The Father

This is Stupendous Condescension

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

I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys. – Song of Songs

Be it always remembered that human self-praise is evil because of the motive which underlies it. We praise ourselves, and, alas! that we should be so foolish as to do so, we do it out of pride; but when Christ praises Himself, He does it out of humility. “Oh!” say you, “how can you prove that to be true?” Why, thus; He praises Himself that He may win our love; but what condescension it is on His part that He should care about the love of such insignificant and undeserving persons as we are! It is a wonderful stoop that the Christ of God should speak about having a bride, and that He should come to seek His bride among the sons of men. If princes were to look for consorts among beggars, that would be after all but a small stoop, for God hath made of one blood all nations of men that dwell upon the face of the earth; but for Christ to forsake the thrones and glories of heaven, and the splendours of His Father’s courts above, to come down to win a well-beloved one here, and for her sake to take upon Himself her nature, and in her nature to bear the shame of death, even the death of the cross, this is stupendous condescension of which only God Himself is capable; and this praising of Himself is a part of that condescension, a necessary means of winning the love of the heart that He has chosen. So that this is a matchless instance, not of pride, but of humility, that those dear lips of the heavenly Bridegroom should have to speak to His own commendation, and that He should say, “I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.” O human lips, why are ye silent, so that Christ must speak about Himself? O human hearts, why are ye so hard that ye will never feel until Christ Himself shall address you? O human eyes, why are ye so blind that ye shall never see till Christ shows Himself in His own superlative light and loveliness? I think I need not defend my Master, though He used these sweet emblems to set forth Himself; for this is an instance, not of His pride, but of His humility. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2472.cfm

This is Rare Praise

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God, The Father 5 Comments

My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand. His head is as the most fine gold, his locks are bushy, and black as a raven. His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk, and fitly set. His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers: his lips like lilies, dropping sweet smelling myrrh. His hands are as gold rings set with the beryl: his belly is as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires. His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine gold: his countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars. His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely. – Songs 5:16

There is no point in our Lord Jesus that you could improve. To paint the rose were to spoil its ruddy hue. To tint the lily (for He is lily as well as rose), were to mar its whiteness. Each virtue in our Lord is there in a state of absolute perfection: it could not be more fully developed. If you were able to conceive of each virtue at its ripest stage it would be found in Him. In the matter of transparent ingenuousness and sterling honesty, did ever man speak or act so truthfully as He? Ask, on the other hand, for sympathizing tenderness and love, was ever any so gentle as Jesus? Do you want reverence to God? See how He bows before the Father. Do you want boldness before men? See how He bears the Pharisees. You could not better anything which you find in Jesus. Wherever you shall cast your eye it may rest with satisfaction, for the best of the best of the best is to be seen in Him. He is altogether lovely at every separate point, so that the spouse, when she began with His head, descended to His feet, and then lifting her eyes upward again upon a return voyage of delight, she looked into His countenance and summed up all that she had seen in this one sentence, “He is altogether lovely.” This is rare praise. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1446.cfm

Doing All in the Service of God

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

If any man serve Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there shall also My servant be: if any man serve Me, him will My Father honour. – John 12:26

“The rich relics of a well-spent hour” do sometimes pour around your path a stream of light that cheers our eyes, though it may escape your notice. Are you patient under your sufferings? Do you try to keep the flesh in subjection, to govern your spirit, to refrain from murmuring, and to foster cheerfulness? That, my friend, is doing a great deal. I am sure that the holy serenity of a suffering child of God is one of the best sermons that can ever be preached in a family. A sick saint has often been more serviceable in a house than the most eloquent divine could have been. They see how sweetly you submit to the divine will, how patiently you can bear painful operations, how the Lord gives you songs in the night. Why, you are greatly useful.

You say, “I cannot serve God,” when you cannot teach in the school or preach in the pulpit, when you are unable to sit on a committee or speak on a platform: as if these were the only forms of service to be taken into account. Do you not think that a mother nursing her baby is serving God? Do you not think that men and women going about their daily toil with patient industry discharging the duties of domestic life are serving God? If you think rightly you will understand that they are. The servant sweeping the room, the mistress preparing the meal, the workman driving a nail, the merchant casting up his ledger, ought to do all in the service of God. Though, of course, it is very desirable that we should each and all have some definitely religious work before us, yet it is much better that we should hallow our common handicraft, and make our ordinary work chime with the melodies of a soul attuned for heaven. Let true religion be our life, and then our life will be true religion. That is how it ought to be. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1513.cfm

The Sayings of the Saints are the Teachings of the Spirit

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

…He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance… – John 14:26

There are some things which you and I can do naturally, when we are but children without any teaching. Who ever taught a child to cry? It is natural to do it. The first sign of its life is its shrill feeble cry of pain. Ever afterwards you need never send it to school to teach it to utter the cry of its grief, the well known expression of its little sorrows. Ah, my brethren, but you and I as spiritual infants, had to be taught to cry; for we could not even cry of ourselves, till we had received “the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.” There are cryings and groanings which cannot be uttered in words and speech, simple as this language of the new nature seems to be. But even these feeblest groanings, sighings, cryings, and tears, are marks of education. We must be taught to do this, or else we are not sufficient to do even these little things in and of ourselves. Children, as we know, have to be taught to speak, and it is by degrees that they-are able to pronounce first the shorter, and afterwards the longer words. We, too, are taught to speak. We have none of us learned, as yet, the whole vocabulary of Canaan. I trust we are able to say some of the words; but we shall never be able to pronounce them all till we come into that land where we shall see Christ, and “shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.” The sayings of the saints, when they are good and true, are the teachings of the Spirit. Marked ye not that passage-“No man can say that Jesus is the Christ but by the Holy Ghost?” He may say as much in dead words, but the spirit’s saying, the saying of the soul, he can never attain to, except as he is taught by the Holy Ghost. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0315.cfm

The Great Teacher of the Father’s Children

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, The Father, The Holy Spirit 3 Comments

…He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance… – John 14:26

The Holy Ghost is the great Teacher of the Father’s children. The Father begets us by His own will through the word of truth. Jesus Christ takes us into union with Himself, so that we become in a second sense the children of God. Then God the Holy Spirit breathes into us the “spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.” Having given us that spirit of adoption, He trains us, becomes our great Educator, cleanses away our ignorance, and reveals one truth after another, until at last we comprehend with all the saints what are the heights, and depths, and lengths, and breadths, and know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, and then the Spirit introduces the educated ones to the general assembly and church of the firstborn whose names are written in heaven. And here indeed we have a wide field spread before us, for He teaches to God’s people all that they do that is acceptable to the Father, and all that they know that is profitable to themselves.

Those first words which we ever used as Christians-“God be merciful to me a sinner,” were taught us by the Holy Spirit; and that song which we shall sing before the throne-“Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever,” shall but be the ripe fruit of that same tree of knowledge of good and evil, which the Holy Spirit hath planted in the soil of our hearts. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0315.cfm

The Gift of the Holy Spirit to Us

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

“But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, Whatsoever I have said unto you.”-John 14:26.

There are many choice gifts comprehended in the Covenant of Grace, but the first and richest of them are these twain-the gift of Jesus Christ for us and the gift of the Holy Ghost to us. The first of these I trust we are not likely to undervalue…But the second great gift, by no means inferior to the first-the gift of the Holy Spirit to us-is so spiritual and we are so carnal, is so mysterious and we are so material, that we are very apt to forget its value, ay, and even to forget the gift altogether. And yet, my brethren, let us ever remember that Christ on the cross is of no value to us apart from the Holy Spirit in us. In vain that blood is flowing, unless the finger of the Spirit applies the blood to our conscience; in vain is that garment of righteousness wrought out, a garment without seam, woven from the top throughout, unless the Holy Spirit wraps it around us, and arrays us in its costly folds. The river of the water of life cannot quench our thirst till the Spirit presents the goblet and lifts it to our lip. All the things that are in the paradise of God itself could never be blissful to us so long as we are dead souls, and dead souls we are until that heavenly wind comes from the four corners of the earth and breathes upon us slain, that we may live. We do not hesitate to say, that we owe as much to God the Holy Ghost as we do to God the Son. Indeed, it were a high sin and misdemeanor to attempt to put one person of the Divine Trinity before another. Thou, O Father, art the source of all grace, all love and mercy towards us. Thou, O Son, art the channel of Thy Father’s mercy, and without Thee Thy Father’s love could never flow to us. And Thou, O Spirit-Thou art He who enables us to receive that divine virtue which flows from the fountainhead, the Father, through Christ the channel, and by Thy means enters into our spirit, and there abides and brings forth its glorious fruit. Magnify, then, the Spirit, ye who are partakers of it; praise, laud, and love His name always, for it is seemly so to do. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0315.cfm

We Want the Holy Ghost

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

Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? …It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in His own power. But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. – Acts 1:6-8

The Savior said to the eleven that they were to wait at Jerusalem till they had received power by the Holy Ghost coming upon them. This is what we want; we want the Holy Ghost. We often speak about this; but, in truth, it is unspeakable, the power of the Holy Ghost, mysterious, divine. When it comes upon a man, he is bathed in the very essence of the Deity. The atmosphere about him becomes the life and power of God. There is an old proverb that knowledge is power; Christ has taken away the knowledge that is not power. He said, “It is not for you, child; it is not for you.” But He gives you the knowledge that is power; or, rather, that power which is better than all knowledge, the power of the Holy Spirit. Gotthold, in his parables, speaks of his little child who wanted to come into his room; but he was doing something there which he did not wish the child to see, and so he went on with his work, when, to his horror and surprise, he found that his child had in some way climbed up outside the window, and was standing on the sill trying to look in to see what his father was doing hazarding his life in the attempt. You may guess that it was not long before that child was taken down with a pat, and something more, to teach him not to pry into his father’s secrets. It is so with some of us; we need just a little pat, and perhaps more than that, to keep us from looking into things that do not belong to us. We may be comforted even if we do not know the times and the seasons, for we may get something vastly better, namely, the Holy Spirit to give us real power for our life-work. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2330.cfm