Tuesday, May 31, 2011

His eyes are upon us



The Lord Jesus Christ never removes his eyes from his Church. He notes everything that concerns her, observing not merely the life of her members but their soul’s health, and not merely their health, but the way in which they spend their spiritual strength. He knows their works, he observes their charity, their patience, their zeal, for his name’s sake. Seven times in his words to the churches, he says, “I know thy works.”

This should make us live with great care, for albeit the whole world is under the eye of God, yet of his Church it is true, “upon one stone there shall be seven eyes.” The full perfection of omniscience exerts itself upon the Lord’s chosen people. The husbandman has an eye to all his estate, but his chief care is his own family; and, even so, while the Great Husbandman of all creation observes all his works, he chiefly looks upon his own household. “The eye of the Lord is upon them that fear him, upon them that hope in his mercy.”

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Laboring and Not Fainting," delivered September 8, 1872. Image by iChaz under Creative Commons License.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Who shall lay anything to our charge?



Let us this morning walk up and down with perfect peace and confidence, for from the day when Jesus died we were perfectly clear before the judgment seat of God. “With his stripes we are healed,” or rather “we were healed,” for the words are in the past in the original Hebrew. “With his stripes we were healed.”

My sins, they ceased to be, centuries ago; my debts, my Savior paid them before I was born, and nailed up the receipted bill to his Cross, and I can see it there. The handwriting of ordinances that was contrary to us, he took it away and nailed it to his Cross. I can see it, and while I read the long list of my sins — oh, how long, what a roll it wanted to contain them, — yet I see at the bottom, “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” It matters not how long that roll was; the debt is all discharged. I am acquitted before God, and so is every believer in Jesus.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "A Simple Remedy," delivered September 1, 1872. Image by jurvetson under Creative Commons License.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Faith that He will raise me



We need have no trouble about the body, any more than we have concerning the soul. Faith being exercised upon immortality relieves us of all trembling as to the spirits of the just; and the same faith, if exercised upon resurrection, will with equal certainty efface all hopeless grief with regard to the body; for, though apparently destroyed, the body will live again — it has not gone to annihilation. That very frame which we lay in the dust shall but sleep there for a while, and, at the trump of the archangel, it shall awaken in superior beauty, clothed with attributes unknown to it while here.

The Lord’s love to his people is a love towards their entire manhood, he chose them not as disembodied spirits, but as men and women arrayed in flesh and blood. The love of Jesus Christ towards his chosen is not an affection for their better nature merely, but towards that also which we are wont to think their inferior part; for in his book all their members were written, he keepeth all their bones, and the very hairs of their head are all numbered. Did he not assume our perfect manhood? He took into union with his Deity a human soul, but he also assumed a human body; and in that fact he gave us evidence of his affinity to our perfect manhood, to our flesh, and to our blood, as well as to our mind and to our spirit. Moreover, our Redeemer has perfectly ransomed both soul and body.

It was not partial redemption which our kinsman effected for us. We know that our Redeemer liveth, not only with respect to our spirit, but with regard to our body; so that though the worm shall devour its skin and flesh, yet shall it rise again because he has redeemed it from the power of death, and ransomed it from the prison of the grave.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "The Resurrection Credible," delivered August 25, 1872. Image by jurvetson under Creative Commons License.

Monday, May 9, 2011

No Sloth in His Service



Laziness never yet had communion with Christ. Those who walk with Christ must walk swiftly. Jesus is no idler or loiterer; he is about his father’s business, and you must march with quick step if you would keep pace with him. As vinegar to the teeth, and as smoke to the eyes, are sluggards to active persons. Those who have much to do have no fellowship with gossips, who drop in to while away the hours with chat.

Jesus has no fellowship with you, who care not for souls that are perishing. He is incessantly active, and so must you be if you would know his love. There is a fierce furnace-heat beating upon everything to-day: men are toiling hard to hold their own, and Jesus must not be served by slothful hearts. I am sure that I err not, from his mind, when I say to you, beloved, if you would know the Beloved fully you must get up early, and go afield with him to work with him. Your joy shall be in spending and being spent for him.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "A Call For Revival," delivered August 18, 1872. Image by jurvetson under Creative Commons License.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Draw Courage from His Love



A Christian is never strong for service when he does not know whether Christ loves him or not. If that be a question, you have put out the fire by which alone the force can be generated which must work the machinery of your spirit. You must know beyond question that Jesus loved you and gave himself for you, you must feel that he is loving you now, that his heart is looking out through those dear eyes which once wept over Jerusalem, and that the meaning of his loving glance is, “Soul, I love thee, I loved thee so that I gave myself for thee, and I have not repented of the gift. I love thee still as much as I loved thee upon Calvary’s bloody tree.” It is strength to feel that still “his desire is toward me.” Oh, when you feel, “Jesus loves me, Jesus desires me to show my love to him, Jesus at this moment thinks of me and takes a delight in me,” this will make you strong as a giant in the cause of your beloved.

Between the very jaws of death a man would venture who felt that the love of Christ was set upon him. Love to Jesus is the fountain of courage, the mother of self-denial, and the nurse of constancy. Strive then for a well assured sense of the Savior’s love. Be not content till you possess it, for it will be health to your spirit and marrow to your bones: it will be a girdle of strength to your loins and a chain of honor about your neck.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "A Call For Revival," delivered August 18, 1872. Image by OakleyOriginals under Creative Commons License.

Friday, May 6, 2011

Not satisfied with our harvest



Travelling along our island just now you see everywhere the sickle, or the reaping machine, in full work; harvest whitens the plains; everywhere the loaded wagons are bearing home the precious fruits of the earth. My spirit is stirred within me, and my soul is on flame, for I see everywhere a harvest except in the church of Christ.

Reapers are busy everywhere except in the fields of our divine Boaz. All fields are ripe, but those of Bethlehem; all barns are filling but those of the Great Husbandman; Christ Jesus has scarce a sheaf ingathered of late; we hear of very few results from the sacred sowing of the word. Here and there the church, like Ruth, gathers an ear, a very precious ear it is true, for who shall estimate the value of a single soul; but we have no wave-sheafs as in the days of Pentecost, or, if we have them, they are few and far between; and as for the harvest home which we have so long expected, our eyes fail in looking for it in vain.

As a church, constituting a part of the Master’s field, we have had for years one continued harvest, but still never such an one as has satisfied our spirits, for our idea of our king is such that the largest increase to his church would not content us, we should still feel that our Lord Jesus deserved far more. As he has not yet seen of the travail of his soul so as to be satisfied, so neither are we his servants content on his behalf, but we long, and cry, and pray for a larger harvest as his reward for the dread sowings of Gethsemane and Golgotha, in bloody sweat and streams of vital blood.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "A Call For Revival," delivered August 18, 1872. Image by OakleyOriginals under Creative Commons License.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Oratory not enough



Alas, we know well enough that sinners have been dazzled a thousand times by all the pyrotechnics of oratory, and yet have remained as spiritually blind as ever they were. A notion has been held by some that you must argue the truth into men’s minds; that if you can put the doctrines of the gospel before them in a clear, logical, demonstrative form they must give way. But, truly, no man’s eyes are opened by syllogisms. Reason alone gives no man power to see the light of heaven. The clearest statements and the most simple expositions are equally in vain without grace.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "The Healing Of One Born Blind," delivered August 11, 1872. Image by Victor Bezrukov under Creative Commons License.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

All need saving



Every man by nature fights against salvation by grace. Though we have nothing good in ourselves, we all think we have; though we have all broken the law, and have lost all claim upon divine regard, yet we are all proud enough to fancy that we are not quite so bad as others; that there are some mitigating circumstances in our offenses, and that we can, in some measure, appeal to the justice as well as to the compassion of God. Hence the apostle puts it so strongly, “By grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast.”

The statement of the text means just this, that we all need saving — saving from our sins, and saving from the consequences of them; and that if we are saved it is not because of any works which we have already performed. Who among us, upon looking back at his past life, would dare to say that he deserves salvation?

Neither are we saved on account of any works foreseen which are yet to be performed by us. We have made no bargain with God that we will give him so much service for so much mercy; neither has he made any covenant with us of this character; he has freely saved us, and if we serve him in the future, as we trust we shall, with all our heart and soul and strength, even then we shall have no room for glorying, because our works are wrought in us of the Lord. What have we even then which we have not received?

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Salvation All Of Grace," delivered August 4, 1872. Image by under Creative Commons License.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Every blessing through that channel



We are not justified before God by works in any measure or in any degree, but by faith alone; and the apostle tells us “it is of faith, that it might be by grace.” We see a golden thread of grace running through the whole of the Christian’s history, from his election before all worlds, even to his admission to the heaven of rest. Grace, all along, “reigns through righteousness unto eternal life,” and “where sin aboundeth, grace doth much more abound.”

There is no point in the history of a saved soul upon which you can put your finger and say, “In this instance he is saved by his own deservings.” Every single blessing which we receive from God, comes to us by the channel of free favor, revealed to us in Christ Jesus our Lord. Boasting is excluded, because deservings are excluded. Merit is an unknown word in the Christian church; it is banished once for all; and our only shoutings over foundation or topstone are, “Grace, grace unto it!”

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Salvation All Of Grace," delivered August 4, 1872. Image by Victor Bezrukov under Creative Commons License.

Monday, May 2, 2011

The modern spirit



The modern spirit mutters, “We are all right, every one of us.” He who says “yes” is right, and he who says “no” is also right. You hear a man talk with mawkish sentimentality which he calls Christian charity. “Well, I am of opinion that if a man is a Mahometan,* or a Catholic, or a Mormonite, or a dissenter, if he is sincere, he is all right.” They do not quite include devil worshippers, Thugs and cannibals yet, but if things go on they will accept them into the happy family of the Broad Church.

Such is the talk and cant of this present age, but I bear my witness that there is no truth in it, and I call upon every child of God to protest against it, and, like Moses, to declare that he can have no complicity with such a confederacy. There is truth somewhere, let us find it; the lie is not of the truth, let us abhor it. There is a God, let us follow him, and it cannot be that false gods are gods too. Surely truth is of some value to the sons of men, surely there must be something worth holding, something worth contending for, and something worth dying for; but it does not appear now-a-days as if men thought so. May we have a respect for God’s true church in the world which abides by the apostolic word and doctrine.

* - that is, a Muslim

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Moses' Decision," delivered July 28, 1872. Image by Nic McPhee under Creative Commons License.