The Holy Spirit

Will You Receive God’s Mercy or His Condemnation?

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, promises, Sovereignty of God, The Father, The Holy Spirit, the unbelieving life Leave a comment

And when He comes, He will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: Of sin, because they believe not on Me… – John 16:8,9

He that believeth on Him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. – John 3:18

The all-seeing One, when He beholds men spurning the supreme gift of His love, cannot but regard such rejection as the worst proof of the hatred of their hearts against Himself. When the Holy Spirit comes to convince men of sin, the special sin which He brings to light is thus described, “Of sin, because they believed not on Me.” Not because the heathen were licentious in their habits, barbarians in their wars, and the bloodthirsty in their spirit. No, “Of sin, because they believe not on Me.”

Condemnation has come upon men, but what is the condemnation? “That light is come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil.” Remember, also, that expressive text, “He that believes not is condemned already.” And what is he condemned for? “Because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God.”

Let me remark, further, that in the rejection of divine mercy as presented in Christ, the unbeliever has displayed intense venom against God, for observe how it is. He must either receive the mercy of God in Christ, or he must be condemned—there is no other alternative. He must trust Christ whom God has set forth to be the propitiation for sin, or else he must be driven from the presence of God into eternal punishment. The unbeliever in effect says, “I had sooner be damned than accept God’s mercy in Christ.” Can we conceive a grosser insult to the infinite compassion of the great Father? ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1012.cfm

He is Salvation

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

Let such as love Thy salvation say continually, “The LORD be magnified.” – Psalm 40:16; 70:4

Let me show you, beloved, what it is in salvation that the thoughtful believer loves; and I may begin by saying that he loves, best of all, the Savior Himself. Often our Lord is called Salvation, because He is the great worker of it, the author and finisher, the Alpha and the Omega of it. He who has Christ has salvation; and, as He is the essence of salvation, He is the center of the saved ones’ affection. Have you, beloved, carefully considered that Jesus is divine, that He counts it not robbery to be equal with God, being our Creator and Preserver, as well as our Redeemer? Do you fully understand that our Lord is infinite, eternal, nothing less than God; and yet for our sakes He took upon Himself our nature, was clothed in that nature with all its infirmities, sin alone excepted, and in that nature agonized, bled, and died, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God. Oh, marvel of marvels, miracle of miracles! The immortal Lord stoops to death; the Prince of glory bows to be spit upon. Shame and dishonor could not make Him start back from His blessed purpose, but to the death of the cross He surrendered Himself. O, you who are saved, do you not love Christ, who is your salvation? Do you not feel a burning desire to behold Him as He is? Is not His presence, even now, a nether heaven to you? Will not a face-to-face view of His glory be all the heaven that your utmost stretch of imagination can conceive? I know it is so. Your heart is bound to Jesus, His name is set as a seal upon it; therefore, I charge you to say continually, “Let God be magnified.” Glory be to the Father who gave His Son, to the Son who gave Himself, to the Spirit who revealed all this to us. Triune God, be Thou extolled for ever and ever.

“He bore, that we might never bear,
His Father’s righteous ire.”

~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1013.cfm

Blessed is He Who Studies the Gospel

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

Let all those that seek Thee rejoice and be glad in Thee: let such as love Thy salvation say continually, “The LORD be magnified.” – Psalm 40:16

To sustain and bring to perfection in the renewed heart an ardent affection towards the divine salvation of a sort that will continue, and become practically fruitful, there must be an intelligent consideration, and an instructed apprehension as to the character of this salvation. It is a great pity that so many professors have only a religion of feeling and are quite unable to explain and justify their faith. They live by passion, rather than by principle. Religion is in them a series of paroxysms, a succession of emotions. They were stirred up at a certain meeting, excited, and carried away, and let us hope they were really and sincerely converted: but they have failed to become to the fullest extent disciples or learners. They do not sit at Jesus’ feet, they are not Bereans who search the Scriptures daily to see whether these things be so: they are content with the mere rudiments, the simple elements: they are still little children and have need to be fed with milk, for they cannot digest the strong meat of the kingdom. Such persons do not discern so many reasons for admiring and loving the salvation of God, as the intelligent enlightened Spirit-taught believer. I would to God that all of us, after we have received Christ, meditated much upon His blessed person, and the details of His work, and the various streams of blessings which leap forth from the central fount of Calvary’s sacrifice. All Scripture is profitable, but especially those Scriptures which concern our salvation. Some things lose by observation, they are most wondered at when least understood; but the gospel gains by study: no man is ever wearied in meditating upon it, nor does he find his admiration diminished, but abundantly increased. both day and night and finds his heart’s delight in it. Such a man will have a steadier and intenser affection for it, in proportion as he perceives its excellence and surpassing glory. The man who receives the gospel superficially and holds it as a matter of impression and little more, being quite unable to give a reason for the hope that is in him, lacks that which would confirm and intensify his love. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1013.cfm

Sanctified in Christ Jesus

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

But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us righteousness, and sanctification… – 1 Corinthians 1:30

Our sanctification is all in Christ; that is to say, it is because we are in Christ that we have the basis of sanctification, which consists in being set apart. A thing was sanctified of old, under the law, when it was set apart for God’s service. We were sanctified in Christ Jesus when we were set apart by the divine Spirit to be the Lord’s own peculiar people for ever. Election is the basis of sanctification. Moreover, the power by which we are sanctified comes to us entirely by virtue of our union with Christ. The Holy Spirit who sanctifies us through the truth, works in us by virtue of our union with Jesus. That which becomes holy in us is the new life. The old nature never changes into a holy thing; the carnal mind is not reconciled to God, neither, indeed, can be. The old man is not sent to the hospital to be healed, but to the cross to be crucified. It is not transformed and improved but doomed to die and to be buried. The ordinance of baptism…is meant to show, by our immersion in the liquid tomb, that it is by death and burial that we pass into life by the power of resurrection. If any man be in Christ, he is not an old creature mended up: he is a new creature. “Old things are passed away; behold all things are become new.” Now, it is because this new life is the great, the true matter of sanctification, and because it comes to us by virtue of our oneness with Christ, that Jesus Christ is made to us the power and the life by which we are sanctified. 

“Thou art God’s child: walk worthy of Him who is thy Father.” His love to thee will never cease. He cannot cast thee away: He is faithful and never changes, therefore love Him in return. This is a motive fit for the child of the free woman, and it moves His heart. The child of the bond woman is driven by the whip, but the child of the free woman is drawn by cords of love. “The love of Christ constraineth us;” not fear of hell but love of Christ; not fear that God will cast us away, for that He cannot do, but the joy that we are saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation constrains us to cling to Him with all our heart and soul, for ever and ever. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0991.cfm

Scholars at the Cross-foot Let Us Always Be

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

But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom… – 1 Corinthians 1:30

Jesus Christ is made unto us wisdom... we do not expect wisdom to come to us through the culture that is of man, but we expect to be made wise through sitting at our Master’s feet and accepting Him as wisdom from God Himself… “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?” It seemeth to me to be greater wisdom to believe what Christ hath said than to believe what my deepest thoughts have discovered; and though I have thought long upon a subject, and turned it over and over, and think I know more of it than another man, yet, in one simple word of Christ there is more wisdom than in all my thoughts and ruminatings. I am never to look to myself for wisdom, and to fancy that I am the creator of truth or the revealer of it; but ever to go to Him, my Lord, my Teacher, my All, and to believe that the highest culture, the best results of the highest education are to be found by sitting at His feet, and the best results of the deepest meditation, too, are to be gained in lying down in the green pastures, beside the still waters, where He, as the good Shepherd, leads me.

To know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom. Now, that man is wise in three respects who has Christ for his wisdom. Christ’s teaching will make him wise of thought, and wise of heart. All you want to know of God, of sin, of life, of death, of eternity, of predestination, of man’s responsibility, Christ has either personally, or by His Spirit in the word of God, taught you. Anything that you find out for yourself, anything over and above revelation, is folly, but whatever He has taught is wisdom; and He has so taught it that if you learn it in the spirit in which He would have you learn it, it will not be dry, dead doctrine to you, but spirit and life; and His teaching will endow you with wisdom as well as knowledge. Scholars at the cross-foot let us always be. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0991.cfm

Our Spiritual Existence

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

But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus… – 1 Corinthians 1:30

Are you this day united to Christ-a stone in that building, of which He is both foundation and topstone-a limb of that mystical body, of which He is the head? Then you did not get there of yourself. No stone in that wall leaped into its place; no member of that body was its own creator. You come to be in union with Christ through God the Father. You were ordained unto this grace by His own purpose, the purpose of the Infinite Jehovah, who chose you, or ever the earth was. “Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you.” The first cause of your union with Christ lies in the purpose of God who gave you grace in Christ Jesus from before the foundation of the world. And as to the purpose, so to the power of God is your union with Christ to be attributed. He brought you into Christ; you were a stranger, He brought you near; you were an enemy, He reconciled you. You had never come to Christ to seek for mercy if first of all the Spirit of God had not appeared to you to show you your need, and to lead you to cry for the mercy that you needed. Through God’s operation as well as through God’s decree you are this day in Christ Jesus. It will do your souls good, my brethren, to think of this very common-place truth. Many days have passed since your conversion, it may be, but do not forget what a high day the day of your new birth was; and do not cease to give glory to that mighty power which brought you out of darkness into marvellous light. You did not convert yourself; if you did, you still have need to be converted again. Your regeneration was not of the will of man, nor of blood, nor of birth; if it were so, let me tell you the sooner you are rid of it the better. The only true regeneration is of the will of God and by the operation of the Holy Ghost. “By the grace of God, I am what I am.” He “has begotten us again unto a lively hope.” “He that hath wrought us to the selfsame thing is God.” “Of Him are ye in Christ Jesus.” Through the operation and will and purpose of God are you this day a member of Christ’s body and one with Jesus. Give all the glory, then, to the Lord alone. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0991.cfm

Make Him Known

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

But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. – 1 Corinthians 1:30, 31

Beyond all question the name, person, and work of Jesus are the salt and savor of every true gospel ministry, and we cannot have too much of them. Alas! that in so many ministries there is such a lack of this first dainty of the feast, this essence of all soul-satisfying doctrine. We may preach Christ without prescribing how much, only the more we extol Him the better. It would be impossible to sin by excess in preaching Christ crucified. It was an ancient precept, “With all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt;” let it stand as an ordinance of the sanctuary now: “With all thy sermonisings and discoursings thou shalt ever mingle the name of Jesus Christ; thou shalt ever seek to magnify the alpha and omega of the plan of redemption.” The apostle in the first chapter of this epistle was anxious to speak to the Corinthians about their divisions and other serious faults, but he could not confine himself to that unpleasant theme; as naturally as possible his heart bounded over the mountains of division to his Lord and Master. Divisions did but remind him of the great uniting One who has made all His people one, and human follies did but drive him nearer to the infallible Christ who is the wisdom of God. Though Paul had to write many sharp things to those ancient Plymouth Brethren at Corinth, yet how sweetly did he prevent all bitterness by dipping his pen in the honeyed ink of love to the Lord Jesus, and admiration of His person and work! Let us, dear friends, if we have to preach, preach Christ crucified; and if we are private persons, let us in our household life, and in all our conversation, make His name to be as ointment poured forth. Let your life be Christ living in you. May you be like Asher, of whom it is said, he dipped his foot in oil may you be so anointed with the Spirit of your Lord that wherever you put down your foot, you may leave an impression of grace. The balmy south wind bears token of having passed over sunny lands; may the ordinary bent and current of your life bear evidence in it that you have communed with Jesus. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0991.cfm