The Holy Spirit

Divine Grace

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

And I will put My spirit within you… – Ezekiel 36:27

Who but the Lord could speak after this fashion? Can one man put the Spirit of God within another? Could all the church combined breathe the Spirit of God into a single sinner’s heart? To put any good thing into the deceitful heart of man is a great achievement; but to put the Spirit of God into the heart, truly this is the finger of God. Nay, here I may say, the Lord has made bare His arm, and displayed the fulness of His mighty power. To put the Spirit of God into our nature is a work peculiar to the Godhead, and to do this within the nature of a free agent, such as man, is marvellous. Who but Jehovah, the God of Israel, can speak after this royal style, and, beyond all dispute, declare, “I will put My spirit within you?” Men must always surround their resolves with conditions and uncertainties; but since omnipotence is at the back of every promise of God, He speaks like a king; yea, in a style which is only fit for the eternal God. He purposes and promises, and He as surely performs. Sure, then, is this sacred saying, “I will put My spirit within you.” Sure, because divine. O sinner, if we poor creatures had the saving of you, we should break down in the attempt; but, behold the Lord Himself comes on the scene, and the work is done! All the difficulties are removed by this one sentence, “I will put My spirit within you.” We have wrought with our spirit, we have wept over you, ‘and we have entreated you; but we have failed. Lo, there cometh One into the matter who will not fail, with whom nothing is impossible; and He begins His work by saying, “I will put My spirit within you.” The word is of grace and of God; regard it, then, as a pledge from the God of grace.

Glory be to God, who gives to sinners the indwelling of His Spirit. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2200.cfm

My Father!

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

For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. – Romans 8:14

And what is “the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father?” I cannot tell you; but if you have felt it you will know it. It is a sweet compound of faith that knows God to be my Father, love that loves Him as my Father, joy that rejoices in Him as my Father, fear that trembles to disobey Him because He is my Father and a confident affection and trustfulness that relies upon Him, and casts itself wholly upon Him, because it knows by the infallible witness of the Holy Spirit, that Jehovah, the God of earth and heaven, is the Father of my heart. Oh! have you ever felt the spirit of adoption? There is nought like it beneath the sky. Save heaven itself there is nought more blissful than to enjoy that spirit of adoption. Oh! when the wind of trouble is blowing and waves of adversity are rising, and the ship is reeling to the rock how sweet then to say “My Father,” and to believe that His strong hand is on the helm!-when the bones are aching, and when the loins are filled with pain, and when the cup is brimming with wormwood and gall, to say “My Father,” and seeing that Father’s hand holding the cup to the lip, to drink it steadily to the very dregs because we can say, “My Father, not my will, but Thine be done.”  “My Father!” Oh! there is music there; there is eloquence there; there is the very essence of heaven’s own bliss in that word, ” My Father,” when applied to God, and when said by us with an unfaltering tongue, through the inspiration of the Spirit of the living God.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0213.cfm

Sonship

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

…Our Father which art in heaven… – Matthew 6:9

Here is sonship-“Our Father which art in heaven.” How are we to understand this, and in what sense are we the sons and daughters of God? Some say that the Fatherhood of God is universal, and that every man, from the fact of his being created by God, is necessarily God’s son, and that therefore every man has a right to approach the throne of God, and say, “Our Father which art in heaven.” …I have never been able to see that creation necessarily implies fatherhood. I believe God has made many things that are not His children… He made the angels, who stand in an eminently high and holy position, are they His children? “Unto which of the angels said He at any time, thou art My son?” I do not find, as a rule, that angels are called the children of God; and I must demur to the idea that mere creation brings God necessarily into the relationship of a Father… Those who can say, “Our Father which art in heaven,” are something more than God’s creatures: they have been adopted into His family. He has taken them out of the old black family in which they were born; He has washed them. and cleansed them, and given them a new name and a new spirit, and made them “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ;” and all this of His own free, sovereign, unmerited, distinguishing grace. And having adopted them to be His children, He has in the next place, regenerated them by the Spirit of the living God. He has “begotten them again unto a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” and no man hath a right to claim God as his Father, unless he feeleth in his soul, and believeth, solemnly, through the faith of God’s election, that he has been adopted into the one family of which is in heaven and earth, and that he has been regenerated or born again. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0213.cfm

A Model of Prayer

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

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. – Matthew 6:9

I very much question whether this prayer was intended to be used by Christ’s own disciples as a constant form of prayer. It seems to me that Christ gave it as a model, whereby we are to fashion all our prayers, and I think we may use it to edification, and with great sincerity and earnestness, at certain times and seasons. I have seen an architect form the model of a building he intends to erect of plaster or wood; but I never had an idea that it was intended for me to live in. I have seen an artist trace on a piece of brown paper, perhaps, a design which he intended afterwards to work out on more costly stuff; but I never imagined the design to be the thing itself. This prayer of Christ is a great chart, as it were: but I cannot cross the sea on a chart. It is a map; but a man is not a traveler because he puts his fingers across the map. And so a man may use this form of prayer, and yet be a total stranger to the great design of Christ in teaching it to His disciples. I feel that I cannot use this prayer to the omission of others. Great as it is, It does not express all I desire to say to my Father which is in heaven. There are many sins which I must confess separately and distinctly; and the various other petitions which this prayer contains require, I feel, to be expanded, when I come before God in private; and I must pour out my heart in the language which His Spirit gives me; and more than that, I must trust in the Spirit to speak the unutterable groanings of my spirit, when my lips cannot actually express all the emotions of my heart. Let none despise this prayer; it is matchless, and if we must have forms of prayer, let us have this first, foremost, and chief; but let none think that Christ would tie His disciples to the constant and only use of this. Let us rather draw near to the throne of heavenly grace with boldness, as children coming to a father, and let us tell forth our wants and our sorrows in the language which the Holy Spirit teacheth us.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0213.cfm

He Will Fulfill His Divine Decree

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

And your eyes shall see, and ye shall say, The LORD will be magnified from the border of Israel. – Malachi 1:5

Those who now despise the messages which are sent to them will, at last, be left to their own devices. “My Spirit shall not always strive with man,” saith the Eternal God; and continual rejection will, at last, end in the total withdrawal of His presence, and the eternal ruin of all who have resisted Him.

But notwithstanding the rejection of men, He will fulfill the divine decree. Man’s obstinacy shall not frustrate the purpose of God; and the things which He hath foreordained shall surely come to pass. In this shall be clear evidence that the Spirit of the Lord was not straitened. Not one of God’s chosen shall be suffered to continue in the way to ruin; they shall all be effectually called, and enabled to embrace Christ as He is freely preached to them in the gospel.

He will glorify Christ, and prepare a people to welcome His advent. The gospel shall be preached among all nations, and out of every tribe and people witnesses shall be gathered to await the glorious appearing of the victorious Christ, which cannot be long delayed. Then it shall be soon how grandly the Spirit of the Lord has perfected both the number and the character of the church, which, like a chaste virgin, shall be presented to the Lamb, as the reward of His agony and intercession. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2218.cfm

Let the Lord Do His Work in His Own Way

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

… I will pardon all their iniquities … – Jeremiah 33:8

A great many persons are guilty of thinking the Spirit of God to be straitened when they fancy that He must always work in one way. When I am seeing persons who come forward to confess their faith, I find they often begin by telling me how they were brought low under a sense of sin; and I like that old-fashioned way of conversion. But when I find one beginning by saying, “The Lord met me, and filled my heart with joy and gladness under a sense of pardon, almost before I had any sense of sin, and the sense of sin followed after,” I say to myself, “Let the Lord do His work in His own way.” I am not going to make a pattern, and lay them all on it, and say that they must all be just that length, or else be stretched out a bit, or be cut shorter. No; let the Lord save His own people in His own way; and if one is made to go down to the dark dungeon of law-work, and gets whipped till he has not a bit of whole skin in his soul, I hope that it will do him good. But if another is gently led to Christ, and does not know that there is a rod, but through love and kindness is led to rejoice in his Savior, I trust that he will remember it, and be glad all his days. Conversions are not run into moulds. You cannot get a gross of conversions like a gross of steel pens. Each living child is different from any other living child. A great painter never paints exactly the same picture twice. There is always a difference somewhere, be it ever so slight; and when there is a work for eternity done in a church, it is done in very varied ways. If we begin to tie the Lord down to one way of work, we shall make a great mistake.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2218.cfm

 

However Weak and Feeble You May Be…

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

Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong. – 2 Corinthians 2:10

Dear friends, do you not think that we also treat the Spirit of God as though He were straitened when we imagine that our weakness hinders His working by us. “Oh,” says one, “I have no doubt that God can bless a great many by you!” Well, dear fiend, if you knew what I am often obliged to feel of myself, you would never talk so. I am the weakest of you all, in my own apprehension. Another says, “I know that I am inferior in ability, in knowledge, in opportunity.” Just so, dear friend; and therefore you suppose that the Spirit of God cannot use you. Do you not see, that, though you think such a confession is an evidence of humility, you are straitening the Spirit of God? However weak and feeble you may be, He can use you. If you think that He cannot, you deprive Him of power in your apprehension. It is not yourself, you see, that you are lowering, you are really lowering the power of God. He can use a person who is very insignificant, very obscure, very unlearned, very feeble. Nay, He delights to do this; and He makes even those that are strong feel weak before He uses them, so that they say, “When I am weak, then am I strong.” He will use empty vessels, and if you do not want emptying because you are empty already, then there is one little thing that needs not to be done, and God can begin with you at once. There is nothing in you-nothing. Now, if God will use you, He will manifestly have all the glory. Believe that He can use you, and get to work, and do something. Tell out His gospel. Tell it over and over again. Tell it where you have told it, or where you have never told it, and believe that God can use you; AND HE WILL! Else, if you say, “He cannot use me,” I shall put the question to you again, “Is the Spirit of the Lord straitened?”~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2218.cfm