The Father

The Unique Counsel of the Gospel

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

…that He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. – Romans 3:26

When the Three Divine Persons in the solemn seclusion of Their own loneliness consulted together with reference to the works of grace, one of the first things They had to consider was, how God should be just and yet the justifier of the ungodly-how the world should be reconciled unto God…The Son of God, with His Father and the Spirit, ordained the council of peace. Thus, was it arranged. The Son must suffer; He must be the substitute and must bear His people’s sins and be punished in their stead; the Father must accept the Son’s substitution and allow His people to go free, because Christ had paid their debts. The Spirit of the living God must then cleanse the people whom the blood had pardoned, and so they must be accepted before the presence of God, even the Father…I have always thought that one of the greatest proofs that the gospel is of God, is its revelation that Christ died to save sinners. That is a thought so original, so new, so wonderful; you have not got it in any other religion in the world; so that it must have come from God. As I remember to have heard an un-schooled and illiterate man say, when I first told him the simple story of how Christ was punished in the stead of His people: he burst out with an air of surprise, “Faith! that’s the gospel, I know; no man could have made that up; that must be of God.” That wonderful thought, that God Himself should die, that He himself should bear our sins, that so God the Father might be able to forgive and yet exact the utmost penalty, is super-human, super-angelic; not even the cherubim and seraphim could have been the inventors of it: but that thought was first struck out from the mind of God in the councils of eternity, when the “Wonderful, the Counsellor,” was present with His Father. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0215.cfm

The Wonderful Counsel of Providence

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

And He is before all things, and by Him all things consist. – Colossians 1:17

From all eternity, Christ was the Counsellor of His Father with regard to providence…Was it not the Most High who divided to the nations their inheritance? Hath He not appointed the bounds of our habitation? Oh! heir of heaven, in the day of the great council Christ counselled His Father as to the weight of thy trials, as to the number of thy mercies, if they be numerable, and as to the time, the way, and the means whereby thou shouldst be brought to Himself. Remember, there is nothing that happens in your daily life, but what was first of all devised in eternity, and counselled by Jesus Christ for your good and in your behalf; that all things might work together for your lasting benefit and profit. But, my friends, what unfathomable depths of wisdom must have been involved, when God consulted with Himself with regard to the great book of providence!..Ah! Jacob, the Lord is about to provide for thee in Egypt, when there is a famine in Canaan, and He is about to make thy son Joseph great and mighty. Joseph must be sold for a slave; he must be accused wrongfully, he must be put into the pit, and in the round-house prison he must suffer. But God was going straight to His purpose all the while: He was sending Joseph before them into Egypt that they might be provided for, and when the good old patriarch said, “All these things are against me,” he did not perceive the providence of God, for there was not a solitary thing in the whole list that was against him, but everything was ruled for his weal. Let us learn to leave providence in the hand of the Counsellor, let us rest assured that He is too wise to err in His predestination, and too good to be unkind, and that in the council of eternity, the best was ordained that could have been ordained. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0215.cfm

A Counsellor with God

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

And His name will be called…Counsellor… – Isaiah 9:6

Men take weeks and months and sometimes years, to think out a thing that is surrounded with difficulties; they have to find the clue with much research; enveloped in folds of mystery, they have to take off first one garment and then another, before they find out the naked glorious truth. Not so God. God’s deliberations are as flashes of lightning; they are as wise as if he had been eternally considering, but the thoughts of His heart, though swift as lightning, are as perfect as the whole system of the universe. The reason why God is represented as holding a council, if I think rightly, is this: that we might understand how wise God is. “In the multitude of counsellors there is wisdom.” It is for us to think that in the council of the Eternal Three, each Person in the undivided Trinity being omniscient and full of wisdom, there must have been the sum total of all wisdom. It was to show the unanimity and co-operation of the sacred Persons: God the Father hath done nothing alone in creation or salvation. Jesus Christ hath done nothing alone; for even the work of His redemption, albeit that He suffered in some sense alone, needed the sustaining hand of the Spirit, and the accepting smile of the Father, before it could be completed. God said not, “I will make man,” but “Let Us make man in Our own image.” God saith not merely, “I will save,” but the inference from the declarations of Scripture is, that the design of the three Persons of the blessed Trinity was to save a people to Themselves, who should show forth Their praise. It was, then, for our sakes, not for God’s sake, the council was held-that we might know the unanimity of the glorious Persons, and the deep wisdom of Their devices. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0215.cfm

The Blood is the Life Thereof

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

You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your fathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. – 1 Peter 1:18,19

Martin Luther used to say that every sermon ought to have the doctrine of justification by faith in it. True; but let it have the doctrine of atonement in it. He says he could not get the doctrine of justification by faith in to the Wurtembergers’ heads, and he felt half inclined to take the book into the pulpit and fling it at their heads, in order to get it in. I am afraid he would not have succeeded if he had. But oh! how would I try to hammer again, and again, and again upon this one nail, “The blood is the life thereof.” “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.”

Christ giving up His life in pouring out His blood-it is this that gives pardon and peace to every one of you, if you will but look to Him- pardon now, complete pardon; pardon for ever. Look away from all other confidences and rely upon the sufferings and the death of the Incarnate God, who has gone into the heavens, and who lives today to plead before His Father’s throne, the merit of the blood which, on Calvary, He poured forth for sinners. As I shall meet you all in that great day, when the crucified One shall come as the King and Lord of all, which day is hastening on apace, as I shall meet you then, I pray you bear me witness that I have striven to tell you in all simplicity what is the way of salvation; and if you reject it, do me this favour, to say that at least I have proffered to you in Jehovah’s name this, His gospel, and have earnestly urged you to accept it, that you may be saved. But the rather I would God that I might meet you there, all covered in the one atonement, clothed in the one righteousness, and accepted in the one Saviour, and then together will we sing, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, and hath redeemed us to God by His blood to receive honour, and power, and dominion for ever and ever.” Amen. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3418.cfm

Justice and Mercy

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

The soul that sins shall die. – Ezekiel 18:4,20

We owe to God a debt of punishment for sin. Was that debt due or not? If the law was right, the penalty ought to be exacted. The law, then, being a righteous law, and the penalty just, shall God do an unjust thing? Would you have Him to be unjust? He had declared that the soul that sinned should die; would you have God to be a liar? Shall He eat His words to save His creatures? The law’s sentence must be carried out. It was inevitable that if God maintained the prerogative of His holiness, He must punish the sins that men have committed. How, then, should He save us? Behold the plan! His dear Son, the Lord of glory, takes upon Himself human nature, comes into the place of as many as the Father gave Him, stands in their standing, and when the sentence of justice has been proclaimed, and the sword of vengeance has leaped out of its scabbard, behold the glorious Substitute bares His arm, and He says, “Strike, O sword, but strike Me, and let My people go.” Into the very soul of Jesus the sword of the law pierced, and His blood was shed, the blood, not of one who was man only, but of One who, by His being an eternal Spirit, was able to offer up Himself without spot unto God, in a way which gave infinite efficacy to His sufferings. He, through the eternal Spirit, we are told, offered Himself without spot to God. Being in His own nature infinitely beyond the nature of man, comprehending all the natures of man, as it were, within Himself, by reason of the majesty of His person, He was able to offer an atonement to God of infinite, boundless, inconceivable sufficiency. What our Lord suffered none of us can tell. I am sure of this: I would not disparage or under-estimate His physical sufferings-the tortures He endured in His body-but I am equally sure that we can none of us exaggerate or over-value the sufferings of such a soul as His; they are beyond all conception…”Yet it pleased the Father to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief. “Now, therefore, God is able to forgive sin. He has punished the sin on Christ; it becomes justice, as well as mercy, that God should blot out those debts which have been paid. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3418.cfm

He Has Open Arms for You, Sinner

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

All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me; and him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out. – John 6:37

There are tens of thousands now in the skies who came to Jesus just as they were, in all the filth and deshabille of the lost estate, and He received every one of them into His heart of love and arms of power. There are many thousands on earth who can testify that they have found Jesus to be a very tender and generous friend. Now, if He has received us, why should He not receive you? Be encouraged to believe that inasmuch as He has received others, He has open arms for you also.

Let me joyfully remind you that Jesus never has rejected a seeking sinner. There is not to be found in all the kingdoms of the universe a single instance of a sincere seeker after Christ being cast away, and there never shall be, for He hath not said to the seed of Jacob, “Seek ye My face in vain,” but He has said, “Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.” Beloved, if there had been a single soul cast away we should have known of it by now. It is eighteen hundred and sixty-eight years now, and if a solitary penitent had been rejected, we should have heard of it before now, for I will tell you of one who would have spread it abroad, and that is the devil. If he could get a single instance of a soul who had repented and trusted Christ but found that Christ would have nothing to do with him, it would be a standing scandal against the cross which Satan would delight to publish. I know, poor sinners, what the devil will tell you when you are coming to Christ-he will describe Jesus as a hard master, but you tell him he is a liar from the beginning, and a murderer, and that he is trying to murder your soul by making you swallow his poisonous lies. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0809.cfm

No Want of Any Good Thing

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

… but they that seek the LORD shall not want any good thing. – Psalm 34:10

“They that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing.” That is, not one of them. They that first stepped into Bethesda’s pool were healed, and no others; but here everybody that steps into this pool is healed; that is to say, everyone that seeks the Lord has this promise-the least, as well as the greatest: the Little-faiths and the Much-afraids as much as the Great-hearts and the Stand-fasts. They that seek the Lord, whether they are chimney-sweeps or princes, whether they are tender children, or seasoned veterans in the Master’s great army-they shall want no good thing. “Well, but” somebody says, “there are some of them that are in want.” They are in want? Yes, that may be, but they are not in want of any good thing. They cannot be. God’s word against anything you say, or I say. If they seek the Lord, they shall not, they cannot, they must not want any good thing. “Well, at any rate, they want what appears to be a good thing.” That is very likely; the text does not say they shall not be. “Well, but they want what they once found to be a good thing; they want health-is not that a good thing? It was a good thing to them when they had it before, yet they want health; does not that go against the text?” No, it does not in any way whatever. The text means this, that anything which is absolutely good for him, all circumstances being considered, no child of God shall ever want. I met with this statement in a work by that good old Puritan, Mr. Clarkson, which stuck by me when I read it some time ago. I think the words were these, “If it were a good thing for God’s people for sin, Satan, sorrow, and affliction to be abolished, Christ would blot them out within five minutes, and if it were a good thing for the seeker of the Lord to have all the kingdoms of this world put at his feet and for him to be made a prince, Jesus would make him a prince before the sun rose again.” If it were absolutely to him, all things being considered, a good thing, he must have it, for Christ would be sure to keep His word. He has said he shall not want it, and He would not let His child want it, whatever it might be, if it were really, absolutely, and in itself, all things considered, a good thing. Now, taking God’s Word and walking by faith towards it, what a light it sheds on your history and mine! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3409.cfm