Our Providential Position

July 26, 2025July 19, 2025Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

Where the birds make their nests… – Psalm 104:17

Birds with their nests for the cedars of Lebanon, storks for the fir trees, wild goats for the high hills, and conies for the rocks. Each of these creatures looks most beautiful at home. Go into the Zoological Gardens, and see the poor animals there under artificial conditions, and you can little guess what they are at home. A lion in a cage is a very different creature from a lion in the wilderness. The stork looks wretched in his wire pen, and you would hardly know him as the same creature if you saw him on the housetops or on the fir trees. Each creature looks best in its own place. Take that truth, now, and use it for yourself. Each man has by God a providential position appointed to him, and the position ordained for each Christian is that in which he looks best; it is the best for him and he is the best for that; and if you could change his position, and shift him to another, he would not be half as happy, nor half as useful, nor half so much himself. Put the stork on the high hills, put the wild goat on the fir trees-what monstrosities! Take my dear brother who has been a working-man this last twenty years, and always been a spiritually-minded man, and make him Lord Mayor of London, and you would spoil him altogether. Take a good hearer and set him preaching, and he would make a sorry appearance. A man out of place is not seen to advantage, you see the wrong side of him, the gracious side is hidden. The position in which God has placed me is the best for me. Let me remember this when I am grumbling and complaining. It may be I have got past that foolish discontent which is altogether selfish, but perhaps I repine because I think, if I were in a different position, I could glorify God more. This species of discontent is very insinuating, but let us beware of it. It is foolish to cry, “if I were placed in a different position, I could do so much more for God!” You could not do so much as you can do now. I am sure the goat would not show the wisdom of God so well in a fir tree, as he would up on a high hill; and you would not display the grace of God so well anywhere else as you can do where you are…God knows better than you what is best for you; bow your soul to His sovereign will. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1005.cfm

God’s Children May be Found in Strange Places

July 25, 2025July 19, 2025Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God 5 Comments

Where the birds make their nests: as for the stork, the fir trees are her house. The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats, and the rocks for the conies. – Psalm 104:17,18

There are to be found God’s people in every city. Some of you are going away, it may be, to the ends of the earth, and this word may be comfortable to you. The Lord has an elect people everywhere. The wild goats are on the rocks, and the conies amongst the stones, and the storks in the trees. Go you where you will, you shall find that God has a living people; or if you should be sent to a country where as yet there are no converted men or women, let not that discourage you, but rather say, “I am sent with the purpose of finding out God’s elect, who as yet are hidden in sin. I am to be the instrument of finding out the Lord’s own blood-bought but hidden ones here.” When thou goest into a city that is given to idolatry, thou shalt hear it said to thee, “I have much people in this city;” go, therefore, and labor to find out the much people. Introduce the gospel, tell of the love of Jesus, and you shall soon find that your efforts are rewarded by the discovery of those who shall love your Savior, and delight in the same truth which now charms your heart. Do not believe that there is a rock without its wild goat; do not think that there is a fir-forest without its stork; or that there are to be found trees by the brook without their birds. Expect to find where God dwells that there are some who are sojourners with Him, as all their fathers were. I love to think that the Lord has His hidden ones even in churches that have sadly degenerated from the faith; and, although it is yours and mine to denounce error unsparingly, and with the iconoclastic hammer to go through the land and break the idols of all the churches in pieces as far as God gives us strength, yet there is not a lamb amongst Christ’s flock that we would disdain to feed; there is not the least of all His people, however mistaken in judgment, whom our soul would not embrace an ardent love. God, in nature, has placed life in singular spots, and so has He put spiritual life into strange out-of-the-way places, and has His own chosen where least we should look for them. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1005.cfm

The Tie of Brotherhood

July 24, 2025July 19, 2025Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Father Leave a comment

The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats, and the rocks for the conies. – Psalm 104:18

I know it is the notion of the bigot, that all the truly godly people belong to the denomination which he adorns. Orthodoxy is my doxy; heterodoxy is anybody else’s doxy who does not agree with me. All the good people go to little Bethel, and nowhere else: they all worship at Zoar, and they sing out of such-and-such a selection, and as for those who cannot say Shibholeth, and lay a pretty good stress on the “h,” but who pronounce it “Sibboleth;”let the fords of the Jordan be taken, and let them be put to death. True, it is not fashionable to roast them alive, but we will condemn their souls to everlasting perdition, which is the next best thing, and may not appear to be quite so uncharitable. Many suppose that because there is grievous error in a church, concerning an ordinance or a doctrine, therefore no living children of God are there. Ah, dear brethren, this severe opinion arises from want of knowing better. A mouse had lived in a box all its life, and one day crawled up to the edge of it and looked round on what it could see. Now the box only stood in a lumber room, but the mouse was surprised at its vastness and exclaimed: “How big the world is!” If some bigots would get out of their box, and only look a little way round them, they would find the realm of grace to be far wider than they dream. It is true that these pastures are a most proper place for sheep, but yet upon yonder hill-tops wild goats are pastured by the Great Shepherd. It is true that yonder plains covered with verdure are best fitted for cattle, but the Lord of all has His beasts in the forest, and His conies among the rocks…You may have to look a long while before you find these living things, but He sees them when you do not, and it is a deal more important to a cony for God to see it, than it is for a man to see it; and so it is an infinitely more weighty matter for a child of God for his Father to know that he is His child, than for his brother to know it. If my brother will not believe me to be a Christian, he cannot help being my brother; he may do what he will in his unkindness, but if I am one of God’s children, and he also is one, the tie of brotherhood cannot be broken between us…God, in nature, has placed life in singular spots, and so has He put spiritual life into strange out-of-the-way places, and has His own chosen where least we should look for them. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1005.cfm

Each Age Has Its Saints

July 23, 2025July 19, 2025Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

Where the birds make their nests: as for the stork, the fir trees are her house. The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats, and the rocks for the conies. – Psalm 104:17,18

Almost every part of God’s world was meant to be the abode of some creature or another…The teaching of this fact is clear. We shall find that for all parts of the spiritual universe God has provided suitable forms of divine life. Think out that thought a moment. Each age has its saints. The first age had its holy men, who walked with God: and when the golden age had gone, and men everywhere had polluted themselves, God had his Noah. In after days, when men had again multiplied upon the face of the earth, and sin abounded, there was Job in the land of Uz, and Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob dwelling in tents in the land which had been given to them by promise. On whatever period of the world’s history you choose to place your finger you may rest assured that as God is there, so is there also some form of the divine life extant; some of God’s twice born creatures are to be found even in the most barren ages. If you come to a period like that of Ahab, when a lonely Elijah bitterly complains, “I, only I am left, and they seek my life to destroy it,” you shall hear a still small voice that saith, “Yet have I reserved unto Myself seven thousand men that have not bowed the knee to Baal.” God has still His elect remnant in the most wicked times to whom He has given a banner, because of the truth. When the light was almost gone from Israel, and formalism had eclipsed the sun of Judaism, there were still a Simeon and an Anna waiting for the coming of the Messiah. Times of fearful persecution, when to mention the name of Christ was to sentence yourself to death, have not been devoid of saints, but rather in the hottest times of oppression God has brought forth heroes equal to the emergency. The fiercer the trial the stronger the men. The church of God, like the fabled Salamander, has lived and flourished amid the flames, and has seemed to feed upon the flames that threatened to devour her. As on the crags where it appears impossible for life to exist God places wild goats, so on the high crags of persecution He upholds men whose feet are like hind’s feet, and who glory as they tread upon their high places. Oppression brings out the heavenly manhood of the saints and lets the devil see what strength God can put into the weakness of man. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1005.cfm

Rejoice in His Works

July 22, 2025July 19, 2025Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

The trees of the LORD are full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon, which He hath planted; Where the birds make their nests: as for the stork, the fir trees are her house. The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats, and the rooks for the conies. – Psalm 104:16-18

This Psalm is all through a song of nature, the adoration of God in the great outward temple of the universe. Some in these modern times have thought it to be a mark of high spirituality never to observe nature; and I remember sorrowfully reading the expressions of a godly person, who, in sailing down one of the most famous rivers in the world, closed his eyes, lest the picturesque beauties of the scene should divert his mind from scriptural topics. This may be regarded by some as profound spirituality; to me it seems to savor of absurdity. There may be persons who think they have grown in grace when they have attained to this; it seems to me that they are growing out of their senses. To despise the creating work of God, what is it but, in a measure, to despise God Himself? “Whoso mocketh the poor despiseth his Maker.” To despise the Maker, then, is evidently a sin; to think little of God under the aspect of the Creator is a crime…David tells us that “The Lord shall rejoice in His works.” If He rejoices in what He has made, shall not those who have communion with Him rejoice in His works also? “The works of the Lord are great, sought out of them that have pleasure therein.” Despise not the work, lest thou despise the Worker…Here on this earth is Calvary where the Savior died, and by His sacrifice, offered not within walls and roofs, He made this outer world a temple wherein everything doth speak of God’s glory. If thou be unclean, all things will be unclean to thee; but if thou hast washed thy robe and made it white in the blood of the Lamb, and if the Holy Spirit hath overshadowed thee, then this world is but a nether heaven; it is but the lower chamber of which the upper story glows with the full splendor of God, where angels see Him face to face, and this lower story is not without glory, for in the person of Christ Jesus we have seen God, and have communion and fellowship with Him even now. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1005.cfm

This Sweet Council

July 21, 2025July 5, 2025Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, promises Leave a comment

Cast not away therefore your confidence, which has great recompense of reward. For you have need of patience, that, after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise. – Hebrews 10:35.36

As the season advances, (the farmer’s) anxieties are prone to increase rather than to abate. If he has had long need of patience while the seasons have succeeded each other, and while organic changes have been in course of development, surely there is a stronger challenge of his patience as the crisis approaches when he shall reap the produce! How anxiously at this season will he observe the skies, watch the clouds, and wait the opportune time to get in his crops and garner them in good condition! Is there no peril that haunts him lest, after all, the blast or the mildew should cheat his hopes? Lest fierce winds should lay the full-grown stems prostrate on the ground? Lest then the pelting showers of rain should drench the well-filled ears of corn? I might almost call this the farmer’s last fear, and yet the most nervous fear that agitates his mind!

In like manner, beloved, we have a closing scene in prospect which may, and will in all probability, involve a greater trial of faith, and a sterner call for patience than any or all of the struggles through which we have already passed! “Cast not away therefore your confidence, which has great recompense of reward. For you have need of patience, that, after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise.” This is sweet counsel for you, O Pilgrim, to Zion’s city bound. When you were young and strong, you did walk many a weary mile with that staff of promise; it helped you over the ground; don’t throw it aside as useless, now that you are old and infirm; lean upon it! Rest upon that promise, in your present weakness, which lightened your labor in the days of your vigor. “Cast not away your confidence.” But, brothers and sisters, there is something more. The apostle says, “You have need of patience, after you have done the will of God.” But, why, you will say, is patience so indispensable at this juncture of experience? Doubtless you all know that we are never so subject to impatience as when there is nothing we can do…Here it is, brothers and sisters that after our fight is fought, after our race is run, after our allotted task is finished, there is so much need of patience; of such patience as waits only on God, and watches unto prayer, that we may finish our course with joy, and the ministry we have received of the Lord Jesus. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1025.cfm