The Holy Spirit

Be Rendered Sensitive

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

Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. – Matthew 6:10

I am afraid there are some who do not obey the Master because they are proud enough to think that they know better than He does; they judge the Lord’s will instead of obeying it. Art thou a judge of the law, my brother? Art thou to sit on the judgment-seat and say of this or that statute of the law, “This does not signify,” or “That may be set aside without any loss to me”? This is not according to the mind of Christ, who did His Father’s will and asked no questions. When next you pray, “Thy will be done in earth, even as it is in heaven,” remember how they do that will before the throne of God, without hesitation, demur, or debate, being wholly subservient to every wish of the Most High.

The Spirit of God has hard work with many Christians to lead them in the right way; they are as the horse and the mule which have no understanding, whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle. There is the stout oak in the forest, and a hurricane howls through it, and it is not moved, but the rush by the river yields to the faintest breath of the gale. Now, though in many things ye should be as the oak and not as the rush, yet in this thing be ye as the bulrush and be moved by the slightest breathing of the Spirit of God. The photographer’s plates are rendered sensitive by a peculiar process: you shall take another sheet of glass and your friend shall stand before it as long as ever he likes, and there will be no impression produced, at least none which will be visible to the eye; but the sensitive plate will reveal every little wrinkle of the face and perpetuate every hair of the head. Oh, to be rendered sensitive by the Spirit of God, and we can be made so by submitting ourselves entirely to His will. Is there not a promise to that effect? – “I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1276.cfm

As Thou Wilt

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

God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. – James 4:6,7

It is essential to our happiness to say at all times, “Nevertheless, not as I will but as Thou wilt.” Brothers and sisters, ought it not so to be? Who ought to rule in the house but the Father? Who should govern in the body but the Head? Who should lead the flock but the Shepherd? We owe so much to Jesus, and so entirely belong to Him, that even were it put to the vote, all of us would give our suffrages so that the Lord Jesus should be King, Head and Chief among us; for is He not the Firstborn among many brethren? Submit, then, my brethren. Beseech the Holy Spirit to bow your will to complete subjection. You will never be happy till self is dethroned. I know some of God’s children who are in great trouble only because they will not yield to the divine will. I met with one, I believe a good sister, who said she could not forgive God for taking away her mother; and another friend said he could not see God to be a good God for he had made him suffer such terrible afflictions. Their furnace was heated seven times hotter by the fuel of rebellion which they threw into it. So long as we blame the Lord and challenge His rights, our self-tortured minds will be tossed to and fro. No father can let his boy bend his little fist in defiance, and yet treat that child with the same love and fondness as his other children who submit themselves to him. You cannot enjoy your heavenly Father’s smile, my dear brother or sister, till you cease from being in opposition to Him, and yield the point in debate; for He has said that if we walk contrary to Him He will walk contrary to us. It will be wise for you to cry, “My Father, my naughty spirit has rebelled against Thee, my wicked heart has dared to question Thee; but I cease from it now: let it be even as Thou wilt, for I know that Thou doest right.” So the text means first humility, and then submission to the Lord’s will. Lord, teach us both. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1276.cfm

Our Trust and Joy

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

While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. – 2 Corinthians 4:18

The presence of Jesus Christ on earth would have been, to a great extent, a perpetual embargo upon the life of faith. We should all have desired to see the Redeemer; but since, as man, He could not have been omnipresent, but could only have been in one spot at one time, we should have made it the business of our lives to provide the means for journeying to the place where He might be seen; or if He himself condescended to journey through all lands, we should have fought our way into the throng to feast our eyes upon Him, and we should have envied each other when the turn came for any to speak familiarly with Him. Thank God we have no cause for clamor or strife or struggle about the mere sight of Jesus after the flesh; for though once He was seen corporeally by His disciples, yet now after the flesh know we even Him no more. Jesus is no more seen of human eyes; and it is well, for faith’s sight is saving, instructing, and transforming, but mere natural sight is not so. Had He been here we should have regarded much more the things which are visible, but now our hearts are taken up with the things which are not seen, but which are eternal. This day we have no priest for eyes to gaze upon, no material altar, no temple made with hands, no solemn rites to satisfy the senses; we have done with the outward and are rejoicing in the inward. Neither in this mountain nor in that do we worship the Father, but we worship God, who is a Spirit, in spirit and in truth. We now endure as seeing Him who is invisible; whom, having not seen, we love; in whom, though now we see Him not, yet believing, we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory…In an unseen Savior we fix our trust, from an unseen Savior we derive our joy. Our faith is now the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0982.cfm

The Person and Work of the Lord Jesus

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

When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He said, It is finished: and He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost. – John 19:30

I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death. Revelation 1:18

The means by which the soul is pardoned is found in the precious blood of Jesus; the cause of its obtaining spiritual life at first is found in Christ’s finished work; and the only reason why the Christian continues still to live after he is quickened, lies in Jesus Christ, who liveth and was dead and is alive for evermore. When I first come to Christ, I know I must find all in Him, for I feel I have nothing of my own; but all my life long I am to acknowledge the same absolute dependence; I am still to look for everything in Him. ” I am the vine, ye are the branches: he that abideth in Me, and I in Him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without Me, ye can do nothing.” the temptation is after we have looked to Jesus and found life there to fancy that in future time we are to sustain ourselves in spiritual existence by some means within ourselves, or by supplies extra and apart from Christ. But it must not be so; all for the future as well as all for the past is wrapped up in the person and the work of the Lord Jesus. Because He died, ye are pardoned; because He lives, ye live; all your life still lies in Him who is the way, the truth, and the life…Do let us recollect this, that we are not saved because of anything that we are, or anything that we do; and that we do not remain saved because of anything we are or can be. A man is saved because Christ died for him, and he continues saved because Christ lives for him. The sole reason why the spiritual life abides is because Jesus lives. This is to get upon a rock, above the fogs which cover all things down below. If my life rests on something within me, then to-day I live, and to-morrow I die; but if my spiritual life rests in Christ, then in my darkest frames-ay, and when sin has most raged against my spirit- still I live in the ever-living One, whose life never changes. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0968.cfm

The Soul’s Highest Life

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

For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. – Romans 8:6

Christ is our life, but He works in us through His Holy Spirit, who dwelleth in us evermore. We know that this life very much consists in union with God. “For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither again can be. So then, they that are in the flesh cannot please God.” Death as to the body consists in the body being separated from the soul; the death of the soul lies mainly in the soul’s being separated from its God. For the soul to be in union with God is the soul’s highest life; in His presence it unfolds itself like an opening flower; away from Him it pines, and loses all its beauty and excellence, till it is as a thing destroyed. Let the soul obey God, let it be holy, pure, gracious, then is it happy and truly living; but a soul sundered from God is a soul blasted, killed, destroyed; it exists in a dreadful death; all its true peace, dignity, and glory, are gone; it is a hideous ruin, the mere corpse of manhood. The new life brings us near to God, makes us think of Him, makes us love Him, and ultimately makes us like Him. My brethren, it is in proportion as you get near to God that you enter into the full enjoyment of life-that life which Jesus Christ gives you, and which Jesus Christ preserves in you. “In His favour is life.” Psa 30:5 “The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life.” Pro 14:27 To turn to God is “repentance unto life.” To forget God is for a man to be “dead whilst he liveth.” To believe the witness of God is to possess the faith which overcometh the world. “He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself: he that believeth not God hath made Him a liar, because he believeth not the record that God gave of His Son. And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0968.cfm

The Spiritual Life

Sherry Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

Because I live, ye shall live also. – John 14:19

Life, what is it? We know practically, but we cannot tell in words. We know it, however, to be a mystery of different degrees. As all flesh is not the same flesh, so all life is not the same life. There is the life of the vegetable, the cedar of Lebanon, the hyssop on the wall…Animal life rises far above the experience and apprehension of the flower of the field. Then there is mental life, which we all of us possess, which introduces us into quite another realm from that which is inhabited by the mere beast. To judge, to foresee, to imagine, to invent, to perform moral acts, are not these new functions which the ox hath not? Now, let it be clear to you, that far above mental life there is another form of life of which the mere carnal man can form no more idea than the plant of the animal, or the animal of the poet. The carnal mind knoweth not spiritual things, because it has no spiritual capacities. As the beast cannot comprehend the pursuits of the philosopher, so the man who is but a natural man cannot comprehend the experience of the spiritually minded. Thus saith the Scripture: “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.” There is in believers a life which is not to be found in other men-nobler, diviner for education cannot raise the natural man into it, neither can refinement reach it; for at its best, “that which is born of the flesh is flesh,” and to all must the humbling truth be spoken, “Ye must be born again.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0968.cfm

Always Looking unto Jesus

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

Yet a little while, and the world seeth Me no more; but ye see Me: because I live, ye shall live also. – John 14:19

Here and there among the crowds of the sightless there were a few chosen men who had received spiritual sight; Christ had been light to them, He had opened their blind eyes, and they had seen Him as the world had not seen Him…We who have the same sight still see Him. Read carefully the words of the verse before us: “Yet a little while, and the world seeth Me no more; but ye see Me.” It is a distinguishing mark of a true follower of Jesus that he sees his Lord and Master when He is not to be seen by the bodily eye; he sees Him intelligently and spiritually; he knows his Lord, discerns His character, apprehends Him by faith, gazes upon Him with admiration as our first sight of Christ brought us into spiritual life, for we looked unto Him and were saved, so it is by the continuance of this spiritual sight of Christ that our spiritual life is consciously maintained. We lived by looking, we live still by looking. Faith is still the medium by which life comes to us from the life-giving Lord. It is not only upon the first day of the Christian’s life that he must needs look to Jesus only, but every day of that life, even until the last; his motto must be, “Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.” …Faith is the life-look. We must never think that we live by works, by feelings, or by ceremonies. “The just shall live by faith.” We dare not preach to the ungodly sinner a way of obtaining life by the works of the law, neither dare we hold up to the most advanced believer a way of sustaining life by legal means. We should in such a case expect to hear the apostle’s expostulation, “Are ye so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?” Our glorifying is that our life is not dependent on ourselves, but is safe in our Lord, as saith the apostle, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless, 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 of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” Because He lives, we live, and shall live forever. God grant that our eye may ever be clear towards Jesus, our life. May we have no confidence but in our Redeemer; may our eyes be fixed upon Him, that no other object may in any measure or degree shut out our view of Him as our all in all. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0968.cfm