The Holy Spirit

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

Bravely Confident

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The LORD is on my side; I will not fear: what can man do unto me? I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the LORD. – Psalm 118:6, 17

Many Reformers had been done to death: Huss, and others who preceded him, had been burnt at the stake; Luther was cheered by the firm conviction that he was perfectly safe until his work was done. In this full assurance he went bravely to meet his enemies at the Diet of Worms, and indeed, went courageously whenever duty called him. He felt that God had raised him up to declare the glorious doctrine of justification by faith, and all the other truths of what he believed to be the gospel of God; and therefore no faggots could burn him, and no sword could kill him till that work was done. Thus he bravely wrote out his belief, and set it where many eyes would see it, “I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord.” It was no idle boast; but a calm and true conclusion from his faith in God and fellowship with him. May you and I, when we are tried, be able, through faith in God, to meet trouble with the like brave thoughts and speeches! We cannot show our courage unless we have difficulties and troubles. A man cannot become a veteran soldier if he never goes to battle. No man can get his sea legs if he lives always on land. Rejoice, therefore, in your tribulations, because they give you opportunities of exhibiting a believing confidence, and thereby glorifying the name of the Most High. But take heed that you have faith, true faith in God; and do not become a puppet of impressions, much less a slave of the judgments of others. To have David’s faith, you must be as David. No man may take up a confidence of his own making: it must be a real work of the Spirit, and growth of grace within, grasping with living tendrils the promise of the living God. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

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

Live for Eternity, Live for Christ’s Glory and Live to Win Souls

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

For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. – Philippians 1:21

It is a dreadful thing to see men, who profess to be Christians, unwilling to die. Should it be so that, when we feel ourselves ill, and likely to die, we should have a host of matters to arrange and many regrets to express? Dear brethren, begin your regrets earlier, while there is time to retrieve the past. Regret now, and ask for grace now to do all that is in you for Him who loved you, and bought you with His blood. As for you who have no redeeming blood upon you, I do not marvel that you live to yourselves. O you who despise Christ, I do not wonder if you despise yourselves so much as to be the slaves of pleasure! But you, who are the elect of God, who are bought by the blood of Jesus, who are called by His Spirit, who profess to be His people—you have nobler things to live for. I pray you, make us not to be ashamed of you by living as if you were mere worldlings, who have their portion in this life. Live for eternity. Live for Christ’s glory. Live to win souls. Behave as occupiers under a Royal Owner should behave. With such a Landlord, the best in the whole universe, be also the best of tenants, and evermore be mindful of the time of your removal to another land…

“Gird up your mind to contemplation, trembling inhabitant of the earth; Tenant of a hovel for a day, you are heir of the universe forever! For, neither congealing of the grave, nor gulphing waters of the firmament, nor expansive airs of heaven, nor dissipative fires of Gehenna, nor rust of rest, nor wear, nor waste, nor loss, nor chance, nor change, shall avail to quench or overwhelm the spark of soul within thee!”

~ C.H. Spurgeon

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Leaving This Hovel for the Mansion

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

For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. – 2 Corinthians 5:1

Set your house in order, my dear brother, even though you are leaving it, because you are going to a better one if you are a believer in Christ. The old clay shed will be taken down and you shall dwell in marble halls. You shall leave the hovel for the mansion. The traveler’s tent shall be rolled up and put away in the tomb to be exchanged for “a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” Oh, let it not be said that you were so bad a tenant in the first house that you could not be trusted with a second, but may grace cause you so to set this house in order that you may quit it without reluctance, and enter into the next with alacrity, leaving your first house behind you without shame, in sure and certain hope of a blessed resurrection! May you cheerfully leave the first house and joyfully surrender the key to the great Landlord, because you know that, go where He will in all its rooms, He will see the remembrances of His own grace, the marks of His own workmanship, the beauties and adornments of His own Holy Spirit. Then, conveyed by ministering spirits to a better country, you shall become possessors of a heritage undefiled, which fades not away…Let us remember that “now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

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House Cleaning

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit 3 Comments

“Thus says the LORD: ‘Set your house in order, for you shall die, and not live.’ ” – 2 Kings 20:1

Our body, our property, our family, this present life, and all its surroundings are in the text described as our house. As believers in Jesus Christ, if there is anything deficient in us, if there be anything excessive in us, if there be aught that is contrary to the Lord’s mind and will, may the Holy Spirit come and correct it all, so that our house may be set in order!.. Some of your houses need sweeping. The dust and filth of sin are lying all over the floors. You want the precious blood to be sprinkled, or else if the Lord begins to sweep with the bosom of the law, it will happen, as Bunyan tells us, that the dust will be enough to choke your prayers or blind the eyes of your faith. May the Gospel come and sprinkle the water of grace and then may Christ come in and sweep your house. But you need more than sweeping—your house wants washing. Every floor needs cleansing and there is no one but the Lord Jesus Christ who can do this. Nothing can make you clean but His blood. In many of your houses the windows are very filthy and the light of the glorious Gospel cannot enter, so as to bring with it an intelligent conception of the things of God. Oh, that this may be set right! The very drainage in some men’s houses is neglected. Many a foul thing stagnates, ferments, and pollutes their souls. Ah! what is there that is in order in the unregenerate man? To every one in that state, the text calls loudly, “Set thine house in order.” But sirs, unless Christ comes to help you, it is a hopeless task. Unless Christ and His Holy Spirit come to the rescue, your houses will remain out of order still, everything filthy and everything disarranged, and when the great King shall come and find it so, woe unto you, woe unto you, in the day of His appearing! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

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Our Chief Business

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Thus saith the LORD, Set thine house in order: for thou shalt die, and not live. – Isaiah 38:1

We are to set our house in order, that is, our own house. Some persons are very busy setting other people’s houses in order and oh, how fast their tongues will go when they are sweeping out their neighbor’s kitchen or dusting out his cupboard! Set your own houses in order, sirs, before you attempt to arrange the affairs of other people. Again, the tenant himself must do it. “Set thine house in order.” You must not leave it to a priest. You must not ask your fellow man to become responsible for you. You must make personal application to Him who can set all in order for you, even to Him who came into the world and died for this very purpose. If you need oil for your lamps, you must go to them that sell and buy for yourselves, for your fellow virgins can give you none of their oil. Set your own house in order. This is the chief business of every living man as a tenant under God…What kind of order is my house to be set in? My conscience will help to tell me that. An enlightened conscience tells us in what kind of order our heart, our family, and our business should be. By its teachings, we may learn how all the departments of the house should be ordered. It cannot be right that the body should be master over the soul—conscience tells us that…Conscience says that the heart is never right till the whole man is in Christ—till, by a living faith, we have embraced Jesus as our full salvation and have received the Holy Spirit as our Sanctifier. We are never right till we are right with conscience, and conscience tells us that we are never right till we are right with God. “Set thine house in order.” Obey the inward monitor, listen to the still small voice, and prepare to meet your God. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

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Our Great Landlord

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Blessed be the Lord, who daily loads us with benefits, the God of our salvation! Selah – Psalm 68:19

There is this clause in the lease, which I am afraid some have never observed, namely, that the Landlord has at all times the right of ingress and egress over His own property. I thank God that some of us have yielded to the Lord this right, and now our prayer often is that He would come into our house, and search us, and try us, and know our ways, and see if there be any evil way in us, and lead us in the way everlasting. Time was when the last thing we wished for was the presence of God, when we said to Him, “Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways.” But now, being renewed by His Spirit, we say to Him, “Abide with us.” Beloved friend, are you always ready to open the door of your heart to God’s inspection? Do you delight in heavenly communion? Do you constantly invite the Lord Jesus to come in and sup with you, and you with Him? If not, you are forgetting one great clause in your lease, and let me also say, you are forgetting the greatest privilege that men can enjoy beneath the stars. It is well for me to recall to your memories that, according to our tenure, our great Landlord permits us to call upon Him to execute all repairs. Our circumstances are apt to grow straitened, and He it is who gives us power to get wealth, He daily loads us with benefits. When our bodily tabernacle is shaken, He it is who heals all our diseases. When our sorrows and wants multiply, He it is who satisfies our mouth with good things, so that our youth is renewed like the eagle’s…Jesus is the beloved Physician. If we had more faith in God and resorted more often to Him by prayer and faith, the prescriptions of the medical man might be more often wise, and his medicines more frequently useful. The Lord, who made our house, best knows how to repair the tenement and He permits us to resort to Him. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

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