The Father

Glorify God in Your Body

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, Sovereignty of God, The Father, The Holy Spirit 2 Comments

… therefore, glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s. – 1 Corinthians 6:20

The Christian man’s body should glorify God by its chastity. Pure as the lily should we be from every taint of uncleanness. The body should glorify God by temperance also; in all things, in eating drinking, sleeping in everything that has to do with the flesh. “Whether ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God,” or as the apostle puts it elsewhere, “whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him.” The Christian man can make every meal a sacrament, and his ordinary avocations the exercise of his spiritual priesthood. The body ought to glorify God by its industry. A lazy servant is a bad Christian. A working man who is always looking for Saturday night, a man who never spends a drop of sweat except when the master is looking on, does not glorify God in his body. The best Christian is the man who is not afraid of hard work when it is due, who works not as an eye-servant or man pleaser, but in singleness of heart seeks to glorify God. Our bodies used to work hard enough for the devil; now they belong to God, and we will make them work for Him. Your legs used to carry you to the theater; be not too lazy to come out on a Thursday night to the house of God. Your eyes have been often open upon iniquity, keep them open during the sermon: do not drop asleep! Your ears have been sharp enough to catch the word of a lascivious song let them be quick to observe the word of God. Those hands have often squandered your earnings in sinfulness, let them give freely to the cause of Christ. Your body was a willing horse when it was in the service of the devil, let it not be a sluggish hack now that it draws the chariot of Christ. Make the tongue speak His praises, make the mouth sing of His glory, make the whole man bow in willing subservience to the will of Him who bought it. As for your spirit, let that glorify God too. Let your private meditations magnify God; let your songs be to Him when no one hears you but Himself, and let your public zeal, let the purity of your conversation, let the earnestness of your life, let the universal holiness of your character, glorify God with your body and with your spirit. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1004.cfm

The Theme of Heaven

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

For ye are bought with a price: therefore, glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s. – 1Corinthians 6:20

And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation… – Revelation 5:9

What say they in heaven when they sing? They would naturally select the noblest topic and that which most engrosses their minds, and yet in the whole range of their memory they find no theme so absorbing as this: “Thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood.” Redeeming love is the theme of heaven. When you reach the upper realms your most important memory will not be that you were wealthy or poor in this life, nor the fact that you sickened and died, but that you were “bought with a price.” We do not know all that may occur in this world before the close of its history, but certainly it will be burnt up with fire, and you in yonder clouds with Christ may witness the awful conflagration. You will never forget it. There will be new heavens and new earth, and you with Christ may see the new-born heavens, and earth, laughing in the bright sunlight of God’s good pleasure; you will never forget that joyous day. And you will be caught up to dwell with Jesus for ever and ever; and there will come a time when He shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father and God shall be all in all. You will never forget the time of which the poet sings—

Then the end, beneath His rod
Man’s last enemy shall fall.
Hallelujah, Christ in God,
God in Christ is all in all.

What then, beloved? Shall it not have the chief place with you now? It has been the fact of your life hitherto, it will be the fact of your entire eternal existence: let it saturate your soul, let it penetrate your spirit, let it subdue your faculties, let it take the reins of all your powers and guide you whither it will. Let the Redeemer, He whose hands were pierced for you, sway the scepter of your spirit and rule over you this day, and world without end. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1004.cfm

The Lord Hath Done It

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

Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit (My Father) taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, He purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. – John 15:2

Supposing Him to be the gardener. – John 20:15

Certain of us have been made to suffer much physical pain, which often bites into the spirit, and makes the heart to stoop: others have suffered heavy temporal losses, having had no success in business, but, on the contrary, having had to endure privation, perhaps even to penury. Are you ready to complain against the Lord for all this? I pray you, do not do so. Take the supposition of the text into your mind this morning. The Lord has been pruning you sharply, cutting off your best boughs, and you seem to be like a thing despised that is constantly tormented with the knife. Yes, but “supposing Him to be the gardener,” suppose that your loving Lord has wrought it all, that from His own hand all your grief has come, every cut, and every gash, and every slip: does not this alter the case? Hath not the Lord done it? Well, then, if it be so, put your finger to your lip and be quiet, until you are able from your heart to say, “The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, and blessed be the name of the Lord.” I am persuaded that the Lord hath done nothing amiss to any one of His people; that no child of His can rightly complain that He has been whipped with too much severity; and that no one branch of the vine can truthfully declare that it has been pruned with too sharp an edge. No; what the Lord has done is the best that could have been done, the very thing that you and I, if we could have possessed infinite wisdom and love, would have wished to have done; therefore, let us stop each thought of murmuring, and say, “The Lord hath done it,” and be glad…Let us believe great things from the work of Christ by His Spirit in the midst of His people’s hearts, and we shall not be disappointed. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1699.cfm

Turn Unto the Lord

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

Supposing Him to be the Gardener. – John 20:15

But He answered and said, Every plant, which My heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch. – Matthew 15:13

In this great congregation many are to the Church what weeds are to a garden. They are not planted by God; they are not growing under His nurture; they are bringing forth no fruit to His glory. My dear friend, I have tried often to get at you, to impress you, but I cannot. Take heed; for one of these days, “supposing Him to be the gardener,” He will reach you, and you shall know what that word meaneth, “Every plant which My heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up.” Take heed to yourselves, I pray.

Others among us are like the branches of the vine which bear no fruit. We have often spoken very sharply to these, speaking honest truth in unmistakable language, and yet we have not touched their consciences. Ah, but “supposing Him to be the gardener,” He will fulfill that sentence: “Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit He taketh away.” He will get at you, if we cannot. Would God you would turn unto the Lord with full purpose of heart; so that instead of being a weed you might become a choice flower; that instead of a dry stick, you might be a sappy, fruit-bearing, branch of the vine. The Lord make it to be so; but if any here need the caution, I pray them to take it to heart at once. “Supposing Him to be the gardener,” there will be no escaping from His eye; there will be no deliverance from His hand. As “He will thoroughly purge His floor, and burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire,” so He will thoroughly cleanse His garden and cast out every worthless thing. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1699.cfm

Happiness in Yielding

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

Supposing Him to be the gardener. – John 20:15

Let each one of us yield himself up entirely to Him. A plant does not know how it ought to be treated; it knows not when it should be watered or when it should be kept dry: a fruit-tree is no judge of when it needs to be pruned, or digged, or dunged. The wit and wisdom of the garden lieth not in the flowers and shrubs, but in the gardener. Now, then, if you and I are here to-day with any self-will and carnal judgment about us, let us seek to lay it all aside that we may be absolutely at our Lord’s disposal. You might not be willing to put yourself implicitly into the hand of any mere man (pity that you should); but surely, thou plant of the Lord’s right-hand planting, thou mayest put thyself without a question into His dear hand. “Supposing Him to be the gardener,” thou mayest well say, “I would neither have will, nor wish, nor wit, nor whim, nor way, but I would be as nothing in the Gardener’s hands, that He may be to me my wisdom and my all. Here, kind Gardener, thy poor plant bows itself to Thy hand; train me as Thou wilt. Depend upon it, happiness lives next door to the spirit of complete acquiescence in the will of God, and it will be easy to exercise that perfect acquiescence when we suppose the Lord Jesus to be the gardener. If the Lord hath done it; what has a saint to say? Oh, thou afflicted one, the Lord hath done it: wouldst thou have it otherwise? Nay, art thou not thankful that it is even so, because so is the will of Him in whose hand thy life is, and whose are all thy ways? …Doth Christ train us? Oh, let us never cause the world to think meanly of our Master. I do not know how to put it, but surely, we ought to do something worthy of such a Lord. Each little flower in the garden of the Lord should wear its, brightest hues, and poor forth its rarest perfume, because Jesus cares for it. The best of all possible good should be yielded by every plant in our Father’s garden, supposing Jesus to the gardener. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1699.cfm

Be This Your Joy

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

Supposing Him to be the gardener. – John 20:15

One of the duties of a Christian is joy. That is a blessed religion which among its precepts commands men to be happy. When joy becomes a duty, who would wish to neglect it? Surely it must help every little plant to drink in the sunlight when it is whispered among the flowers that Jesus is the gardener. “Oh,” you say, “I am such a little plant; I do not grow well; I do not put forth so much leafage, nor are there so many flowers on me as on many round about me!” It is quite right that you should think little of yourself: perhaps to droop your head is a part of your beauty: many flowers had not been half so lovely if they had not practiced the art of hanging their heads. But supposing Him to be the gardener,” then He is as much a gardener to you as He is to the most lordly palm in the whole domain. In the Mentone garden right before me grows the orange and the aloe, and others of the finer and more noticeable plants; but on a wall to my left grows common wallflowers and saxifrages, and tiny herbs such as we find on our own rocky places. Now, the gardener had cared for all of these, little as well as great; in fact, there were hundreds of specimens of the most insignificant growths all duly labelled and described…Oh feeble child of God, the Lord taketh care of you! Your heavenly Father feedeth ravens, and guides the flight of sparrows: should He not much more care for you, oh ye of little faith? Oh, little plants, you will grow rightly enough. Perhaps you are growing downward just now rather than upward. Remember that there are plants of which we value the underground root much more than we do the hull above ground. Perhaps it is not yours to grow very fast; you may be a slow-growing shrub by nature, and you would not be healthy if you were to run to wood. Anyhow, be this your joy, you are in the garden of the Lord, and, “supposing Him to be the gardener,” He will make the best of you. You cannot be in better hands. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1699.cfm

Our Vine-dresser

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

She, supposing Him to be the gardener… – John 20:15

“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.” – John 15:1

He says, “I am the true vine: My Father is the husbandman,” and that is one view of it; but we may also sing, “My Well-beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill: and He fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine”-that is to say, He acted as gardener to it. Thus has Isaiah taught us to sing a song of the Well-beloved touching His vineyard. We read of our Lord just now under these terms-“Thou that dwellest in the gardens, the companions hearken to Thy voice.” To what purpose does He dwell in the vineyards but that He may see how the vines flourish and to care for all the plants? The image, I say, is so far from being unnatural that it is most pregnant with suggestions and full of useful teaching. In one of His own parables our Lord makes Himself to be the dresser of the vineyard…When the “certain man” came in and saw the fig tree that it brought forth no fruit, he said unto the dresser of his vineyard, “Cut it down: why cumbereth it the ground?” Who was it that intervened between that profitless tree and the axe but our great Intercessor and Interposer? He it is who continually comes forward with “Let it alone this year also till I shall dig about it and dung it.” In this case He Himself takes upon Himself the character of the vine-dresser, and we are not wrong in “supposing Him to be the gardener.”

If we would be supported by a type, our Lord takes the name of “the Second Adam,” and the first Adam was a gardener. Moses tells us that the Lord God placed the man in the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it…Behold, the Church is Christ’s Eden, watered by the river of life, and so fertilized that all manner of fruits are brought forth unto God; and He, our second Adam, walks in this spiritual Eden to dress it and to keep it; and so by a type we see that we are right in “supposing Him to be the gardener.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1699.cfm