Made Clean

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

Your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you that He will not hear. – Isaiah 59:2

When sin is on your conscience it needs no law to prevent your communion with God, for you cannot approach Him—you are afraid to do so, and you have a distaste for it. Until the pardoning blood speaks peace within your spirit, you cannot draw near to God! The Apostle says, “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” It is the washing which enables us to draw near. We shrink. We tremble. We find communion impossible until we are made clean.

The defilement was frequent, but the cleansing was always ready. At a certain time, all the people of Israel brought a red heifer to be used in the expiation…The red heifer was killed before the uncleanness was committed, just as our Lord Jesus Christ was made a curse for sin long, long ago. Before you and I had lived to commit the uncleanness, there was a Sacrifice provided for us. For the easing of our conscience, we shall be wise to view this sacrifice as that of a substitute for sin and consider the results of that expiation. Sin on the conscience needs, for its remedy, the result of the Redeemer’s Substitution. 

Today the Living Water of the Divine Spirit’s sacred influences must take up the result of our Lord’s Substitution and this must be applied to our consciences. That which remains of Christ after the fire has passed upon Him, even the eternal merits—the enduring virtue of our great Sacrifice—must be sprinkled upon us through the Spirit of our God. Then are we clean in conscience, but not till then. When the eternal Sabbath breaks, then shall be the last sprinkling with the hyssop and we shall be clean, and we shall enter into the rest which remains for the people of God and clean every whit! We shall come before God, at last, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, and be as able to commune with Him as if we had never transgressed, being presented faultless before His Presence with exceedingly great joy! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1481.cfm

The Christian’s Glorious Inventory

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

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Stained Piety and Polluted Devotion

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And whosoever toucheth one that is slain with a sword in the open fields, or a dead body, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be unclean seven days. – Numbers 9:16

The Israelite became unclean even in the act of doing good, for assuredly it was a good deed to bury the dead! A man would be defiled, if, out of charity, he helped to inter the poor, or the slain, or the poor relics of mortality which might be exposed upon the plain—and yet this was a praiseworthy action. Alas, there is sin even in our holy things. A morality so pure that no human eye can detect a flaw may yet be faulty to the eye of God. Brothers and Sisters, sin stains our piety and pollutes our devotion! We do not even pray without needing to ask God to forgive the prayer. Our acts of faith have a measure of unbelief in them, for the faith is never so strong as it ought to be. Our penitential tears have some grit of impenitence in them and our heavenly aspirations have a measure of carnality to degrade them. The evil of our nature clings to all that we do. Who shall bring a clean thing out of an unclean? No one! One way or another defilement will come upon us. We have been once washed in the blood of Jesus, and we are clean before the bar of God. And yet in the Divine family we need that our feet be washed after walking awhile in this dusty world and there is not one disciple who is above the need of this washing. To one and all our Lord says, “If I wash you not, you have no part in Me.”

Pollution went forth from the polluted. Do you and I sufficiently remember how much evil we are spreading when we are out of communion with God? Every ungenerous temper creates the same in others. We never cast a proud look without exciting resentment and bad feelings in others. Somebody or other will follow our example if we are slothful—and thus we may be doing great mischief even when we are doing nothing! You cannot even bury your talent in a napkin without setting an example to others to do the same and were that example followed by all, how dreadful would be the consequences! Observe that I am not now speaking of sinners, but of the saints of God! My soul’s longing is that we may walk worthy of the Lord unto all well-pleasing and may not become unfit for communion with Him.  ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1481.cfm

Get to Living Things!

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, confession of sin, prayer, promises, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

And whosoever toucheth one that is slain with a sword in the open fields, or a dead body, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be unclean seven days. – Numbers 19:16

Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption [for us]. – Hebrews 9:12

In the passage in Numbers which is now before us, the one source of defilement dealt with is death. “Whoever touches one that is slain with a sword in the open fields, or a dead body, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be unclean seven days.” Now, death is peculiarly the symbol of sin as well as the fruit of sin. Sin, like death, defaces the image of God in man. As soon as death grasps the body of a man, it destroys the bloom of beauty, the dignity of strength and drives forth from the human form that mysterious something which is the token of life within. However comely a corpse may appear for a time, yet it is defaced—the excellence of life has departed and, alas, in a few hours, or at longest in a few days, the image of God begins utterly to pass away—corruption and the worm commence their desolating work and horror follows in their train. What death does for the “human face,” sin does for the spiritual image of God upon us. It utterly defaces it…Like a dog at one’s heels, sin is always with us! Like our shadow, it follows us, go where we may. Yes, and when the sun shines not and shadows are gone, sin is still there. Where shall we flee from its presence and where shall we hide from its power? When we would do good, evil is present with us. How humbled we ought to be at the recollection of this!

Sin is death. Labor to keep from it! Inasmuch as you are delivered from the yoke of sin, go forth and serve God! Since He is the living God and evidently hates death and makes it to be an uncleanness to Him, get to living things! Offer to God living prayers and living tears! Love Him with living love! Trust Him with living faith! Serve Him with living obedience! Be all alive with His life—not only have life—but have it more abundantly! He has purged you from the defilement of death, now live in the beauty and glory and excellency of the Divine Life and pray the Holy Spirit to quicken you that you may abide in full fellowship with God! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1481.cfm

A People Near unto Him

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

For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies to the purifying of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?—‍Hebrews 9:13-14

Beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ, you dwell in great nearness to God. He calls you “a people near unto Him.” His Grace has made you His sons and daughters and He is a Father unto you. In you is His Word fulfilled, “I will dwell in them and walk with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” Remember that your favored position as children of God has placed you under a peculiar discipline, for now God deals with you as with sons—and sons are under household law. The Lord will be sanctified in them that come near to Him. Special favor involves special rules. There were no strict laws made as to the behavior of the Amalekites, Amorites and Egyptians because they were far off from God and the times of their ignorance He winked at.

But the Lord set Israel apart to be His people and He came and dwelt in the midst of the congregation. The sacred tent wherein He displayed His Presence was pitched in the center of the camp and there the great King uplifted His banner of fire and cloud! Therefore, as the Lord brought the people so near to Himself, He put them under special laws, such as belong to His palace rather than to the outskirts of His dominion. They were bound to keep themselves very pure, for they bore the vessels of the Lord and were a nation of priests before Him. They ought to have been spiritually holy, and being in their childhood, they were taught this by laws referring to external cleanliness. Just as the children of Israel in the wilderness were put under stringent regulations, so do those who live near to God come under a holy discipline in the house of the Lord. “Even our God is a consuming fire.” We are not, now, speaking of our salvation, or of our justification as sinners, but of the Lord’s dealings towards us as saints. In that respect we must walk carefully with Him and watch our steps that we offend not…Our heart’s desire and inward longing is that we may never lose our Father’s smile. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1481.cfm

Our Perfect Shelter

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I will abide in Your tabernacle forever; I will trust in the shelter of Your wings. Selah – Psalm 61:4

Birds fly to the trees, and the stork to the fir, the wild goat to the high hills, and the cony to the rocks. There is a shelter for every one of these creatures, great and small. Think a moment, then, if God has made each creature happy, and given a place of refuge to each creature, then, depend upon it, he has not left man’s soul without a shelter. And here is an important truth, for every man is certainly in danger, and every thinking man knows it. My God, dost Thou shield and shelter the cony in the rock, and is there no rock for me to shelter in? Assuredly Thou hast not made man and left him without a refuge; when Thou givest to the rock-rabbit the cleft in which he may hide himself, there must be a shelter for man. This must certainly be true, because you and I, if we have observed our inner life, must have felt conscious that nothing here below can fill an immortal soul. You have prospered in business and have enjoyed good health; but for all that, in quiet moments of reflection, you feel a craving for something not to be found beneath the sun…Beloved, there is a shelter for man from the sense of past guilt. It is because we are guilty that we are fearful: we have broken our Maker’s law, and therefore we are afraid. But our Maker came from heaven to earth; Jesus, the Christ of God, came here, and was made man, and bore that we might never bear His Father’s righteous wrath, and whosoever believeth in Jesus shall find perfect rest in those dear wounds of His. Since Christ suffered for me, my guilt is gone, my punishment was endured by my Substitute, therefore do I hear the voice that saith, “Comfort ye, comfort ye My people! Say unto them, that their warfare is accomplished; for they have received at the Lord’s hand double for all their sins.” And as for future fears, he who believes in Jesus finds a refuge from them in the Fatherhood of God. He who trusts Christ, says: “Now I have no fear about the present, nor about the future. Let catastrophe follow catastrophe, let the world crash, and all the universe go to ruin; beneath the wings of the Eternal God I must be safe. All things must work together for my good, for I love God, and have been called according to His purpose.” What a blessed shelter this is! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

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

Individuality of Character

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But now, O LORD, Thou art our Father; we are the clay, and Thou our potter; and we all are the work of Thy hand. – Isaiah 64:8

…as for the stork, the fir trees are her house. The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats… – Psalm 104:17,18

Each creature has its appropriate place, and I believe that each constitution is meant, under the power of grace, to be suitable for a man’s position. I might wish to be of a different temperament from what I am-I sometimes think so, but in wiser moments, I would not wish to alter anything in myself but that which is sinful. Martin Luther might have wished that he had been as gentle as Melancthon, but then we might have had no reformation: Melancthon might certainly sometimes have wished that he had been as energetic as Martin Luther, but then Luther might have lacked his most tender comforter, if Melancthon had been as rough as he. Peter might have been improved if he had not been so rough, and John might possibly have been improved if he had been somewhat more firm; but after all, when God makes Peter he is best as Peter, and when He makes John he is best as John, and it is very foolish when Peter wants to be John, and when John pines to be Peter. Dear brethren, the practical matter is, be yourselves in your religion. Never attempt to counterfeit another’s virtues, nor try to square your experience according to another man’s feelings, nor endeavor to mould your character so that you may look as if you were like a certain good man whom you admire. No, ask the Lord, who made a new man of you, to let your manhood come out as He meant it, and whichever grace He meant to be prominent, let it be prominent. If you are meant to play the hero and rush into the thick of the battle, then let courage be developed; or if He designed you to lie in the hospital and suffer, then let patience have its perfect work; but ask the Lord to mould you after His own mind. As He finds a stork for a fir tree and a fir tree for a stork; a hill for a wild goat, and a wild goat for a hill; He will find a place for you, the man, and find for you, the man, the place that He has created for you, There His name shall be most glorified, and you shall be safest. Kick not against the pricks, but take kindly to the yoke, and serve your day and generation till your Master calls you home. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

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