The Holy Spirit

Experimental Knowledge

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

..and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. – 1 Timothy 2:4

This knowledge when it comes really to save the soul is what we call experimental knowledge-knowledge acquired according to the exhortation of the psalmist, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good”-acquired by tasting. Now, at this present moment, I, speaking for myself, know that I am originally lost by nature. Do I believe it? Believe it? I am as sure of it as I am of my own existence. I know that I am lost by nature. It would not be possible for anybody to make me doubt that: I have felt it. How many weary days I spent under the pressure of that knowledge! Does a soldier know that there is such a thing as a cat when he has had a hundred lashes? It would take a deal of argument to make him believe there is not such a thing, or that backs do not smart when they feel the lash. Oh, how my soul smarted under the lash of conscience when I suffered under a sense of sin! Do I know that I could not save myself? Know it? Why, my poor, struggling heart labored this way and that, even as in the very fire with bitter disappointment, for I labored to climb to the stars on a treadwheel, and I was trying and trying and trying with all my might, but never rose an inch higher. I tried to fill a bottomless tub with leaking buckets, and worked on and toiled and slaved, but never accomplished even the beginning of my unhappy task. I know, for I have tried it, that salvation is not in man, or in all the feelings, and weepings, and prayings, and Bible readings, and church goings, and chapel goings which zeal could crowd together. Nothing whatsoever that man does can avail him towards his own salvation. This I know by sad trial of it, and failure in it…

“Man lost: Christ his Savior. Man nothing: God all in all. The heart depraved: the Spirit working the new life by faith.” The Lord grant that these truths may come home to your hearts with power.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1516.cfm

Saved from Trusting in a Lie

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

Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. – ! Timothy 2:4

I have known men, when first they have come to a knowledge of this truth, become unable to sleep. They have started up in the night. They have asked those who were with them to help them to pray. The next day they have been scarcely able to mind their business, for a dreadful sound has been in their ears. They feared lest they should stumble into the grave and into hell. Thus they were saved from carelessness. They could not go back to be the mere brute beasts they were before. Their eyes had been opened to futurity and eternity. Their spirits had been quickened-at least so much that they could not rest in that doltish, dull, dead carelessness in which they had formerly been found. They were shaken out of their deadly lethargy by a knowledge of the truth…Often when men are awakened to know something about the wrath of God they begin to plunge about to discover divers methods by which they may escape from that wrath…Under such untruthful notions we have known people who were somewhat aroused sit down again in a false peace. They have done all that they judged right and attended to all that they were told. Suddenly, by God’s grace, they come to a knowledge of another truth, and that is that by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in the sight of God. They discover that salvation is not by works of the law or by ceremonies, and that if any man be under the law he is also under the curse. Such a text as the following comes home, “Not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God,” and such another text as this, “Ye must be born again,” and then this at the back of it-“that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” When they also find out that there is necessary a righteousness better than their own, a perfect righteousness to justify them before God, and when they discover that they must be made new creatures in Christ Jesus, or else they must utterly perish, then they are saved from false confidences, saved from crying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace. It is a grand thing when a knowledge of the truth stops us from trusting in a lie. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1516.cfm

 

All Men Saved

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

For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. – 1 Timothy 2:3, 4

It is quite certain that when we read that God will have all men to be saved it does not mean that He wills it with the force of a decree or a divine purpose, for, if He did, then all men would be saved. He willed to make the world, and the world was made: He does not so will the salvation of all men, for we know that all men will not be saved. Terrible as the truth is, yet is it certain from holy writ that there are men who, in consequence of their sin and their rejection of the Savior, will go away into everlasting punishment, where shall be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. There will at the last be goats upon the left hand as well as sheep on the right, tares to be burned as well as wheat to be garnered, chaff to be blown away as well as corn to be preserved. There will be a dreadful hell as well as a glorious heaven, and there is no decree to the contrary.

…The Holy Ghost by the apostle has written “all men,” and unquestionably He means all men…Then comes the question, “But if He wishes it to be so, why does He not make it so? ” …There stands the text, and I believe that it is my Father’s wish that “all men should be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth.” But I know, also, that He does not will it, so that He will save any one of them, unless they believe in His dear Son; for He has told us over and over that He will not. He will not save any man except he forsakes his sins, and turns to Him with full purpose of heart: that I also know. And I know, also, that He has a people whom He will save, whom by His eternal love He has chosen, and whom by His eternal power He will deliver. I do not know how that squares with this; that is another of the things I do not know. If I go on telling you of all that I do not know, and of all that I do know, I will warrant you that the things that I do not know will be a hundred to one of the things that I do know. And so we will say no more about the matter, but just go on to the more practical part of the text. God’s wish about man’s salvation is this: that men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1516.cfm

By God’s Grace

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

It is God that girdeth me with strength, and maketh my way perfect. – Psalm 18:32

Someone may perhaps say, “I have a special temptation, but I am going to set a guard against it.” …Well, first, you must find out what it is. You must get a clear idea of your own iniquity. Ask the Lord to search you, and try you, and know your ways. When you have found out what that iniquity is, then endeavour to get a due sense of its foulness and guilt in the sight of God. Ask the Lord to make thee hate most that sin to which thou art most inclined. Remember that thou art a child of God; it ill becomes thee to be friendly with any of the King’s enemies. Remember that Christ has bought thee; thou belongest to Him, thou shouldst not be the slave of any sin, thou must not be such if the life of God be in thee. The life of God in the soul hates sin; thou canst not take pleasure in any sin if thou art indeed a regenerate man or woman. Therefore, I say to thee, seek to get a sight of the heinousness of thy particular sin and the danger which attends it, that, as thou hast an extraordinary horror of it, thou mayest set that over against thy tendency to it.

Then, be resolved in the power of the Holy Spirit that this particular sin shall be overcome. There is nothing like hanging it up by the neck, that very sin, I mean. Do not fire at sin indiscriminately; but, if thou hast one sin that is more to thee than another, drag it out from the crowd, and say, “Thou must die if no other does. I will hang thee up in the face of the sun.” I tell thee that, if thou let any sin master thee, thou wilt be lost. If any sin should remain unconquered, thou art ruined; for this is the way of salvation, the absolute conquest of every sin through the grace of the Holy Spirit. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2432.cfm

Here, Jesus, Here I Am!

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

He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. – Mark 16:16

To believe is as a man would do in a stream. It is said, that if we were to fold our arms, and lie motionless, we could not sink. To believe is to float upon the stream of grace. I grant you, you shall do afterward; but you must live before you can do. The gospel is the reverse of the law. The law says, “Do and live;” the gospel says, “Live first, then do.” The way to do, poor sinner, is to say, “Here, Jesus, here I am; I give myself to Thee.” I never had a better idea of believing than I once had from a poor countryman. I may have mentioned this before; but it struck me very forcibly at the time, and I can not help repeating it. Speaking about faith he said, “The old enemy has been troubling me very much lately; but I told him that he must not say any thing to me about my sins, he must go to my Master, for I had transferred the whole concern to Him, bad debts and all.” Believing is giving up all we have to Christ, and taking all Christ has to ourselves. It is changing houses with Christ, changing clothes with Christ, changing our unrighteousness for His righteousness, changing our sins for His merits. Execute the transfer, sinner; rather, may God’s grace execute it, and give thee faith in it; and then the law will be no longer thy condemnation, but it shall acquit thee. May Christ add His blessing! May the Holy Spirit rest upon us! And may we meet at last in heaven! Then will we “sing to the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the Beloved.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3254.cfm

Begotten Again to a Lively Hope

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

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. – 1 Peter 1:3

Can men really believe that, after having been “begotten again to a lively hope,” that birth in God, through Christ, and by His Spirit, can yet fail? We have asked ourselves, Can men imagine that, after God hath once broken our chains, and set us free, He will call us back, and bind us once again, like Prometheus, to the great rocks of despair? Will He once blot out the handwriting that is against us, and then record the charge again? Once pardoned, then condemned? We trow, that had Paul been in the way of such men, he would have said, “Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died; yea, rather, that is risen again. Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” There is no condemnation to us, being in Christ Jesus; we “walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” It is a sweet thought, that Satan himself can never rob me of my pardon. I may lose my copy of it, and lose my comfort; but the original pardon is filed in heaven. It may be that gloomy doubts may arise, and I may fear to think myself forgiven: but

“Did Jesus upon me shine?
Then Jesus is for ever mine.”

“O! my distrustful heart!
How small thy faith appears.
Far greater, Lord, Thou art,
Than all my doubts and fears.
‘Midst all my sin, and fear, and woe,
Thy Spirit will not let me go.”

I love, at times, to go back to the hour when I hope I was forgiven through a Saviour’s blood. There is much comfort in it to remember that blessed hour when first we knew the Lord. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3254.cfm

The Blood Covenant

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

This is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you. – Hebrews 9:20

The blood of Jesus is the blood of the covenent. Long before this round world was made, or stars began to shine, God forsaw that He would make man. He also foresaw that man would fall into sin. Out of that fall of man His distinguishing grace and infinite sovereignty selected a multitude that no man can number to be His. But, seeing that they had offended against Him, it was necesary, in order that they might be saved, that a great scheme or plan should be devised, by which the justice of God should be fully satisfied, and yet the mercy of God should have full play. A covenant was therefore arranged between the persons of the blessed Trinity. It was agreed and solemnly pledged by the oath of the eternal Father that He would give unto the Son a multitude whom no man could number who should be His, His spouse, the members of His mystical body, His sheep, His precious jewels. These the Saviour accepted as His own, and then on His part, He undertook for them that He would keep the divine law that He would suffer all the penalties due on their behalf for offences against the law, and that He would keep and preserve every one of them until the day of His appearing. Thus stood the covenant, and on that covenant the salvation of every saved man and woman hangs…In that covenant, made between Himself and His Son, there was not a word said about our actions having any merit in them. We were regarded as though we were not, except that we stood in Christ, and we were only so far parties to the covenant as we were in the loins of Christ on that august day. We were considered to be the seed of the Lord Jesus Christ, the children of His care, the members of His own body. “According as He hath chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world.” Oh, what grace it was that put your name and mine in the eternal roll, and provided for our salvation, provided for it by a covenant, by a sacred compact between the Father and His eternal Son, that we should belong to Him in the day when He should make up His jewels!~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3293.cfm