The Father

Swift are the Feet of Forgiveness

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, confession of sin, promises, repentance, salvation, The Father 1 Comment

“And kissed him.”- Luke 15:20

Before the prodigal son received these kisses of love, he had said in the far country, “I will arise and go to my father.” He had, however, done more than that, else his father’s kiss would never have been upon his cheek. The resolve had become a deed: “He arose, and came to his father.” A bushelful of resolutions is of small value; a single grain of practice is worth the whole. The determination to return home is good; but it is when the wandering boy begins the business of really carrying out the good resolve, that he draws near the blessing.

Before the kisses of love were given, this young man was on his way to his father; but he would not have reached him unless his father had come the major part of the way… If you come a little way to Him, when you are “yet a great way off” He will run to meet you. I do not know that the prodigal saw his father, but his father saw him. The eyes of mercy are quicker than the eyes of repentance. Even the eyes of our faith is dim compared with the eye of God’s love. He sees a sinner long before a sinner sees Him.

I do not suppose that the prodigal travelled very fast. I should imagine that he came very slowly-

“With heavy heart and downcast eye,
With many a sob and many a sigh.”

He was resolved to come, yet he was half afraid. But we read that his father ran. Slow are the steps of repentance, but swift are the feet of forgiveness. God can run where we scarcely limp, and if we are limping towards Him, He will run towards us. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2236.cfm

The Lord’s Delights

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

Then said He, Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God. – Hebrews 10:9

Our Lord delighted to carry out all the purposes and desires of the Most High God. He so delighted in the will of God that He came to do it, and to bear it, by the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. He also delighted in God. He took an intense delight in glorifying the Father. He came to reveal the Father, and make Him to be beloved of men. He did all things to please God. Moreover, He took a delight in us; and here, though the object of His love is less, the love itself is heightened by the conspicuous condescension. The Lord Jesus took a deep delight in His people, whose names were written on His heart, and graven on the palms of His hands. His heart was fixed on their redemption, and therefore He would present Himself as a sacrifice on their behalf. The people whom the Father gave Him from before the foundation of the world lay on His very soul; for them He had a baptism to be baptized with, and He was straitened till it was accomplished. He gave Himself no rest till He had left both joy and rest to ransom His own.

When our Lord was here, He was the most blessed of men. Do you start? Do you remind me that He was “a man of sorrows”? I grant you that none was more afflicted; but I still stand to it, that within Him dwelt a joy of the highest order. To Him it was joy to be in sorrow, and honor to be put to shame…You shall never go too far in your estimate of His unfathomable griefs; but going with you to the full in it all, I shall take liberty still to say that He had within Himself a fountain of joy, which enabled Him to endure the cross, and even to despise the shame. Blessed among men was He, even when He was made a curse for us! With delight He gave Himself for us, and made a cheerful surrender of Himself, that He might be the ransom for many. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2202.cfm

Our Lord’s Wondrous Love

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

I delight to do Thy will, O God. – Psalm 40:8

Note well, that He came in complete subserviency to His Father, God. “I delight to do”-what? “Thy will.” His own will was absorbed in the divine will. His pleasure it was to say, “Not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” It was His meat and His drink to do the will of Him that sent Him, and to finish His work. Though He was Lord and God, He became a lowly servant for our sakes. Though high as the highest, He stooped low as the lowest. The King of kings was the servant of servants, that He might save His people. He took upon Him the form of a servant, and girded Himself, and stood obediently at His Father’s call.

He had a prospective delight as to His work. Before He came, He delighted in the thought of His incarnation. The Supreme Wisdom saith, “My delights were with the sons of men.” Happy in His Father’s courts, He yet looked forward to an access of happiness in becoming man. “Can that be?” saith one. Could the Son of God be happier than He was? As God, He was infinitely blessed; but He knew nothing by experience of the life of man, and into that sphere He desired to enter. To the Godhead there can be no enlargement, for it is infinite; but still there can be an addition; our Lord was to add the nature of man to that of God. He would live as man, suffer as man, and triumph as man, and yet remain God: and to this He looked forward with a strange delight, inexplicable except upon the knowledge of the great love He bore to us. He had given His heart so entirely to His dear Bride, whom He saw in the glass of predestination, that for her He would endure all things.

“Yea, saith the Lord, for her I’ll go
Through all the depths of care and woe,
And on the cross will even dare
The bitter pangs of death to bear.”

It was wondrous love. Our Lord’s love surpasses all language and even thought. I am talking prodigies and miracles at every word I utter. It was delightful to our Lord to come hither. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2202.cfm

In The Book Written by the Finger of God

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

In the volume of the book it is written of Me… – Psalm 40:7; Hebrews 10:7

There was a time before all time, when there was no day but the Ancient of Days, when all that existed was the Lord, who is all in all: then the sacred Three entered into covenant, in mutual agreement, for a sublime end. Man sinning, the Son of God shall be the surety. Christ shall bear the result of man’s offense; He shall vindicate the law of God, and make Jehovah’s name more glorious than ever it has been. The second person of the divine Unity was pledged to come, and take up the nature of men, and so become the firstborn among many brethren to lift up a fallen race, and to save a number that no man can number, elect of God the Father, and given to the Son to be His heritage, His portion, His bride. Then did the Well-beloved strike hands with the eternal God, and enter into covenant engagements on our behalf: “In the volume of the book it is written.” That sealed book, upon whose secrets no angel’s eye has looked, a book written by the finger of God long before He wrote the Book of the law upon tables of stone, that book of God may be spoken of in the Psalm, “And in Thy book all My members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.” Our Lord came to carry out all His suretyship engagements: His work is the exact fulfillment of His engagements recorded in the eternal covenant, “ordered in all things and sure.” He acts out every mysterious line and syllable, even to the full. Then He said, “A body hast Thou prepared Me. Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of Me.” It is ever a pleasing study to see our Lord, both in the written Word, and in the eternal covenant of grace. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2202.cfm

Wondrous Mystery- God in Flesh

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

“Mine ears hast Thou opened…A body hast Thou prepared Me. .” – Psalm 40:6 ; Hebrews 10:5

When the Savior came, His ear was not as ours, but was attentive to the divine voice…As man, He had a divine instinct of holiness, which made Him to know and love the Father’s will, and caused Him always to translate that will into His own life. You see He came with an opened ear, and some think that here we have an allusion to the boring of the ear in the case of the servant who had a right to liberty, but refused to quit his servitude, because he loved his master, and wished to remain with him for ever. It is not certain that there is any such reference; but it is certain that our Lord was bound for ever to the service which He had undertaken for His Father, and that He would not go back from it. He pledged Himself to redeem us, and He set His face like a flint to do it. He loved His Father, and He loved His chosen so much that He vowed to execute the Father’s work, even to what I might call “the bitter end,” if I did not know that it was a sweet and blessed end to Him.

“A body hast Thou prepared Me.” In the fullness of time He came into that body, which was admirably adapted to enshrine the Godhead. Wondrous mystery, that the infant of Bethlehem should be linked with the Infinite; and that the weary man by the shores of Galilee should be very God of very God, revealed in a body prepared for Him! “A body hast Thou prepared Me”: He had a prepared ear and a prepared body…He from old eternity dwelt with God: the Word was in the beginning with God, and the Word was God…There was fashioned by the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the blessed Virgin, a body fitted to embody the Son of God. Wrought mysteriously, by means into which we must not inquire-for what God hath veiled must remain covered-that body was suited to set forth the great mystery, “God manifest in the flesh.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2202.cfm

In the Volume of the Book it is written of Him

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

“Sacrifice and offering Thou didst not desire, mine ears hast Thou opened: burnt offering and sin offering hast Thou not required. Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do Thy will, O my God: yea, Thy law is within my heart.” – Psalm 40:6-8. (compare: Hebrews 10:5-7)

We rejoice that the Lord Jesus Himself here speaks of Himself. Who but He can declare His own generation? Here He is both the subject of the words and the speaker also. The word is from Himself and of Himself, and so we have double reason for devout attention. He tells us what He said long ago. He declares, “Lo, I come.”

Here is a message worth the telling…Tell the Ethiopians, the Chinese, the Hindoos, and all the islands of the sea that God has come hither to save men, and has taken a prepared body, that He might give to God all He required, and all that He desired, that sinful men might be accepted in the Beloved, with whom God the Father is well pleased. Go, and take to the heathen this sacred Book. “In the volume of the book it is written of Him.” Do not begin to doubt the Book yourself. Why should you send missionaries to teach them about a book in which you do not yourself believe? Tell the nations that “In the volume of the book it is written of Him.” Believe this Book, and spread it. Help Bible societies, and all such efforts; and aid missionary societies, which carry the Book and proclaim the Savior. The men of the Book of God are the men of God, such as the world needs. Bid such men go and open the Book of God, and teach the nations its blessed news. Go, dear friends, and assure the heathen that there is happiness in obedience to God. So the Savior found it. He delighted in God’s will, even to the death, and they will also know delight as in their measures they bow before the authority of the Word and the will of the one living and true God, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. Jehovah, the I AM, must be worshiped, for beside Him there is none else. Give glory unto God, whom our Lord Jesus has come to glorify. Amen. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2202.cfm

He hath not given me over!

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

…but He hath not given me over unto death. – Psalm 118:18

It is a great blessing to a child of God to feel a full assurance that he has eternal life in Christ Jesus. “The Lord hath chastened me sore: but He hath not given me over unto death.” Notice the words, “Given me over.” It is the most awful thing out of hell to be given over by God.

Unbroken prosperity and undisturbed health may be the signs of being “given over unto death”; and they are in such cases where sin is committed without pangs of conscience, or apprehensions of judgment. Such freedom from fear may be maintained even in death: “There are no bands in their death: but their strength is firm.” All goes quietly with them; “Like sheep they are laid in the grave.” But “in hell they lift up their eyes, being in torments.” To be given over unto death is often followed by callousness, presumption, and bravado; but it is a dreadful doom, the direst sentence from the throne of judgment as to this life. But you, dear child of God, have this comfort, He has not given you over, He is thinking upon you. By scourging you, He is proving that He has not given you over. Men do not prune the vine they mean to uproot; nor thresh out the weeds which they mean to burn. He who is chastened is not given over unto destruction… What joy lies in this, “He hath not given me over!” As long as the father chastens his boy, he has hope of him; if he ceased to do so altogether, we might fear that he thought him too bad to be reclaimed. Be glad, then, dear child of God, that since the Lord chastens you sore, He has not erased your name from His heart and His hands, nor yielded you up to your enemy’s power. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2237.cfm