The Father

We Love the Salvation of God

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

Let all those that seek Thee rejoice and be glad in Thee: let such as love Thy salvation say continually, “The LORD be magnified.” – Psalm 40:16

The object of (God’s salvation) towards us was to redeem unto Christ a people who should be zealous for good works. The sinner loves a salvation from hell; the saint loves a salvation from sin. Anybody would desire to be saved from the pit, but it is only a child of God who pants to be saved from every false way. We love the salvation of God because it saves us from selfishness, from pride, from lust, from worldliness, bitterness, malice, sloth, and uncleanness. When that salvation is completed in us, we shall be “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing,” and shall be renewed in holiness after the image of Christ Jesus our Lord. That its great aim is our perfection in holiness is the main beauty of salvation. We would be content to be poor, but we cannot be content to be sinful; we could be resigned to sickness, but we could not be satisfied to remain in alienation from God. We long for perfection and nothing short of it will content us, and, because this is guaranteed to the believer in the gospel of Christ, we love His salvation, and we would say continually, “Let God be magnified.”

We love His salvation because of one or two characteristics in it which especially excite our delight. Foremost is the matchless love displayed in it. Why should the Lord have loved men, such insignificant creatures as they are, compared with the universe? Why should He set His heart upon such nothings? But more, how could He love rebellious men who have wantonly and arrogantly broken His laws? Why should He love them so much as to give up His only begotten? These are things we freely speak of, but who among us knows what is their weight; “God commendeth His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” I believe that even in heaven, with enlarged faculties, it will be a subject of perpetual wonder to us that ever God could love and save us. And shall we not love the salvation which wells up from the deep fount of the Father’s everlasting affection? O brethren, our hearts must be harder than adamant, and made of hell-hardened steel, if we can at once believe that we are saved and yet not love, intensely love the salvation which was devised by Jehovah’s heart. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1013.cfm

He is Salvation

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

Let such as love Thy salvation say continually, “The LORD be magnified.” – Psalm 40:16; 70:4

Let me show you, beloved, what it is in salvation that the thoughtful believer loves; and I may begin by saying that he loves, best of all, the Savior Himself. Often our Lord is called Salvation, because He is the great worker of it, the author and finisher, the Alpha and the Omega of it. He who has Christ has salvation; and, as He is the essence of salvation, He is the center of the saved ones’ affection. Have you, beloved, carefully considered that Jesus is divine, that He counts it not robbery to be equal with God, being our Creator and Preserver, as well as our Redeemer? Do you fully understand that our Lord is infinite, eternal, nothing less than God; and yet for our sakes He took upon Himself our nature, was clothed in that nature with all its infirmities, sin alone excepted, and in that nature agonized, bled, and died, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God. Oh, marvel of marvels, miracle of miracles! The immortal Lord stoops to death; the Prince of glory bows to be spit upon. Shame and dishonor could not make Him start back from His blessed purpose, but to the death of the cross He surrendered Himself. O, you who are saved, do you not love Christ, who is your salvation? Do you not feel a burning desire to behold Him as He is? Is not His presence, even now, a nether heaven to you? Will not a face-to-face view of His glory be all the heaven that your utmost stretch of imagination can conceive? I know it is so. Your heart is bound to Jesus, His name is set as a seal upon it; therefore, I charge you to say continually, “Let God be magnified.” Glory be to the Father who gave His Son, to the Son who gave Himself, to the Spirit who revealed all this to us. Triune God, be Thou extolled for ever and ever.

“He bore, that we might never bear,
His Father’s righteous ire.”

~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1013.cfm

The Enemy Most to be Dreaded

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

Oh, that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me… – Job 29:2

Are there not many among us who once walked humbly with God, and near to Him, who have fallen into carnal security? Have we not taken it for granted that all is well with us, and are we not settled upon our lees like Moab of old? How little of heart-searching and self-examination are practiced now-a-days! How little enquiry as to whether the root of the matter is really in us! Woe unto those who take their safety for granted, and sit down in God’s house and say, “The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are we.” Woe unto them that are at ease in Zion. Of all enemies, one of the most to be dreaded is presumption. To be secure in a Christ is a blessing, to be secure in ourselves is a curse. Where carnal security reigns, the Spirit of God withdraws. He is with the humble and contrite, but He is not with the proud and self-sufficient. My brethren, are we all clear in this respect? Do not many of God’s people also need to bemoan their worldliness? Once Christ was all with you, brethren; is it so now? Once you despised the world, and contemned alike its pleasures and its frowns; but now, my brethren, are not the chains of worldly custom upon you? Are not many of you enslaved by fashion, and eaten up with frivolity? Do you not, some of you, run as greedily as worldlings after the questionable enjoyments of this present life? Ought these things to be so? Can they remain so, and your souls enjoy the Lord’s smile? “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” “If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” You cannot be Christ’s disciples and be in fellowship with the ungodly. Come ye out from among them; be ye separate; touch not the unclean thing; then shall ye know right joyfully that the Lord is Father to you, and that you are His sons and daughters. But, brethren, have ye gone unto Jesus without the camp, and do ye abide there with Him? Is the line of your separation visible-ay, is it existing? Is there any separation at all? Is it not often the case that the professed people of God are mixed up with the sons of men so that you cannot discern the one from the other? If it be so with any one of us, let him humble himself, and let him cry in bitterness, “Oh that I were as in months past.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1011.cfm

True Christian Worship

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

“But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”-John 4:23-24.

True Christian worship addresses God, not merely as Creator and Preserver, or as the great Lord of the Universe, but as one who is very near of kin to us, our Father, beloved of our souls. Jesus likewise states that gospel worship is to be of a kind which does not result from the man himself merely, but comes from God, and is a work of grace. This is implied in the sentence, “The Father seeketh such to worship Him,” as if no true worship would come from any man unless God sought it. True devotion under the Christian dispensation is not merely human but also divine. These are very grave points, and draw a broad line of distinction between the living worship of the chosen of God and the dead formal worship of the world which lieth in the wicked one.

Furthermore, the Savior goes on to say that they who worship God are to worship Him “in spirit.” No longer with the visible sacrifice of a lamb, but inwardly trusting in Him who is the Lamb of God’s Passover; no more with the sprinkled blood of goats, but heartily relying upon the blood once shed for many; no longer worshipping God with ephod, breastplate, and mitre, but with prostrate soul, with uplifted faith, and with the faculties not of the body but of the inward spirit. We who worship God under this Christian dispensation are no longer to fancy that bodily exercise in worship profiteth anything, that genuflexions and contortions are of any value, but that acceptable worship is wholly mental, inward, and spiritual. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0695.cfm

Continual Praises

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

Praise is awaiting You, O God, in Zion… – Psalm 65:1

It is to be feared that some of our praise ascends nowhere at all, but it is as though it were scattered to the winds. We do not always realize God. Now, “he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him;” this is as true of praise as of prayer. “God is a Spirit,” and they that praise Him must praise Him “in spirit and in truth,” for “the Father seeketh such” to praise Him, and only such; and, if we do not lift our eyes and our hearts to Him, we are but misusing words and wasting time. Our praise is not as it should be, if it be not reverently and earnestly directed to the Lord of Hosts. Vain is it to shoot arrows without a target: we must aim at God’s glory in our holy songs, and that exclusively.

“Jesus, where’er Thy people meet,
There they behold Thy mercy-seat;
Where’er they seek Thee, Thou art found,
And every place is hallow’d ground,

For Thou within no walls confined,
Inhabitest the humble mind;
Such ever bring Thee where they come,
And going, take Thee to their home.”

There should be in all our solemn assemblies a spiritual incense altar, always smoking with “the pure incense of sweet spices, mingled according to the art of the apothecary”: the thanksgiving which is made up of humility, gratitude, love, consecration, and holy joy in the Lord. It should be for the Lord alone, and it should never go out day nor night. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1023.cfm

The Great Redeemer Lives

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

I am He that liveth, and was dead; and behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen. – Revelation 1:18

The Lord in the glory of His tenderness mentions…His atoning death. He says, “I was dead,” the original more correctly rendered is “was made dead.” Here we come upon the human nature of our Redeemer. As God and as man He had two natures, but He was not two persons. As one person He ever lives, and yet He was made to die. He came into this world in human form that He might be capable of death; the pure spirit of God could not die, it was not possible that He, the I AM, could be subject to death; but He allied Himself with humanity, and in that human form Jesus could die, and did die. In very deed, and truth, and not in semblance; Jesus bowed His head, and gave up the ghost, and they laid His corpse in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. Here to the child of God is a fruitful source of consolation. He died, then the atonement is complete; without the shedding of blood there is no remission, but the death of the Son of God brings plenteous pardon. There must be in the death of such a one of sufficient merit to remove guilt and cleanse transgression. Is it not written, “He hath washed us from our sins in His own blood?” Dost thou not hear that song in heaven? Will not its music make thee glad? His own blood hath washed thee; if thou believest in Him thou art clean. Look to Calvary, and as thou lookest there and perceivest that He was dead, “fear not.”

And then the master declared His endless life, “I am alive for evermore.” He who offered up the atonement lives again to claim the effect of His sacrifice. He has presented the meritorious sacrifice, and now He has gone to heaven to plead the sacrifice before the throne of God, and to lay claim to the place which He has prepared for them that love Him. Thou hast no dead Savior to trust to: thou reliest in Him who once died-this is comfort to thee, but He lives, the great Redeemer lives. He has risen from the tomb; He has climbed the hills of heaven; He sits at the right hand of the Father, prepared to defend His people. If thou hadst a Christ in the sepulcher that were sorrow upon sorrow; but thou hast a Christ in heaven, who can die no more. Be thou of good cheer. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1028.cfm

Only God is First and Last

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

And He laid His right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am He that liveth, and was dead; and behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen. – Revelation 1:17,18

As to the Lord’s person, Jesus revealed to His disciple that He was most truly divine. “I am the first and the last.” This language can be used of none but God Himself; none but He is first; none but He is last; none but God can be first and last. Now, our Lord Jesus Christ was evidently first. He existed before He was born into the world. We read, “a body hast Thou prepared Me.” Then Christ was a previously existing one for whom that body was prepared; and He it is who said, “Lo, I come, to do Thy will O God.” He came into the world, but He had from old eternity dwelt in the bosom of the Father. John the Baptist was born into the world before the Savior, of whom he was the forerunner, but what does he say? His testimony is “He, coming after me, is preferred before me, for He was before me.” He is first in order of honor because first in order of existence. John was the elder as man, but as God the Lord Jesus is from everlasting. Go back in history as far as you will; with one leap ascend to the days of Moses, and there is Christ before you, for we read: “Let us not tempt Christ as some of them also tempted and were destroyed of serpents.” There was Christ, then, in the wilderness vexed by the people. He it was whose voice then shook the earth, but who will yet shake not the earth only but also heaven.

By the words “the first and the last” are signified, in most languages, the sum and substance of all things. We say sometimes the top and the bottom of it is so and so; we mean that it is the whole of it. And the Greeks were wont to say, “This is the prow and stern of the business,” meaning that it is the whole. And so Jesus Christ, in being first and last, is all in all. And, truly, it is so in the working of redemption and salvation; He begins, carries on, completes; He asks no creature help and will have none. To us He is the author and the finisher of our faith, the alpha of our first comfort, and the omega of our final bliss. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

 https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1028.cfm