The Holy Spirit

The Lord Hath Done It!

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

Sing, O ye heavens; for the LORD hath done it… – Isaiah 44:23

Brethren, the very center and emphasis of the song seems to me to lie in this: “The Lord hath done it.” How my heart delights in those five words, “The Lord hath done it!” Look at them for a minute. Whatever God does is the subject of joy to all pure beings. God in action is the delight of an intelligent universe. When God created the world, the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy. I can well conceive that they kept a more than ordinarily joyous festival on that Seventh Day, when the Lord “rested and was refreshed.” Wondrous expression! If we were perfect, everything that God did would cause us to sing, and as He is always acting, we should be always singing. If salvation were the work of man, our scantiest notes might suffice, for what is man but a worm, a creature that is crushed before the moth? Wherein is he to be accounted of? But when we sing of redemption it is the Lord’s redemption. He planned it from the beginning; He carried it out in the person of His Son; He applies it by His Holy Spirit. Salvation is of the Lord. “The Lord hath done it.” You who choose may invent a salvation that is partly by man and partly by God, and you may cry this up much as you please; as for me, I have no desire for any salvation but that which is all of God, neither is there any other. This one note shall occupy my entire being-“The Lord hath done it:” “The Lord hath done it.” Every new convert who has newly found peace knows that the Lord has done it; every man who has been for years a believer, and has learned his own weakness, will say clearly, “The Lord hath done it;” ay, and the aged Christian just about to depart is the man to say, “The Lord hath done it.” Grace reigns without a rival, the Lord alone is exalted. Sing, O heavens, and be joyful O earth, for redemption is Jehovah’s work. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1240.cfm

The Day Will Come

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Father, The Holy Spirit 4 Comments

I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto Me; for I have redeemed thee. – Isaiah 44:22

There are times when our unbelief makes new clouds and threatens new storms. Though our sin was all forgiven at the very first, and when we were first washed we were clean every whit, so that we needed not ever afterwards to wash again, except to wash our feet, yet unbelief can revive the memories of sin, and defile the conscience with dead works, and so it can create clouds between us and God: nevertheless, when our Lord reveals Himself He blotteth out our sins like a cloud, and like a thick cloud our transgressions, and again we return unto Him and rejoice in Him. We need not come under these returning glooms, and we ought not to do so; but should it happen to us that we come under a cloud, it will be a blessed thing to look up and remember that the Lord can clear the skies in a moment and turn our dreariest shades into the brightness of the morning.

The day will come when the gospel shall have been preached for the last time, when the chosen of God shall have been all gathered out from among men, and the dispensation shall be fulfilled. Then shall all the saints rise to glory at the call of God. The elect multitude shall be all there, every one according to the purpose of the Father, every one according to the redemption of the Son, every one according to the calling of the Spirit, all there; upon their faces there shall be no spot nor wrinkle, and on their garments no stain nor defilement, for they are without fault before the throne of God. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1240.cfm

He Was Seen of Me

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

And last of all He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time. – 1 Corinthians 15:8

Though Paul was, in a spiritual sense, “born out of due time,” he was truly born again; and those persons, who have been converted at singular times, and under strange circumstances, have been really converted. How do we know that Paul was born again, and that he was called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ?

I answer, because he had seen the Lord. After mentioning those who saw the risen Christ, he says, “Last of all He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.” The first, evidence that he was an apostle was that he had actually beheld the Lord. Now, in a spiritual sense, one of the marks of a true believer is that he has seen the Lord. My dear friend, if you have looked to Christ for forgiveness…if you have by faith seen Jesus on the cross, and truly trusted Him, you are as much saved as the man is who believed in Christ fifty years ago. Looking to Jesus is the evidence that we are born again; and happy is everyone who can truthfully say, concerning Christ.” He was seen of me also.” “I looked to Him; He looked on me; and we were one for ever. I trusted to Him, and therefore I am saved.” If you can say that from your heart and the Holy Spirit bears witness that what you say is true, you. need, not raise any question about your new birth. If thou art trusting in Jesus, it is well with thy soul in time and to eternity. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2663.cfm

God’s Timing

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

And last of all He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time. – 1 Corinthians 15:8

Mr. Tennant, a famous American minister of Whitefield’s time, one of the most earnest and seraphic men who ever proclaimed the gospel of Jesus Christ, had a hearer, who remained unmoved under many a score of his most faithful sermons. Others were saved, but not this man; he seemed unmoved and immovable; but it came to pass, on a certain Sabbath, that a very unusual thing happened. Mr. Tennant had prepared his sermon with great, care, it was what we are wont to call a laborious discourse, into which he had put all the thought and all the pains possible; but he had not been preaching long before his memory completely failed him, his mind refused to work, and, after floundering about for a while, he was obliged to sit down in great confusion, and say that, he could not preach to the people that day. The man I have mentioned, who had never before been impressed under Mr. Tennant’s ministry, was that day called by sovereign grace, as “one born out of due time,” for he was led to see that there was a spiritual and supernatural force which had usually helped the pastor to preach, and that, when this divine influence was withdrawn, he was as weak as other men, and could not speak with power: as he had been accustomed to do. This truth, somehow or other, -for human minds are strangely constituted, and things which have no effect upon certain people very greatly affect others who are present at the same time;- this truth, I say, induced the man to think; thinking, he was led to believe in God, and to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for the salvation of his soul. He was, without doubt, one “born out of due time.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2663.cfm

Converted

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit 1 Comment

“One born out of due time.”-1 Corinthians 15:8

It was necessary that Paul, as an apostle, should have seen the Lord. He was not converted at the time of Christ’s ascension; yet he was made an apostle, for the Lord Jesus appeared to him in the way, as he was going to Damascus to persecute the saints of God. When he looked upon himself as thus put in, as it were, at the end of the apostles, he spoke of himself in the most depreciating terms, calling himself, “one born out of due time.” Those who are acquainted with the Greek tongue know what a despicable term Paul here applied to himself,-as though he was scarcely a man at all,-at any rate, as the very last of the family, “born out of due time;” and not only the last, but also the very least, for he says, “I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” 

Paul proved that he was a true citizen of the New Jerusalem because he became, of all men, most zealous for Christ, zealous for the gospel, zealous for the winning of souls; he seemed to try to do all he could to undo the mischief he had wrought in the days of his unregeneracy, and to work with both his hands and all his heart to establish and extend the kingdom which once he tried to overthrow. O God, by Thy great mercy, cause another Paul to be born in this house of prayer! Thou canst do it; wilt Thou not bring to Thyself, by the power of the Eternal Spirit, some wild, threatening, blustering, blaspheming hater of Christ, lay him at the dear feet of the Crucified, and cause him to look up and live? Pray for this, dear Christian people. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2663.cfm

Our Sword

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit 6 Comments

And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; – Ephesians 6:17

It is the lot of some of us to be called to withstand great errors. We have been sorely harassed at times with doubts and misgivings about some established truth. I suppose no one is a firm believer who has not once been a doubter. He knows no faith who never had a fear; for candid enquiry must go before absolute credence. How can anyone know the proofs and vouchers of his faith unless he has taken pains to dig into the volume of evidence that lies at its base? Now it is a fine, a noble thing, when you have had a conflict in your own soul with some plausible heresy, some seductive perversion of the truth, and have put it to flight with the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; it is a noble feat, I say, to capture the arms of your assailant and to use the very weapons of the adversary against him. You have detected his sophistry, you have found out his devices, and now for the future you will not be so readily carried away with every wind of doctrine. This time you are too old to be taken with his chaff. You were deceived once, but by God’s grace you are not willing any longer to lend a ready ear to the fair speech which casts a mist over plain facts, but you henceforth resolve to prove the spirits whether they be of God. Texts of Scripture are sometimes used by the adversaries of the gospel and turned against us. I know some ministers who, when they meet with a passage that they cannot immediately reconcile with the orthodox faith, alter the reading, or put a fresh sense on the words, or twist it and turn it to suit their purpose. It is a bad plan, my brethren; the texts of Scripture are to be taken as they stand, and you may rest assured they will always defend, never overturn, the faith once delivered to the saints. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0972.cfm

Comforted to Comfort

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit 1 Comment

Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted by God. – 2 Corinthians 1:4

I do think it often proves a great blessing to a man that he had a terrible conflict, a desperate encounter, a hard-fought engagement in passing from the empire of Satan into the kingdom of God’s dear Son. Sooner or later each saved man will have his hand-to-hand fight with the prince of darkness; and as a general rule, it is a great mercy to have it over on the outset of one’s career, and be able afterwards to feel, “Whatever comes upon me, I never can suffer as I suffered when I was seeking Christ. Whatever staggering doubt, or hideous blasphemy, or ghastly insinuations, even of suicide itself, may assail my feeble heart, they cannot outdo the horror of great darkness through which my spirit passed when I was struggling after a Savior.” Full often have I found it good, when I have talked with a young convert in deep distress about his sin, to tell him something more of his anxious plight than he knew how to express and he wondered where I had found it, though he would not have wondered if he knew where I had been, and how much deeper in the mire than he; when he has talked about some horrible thought that he has had, with regard to the impossibility of his own salvation, and I have said, “Why, I have thought that a thousand times, and yet have overcome it through the help of God’s Spirit.” I know that a man’s own experience is one of the very best weapons he can use in fighting with evil in other men’s hearts. Often their misery and despondency, aggravated, as it commonly is by a feeling of solitariness, will be greatly relieved before it is effectually driven out when they find that a brother has suffered the same, and yet has been able to overcome. Right soon will he look into the same dear face and be lightened; and then he will magnify the Lord with me, and we shall exalt His name together. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0972.cfm