Seeing God in Christ

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God, The Father 1 Comment

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ… – Ephesians 1:3

When we see God in connection with Christ, we see God through Christ; when we see God in Christ, then our hearts are all aflame, and we burst out with, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The infinite Jehovah, who can conceive Him? “Our God is a consuming fire.” Who can draw near to Him? But in the Mediator, in the Person of the God, the Man, in whom we find blended human sympathy and divine glory, we can draw nigh to God. There it is that we get our hands upon the golden harp-strings and resolve that every string shall be struck to the praise of God in Christ Jesus.

But note carefully that God is described here as the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. When Jesus knelt in prayer, He prayed to our God. When Jesus leaned in faith upon the promises, He trusted in God that He would deliver Him. When our Saviour sang on the Passover night, the song was unto God. When He prayed in Gethsemane, with bloody sweat, the prayer was unto our God. Jesus said to Mary at the sepulchre, “Go to My brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto My Father, and your Father; and to My God, and your God.” How we ought to bless God when we think that He is the God whom our Redeemer blesses! This is the God who said of Christ, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Delightful thought! When I approach Jehovah, I approach the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. Surely, when I see His blood-stained footprints there on the ground before me, though I put my shoe off from my foot, for the place is holy ground, yet I follow with confidence where my Friend, my Saviour, my Husband, my Head has been before me; and I rejoice as I worship the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2266.cfm

Blessing God’s Children Blesses Him

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God, The Father 1 Comment

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me. – Matthew 25:40

There is a way of blessing God which, I trust, we shall all endeavour to practise; and that is by the doing good to His children. When they are sick, visit them. When they are downcast, comfort them. When they are poor, relieve them. When they are hard pressed by outward adversaries, stand at their side, and help them. You cannot bless the Head, but you can bless the feet; and when you have refreshed the feet, you have refreshed the Head. He will say, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me.” If they be naked, and you clothe them; if they be sick, and you visit them; if they be hungry, and you feed them; you do in this respect bless God. David not only said, “Thou art my Lord: my goodness extendeth not to Thee;” but added, “but to the saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent in whom is all my delight.” You can be good to them, and in that respect, you may be blessing God. He has done so much for us, that we would fain do something for Him; and when we have reached the limit of our possibilities, we long to do more. We wish that we had more money to give, more talent to use, more time that we could devote to His cause; we wish that we had more heart and more brain; sometimes we wish that we had more tongue, and we sing, –

“Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing
My great Redeemer’s praise!”

This word “blessed” is an attempt to break the narrow circle of our capacity. It is an earnest endeavour of a burning heart to lay at God’s feet crowns of glory which it cannot find: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2266.cfm

Praises to Jehovah!

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

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ… – Ephesians 1:3

We bless God when we say concerning the whole of His character, “Amen. This God is our God for ever and ever.” Let Him be just what the Bible says He is; we accept Him as such. Sternly just, He will not spare the guilty. Amen, blessed be His name! Infinitely gracious, ready to forgive. Amen, so let it be! Everywhere present, always omniscient. Amen, so again do we wish Him to be! Everlastingly the same, unchanging in His truth, His promise, His nature. We again say that we are glad of it, and we bless Him. He is just such a God as we love. He is indeed God to us, because He is really God, and we can see that He is so, and every attribute ascribed to Him is a fresh proof to us that Jehovah is the Lord. Thus, we bless Him by adoration.

Praise Him also in your speech. Break the silence; speak of His glory. Invite others to cry with you, “Hallelujah!” or “Hallels unto Jah!” “Praise to Jehovah!” Ascribe ye greatness unto our God. Oh, that all flesh would magnify the Lord with us!

This language is the utterance of assent to all the blessedness that is ascribed to the Lord. After hearing how great He is, how glorious He is, how happy He is, we bless Him by saying, “Amen; so let it be! So would we have it! He is none too great for us, none too blessed for us. Let Him be great, glorious and blessed, beyond all conception.” Amen. This God is our God for ever and ever. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2266.cfm

How Can We Bless God?

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

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ: according as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.”-Ephesians 1:3-4

It should be our life to bless Him who gave us our life. It should be our delight to bless Him who gives us all our delights. So says the text, and so let us do: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

But how can we bless God? Without doubt the less is blessed of the Greater. Can the Greater be blessed by the less? Yes, but it must be in a modified sense. God blesses us with all spiritual blessings; but we cannot give Him any blessings. He needs nothing at our hand; and if He did, we could not give it. “If I were hungry,” saith the Lord, “I would not tell thee: for the world is Mine, and the fulness thereof.” God has an all-sufficiency within Himself and can never be thought of as dependent upon His creatures, or as receiving anything form His creatures which He needs to receive. He is infinitely blessed already; we cannot add to His blessedness. When He blesses us, He gives us a blessedness that we never had before; but when we bless Him, we cannot by one iota increase His absolutely infinite perfectness. David said to the Lord, “My goodness extendeth not to Thee.” This was as if he had said, Let me be as holy, as devout, and as earnest as I may, I can do nothing for Thee; Thou art too high, too holy, too great for me to be really able to bless Thee in the sense which Thou dost bless me. How, then, do we bless God? We say with David, “Bless the Lord, O my soul,” and we say with Paul, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We can bless God by praising Him, extolling Him, desiring all honour for Him, ascribing all good to Him, magnifying and lauding His holy name. Well, we will do that. Sit still, if you will, and let your heart be silent unto God; for no language can ever express the gratitude that, I trust, we feel to Him who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2266.cfm

Healing and Pardon

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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.

Sermon Text

The Free Grace Gospel Saved the Dying Thief

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

And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with Me in paradise. – Luke 23:42,43

I read somewhere, and I think it is true, that some ministers preach the gospel in the same way as donkeys eat thistles, namely, very, very cautiously. On the contrary, I will preach it boldly. I have not the slightest alarm about the matter. If any of you misuse free-grace teaching, I cannot help it. He that will be damned can as well ruin himself by perverting the gospel as by anything else. I cannot help what base hearts may invent; but mine it is to set forth the gospel in all its fulness of grace, and I will do it. If the thief was an exceptional case-and our Lord does not usually act in such a way-there would have been a hint given of so important a fact. A hedge would have been set about this exception to all rules. Would not the Saviour have whispered quietly to the dying man, “You are the only one I am going to treat in this way”? Whenever I have to do an exceptional favour to a person, I have to say, “Do not mention this, or I shall have so many besieging me.” If the Saviour had meant this to be a solitary case, He would have faintly said to him, “Do not let anybody know; but you shall to-day be in the kingdom with Me.” No, our Lord spoke openly, and those about Him heard what He said…The Saviour had this wonder of grace reported in the daily news of the gospel, because He means to repeat the marvel every day. The bulk shall be equal to sample, and therefore He sets the sample before you all. He is able to save to the uttermost, for He saved the dying thief. The case would not have been put there to encourage hopes which He cannot fulfil. Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, and not for our disappointing. I pray you, therefore, if any of you have not yet trusted in my Lord Jesus, come and trust in Him now. Trust Him wholly; trust Him only; trust Him at once. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2078.cfm

Death Bed Repentance- Is It Sincere?

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, confession of sin, prayer, promises, repentance, salvation 2 Comments

Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with Me in paradise. – Luke 23:43

Heaven and hell are not places far away. You may be in heaven before the clock ticks again, it is so near. Could we but rend that veil which parts us from the unseen! It is all there, and all near. “To-day,” said the Lord; within three or four hours at the longest, “shalt thou be with Me in paradise;” so near is it. A statesman has given us the expression of being “within measurable distance.” We are all within measurable distance of heaven or hell; if there be any difficulty in measuring the distance, it lies in its brevity rather than in its length.

Surely, if anything beyond faith is needed to make us fit to enter paradise, the thief would have been kept a little longer here; but no, he is, in the morning, in the state of nature, at noon he enters the state of grace, and by sunset he is in the state of glory. The question never is whether a death-bed repentance is accepted if it be sincere: If it be so, if the man dies five minutes after his first act of faith, he is as safe as if he had served the Lord for fifty years. If your faith is true, if you die one moment after you have believed in Christ, you will be admitted into paradise, even if you shall have enjoyed no time in which to produce good works and other evidences of grace. He that reads the heart will read your faith written on its fleshy tablets, and He will accept you through Jesus Christ, even though no act of grace has been visible to the eye of man. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2078.cfm