The Father

Safe and Secure Forever

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

…who is even at the right hand of God… – Romans 8:34

The right hand of God is the place of majesty, and the place of favour too. Now, Christ is His people’s representative. When He died for them they had rest; when He rose again for them, they had liberty; when He was received into His Father’s favour, yet again, and sat at His own right hand, then had they favour, and honour, and dignity. Do you not remember that the two sons of Zebedee asked to sit, one on the right hand and the other on the left? Little did they know that they had already what they asked for, for all the church is now at the right hand of the Father; all the church is now raised up together, and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. The raising and elevation of Christ to that throne of dignity and favour, is the elevation, the acceptance, the enshrinement, the glorifying of all His people, for He is their common head, and stands as their representative. This sitting at the right hand of God, then, is to be viewed as the acceptance of the person of the surety, the reception of the representative, and therefore, the acceptance of our souls. Who is He that condemneth, then? Condemn a man that is at the right hand of God? Absurd! Impossible! Yet am I there in Christ. Condemn a man who sits next to his Father, the King of kings! Yet there is the church, and how can she in the slightest degree incur condemnation when she is already at the right hand of the Father with her covenant Head. And let me further remark, that the right hand is the place of power. Christ at the right hand of God signifies that all power is given unto Him in heaven and in earth. Now, who is he that condemns the people that have such a Head as this? O my soul! what can destroy thee if omnipotence is thy helper? If the aegis of the Almighty covers thee, what sword can smite thee? Every blood-bought redeemed child of God is safe and secure for ever. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0256.cfm

At Perfect Peace

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

…be content with such things as ye have: for He hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. – Hebrews 13:5

Some years ago, under the apprehension of divine wrath, we were unhappy and troubled, so that we could find no rest; but now we are blessed in Christ so greatly that we are at perfect peace, and our soul has dropped its anchor in the haven of content. Our joy is usually as great as formerly our sorrow used to be. We feared our sorrow would kill us: we now sometimes think that our joy is more likely to do so, for it becomes so intense that at times we can scarcely bear it, much less speak it. As we could get no rest before, so now, by faith, we feel as if we never lost that rest, for we are so quiet of heart, so calm, so settled, that we sing, “My heart is fixed, O God; my heart is fixed!” …Getting God’s blessing upon everything, we have learned to be content, and something more: we joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We used to fret before we knew Him; but His love has ended that. We thought we could do things better than God could, and we did not like His way of managing; but He has taught us to be like children, pleased with whatever our Father provides; and therefore we joyfully declare, “My soul is even as a weaned child: I have nothing to wish for. I want nothing but what my Father pleases to give me.” …Unto us who believe, Christ is precious-both treasure and honor in one: in fact, Christ is all. It is a delightful calm of mind which the believer enjoys when he dwells in Christ. Humble faith puts the soul into the guardian hand of the Redeemer, and leaves it there in the restfulness of entire trust. Grace baptizes us into blessedness. It plunges us into that sea of everlasting rest in which we hope for ever to bathe our weary souls. Yes, blessed be His name, the Lord Jesus has made life worth living! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2187.cfm

To Behold His Face

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

As for me, I will behold Thy face in righteousness… – Psalm 17:15

Have I not seen my Father’s face here below? Yes, I have, “through a glass darkly,” But has not the Christian sometimes beheld Him, when in His heavenly moments earth is gone, and the mind is stripped of matter? There are some seasons when the gross materialism dies away, and when the ethereal fire within blazes up so high that it almost touches the fire of heaven. There are seasons, when in some retired spot, calm and free from all earthly thought, we have put our shoes from off our feet because the place whereon we stood was holy ground; and we have talked with God! even as Enoch talked with Him so has the Christian held intimate communion with his Father. He has heard His love whispers, he has told out his heart, poured out his sorrows and his groans before Him. But after all he has felt that he has not beheld His face in righteousness. There was so much sin to darken the eyes, so much folly, so much frailty, that we could not get a clear prospect of our Jesus. But here the Psalmist says, “I will behold Thy face in righteousness.” When that illustrious day shall arise, and I shall see my Saviour face to face, I shall see Him “in righteousness.” 

My God, I believe I shall stand before Thy face as pure as Thou art Thyself, for I shall have the righteousness of Jesus Christ -there shall be upon me the righteousness of God. “I shall behold Thy face in righteousness.” O Christian, canst thou enjoy this? Though I cannot speak about it, dost thy heart meditate upon it? To behold His face forever; to bask in that vision! True, thou canst not understand it; but thou mayest guess the meaning. To behold His face in righteousness! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0025.cfm

Our Heart’s Cry

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

And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. – Galatians 4:6

Our heart and our flesh crieth out for God, for the living God, and this is the cry, “Abba, Father, I must know Thee, I must taste Thy love, I must dwell under Thy wing, I must behold Thy face, I must feel Thy great fatherly heart overflowing and filling my heart with peace.” the most of this crying is kept within the heart, and does not come out at the lips. Like Moses, we cry when we say not a word. God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, whereby we cry, “Abba, Father.” You know what I mean: it is not alone in your little room, by the old arm-chair, that you cry to God, but you call Him “Abba, Father,” as you go about the streets or work in the shop. The Spirit of His Son is crying “Abba, Father,” when you are in the crowd or at your table among the family. I see it is alleged as a very grave charge against me that I speak as if I were familiar with God. If it be so, I make bold to say that I speak only as I feel. Blessed be my heavenly Father’s name, I know I am His child, and with whom should a child be familiar but with his father? 0 ye strangers to the living God, be it known unto you that if this be vile, I purpose to be viler still, as He shall help me to walk more closely with Him. We feel a deep reverence for our Father in heaven, which bows us to the very dust, but for all that we can say, “truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.” No stranger can understand the nearness of the believer’s soul to God in Christ Jesus, and because the world cannot understand it, it finds it convenient to sneer, but what of that? Abraham’s tenderness to Isaac made Ishmael jealous, and caused him to laugh, but Isaac had no cause to be ashamed of being ridiculed, since the mocker could not rob him of the covenant blessing. Yes, beloved, the Spirit of God makes you cry “Abba, Father,” but the cry is mainly within your heart, and there it is so commonly uttered that it becomes the habit of your soul to be crying to your Heavenly Father. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1435.cfm

A Babe’s Lisping

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

For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. – Romans 8:15

There are seasons when doubts and fears abound, and so suffocate us with their fumes that we cannot even raise a cry, and then the indwelling Spirit represents us, and speaks for us, and makes intercession for us, crying in our name, and making intercession for us according to the will of God. Thus does the cry “Abba, Father” rise up in our hearts even when we feel as if we could not pray and dare not think ourselves children. Then we may each say, “I live, yet not I, but the Spirit that dwelleth in me.” On the other hand, at times our soul gives such a sweet assent to the Spirit’s cry that it becometh ours also, but then we more than ever own the work of the Spirit, and still ascribe to Him the blessed cry, “Abba, Father.”

God hath sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, and that Spirit cries in us exactly according to the cry of the Son. If you turn to the gospel of Mark, at the fourteenth chapter, thirty-sixth verse, you will find there what you will not discover in any other evangelist (for Mark is always the man for the striking points, and the memorable words), he records that our Lord prayed in the garden, “Abba, Father, all things are possible unto Thee; take away this cup from Me: nevertheless not what I will, but what Thou wilt.” So that this cry in us copies the cry of our Lord to the letter-“Abba, Father.” “Abba” is not a word, somehow, but a babe’s lisping. Oh, how near we are to God when we can use such a speech! How dear He is to us and dear we are to Him when we may thus address Him, saying, like the great Son Himself, “Abba, Father.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1435.cfm

The Spirit’s Cry Within Us

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

God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. – Galatians 4:6

Where the Holy Ghost enters there is a cry. “God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son, crying, ‘Abba, Father.'” Now, notice, it is the Spirit of God that cries-a most remarkable fact. Some are inclined to view the expression as a Hebraism, and read it, He “makes us to cry;” but, beloved, the text saith not so, and we are not at liberty to alter it upon such a pretence. We are always right in keeping to what God says, and here we plainly read of the Spirit in our hearts that He is crying “Abba, Father.” The apostle in Romans 8:15 says, “Ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father,” but here he describes the Spirit Himself as crying “Abba, Father.” We are certain that when he ascribed the cry of “Abba, Father” to us, he did not wish to exclude the Spirit’s cry, because in the twenty-sixth verse of the famous eighth of Romans he says, “Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” Thus he represents the Spirit Himself as groaning with unutterable groanings within the child of God, so that when he wrote to the Romans he had on his mind the same thought which he here expressed to the Galatians,-that it is the Spirit Himself which cries and groans in us “Abba, Father.” How is this? Is it not ourselves that cry? Yes, assuredly; and yet the Spirit cries also. The expressions are both correct. The Holy Spirit prompts and inspires the cry. He puts the cry into the heart and mouth of the believer. It is His cry because He suggests it, approves of it, and educates us to it. We should never have cried thus if He had not first taught us the way. As a mother teaches her child to speak, so He puts this cry of “Abba, Father” into our mouths; yea, it is He who forms in our hearts the desire after our Father God and keeps it there. He is the Spirit of adoption, and the author of adoption’s special and significant cry. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1435.cfm

Sonship Sealed by the Indwelling Spirit

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

“God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts.” – Galatians 4:6

Note, that it does not say into your heads or your brains. The Spirit of God doubtless illuminates the intellect and guides the judgement, but this is not the commencement nor the main part of His work. He comes chiefly to the affections, He dwells with the heart, for with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and “God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts.” Now, the heart is the centre of our being, and therefore doth the Holy Ghost occupy this place of vantage. He comes into the central fortress and universal citadel of our nature, and thus takes possession of the whole. The heart is the vital part; we speak of it as the chief residence of life, and therefore the Holy Ghost enters it, and as the living God dwells in the living heart, taking possession of the very core and marrow of our being. It is from the heart and through the heart that life is diffused. The blood is sent even to the extremities of the body by the pulsings of the heart, and when the Spirit of God takes possession of the affections, He operates upon every power, and faculty, and member of our entire manhood. Out of the heart are the issues of life, and from the affections sanctified by the Holy Ghost all other faculties and powers receive renewal, illumination, sanctification, strengthening, and ultimate perfection.

This wonderful blessing is ours “because we are sons;” and it is fraught with marvellous results. Sonship sealed by the indwelling Spirit brings us peace and joy; it leads to nearness to God and fellowship with Him; it excites trust, love, and vehement desire, and creates in us reverence, obedience, and actual likeness to God. All this, and much more, because the Holy Ghost has come to dwell in us. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1435.cfm