What is the Old Gospel?

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, promises, salvation Leave a comment

(…behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.) – 2 Corinthians 6:2

On earth, as long as a man desires to be saved, he may be saved; while there is life there is hope. I believe that, if a man’s breath were going from his body, if he could then look to Christ, he would live. But-

“There are no acts of pardon passed
In the cold grave, to which we haste;
But darkness, death, and long despair,
Reign in eternal silence there.”

Do not venture on that last leap without Christ; but even now, ere the clock strikes another time, fly to Jesus. Trust Him even now.

The old-fashioned gospel is not dead yet. There are a great many who would like to muzzle the mouths of God’s ministers; but they never will. The old gospel will live when they are dead; and, because it is still preached to you, you may believe and live. What is the old gospel? It is that, seeing you are helpless to save yourself, or bring yourself back to God, Christ came to restore you; that He took those sins of yours, which were enough to sink you to hell, and bore them on the cross, that He might bring you to heaven. If you will but trust Him, even now, He will deliver you from the curse of the law; for it is written, “He that believeth on Him is not condemned.” If you will trust Him, even now, He will give you a life of blessedness, which will never end; for again it is written, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.” Because that gospel is preached, there is hope for you…Since there is a gospel, take it; take it now, even now. God help you to do so! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2249.cfm

Aged Sinners, it is Never Too Late for Christ to Save You

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God 1 Comment

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?” – John 11:25.26

For some of you, the time is late, very late; yet it is not too late. You are getting into years, my friend. I want you to believe that even now Christ can save you. I am glad to see the aged saints; but amongst so many elderly people, no doubt, there are some unsaved sinners, whose grey hairs are not a crown of glory, but a fool’s cap. But however old you are, though you are sixty, seventy, eighty or even ninety years of age, yet even now Christ can give you life. Blessed be God for that! But it is not altogether the years that trouble you; it is your sins. If you have gone to the very extremity of sin, you may believe that, after all those years of wandering, the arms of free grace are still open to receive you even now. There is an old proverb, “It is never too late to mend.” It is never too late for us to mend ourselves, but it is never too late for Christ to mend us. Christ can make us new, and it is never too late for Him to do it. If you come to Him, and trust Him, He will receive you even now.

By the longsuffering of God, there is a time left to you, in which you may turn to Him. What a thousand mercies it is that even now is a time of mercy to you: it might have been the moment of your everlasting doom! You have been in accidents; you have been within an inch of the grave many times; you have been ill, seriously ill; you have been well-nigh given up for dead; and here you are yet alive, but still an enemy to God! Plucked by His hand from the fire and flood, and, mayhap, from battle; delivered from fever and cholera, and still ungrateful, still rebelling, still spending the life that grace has lent you in resisting the love of God! …O God, strike many a man down, as Thou did Saul of Tarsus, and change their hearts by Thine own supreme love, as Thou canst do it, even now, on the very spot where they sit or stand. Amen. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2249.cfm

Seek Such Faith

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

“But even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You.” – John 11:22

Like Jacob at Jabbok, may we lay hold of God, saying, “I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me.” To such faith the Lord will give a quick response. He that will not be denied shall not be denied. My friend, Hudson Taylor, who has done such a wonderful work for China, is an instance of this. Brought up in a godly home, he, as a young man, tried to imitate the lives of his parents, and failing in his own strength to make himself better, he swung to the other extreme, and began to entertain skeptical notions. One day, when his mother was away from home, a great yearning after her boy possessed her, and she went up to her room to plead with God that “even now” He would save him. If I remember aright, she said that she would not leave the room until she had the assurance that her boy would be brought to Christ. At length her faith triumphed, and she rose quite certain that all was well, and that “even now” her son was saved. What was he doing at that time? Having half an hour to spare, he wandered into his father’s library, and aimlessly took down one book after another to find some short and interesting passage to divert his mind. He could not find what he wanted in any of the books, so, seeing a narrative tract, he took it up with the intention of reading the story, and putting it down where the sermon part of it began. As he read, he came to the words “the finished work of Christ”, and almost at the very moment in which his mother, who was miles away, claimed his soul for God, light came into his heart. He saw that it was by the finished work of Christ that he was to be saved; and kneeling in his father’s library, he sought and found the life of God. Some days afterwards, when his mother returned, he said to her, “I have some news to tell you.” “Oh, I know what it is!” she answered, smiling, “You have given yourself to God.” “Who told you?” he asked in astonishment. “God told me,” she said, and together they praised Him, who, at the same moment, gave faith to the mother, and life to the son, and who has since made him such a blessing to the world…Seek such faith even now, I beseech you, “even now.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2249.cfm

The Gospel is for the Hopeless

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God 4 Comments

Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” – John 11:39

Though you cannot reach your son, or your daughter, Christ can meet with them. “The Lord’s hand is not shortened, that He cannot save; neither is His ear heavy, that He cannot hear.” Though your prodigal boy or your wandering girl be at the end of the earth, Christ can reach them, and save them. Have faith in God. Even now Christ can aid you.

“Faith, mighty faith, the promise sees,
And looks to God alone,
Laughs at impossibilities,
And says, ‘It shall be done.'”

There was a brother here, who is now in heaven, a good, earnest Christian man, whose son had treated him very shockingly indeed, and the father, justly indignant, felt it right to give his son up. He had often tried to help him, but the young man was so scandalous a scapegrace that I did not wonder that the old man turned him away. But one night, as I was preaching here, I spoke in something like the same way in which I have spoken now; and the next morning the old man’s arm was about his child’s neck. He could not help himself; he felt he must go and find his son out and seek again to reclaim him. It seemed to have been the appointed time for that boy’s salvation, for it pleased God that within a few months that son died, and he passed away with a good hope, through grace, that he had been brought to his Saviour’s feet by his father’s love. If any of you have a very bad son, go after him, seeking, until by the grace of God, you shall find him. And you that have grown hopeless about your relatives, you must try not to give them up. If other people cast them off, you must not, for they are allied to you by the ties of blood. Seek them out. You are the best person in the world to seek them, and the most likely to find them, if you can believe that even now, when the worst has come to the worst, even now almighty grace can step in, and save the lost soul. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2249.cfm

 The Simplicity and Sublimity of Salvation

Sherry sermon 1 Comment

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

Christ Can Save the Most Vile

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

Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of him who was dead, said to Him, “Lord, by this time there is a stench, for he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?” – John 11:39,40

There are persons alive in the world, who are just masses of living putridity. It is a shocking thing that there are men and women, made in the image of God, with talents and ability, with capacity and conscience, who, nevertheless, seem to live for nothing else but to indulge their licentious passions, and to lead others into vices which else they had never known. There must come an awful day of reckoning to such when the Christ of God shall sit upon the throne and shall weigh before all men the secret doings of libertines, of debauched men, and depraved women. If any of you have such a one related to you, can you believe that even now Christ can raise that one? Yours is just the same sort of case as Martha had. She said, “Brother is buried; worse than that, he stinketh.” She did not like to say that of dear Lazarus, her own brother, but she could not help saying it. And there are some men of whom we are compelled to say, no matter how much our love seeks to shield them, that their character stinks. But can you still believe that, even now, there is hope that God can intervene, and that grace can save? Why, my dear friend, you and I know that it is so! I do believe it; we must all believe it. If it comes to a case very near and dear to you, and you begin to be a little bit staggered, recollect what you used to be yourselves-not openly so depraved, perhaps, but inwardly, quite the same, and take hope for these foul men and women from the remembrance of what you were: “and such were some of you; but ye are washed.”…I think while there is breath in the body of some of us, we must go on telling the gospel; for, if it saved us, it can save the worst of sinners. We are bound to believe that even now Christ can save even the most horrible and the most vile. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2249.cfm

The Given-up People

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, prayer, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. – John 11:25

Martha had done everything (for her sick brother) and nothing seemed to be of the least use. None of the medicines she applied seemed to soothe the sufferer. Her brother grew worse and worse, until she saw that, though she had nursed him back to health the last time he had been ill, she was now utterly powerless. Then he died. Yet, even though things had gone as far as that, she had faith in Christ. In like manner, your case is beyond your skill; can you not even now feel that you shall find that word true, “He shall not fail”? Christ never did fail yet, and He never will. When all the doctors give a patient up, the Great Physician can step in and heal.

Perhaps you are in a worse plight still. The case has been given up. I think I hear one kind, gracious soul, whose hope has been crushed, say, “Well, sir, that is just what we have come to about my boy. We held a little family meeting and said we must get him to go away to Australia, if we can. If he will only go to America, or somewhere abroad, it will be a relief to have him out of our sight. He keeps coming home intoxicated and gets brought before the magistrates. He is a disgrace to us. He is a shame to the name he bears. We have given him up.” Martha had come to this. She had given her brother up and had actually buried him; yet she believed in the power of Christ. Ah, there are many people that are buried alive! I do not know that such a thing ever happens in the cemetery; but I know it happens in our streets and homes. Many are buried morally and given up by us before God gives them up. And, somehow, it is often the given-up people that God delights to bless. Can you believe that even now, even now, prayer can be heard; that even now the Holy Ghost can change the nature, and that even now Christ can save the soul? Believest thou this? I shall rejoice if thou canst, and thou too shalt rejoice ere long. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2249.cfm