Our Sympathetic Counsellor

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

For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmaties; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. – Hebrews 4:15

There is one thing that is always necessary in a man, before we can rejoice in his being a counsellor. There are some counsellors concerning the legislation of our country in whom you or I could not rejoice much, because we feel that in their counsels the most of us would be forgotten. Our farming friends would probably rejoice in them; they will consult their interests, there is not much doubt; but whoever heard of a counsellor yet who counselled for the poor? or who has these many years heard as much as an inkling of the name of a man who really counselled for economy and for the good of his nation. We have plenty of men who promise us that they will counsel for us- an abundance of men who, if we would but return them to parliament would most assuredly pour forth such wisdom in our behalf that, without doubt, we should be the most happy and enlightened people in the world according to their promise. but alas! when they get into office, they have no hearty sympathy with us; they belong to a different rank from the most of us, they do not sympathize with the wants and the desires of the middle class and of the poor. But, with regard to Christ, we can put every confidence in Him, for we know that in that council from eternity He sympathized with man. He says, “My delights were with the sons of men.” Happy men to have a counsellor who delights in them! Moreover, He then, though He was not man, yet foresaw that He was to be “bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh,” and therefore in the counsels of eternity He pleaded His own cause when He pleaded our cause, for He well knew that He was to be tempted in all points like as we are and was to suffer our sufferings and to be our covenant head in union with ourselves. Sweet Counsellor! I love to think Thou wast in the everlasting council, my friend, my brother born for adversity! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

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

Thy Immutable Counsels of Old

Sherry Christian Life Leave a comment

“…being predestinated according to the purpose of Him that worketh all things after the counsel of His own will.” – Ephesians 1:11

The predestination of everyone of God’s people was arranged at the eternal council, where God’s will sat as the sovereign umpire and undisputed president. There was it said of each redeemed one, “At such an hour I will call him by My grace, for I have loved him with an everlasting love, and by My lovingkindness will I draw him.” There was it originated when the peace-speaking blood shall be laid to that elect one’s conscience, when the Spirit of the living God shall breathe joy and consolation into his heart. There was it settled how that chosen one should be “kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation;” and there was it determined and settled by two immutable things, wherein it is impossible for God to lie, that every one of these should be eternally saved, beyond the shadow of a risk of perishing. The apostle Paul was not like some preachers, who are afraid to say a word about the everlasting council, for he says in his epistle to the Hebrews-“God willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of His council, confirmed it by an oath.” Now, you hear some talk about the immutability of the promise: that is good. But the immutability of God’s counsel, -that is to fathom to the very uttermost the doctrines of grace. The council of God from all eternity is immutable; not one purpose has He ever altered, not one decree has He ever changed, He has nailed His decrees against the pillars of eternity, and though the devils have sought to rend them down from the posts of His magnificent palace, yet, saith He, “have I set My king upon My holy hill of Zion;” the decree shall stand; I will do all My pleasure. Thy counsels of old are faithfulness and truth. Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast made the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth, Thou hast determined Thy plans and purposes, and they stand fast for ever and ever. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

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

His Name: Wonderful!

Sherry sermon 4 Comments

You who are King of kings and Lord of lords, we worship You. Before Jehovah’s awful throne we bow with sacred joy.

Sermon Text

The Unique Counsel of the Gospel

Sherry 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

Sherry 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

Sherry 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

Sherry 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