father gave,
His hands securely keep.”

Whether my arguments seem good to you or not, is of small consequence; for the text is the inspired Word of God, and it cannot be misunderstood or questioned. Thus saith the Lord, “I will not turn away from them, to do them good.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2108.cfm

His Sure Pledge

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

For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. – Romans 5:6

When God gave His Son, He gave us a sure pledge that He meant to finish His work of love. They say of a man that does not finish his work, “This man began to build, and was not able to finish”; but that shall never be said of the Lord Jehovah. The Lord God has laid out His whole Deity to save His people, and given His whole self in the person of the Well-beloved for our redemption; and can you believe that He will fail in it? Surely, the idea is blasphemous. Some of us have known too much love already to believe that it will ever cease to flow towards us. We have been so favoured that we dare not fear that His favour toward us will cease. So heavenly, so divine is the sense of the love of God, when it is revealed to the soul, that we cannot believe that it has been given to mock us. We have been carried away with such torrents of love, that we will never believe that they can be dried up. The Lord has communed with us so closely, that the secret of the Lord is with us, and He will for ever recognize that mystic token by which our union has been sealed. Like Paul, each one of us may say, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.” The cost to which our Lord has gone assures us that He will complete His designs of grace. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2108.cfm

Yet…

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

…I will not turn away from them, to do them good… – Jeremiah 32:40

I would have you remember that we are by God at this day viewed in the same light as ever. He saw us at the first as under sin, fallen and depraved, and yet He promised to do us good. And if to-day I am sinful, if to-day I have to groan by reason of my evil nature, yet I am but where I was when He chose me, and called me, and redeemed me by the blood of His Son. “When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” We were undeserving objects upon whom He bestowed His mercy, out of no motive but that which He drew from His own nature; and if we are undeserving still, His grace is still the same. If it be so, that He still deals with us in the way of grace, it is evident that He still views us as undeserving; and why should He not do good towards us now as He did at the first? Assuredly, the fountain being the same, the stream will continue to flow.

Moreover, remember that He sees us now in Christ. Behold, He has put His people into the hands of His dear Son. He has even put us into Christ’s body; “for we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones.” He sees us in Christ to have died, in Him to have been buried, and in Him to have risen again. As the Lord Jesus Christ is well-pleasing to the Father, so in Him are we well-pleasing to the Father also; for our being in Him identifies us with Him…Firmly believe that until the Lord rejects Christ He cannot reject His people; until He repudiates the atonement and the resurrection, He cannot cast away any of those with whom He has entered into covenant in the Lord Jesus Christ. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/kjv/jer/32/40/s_777040

Nothing More Glorious

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

And I will make an everlasting covenant with them… – Jeremiah 32:40

In the order of God’s working He always advances from the good to the better. The old law was put away because He found fault with it, and therefore the new covenant must last till a fault can be found with it, which will never be. This is the glory which excelleth: no brightness can exceed the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. There can be nothing more gracious, nothing more righteous, nothing more just to God or more safe to man, than the plan of salvation set forth in the covenant of grace. The moon gives way to the sun, and the sun gives way to a lustre which shall exceed the light of seven days; but what is to supersede the light of free grace and dying love, the glory of the love which gave the Only-begotten that we might live through Him? The covenant of grace made with us in Christ Jesus is the masterpiece of divine wisdom and love, and it is established on such sure principles that it must last for ever.

Who else could have thought of a covenant, “ordered in all things and sure,” to be made with guilty man? It was also divine in its carrying out, and therefore it shall endure. Who could have provided a Saviour like the Only-begotten of the Father? Who could have given Him for a covenant but the Father? The covenant is divine in its maintenance. Note well the word of the Lord: “I will make an everlasting covenant with them.” He does not say, “They shall make a covenant with Me”; but “I will make a covenant with them.” That God is the maker of the covenant is a reason for its certainty and everlastingness. The faithful God has given guarantees which fix it fast, even His promise and His oath; those two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie. Through these we have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to Christ Jesus. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2108.cfm