The Father

This Memorable Cry

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, The Father 4 Comments

“Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? That is to say, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”- Matthew 27:46

It has been well said that every word in this memorable cry deserves to have an emphasis laid upon it. If you read it, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? I marvel not that My disciples should, but why hast Thou gone, My Father God? Why couldst Thou leave Me?” there is a wondrous meaning there. Then take it thus, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? I know why Thou hast smitten Me; I can understand why Thou dost chasten Me; but why hast Thou forsaken Me? Wilt Thou allow Me no ray of love from the brightness of Thine eyes-no sense of Thy presence whatsoever?” This was the wormwood and the gall of all the Saviour’s bitter cup. Then God forsook Him in His direst need. Or if you take it thus, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” there comes another meaning. “Me, Thy well beloved, Thine eternal well beloved, shine innocent, Thy harmless, Thine afflicted Son-why hast Thou forsaken Me? “Then, indeed, it is a marvel of marvels not that God should forsake His saints, or appear to do so, or that He should forsake sinners utterly, but that He should forsake His only Son…I gather that many a child of God has had to say precisely what the Lord Jesus, the first-born of the family, uttered upon the cross. Now as God’s children are brought into the same circumstances as Christ, and Christ is considered the exemplar…do as Jesus did. If you come into His condition, lift up your hearts to God, that you may act as He did in that condition: Under desertion of soul, the Lord Jesus still turned to God. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3507.cfm

If Christ is Yours, All Things are Yours

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

Jesus saith unto him, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me. – John 14:6

Christ is the channel of all, the pledge of all, the sum of all. All love and mercy flow from God through Christ the Mediator. We get nought apart from Him. “No man cometh unto the Father but by Me.” Other conduits are dry, but this channel is always full. “He is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them.” When God gave us Christ, He did as much as say, “I have given you all things.” “He that spared not His own Son, but freely delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” He is a covenant to us, the title-deeds of the promised rest. If you are going to travel on the Continent, you need not carry a bed with you, nor a house, nor a table, nor medicine, nor food; if you only have gold in your purse, you have these condensed. Gold is the representative of everything it can buy, it is a kind of universal talisman, producing, what its owner wishes for. I have never yet met with a person in any country who did not understand its meaning. “Money answereth all things,” says the wise man, and this is true in a limited sense; but he that has Christ, has indeed all things: he has the essence, the substance of all good. I have only to plead the name of Jesus before the Father’s throne, and nothing desirable shall be denied me. If Christ is yours, all things are yours. God, who gave you Christ, has in that one gift summed up the total of all you will want for time and for eternity, to obliterate the sin of the past, to fulfill the needs of the present, and to perfect you for all the work and bliss of the future. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1006.cfm

Herein is Love

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

Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. – 1 John 4:10

This is where all our hope, and our joy, and our love begin: “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us.” In connection with this same truth of union with Christ, and fruitbearing as the result of it, our Lord Himself says, “Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you.” When this love thus made choice of us, He entered into covenant with His Father concerning His people; and before we were born He identified Himself with us, so that in the purpose of God from all eternity we were accepted in Him. But union with us meant union with our sins; and though the Son of God could never be overcome of evil, or become a sharer in human guilt, yet by the blessed mystery of His unity with His people, He could take their sin upon Himself, and bear it in His own body on the tree. Thus, as there is no past or future to the eyes of Him before whom all events are spread out in one eternal “now”, the Son of God was able to atone for the iniquities of those who, through all the ages, would be truly joined to Him. His love that chose us did not shrink back from the awful payment which our debt rendered necessary: it was stronger than death, and mightier than the grave. Many waters could not quench it; many floods could not drown it; nor will it cease to exert its blessed influence over us until it shall bring us home to the mansions above; and not even then, for Christ’s love is everlasting. By this loving union Christ brings us safely through all the temptations of life; the ransomed spirits of such as are joined to Him are taken to be with Christ the instant they are absent from the body; and at last out of the tomb that same love shall call the body, and on the glad day of resurrection it shall be clearly seen how wonderful is the love which made our Lord so one with us.  ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2245.cfm

A Living Union with Christ

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

For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom He will. – John 5:21

This living union is Christ’s life in us. It is given to Him, not only to take us in our feebleness; but it is His divine prerogative to impart life to us, and to call dead men, and to make them live. “For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom He will.” This is how we come to have life in connection with Him. His life flows into us, as out of the tree into the branches: so that we can truly say, with the apostle, “I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith to the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” The living union begins with our Lord’s life, and then that life flows into us, and we begin to live also.

O souls, if the life of Christ is not in you, you are dead while you live, and you will die forever when you die! Unless you get linked to Christ, you will be driven from the presence of God, and away from all that makes for true life and joy. Lay hold on Christ, and you will “lay hold on eternal life”; for He is “that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us,” and living contact with Him is our only hope either for the present or for the future.

God grant to you and to me to have such a living union to Christ!~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2245.cfm

The Love that Changes a Man

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

But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him. – 1 John 2:5

Oh, if the love of the Father to Christ once enters into a man’s soul it will change him; it will sway him with the noblest passion; it will make him a zealot for Christ; it will cast out his selfishness; it will change him into the image of Christ, and fit him to dwell in heaven where love is perfected…this indwelling of the Father’s love in us has the most blessed results. It has an expulsive result. As soon as ever it gets into the heart it says to all love of sin, “Get thee hence; there remains no room for thee here.” When the light enters in, the darkness receives immediate notice of ejectment; the night is gone as soon as the dawn appears. It has also a repulsive power by which it repels the assaults of sin. As though a man did snatch the sun out of the heaven and make a round shield with it, and hold it in the very face of the prince of darkness, and blind him with the light, so doth the love of God the Father repel the enemy. It girds the soul with the armour of light. It repels the devil, the love of the world, the love of sin, and all outward temptations. And then what an impulsive power it has. Get the love of Christ into you, and it is as when an engine receives fire and steam, and so obtains the force which drives it. Then have you strengthening, then have you motive power, then are you urged on to this and that heroic deed which, apart from this sublime love, you never would have thought of. For Christ you can live, for Christ you can suffer, for Christ you can die, when once the Father’s love to him has taken full possession of your spirit. And, oh, how elevating it is. How it lifts a man up above self and sin; how it makes him seek the things that are above! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1667.cfm

The Father Loves You Even as He Loves His Son

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

Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! – 1 John 3:1

Remember that you are to have in your heart a sense of the Father’s love to you, and to recollect that it is precisely the same love wherewith He loves His Son. “That the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them.” Oh, wonder of wonders, I feel more inclined to sit down and meditate upon it than to stand up and talk about it! The love wherewith He loved His Son-such is His love to all His chosen ones. Can you believe it, that you should be the object of God’s delight, even as Christ is, because you are in Christ; that you should be the object of the Father’s love as truly as Christ is, because He sees you to be part and parcel of the mystical body of His well-beloved Son? Do not tell me that God the Father does not love you as well as He does Christ: the point can be settled by the grandest matter of fact that ever was. When there was a choice between Christ and His people which should die of the two, the Father freely delivered up His own Son that we might live through Him. Oh, what a meeting there must have been of the seas of love that day, when God’s great love to us came rolling in like a glorious springtide, and His love to His Son came rolling in at the same time. If they had met and come into collision, we cannot imagine the result; but when they both took to rolling together in one mighty torrent, what a stream of love was there! The Lord Jesus sank that we might swim, He sank that we might rise; and now we are borne onward for ever by the mighty sweep of infinite love into an everlasting blessedness which tongues and lips can never fully set forth. Oh, be ravished with this. Be carried away with it; be in ecstasy at love so amazing, so divine: the Father loves you even as He loves His Son; after the same manner and sort He loveth all His redeemed.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1667.cfm

“Yes, I know the Father loved Him…”

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

“that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.” John 17:21

Our Lord Jesus Christ desires us to have a distinct recognition of the Father’s love to Him. He wants the love wherewith the Father loves Him to be felt in us, so that we may say, “Yes, I know the Father loved Him, for I, who am such a poor, unworthy, and foolish creature, yet love Him; and, oh, how His Father must love Him.” I love Him! Ay, by His grace, it were a blessed thing to die for Him; but if I love Him, oh, how must His Father love Him who can see all His beauty, and can appreciate every distinct piece of loveliness that is in Him! …For, first and foremost, the Father and the Son are one: they are one in essence. The Saviour has been with the Father from the beginning, and His delight has been with Him, even as the Father testified, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Oh, do try to feel, if you can, the love of the Father to His Son, or else you will not love the Father as you should for the amazing sacrifice which He made in giving Jesus to us. Think what it cost Him to tear His Well-Beloved from His bosom and send Him down below to be “despised and rejected.” Think what it cost Him to nail Him up to yonder cross, and then forsake Him and hide His face from Him, because He had laid all our sins upon Him. Oh, the love He must have had to us thus to have made His best Beloved to become a curse for us, as it is written, “Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree.” I want you to get this right into your souls, dear friends. Do not hold it as a dry doctrine, but let it touch your heart. Let it flow into your heart like a boiling stream, till your whole souls become like Icelandic geysers, which boil and bubble up and send their steam aloft into the clouds. Oh, to have the soul filled with the love of the Father towards Him who is altogether lovely.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1667.cfm