Praise Him for This!

September 6, 2025September 6, 2025Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

Praise waiteth for Thee, O God…Iniquities prevail against me: as for our transgressions, Thou shalt purge them away. -Psalm 65:1,3

Infinite love has made us clean every whit! -though we were black and filthy. We are washed -washed in priceless blood. Praise Him for this! Go on with the passage, “Blessed is the man whom Thou choosest and causest to approach unto Thee.” Is not the blessing of access to God an exceeding choice one? Is it a light thing to feel that, though once far off, we are made nigh through the blood of Christ; and this because of electing love! “Blessed is the man whom Thou choosest.” Ye subjects of eternal choice, can you be silent? Has God favored you above others, and can your lips refuse to sing? No, you will magnify the Lord exceedingly, because He hath chosen Jacob unto Himself, and Israel for His peculiar treasure. Let us read on, and praise God that we have an abiding place among His people-“That we may dwell in Thy courts.”-Blessed be God we are not to be cast forth and driven out after a while, but we have an entailed inheritance amongst the sons of God. We praise Him that we have the satisfaction of dwelling in His house as children. “We shall be satisfied with the goodness of Thy house, even of Thy holy temple.” But I close the psalm, and simply say to you, there are ten thousand reasons for taking down the harp from the willows; and I know no reason for permitting it to hang there idle. There are ten thousand times ten thousand reasons for speaking well of “Him who loved us and gave Himself for us.” “The Lord hath done great things for us whereof we are glad.” I remember hearing in a prayer-meeting this delightful verse mutilated in prayer, “The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we desire to be glad.” Oh, brethren, I dislike mauling, and mangling, and adding to a text of Scripture. If we are to have the Scriptures revised, let it be by scholars, and not by every ignoramus. “Desire to be glad,” indeed! This is fine gratitude to God when He hath done great things for us.” If these great things have been done, our souls must be glad and cannot help it; they must overflow with gratitude to God for all His goodness. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1023.cfm

Heart-felt Silent Praise

September 5, 2025September 5, 2025Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

“Praise is silent unto Thee”… – Psalm 65:1

There is praise for God in Zion, and it is often spoken; but there is often praise for God in Zion, and it is silence. There are some who cannot sing vocally, but perhaps, before God, they sing best. There are some, I know, who sing very harshly and inharmoniously-that is to say, to our ears; and yet God may accept them rather than the noise of stringed instruments carefully touched. There is a story told of Rowland Hill’s being much troubled by a good old lady who would sit near him and sing with a most horrible voice, and very loudly- as those people generally do who sing badly-and he at last begged her not to sing so loudly. But when she said, “It comes from my heart,” the honest man of God retracted his rebuke, and said, “Sing away, I should be sorry to stop you.” When praise comes from the heart, who would wish to restrain it. Even the shouts of the old Methodists, their “hallelujahs” and “glorys,” when uttered in fervor, were not to be forbidden; for if these should hold their peace, even the stones would cry out. But there are times when those who sing, and sing well, have too much praise in their soul for it to enclose itself in words. Like some strong liquors which cannot use a little vent, but foam and swell until they burst each hoop that binds the barrel; so, sometimes, we want a larger channel for our soul than that of mouth and tongue, and we long to have all our nerves and sinews made into harp strings, and all the pores of our body made mouths of thankfulness. Oh, that we could praise with our whole nature, with not one single hair of our heads, or drop of blood in our veins, keeping back from adoring the Most High! When this desire for praise is most vehement, we fall back upon silence, and quiver with the adoration which we cannot speak. Silence becomes our praise…Let us, then, by our silence, praise God, and let us always confess that our praise, compared with God’s deserving, is but silence. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1023.cfm

Our Highest Praise is but Silence Before God

September 4, 2025August 23, 2025Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

Praise waiteth for Thee, O God, in Zion… – Psalm 65:1

Perhaps, you are aware, dear friends, that there are other translations of this verse. “Praise waiteth for Thee,” may be read, “Praise is silent unto Thee”-“is silent before Thee.” One of the oldest Latin commentators reads it, “Praise and silence belong unto Thee;” and Dr. Gill tells us, that in the King of Spain’s Bible, it runs “The praise of angels is only silence before Thee, O Jehovah,” so that when we do our best our highest praise is but silence before God, and we must praise Him with confession of shortcomings. Oh, that we too, as our poet puts it, might,

“Loud as His thunders speak His praise,
And sound it lofty as His throne!”

But we cannot do that, and when our notes are most uplifted, and our hearts most joyous, we have not spoken all His praise. Compared to what His nature and glory deserve, our most earnest praise has been little more than silence. Oh, brethren, have you not often felt it to be so? Those who are satisfied with formal worship, think that they have done well when the music has been correctly sung; but those who worship God in spirit, feel that they cannot magnify Him enough. They blush over the hymns they sing and retire from the assembly of the saints mourning that they have fallen far short of His glory. O for an enlarged mind, rightly to conceive the divine majesty; next for the gift of utterance to clothe the thought in fitting language; and then for a voice like many waters, to sound forth the noble strain. Alas! as yet, we are humbled at our failures to praise the Lord as we would…How, then, shall we proclaim to men God’s glory? When we have done our best, our praise is but silence before the merit of His goodness, and the grandeur of His greatness. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1023.cfm

Perpetual Praise

September 3, 2025September 3, 2025Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

Praise the LORD! Oh, give thanks to the LORD, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever. – Psalm 106:1

“His mercy endureth for ever:” let our praises endure for ever. He makes the outgoings of the morning to rejoice, let us celebrate the rising of the sun with holy psalm and hymn. He makes the closing in of the evening to be glad, let Him have our vesper praise. “One generation shall praise Thy works to another, and shall declare Thy mighty acts.” Could His mercy cease, there might be some excuse for staying our praises: but even should it seem to be so, men who love the Lord would say with Job, “Shall we receive good at the hand of the Lord, and shall we not also receive evil? The Lord gave, end the Lord hath taken away; and blessed be the name of the Lord.” Let our praise abide, continue, remain, and be perpetual. It was a good idea of Bishop Farrar, that, in his own house he would keep up continual praise to God, and as, with a large family and household, he numbered just twenty-four, he set apart each one for an hour in the day to be engaged specially in prayer and praise, that he might girdle the day with a circle of worship. We could not do that. To attempt it might on our part be superstition; but to fall asleep blessing God, to rise in the night to meditate on Him, and when we wake in the morning to feel our hearts leap in the prospect of His presence during the day, this is attainable, and we ought to reach it. It is much to be desired that all day long, in every avocation, and every recreation, the soul should spontaneously pour forth praise, even as birds sing, and flowers perfume the air, and sunbeams cheer the earth. We would be incarnate psalmody, praise enshrined in flesh and blood. From this delightful duty we would desire no cessation and ask no pause…”Praise waiteth for Thee” with a servant’s livery on, a servant’s ear to hear, and a servant’s heart to obey. Praise bows at Thy foot-stool, feeling that it is still an unprofitable servant. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1023.cfm

Continual Praises

September 2, 2025August 23, 2025Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, Sovereignty of God, The Father, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

Praise is awaiting You, O God, in Zion… – Psalm 65:1

It is to be feared that some of our praise ascends nowhere at all, but it is as though it were scattered to the winds. We do not always realize God. Now, “he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him;” this is as true of praise as of prayer. “God is a Spirit,” and they that praise Him must praise Him “in spirit and in truth,” for “the Father seeketh such” to praise Him, and only such; and, if we do not lift our eyes and our hearts to Him, we are but misusing words and wasting time. Our praise is not as it should be, if it be not reverently and earnestly directed to the Lord of Hosts. Vain is it to shoot arrows without a target: we must aim at God’s glory in our holy songs, and that exclusively.

“Jesus, where’er Thy people meet,
There they behold Thy mercy-seat;
Where’er they seek Thee, Thou art found,
And every place is hallow’d ground,

For Thou within no walls confined,
Inhabitest the humble mind;
Such ever bring Thee where they come,
And going, take Thee to their home.”

There should be in all our solemn assemblies a spiritual incense altar, always smoking with “the pure incense of sweet spices, mingled according to the art of the apothecary”: the thanksgiving which is made up of humility, gratitude, love, consecration, and holy joy in the Lord. It should be for the Lord alone, and it should never go out day nor night. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1023.cfm

All Praise for Thee and Only for Thee

September 1, 2025August 23, 2025Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

Praise waiteth for Thee, O God, in Zion. – Psalm 65:1

“Praise for Thee, and all the praise for Thee,” and no praise for man or for any other who may be thought to be, or may pretend to be, worthy of praise. Have I not sometimes gone into places called houses of God where the praise has waited for a woman-for the Virgin, where praise has waited for the saints, where incense has smoked to heaven, and songs and prayers have been sent up to deceased martyrs and confessors who are supposed to have power with God? In Rome it is so, but in Zion it is not so. Praise waiteth for thee, O Mary, in Babylon; but praise waiteth for Thee, O God, in Zion. Unto God, and unto God alone, the praise of His true church must ascend. If Protestants are free from this deadly error, I fear they are guilty of another, for in our worship, we too often minister unto our own selves. We do so when we make the tune and manner of the song to be more important than the matter of it. I am afraid that where organs, choirs, and singing men and singing women are left to do the praise of the congregation, men’s minds are more occupied with the due performance of the music, than with the Lord, who alone is to be praised. God’s house is meant to be sacred unto Himself, but too often it is made an opera-house, and Christians form an audience, not an adoring assembly. The same thing may, unless great care be taken, happen amid the simplest worship, even though everything which does not savor of gospel plainness is excluded, for in that case we may drowsily drawl out the words and notes, with no heart whatever. To sing with the soul, this only is to offer acceptable song! We come not together to amuse ourselves, to display our powers of melody or our aptness in creating harmony we come to pay our adoration at the footstool of the Great King, to whom alone be glory for ever and ever. True praise is for God-for God alone. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1023.cfm