The Unique Counsel of the Gospel

December 10, 2022December 3, 2022Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, promises, Sovereignty of God, The Father, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

…that He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. – Romans 3:26

When the Three Divine Persons in the solemn seclusion of Their own loneliness consulted together with reference to the works of grace, one of the first things They had to consider was, how God should be just and yet the justifier of the ungodly-how the world should be reconciled unto God…The Son of God, with His Father and the Spirit, ordained the council of peace. Thus, was it arranged. The Son must suffer; He must be the substitute and must bear His people’s sins and be punished in their stead; the Father must accept the Son’s substitution and allow His people to go free, because Christ had paid their debts. The Spirit of the living God must then cleanse the people whom the blood had pardoned, and so they must be accepted before the presence of God, even the Father…I have always thought that one of the greatest proofs that the gospel is of God, is its revelation that Christ died to save sinners. That is a thought so original, so new, so wonderful; you have not got it in any other religion in the world; so that it must have come from God. As I remember to have heard an un-schooled and illiterate man say, when I first told him the simple story of how Christ was punished in the stead of His people: he burst out with an air of surprise, “Faith! that’s the gospel, I know; no man could have made that up; that must be of God.” That wonderful thought, that God Himself should die, that He himself should bear our sins, that so God the Father might be able to forgive and yet exact the utmost penalty, is super-human, super-angelic; not even the cherubim and seraphim could have been the inventors of it: but that thought was first struck out from the mind of God in the councils of eternity, when the “Wonderful, the Counsellor,” was present with His Father. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0215.cfm

The Wonderful Counsel of Providence

December 9, 2022December 3, 2022Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Father Leave a comment

And He is before all things, and by Him all things consist. – Colossians 1:17

From all eternity, Christ was the Counsellor of His Father with regard to providence…Was it not the Most High who divided to the nations their inheritance? Hath He not appointed the bounds of our habitation? Oh! heir of heaven, in the day of the great council Christ counselled His Father as to the weight of thy trials, as to the number of thy mercies, if they be numerable, and as to the time, the way, and the means whereby thou shouldst be brought to Himself. Remember, there is nothing that happens in your daily life, but what was first of all devised in eternity, and counselled by Jesus Christ for your good and in your behalf; that all things might work together for your lasting benefit and profit. But, my friends, what unfathomable depths of wisdom must have been involved, when God consulted with Himself with regard to the great book of providence!..Ah! Jacob, the Lord is about to provide for thee in Egypt, when there is a famine in Canaan, and He is about to make thy son Joseph great and mighty. Joseph must be sold for a slave; he must be accused wrongfully, he must be put into the pit, and in the round-house prison he must suffer. But God was going straight to His purpose all the while: He was sending Joseph before them into Egypt that they might be provided for, and when the good old patriarch said, “All these things are against me,” he did not perceive the providence of God, for there was not a solitary thing in the whole list that was against him, but everything was ruled for his weal. Let us learn to leave providence in the hand of the Counsellor, let us rest assured that He is too wise to err in His predestination, and too good to be unkind, and that in the council of eternity, the best was ordained that could have been ordained. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0215.cfm

Sovereign Counsellor in Creation

December 8, 2022December 3, 2022Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

The LORD possessed me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. – Proverbs 8:22,23

We are told in the passage we have read that the Lord Jesus Christ, who represents Himself as Wisdom, was with God before the world was created, and we have every reason to believe that we are to understand this as meaning, that He was not only with God in company, but with God in co-operation. Besides, we have other Scriptures to prove that “all things were made by Him and without Him was not any thing made that was made.” And to quote yet another passage that clinches this truth. God said, “Let Us make man;“ so that a part of the consultation was with reference to the making of worlds, and the creatures that should inhabit them. I believe that in the sovereign council of eternity, the mountains were weighed in scales, and the hills in balances; then was it fixed in sovereign council how far the sea should go, and where should be its bounds-when the sun should arise and come forth, like a giant from the chambers of his darkness, and when he should return again to his couch of rest. Then did God decree the moment when he should say, “Let there be light,” and the moment when the sun should be turned into darkness, and the moon into a clot of blood. Then did He ordain the form and size of every angel, and the destinies of every creature; then did He sketch in His infinite thought, the eagle as he soared to heaven and the worm as he burrowed into the earth. Then the little as well as the great, the minute as well as the immense, came under the sovereign decree of God. Christ was a Counsellor in the matter of creation; with none else took He counsel; none else instructed Him. Christ was the Counsellor for all the wondrous works of God. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0215.cfm

A Counsellor with God

December 7, 2022December 7, 2022Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Father, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

And His name will be called…Counsellor… – Isaiah 9:6

Men take weeks and months and sometimes years, to think out a thing that is surrounded with difficulties; they have to find the clue with much research; enveloped in folds of mystery, they have to take off first one garment and then another, before they find out the naked glorious truth. Not so God. God’s deliberations are as flashes of lightning; they are as wise as if he had been eternally considering, but the thoughts of His heart, though swift as lightning, are as perfect as the whole system of the universe. The reason why God is represented as holding a council, if I think rightly, is this: that we might understand how wise God is. “In the multitude of counsellors there is wisdom.” It is for us to think that in the council of the Eternal Three, each Person in the undivided Trinity being omniscient and full of wisdom, there must have been the sum total of all wisdom. It was to show the unanimity and co-operation of the sacred Persons: God the Father hath done nothing alone in creation or salvation. Jesus Christ hath done nothing alone; for even the work of His redemption, albeit that He suffered in some sense alone, needed the sustaining hand of the Spirit, and the accepting smile of the Father, before it could be completed. God said not, “I will make man,” but “Let Us make man in Our own image.” God saith not merely, “I will save,” but the inference from the declarations of Scripture is, that the design of the three Persons of the blessed Trinity was to save a people to Themselves, who should show forth Their praise. It was, then, for our sakes, not for God’s sake, the council was held-that we might know the unanimity of the glorious Persons, and the deep wisdom of Their devices. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0215.cfm

Our Counsellor

December 6, 2022December 3, 2022Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

“For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor.”- Isaiah 9:6

It was by a counsellor that this world was ruined. Did not Satan mask himself in the serpent, and counsel the woman with exceeding craftiness, that she should take unto herself of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, in the hope that thereby she should be as God? Was it not that evil counsel which provoked our mother to rebel against her Maker, and did it not as the effect of sin, bring death into this world with all its train of woe? Ah! beloved, it was meet that the world should have a Counsellor to restore it, if it had a counsellor to destroy it. It was by counsel that it fell and certainly, without counsel it never could have arisen. But mark the difficulties that surrounded such a Counsellor. ‘Tis easy to counsel mischief; but how hard to counsel wisely! To cast down is easy, but to build up how hard! To confuse this world and bring upon it all its train of ills was, an easy thing. A woman plucked the fruit, and it was done; but to restore order to this confusion, to sweep away the evils which brooded over this fair earth, this was work indeed, and “Wonderful” was that Christ who came forward to attempt the work, and who in the plentitude of His wisdom hath certainly accomplished it, to His own honor and glory, and to our comfort and safety.

Now, our Lord Jesus Christ is a Counsellor in a three-fold sense. First, he is God’s Counsellor; he sits in the cabinet council of the King of heaven; he has admittance into the privy chamber, and is the Counsellor with God. In the second place, Christ is a Counsellor in the sense which the Septuagint translation appends to this term. Christ is said to be the angel of the great council. He is a Counsellor in that he communicates to us in God’s behalf, what has been done in the great council before the foundation of the world. And thirdly, Christ is a Counsellor to us and with us, because we can consult with him, and he doth counsel and advise us as to the right way and the path of peace. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0215.cfm

The Blood is the Life Thereof

December 5, 2022November 19, 2022Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Father Leave a comment

You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your fathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. – 1 Peter 1:18,19

Martin Luther used to say that every sermon ought to have the doctrine of justification by faith in it. True; but let it have the doctrine of atonement in it. He says he could not get the doctrine of justification by faith in to the Wurtembergers’ heads, and he felt half inclined to take the book into the pulpit and fling it at their heads, in order to get it in. I am afraid he would not have succeeded if he had. But oh! how would I try to hammer again, and again, and again upon this one nail, “The blood is the life thereof.” “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.”

Christ giving up His life in pouring out His blood-it is this that gives pardon and peace to every one of you, if you will but look to Him- pardon now, complete pardon; pardon for ever. Look away from all other confidences and rely upon the sufferings and the death of the Incarnate God, who has gone into the heavens, and who lives today to plead before His Father’s throne, the merit of the blood which, on Calvary, He poured forth for sinners. As I shall meet you all in that great day, when the crucified One shall come as the King and Lord of all, which day is hastening on apace, as I shall meet you then, I pray you bear me witness that I have striven to tell you in all simplicity what is the way of salvation; and if you reject it, do me this favour, to say that at least I have proffered to you in Jehovah’s name this, His gospel, and have earnestly urged you to accept it, that you may be saved. But the rather I would God that I might meet you there, all covered in the one atonement, clothed in the one righteousness, and accepted in the one Saviour, and then together will we sing, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, and hath redeemed us to God by His blood to receive honour, and power, and dominion for ever and ever.” Amen. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3418.cfm