
…make you fishers of men” (Matthew 7:23; Mark 1:17)
…acknowledge in Heaven those who acknowledge Me on earth” (Matthew 10:32-33)
…give you rest” (Matthew 11:28)
…build My church” (Matthew 16:18)
…give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 16:19)
…show you whom you should fear” (Luke 12:5)
…drive out demons and heal people” (Luke 13:32)
…never drive away those who come to Me” (John 6:37)
…give My life for your life” (John 6:51)
…rise again from the dead” (Matthew 27:63; Mark 14:28; John 2:19)
…raise up believers to eternal life” (John 6:40, 44, 54)
…come back to take you to be with Me forever” (John 14:3)
…do whatever you ask in My name” (John 14:13, 14; 16:28)
…not leave you as orphans” (John 14:18)
…ask the Father to give you an Advocate” (John 14:18)
…give you words and wisdom that are irresistible” (Luke 21:15)
…see you again and give you eternal joy” (John 16:22)
Oh, what a Savior!
This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Charles Spurgeon. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Spurgeon” in the search box to read more entries.
Christ’s Momentary Pain, Your Eternal Gain
After Jesus said this, He looked toward heaven and prayed: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son may glorify You. (John 17:1)
The Son of God was glorified while He was dying, and it was one part of His glory that He should be able to bear the enormous load of human guilt. As a race we lay crushed beneath it.
A thousand Samsons could not relieve us! Angels and archangels, cherubim and seraphim could never lift the stupendous mass! But this one Man alone, with no help, in weakness of body and in death pains, bore away the enormous load of human guilt! The chastisement of our peace was upon Him. The Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all! What a load it was! And that He could bear it was, indeed, a display of His glory. The lost in hell cannot bear the wrath of God! An eternity of suffering will not have discharged the dreadful penalty, and yet He bore that burden in an hour! Oh, marvelous strength of the incarnate God! Glorious are You indeed, O Christ, upon Your Cross! …
I say He was glorified in His passion and His prayer was heard! The Father did glorify His Son even on the Tree! It was an hour of glory that might dazzle angels’ eyes; that hour when He said, ‘It is finished!’ (John 19:30) and gave up the ghost. What had He finished? He had finished that which saved His people! He had peopled heaven with immortal spirits who will delight in Him forever and had shaken the gates of hell! God indeed glorified His Son in enabling Him to bear, and bear so well, all the weight of sin and the penalty that was due to it. …
When He died, He did not render the redemption of His people possible, but He ransomed them completely. By His agonies and death He did not merely give a bare hope of the pardon of sin, but He hurled the sin of all His elect into the depths of the sea in that same moment! He did not merely make the salvation of men a possibility if they would, but He saved His people then and there! He finished the work that He came to do, and proof of it is written that ‘this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God’ (Hebrews 10:12).
From The Son Glorified By The Father And The Father Glorified By The Son
The enemy of your soul would love for you to believe his lies that you have to do something to secure your salvation, or that your most recent sin somehow made your salvation iffy, or that God is angry with you.
THOSE ARE ALL LIES!
Jesus didn’t make your salvation possible; He made it yours. This is what glorifies God: when you believe that the death of Jesus is all that is needed for your complete and eternal salvation!
Is death the #1 fear people have? The simple and complicated answer is: It depends. Fear of dying is a BIG fear in those that statistically are the least likely to die: the young. But fear of dying is very LOW for those on death row, the elderly, and the terminally ill.
I hope to convince you of a fourth group that shouldn’t fear death. It’s a group that all of us can be a member of: Those who understand that physical death is not the end.
In the Garden of Eden, God planted one tree that was off-limits, and He said that the penalty for eating from this tree was death (Genesis 2:16-17). satan tried to get Adam and Eve to doubt what God said, and after they ate the fruit, it appeared satan was correct—they didn’t die. At least not physically.
But their sin did something far, far worse—it separated them from God’s presence. Now when God appeared, Adam and Eve hid in fear. In fact, Jesus even told His followers that the greatest fear wasn’t physical death but spiritual death (Luke 12:4-5).
Jesus came to lift our hope to something beyond this physical world. He said, “God so loved the world that He sent His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him would not die, but would have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Famed atheist Bertrand Russell said, “I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.”
On the other hand, Jesus DID die for His beliefs and proved He was right by His resurrection!
Friend, listen to me—We’re definitely not living our best life now. We are all terminal. Unless Jesus returns, the chances of our physical death are 1-in-1.
But physical death is not the end! Death of the body means freedom for the soul. Jesus has defeated Death once for all! “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades,” Jesus said (Revelation 1:17-18)
Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:54-57)
Invite Jesus into your life right this moment!!
Once you have invited Jesus into your life, and your sins have been forgiven, and your destiny following your physical death is assured, this is how you should now live:
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that to be a Christian and to be fearful of death is a sin. A fearful Christian gives God no praise, robs Him of glory, and paints God in a bad light. A happy, secure Christian knows the Lord is his strength, his comfort, his supply. A happy Christian lifts God high and invites others to know this All-Good, All-Happy God too!
We can live this way because Jesus died to pay the penalty for your sins that separated you from God, and He was resurrected back to life to assure you that your eternal home in God’s presence is secure!
This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Charles Spurgeon. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Spurgeon” in the search box to read more entries.
The Greatest Treasure Ever!
Oh! Christian, do but consider what it is to have God to be your own! Consider what it is, compared with anything else.
Some have their portion in the city. Their wealth is superabundant and in constant streams it flows to them, until they become a very reservoir of gold. But what is gold compared with your God? You could not live on it; your spiritual life could not be sustained by it. Apply it to your aching head, and would it afford you any ease?
Put it on a troubled conscience, and could your gold allay its pangs? Put it on your desponding heart and see if it could stay a solitary groan or give you one grief the less. But you have God, and in Him you have more than gold or riches ever could buy, more than heaps of brilliant ore could ever purchase for you. …
There are griefs here with which men cannot intermeddle, and there are griefs to come with which men cannot interfere to alleviate the pangs, pains, agonies, and dying strife. But when you have this: “I will be your God” [Jeremiah 31:33]—you have as much as other men can have put together. …
O Christian, ask for nothing in this world but that you may live on this and that you may die on this: “I will be your God.” This exceeds all the world has to offer. …
Oh! Here is a very sea of bliss, a very ocean of delight! Come, bathe your spirit in it. You may swim to eternity and never find a shore. You may dive to the very infinite and never find the bottom. “I will be your God.” Oh! If this does not make your eyes sparkle, if this makes not your foot dance for joy and your heart beat high with bliss, then assuredly your soul is not in a healthy state.
From God In The Covenant
I agree with Spurgeon: “If this does not make your eyes sparkle, if this makes not your foot dance for joy and your heart beat high with bliss, then assuredly your soul is not in a healthy state.”
If you want your soul to be in this healthy state, it is possible for you to know assuredly that God is saying to you, “I will be your God.” Jesus died in your place to pay the penalty for your sin. If you believe that, you may ask God to forgive all your sins—completely cancel that record of wrongdoing—and He will! Then His Spirit will take up residence in your heart and you can know the unspeakable bliss of the truth of what God says: “I am your God”!
I share lengthy passages from Charles Spurgeon’s sermons in my weekly Thursdays With Spurgeon feature, along with my short commentaries. But here are some individual quotes from the prince of preachers who were just too good to not share!
“Would you lose your sorrows? Would you drown your cares? Then go to plunge yourself in the Godhead’s deepest sea—be lost in His immensity. And you will come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated.”
“Blessed be His dear name, He is unchanged in His love. When He first wrote the covenant, how full His heart was with affection to His people. He knew that His Son must die to ratify the articles of that agreement. He knew right well that He must rend His Best Beloved from His heart and send Him down to earth to bleed and die. He did not hesitate to sign that mighty covenant. Nor did He shun its fulfillment. He loves as much now as He did then. And when suns will cease to shine and moons to show their feeble light, He still will love on forever and forever.”
“We sweat, we toil, and we fail. How often do we come back weeping because we have toiled, as we think, without success! Yet, Christian man, you have not been without success, for ‘He is still in one mind.’ All this was necessary to the fulfillment of His one purpose. You are not lost; your labor has not rotted under the clod. All, though you see it not, has been working together toward the desired end.”
“Creation is an arrow from the bow of God, and that arrow goes on, straight on, without deviation to the center of the target that God ordained that it should strike.”
“Though in the dark hours you and I may slip and often fall, yet His loving-kindness changes not. Your strong arm, O God, will bear us on. Your loving heart will never fail. You will not turn your love away from us or make it cease to pour upon us Your fierce anger, but having begun You will complete the triumphs of Your grace.”
“God calls upon us, until the world is utterly destroyed with fire, to go on saving men with all our might and main. Every year that passes is meant to be a year of salvation. We rightly call each year the year of our Lord. Let us make it so by more earnest efforts for the bringing of sinners to the Cross of Christ.”
“The very fact that you are made to groan and cry by reason of God’s long-suffering to guilty men gives you sympathy with Christ and union with Christ, who endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself! … But when, through the long-suffering of God with the ungodly, you are made to suffer, account it to be a mark of your salvation. ‘Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you’ (Matthew 5:12).”
“Blessed be God, the effect of Christ’s medicine does not depend upon the degree to which we can realize how it acts, but if we receive it by faith, if it penetrates into the heart, if it takes possession of the affections, it will work in us that wondrous change by which we will be delivered from the love of sin and saved both from its condemnation and its power! Thank God for a simple gospel!”
“Although our Lord Jesus Christ is more perfect than any other example—indeed, the only perfect example—yet it is easier to imitate Christ than it is to imitate some of the best of His people.”
“Because the pill is gilded, you suck down the poison. Because the thing is popular, you patronize it, though it is lustful, it is abominable, it is deceitful!”
More quotes coming soon, so stay tuned!