The Father

These Two Kindred Spiritual Facts

Sherry Attributes of God, prayer, promises, salvation, The Father Leave a comment

And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! Luke 15:17

When the prodigal came to himself he was shut up to two thoughts. Two facts were clear to him, that there was plenty in his father’s house, and that he himself was famishing. May the two kindred spiritual facts have absolute power over all your hearts, if you are yet unsaved; for they were most certainly all-important and pressing truths. These are no fancies of one in a dream; no ravings of a maniac; no imaginations of one under fascination: it is most true that there is plenty of all good things in the Father’s house, and that the sinner needs them. No where else can grace be found or pardon gained; but with God there is plenitude of mercy; let none venture to dispute this glorious truth. Equally true is it that the sinner without God is perishing. He is perishing now; he will perish everlastingly. All that is worth having in his existence will be utterly destroyed, and he himself shall only remain as a desolation; the owl and the bittern of misery and anguish shall haunt the ruins of his nature for ever and for ever. If we could shut up unconverted men to those two thoughts, what hopeful congregations we should have. Alas! they forget that there is mercy only with God, and fancy that it is to be found somewhere else; and they try to slip away from the humbling fact of their own lost estate, and imagine that perhaps there may be some back door of escape; that, after all, they are not so bad as the Scripture declares, or that perchance it shall be right with them at the last however wrong it may be with them now. Alas! my brethren, what shall we do with those who wilfully shut their eyes to truths of which the evidence is overwhelming, and the importance overpowering? I earnestly entreat those of you who know how to approach the throne of God in faith, to breathe the prayer that He would now bring into captivity the unconverted heart and put these two strong fetters upon every unregenerate soul; there is abundant grace with God, there is utter destitution with themselves. Bound with such fetters, and led into the presence of Jesus, the captive would soon receive the liberty of the children of God. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1000.cfm

Only the Wakeful are Praiseful

Sherry Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, The Father, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

Sing praises to God, sing praises: sing praises unto our King, sing praises. – Psalm 47:6

Under Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, the acceptableness of our praise depends very much upon the warmth of it. As cold prayers virtually ask God to deny them, so cold praises ask God to reject them. Cold praises are a sort of semi-blasphemy: they do, as it were, say, “Thou art not worthy to be ardently praised. O God, we bring Thee these poor thanksgivings: they are good enough for Thee.” Surely if we treated our heavenly Father as we should, every sacred passion would glow in our hearts like a furnace: our whole heart would catch fire, and as Elijah went up into heaven with horses of fire and chariots of fire, so, too, our souls, as we thought upon the goodness and the graciousness of God, would ascend to heaven in vehement joy of adoration…Mark with what exhilaration the psalmist rendered praise unto God and imitate him therein. See him dancing before the ark, and hear him cry aloud, “Sing praises to God, sing praises: sing praises unto our King, sing praises.”

Only the wakeful are praiseful. The very best praises God receives from earth are from His troubled saints; but then they are awake; the strokes of the rod have aroused them…When martyrs have magnified God standing on the burning fagot, they have given God better praise than even the angels can. It was the old fable, that the nightingale was made to sing by the thorn that pricked her breast: and many a child of God has poured forth his sweetest music when the thorn of affliction has pierced his heart…Remember what Job did when he sat on the dunghill, scraping himself with a bit of broken pot- he praised God and said, “The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” It was grand of thee, O patriarch of Uz, to be able thus to extol thy Lord: then was thy soul fully awake. Beloved friends, may our inmost souls be so energetic with the power of grace that we may spontaneously and earnestly bless the Lord at all times and under all circumstances. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0996.cfm

Friend…?

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Sovereignty of God, The Father, The Holy Spirit, the unbelieving life 1 Comment

Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? – Matthew 22:12

But Jesus said to him, “Friend, why have you come?” – Matthew 26:50

It was too high a day for the king to use rough speech; the man pretended to be a friend, and he addressed him as such, but though the word I doubt not was uttered softly, it must have stung him if he had any feeling left. Judas exemplified in his own person this character. When he gave the Saviour the traitor’s kiss, our Lord addressed him as “friend.” He pretended to be a friend. A friend, indeed, to insult his king at his own table, and to select for the insult the delicate occasion of the prince’s marriage to which he had been hospitably invited! The king put it to him, “How camest thou in hither? In hither? Was there nowhere else to pour forth thy sedition, no other spot in which to play the traitor? Needest thou come into my palace, and to my table, and before my son on his wedding day to reveal thy enmity? Was there a need to do this?” So may the Lord say to some of us. “Were there no other ways to sin, but that you must profess to be My servant when you were not so? Were there no other bowls that you could drink from, that ye must profane the cups of My table? Was there no other bread that you could put into your wicked mouths but the bread that represents the body of My Son? Had you nowhere else to sin in that you must needs sin in the church? Could you do nothing else to show your spite but that you must make a lying profession of faith in My Son, who bled upon the cross to redeem the sons of men? Could you assail Me nowhere else but through the wounds of My only begotten Son? Could you vex My Spirit by no other means than by pretending to be My friend, and thrusting yourself in hither, while defiantly rejecting that which was necessary to do Me honour, and to do My Son honour, at the festival of My grace?” I dare not dwell upon the topic. I give you the text; I pray that your conscience may preach the sermon. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0976.cfm

The Rebels Are Taken Away

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

And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment…Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. – Matthew 22:11,13

An ungodly man may lie down in the church of God with the lambs of the flock, and nothing may lead you to suspect his true character, but when the time comes for him to make profit by sin, or to get pleasure by sin, or to escape from persecution by sin, then you find out what he is…Changes in the conditions of the church, changes in the condition of the individual, all sorts of providential events go to make up the great sieve by which the wheat and the chaff are separated. The time when the King comes in to see His guests is not the last judgment, for that is the coming of the Son and not of the Father, and if it were intended in the parable, we would read that the prince came in to see his guests. We are led to view the King Himself as continually judging professors and detecting the rebels who place themselves among the saints; by this judgment of God men are taken away from the Church in their transgressions, bound hand and foot, and cast into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. I do not know, my dear brethren, when God may be visiting this church, and taking away the men that are rebels in our midst, but I do know that when professors die it is not certain that all of them sleep in Jesus; but some of them are rooted up, like tares from among the wheat, and are bound up in bundles to burn. The division is going on constantly. The King’s presence is known to believers in the joy which they feel, but it is made known to hypocrites by His cutting them off and appointing them their portion in eternal woe. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0976.cfm

At the Banquet of Mercy

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

And when the king came in to see the guests… – Matthew 22:11

“The king came in to see his guests.” This, I say, was the crowning point of the entire banquet. Observe that he came in after they were in their places. They did not see him before they had entered his halls. When an inferior entertains a superior he always advances to the door to meet him and waits until he comes…but when a superior entertains an inferior the inferior may take his seat at the table, and when all is ready the noble host will come in. It is so in the banquet of mercy. You and I see nothing of God, by way of communion with Him, until first we have been brought in by the message of mercy to the marriage-feast of the gospel; for, indeed, until then a sight of God would strike us with terror-

“Till God in human flesh I see,
My thoughts no comfort find;
The holy, just, and sacred Three
Are terrors to my mind;

But when Immanuel’s face appear,
My hope, my joy, begins;
His name forbids my slavish fear,
His grace removes my sins.”

When I get to the banquet of mercy, then it is that I can dare to look at the King of kings, but not until then. What a joyous sight, a vision of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory as He appears in the gospel, feasting us upon His fatlings. An incarnate God makes God visible to us and makes us happy in the sight. “How canst thou see My face and live?” was the old question, but, behold, it is answered this day. At the marriage union of Christ with His people we see the face of the King in His beauty, and our souls not only live, but we have life more abundantly. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/kjv/mat/22/11/s_951011

Trust Altogether to the Blood and Merits of Jesus Christ

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

For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on Him shall not be ashamed. – Romans 10:11

“Whosoever believeth on Him shall not be ashamed.” “Whosoever.” Whatever man in all the world, throughout all the ages, shall come and trust on Christ shall never be ashamed of having done so…You know what Cardinal Bellarmine said: he was a great antagonist of Luther, and thought that we might trust in our works; but, looking it all over, he admitted that inasmuch as no man could be quite sure that he had done enough good works, it was perhaps best on the whole and safest to trust altogether to the blood and merits of Jesus Christ…There is really no other hope, for if you get a little bit of your own works put into the building, of your hope, you have just so much rotten timber in the fabric, and that rot will plague the whole house, and turn it into dust at the last. No man that rested in Christ, and Christ alone, ever was ashamed of his hope; and none ever shall be. There is sure ground here. The Rock of Ages never fails.

No man is forbidden to believe; “for there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon Him.” There never was a sinner yet to whom God said, “You must not trust My Son”: on the contrary, it is written, “Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.” …Read this verse, “All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me; and him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.” Whoever will in the whole world believe in Christ may do so; he is neither too old or too young, or too rich, or too poor, or too wicked, or too moral; if he will but trust Christ he shall be saved, and he is fully allowed and permitted, yea, commanded to believe and live. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1700.cfm

Our Resurrection

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

…and unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin unto salvation. Hebrews 9:28

The resurrection is the salvation principally intended here. Alas, what evil sin hath done! How many of our best beloved lie rotting beneath the clay! The worms are feeding on those whose voices were the music of our lives. The scythe of death has cut them down like grass; they lie together in rows in yonder cemetery. Who slew all these? The sting of death is sin. But when our Lord cometh, who is the resurrection and the life, from beds of dust and silent clay our dead men shall rise; they shall leap up into immortality. “Thy brother shall rise again.” Thy children shall come again from the land of their captivity. Not a bone, nor a piece of a bone, of a saint shall be left as a trophy in the hand of the enemy. When our Lord brought forth Peter from the prison, He did not let him leave his old shoes behind him, but the angel said, “Gird thyself, and bind on thy sandals, and follow me”; and when the Lord Jesus shall come and open wide the door of the sepulcher, He will bid us come forth in the entirety of our nature and leave nothing behind. Salvation shall mean to us the perfection of our manhood in the likeness of our Lord. No aching hands and weary brows then; but we shall be raised in power. Our vile body shall be changed and made like unto His glorious body. Though sown in corruption, our body shall be raised in incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality. What a glorious prospect lies before us in connection with the day of His appearing a second time unto salvation! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2194.cfm