The Father

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

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

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

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

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

Our Perfect Substitute

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, promises, salvation, The Father 1 Comment

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 5:20

All (Jesus’) sweet wills were towards goodness. His unconstrained life was holiness itself: He was “the holy child Jesus.” The prince of this world found in Him no fuel for the flame which he desired to kindle. Not only did no sin flow from Him, but there was no sin in Him, nor inclination, nor tendency in that direction. Watch Him in secret, and you find Him in prayer; look unto His soul, and you find Him eager to do and suffer the Father’s will. Oh, the blessed character of Christ! If I had the tongues of men and of angels I could not worthily set forth His absolute perfection. Justly may the Father be well pleased with Him! Well may heaven adore Him!

Beloved, it was absolutely necessary that any one who should be able to suffer in our stead should Himself be spotless. A sinner obnoxious to punishment by reason of his own offences, what can he do but bear the wrath which is due to his own sin? Our Lord Jesus Christ as man was made under the law: but He owed nothing to that law, for He perfectly fulfilled it in all respects. He was capable of standing in the room, place, and stead of others, because He was under no obligations of His own. He was only under obligations towards God because He had voluntarily undertaken to be the surety and sacrifice for those whom the Father gave Him. He was clear Himself, or else He could not have entered into bonds for guilty men. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1910.cfm

Our Savior’s Unblemished Nature

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

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

There never was in the heart of our blessed Lord a wish for an evil pleasure, nor a desire to escape any suffering or shame which was involved in His service. When He said, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me,” He never desired to escape the bitter potion at the expense of His perfect lifework. The “if it be possible,” meant, “if it is consistent with full obedience to the Father, and the accomplishment of the divine purpose.” We see the weakness of His nature shrinking, and the holiness of His nature resolving and conquering, as He adds, “nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.” He took upon Him the likeness of sinful flesh, but though that flesh often caused Him weariness of body, it never produced in Him the weakness of sin. He took our infirmities, but He never exhibited an infirmity which had the least of blameworthiness attached to it. Never fell there an evil glance from those blessed eyes; never did His lips let drop a hasty word; never did those feet go on an ill errand, nor those hands move towards a sinful deed; because His heart was filled with holiness and love. Within as well as without our Lord was unblemished. His desires were as perfect as His actions. Searched by the eyes of Omniscience, no shadow of fault could be found in Him.

Yes, more, there were no tendencies about our Substitute towards evil in any form. In us there are always those tendencies; for the taint of original sin is upon us. We have to govern ourselves and hold ourselves under stern restraint, or we should rush headlong to destruction. Our carnal nature lusteth to evil, and needs to be held in as with bit and bridle. Happy is that man who can master himself. But with regard to our Lord, it was His nature to be pure, and right, and loving. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1910.cfm

Provoking God

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

Our fathers understood not Thy wonders in Egypt; they remembered not the multitude of Thy mercies; but provoked Him at the sea, even at the Red Sea. – Psalm 106:7

Why does the Psalmist dwell upon the place, and say, “at the sea, even at the Red Sea”? Why was it worse to provoke the Lord there than elsewhere? It evidently was so, for the inspired Scripture mentions the spot twice to put an emphasis upon it. Why was this?

The offense itself was grievous anywhere. They doubted God when they heard that Pharaoh pursued after them, and they said, “Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast Thou taken us away to die in the wilderness?” This imputation of cruelty to their faithful God provoked His sacred heart. The Lord is very pitiful, and His name is love, and therefore He is not easily provoked; but He declares that He was provoked by this display of their mistrust. They provoked Him: they called Him forth, as it were, to battle; they vexed Him and stirred Him up to contend with them. O brothers and sisters, after so much love as God has shown us, we must not fall to provoking Him; let us far rather spend our lives in extolling Him! To provoke Him at any time is a wanton wickedness—unjust, ungenerous, diabolical. It is no common sin which thus provokes the longsuffering Lord. Many a sin God has endured patiently, but in this case, He is provoked to anger. This is an offense which touches the apple of His eye and causes His jealousy to burn like coals of fire. O children of God, how can you provoke your Father to wrath? The Lord have mercy upon us! We must bow low at His feet with sorrowful repentance. Let us shun this fault in the future. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2204.cfm

Be Humbled and Warned

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

We have sinned with our fathers, we have committed iniquity, we have done wickedly. Our fathers understood not Thy wonders in Egypt; they remembered not the multitude of Thy mercies; but provoked Him at the sea, even at the Red Sea…Save us, O Lord our God. – Psalm 106:6,7,47

OUR FATHERS! From them we derive our nature. We inherit our fathers’ propensities; for that which is born of the flesh is flesh. As is the nature, such is the conduct. Hence the Psalmist writes in verse 6: “We have sinned with our fathers, we have committed iniquity, we have done wickedly.” If we must mention our fathers’ faults, it is not to screen ourselves; for we have to confess that our life’s story is no brighter than theirs. It is not because the fathers have eaten sour grapes that the children’s teeth are set on edge; for we ourselves have greedily devoured those evil clusters: “We have sinned with our fathers.” “As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man.” When we read of the sins of others, we ought to be humbled and warned; for “all we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way.” We have no space wherein to set up a monument to our own glory. As we cannot boast in our pedigree, for we are the children of sinners; so we cannot exalt ourselves because of our personal excellence, for there is none that doeth good, no not one. We come before God and confess our iniquities as a race and as individuals; and we cry unto Him, in the words of the forty-seventh verse, “Save us, O Lord our God.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2204.cfm