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.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on iTunes or Spotify.
Faultless
To Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy—to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen. (Jude 24-25)
I would rather turn to the blessings of which Jude speaks. He seems to ascribe in this doxology three blessings, at least, to the power of the Lord Jesus. The first is the ability to keep you from stumbling, and for this, I am sure, the highest praise is due when you consider for a moment the dangerous way. In some respects, the path to heaven is very safe. It is so as God made it. But in other respects, there is no road as dangerous as the road to eternal life. It is beset with difficulties. … One false step (and how easy it is to take that if divine grace is absent), and down we go! …
Only Christ has the power to take us into heaven. … Christ preserves His people though they have offended God and daily provoke His justice. And He does more, for He presents them to the King of kings in the high court of heaven itself! …
We proceed to notice the condition in which the saints are to be when presented—they are to be faultless—for our Lord never stops short of perfection in His work of love. … Our Savior will carry His people through this life, safe from falling, and He will present them, how?—faultless! … The righteousness of Jesus Christ will make the saint who wears it so fair that he will be positively faultless! Yes, perfect in the sight of God!
From Christians Kept In Time And Glorified In Eternity
Reading these stirring words from Charles Spurgeon, I cannot help but recall the equally stirring lyrics of this Edward Mote hymn:
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.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on iTunes or Spotify.
Secure Forever
Our first parent, Adam, lived in the midst of happiness and peace in the garden. Unlike ourselves he had no depravity, no bias toward evil. God made him upright. He was perfectly pure, and it was in his own will whether he should sin or not. The balance hung evenly in his hands.
But have you forgotten how on that sad day he took of the forbidden fruit and ate and thereby cursed himself and all of us! … When you recollect the paradise he left, the happiness and peace that have forever passed away through his sin, do you not hear the voice that says to you, as a depraved and fallen creature, ‘Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall’ (1 Corinthians 10:12)? Conscious of your own weakness as compared with your parent Adam, you are ready to cry out, ‘O my God, how can I stand where Adam falls?’
But here comes the joyous thought that Christ, who has begun with you, will never cease till He has perfected you! Can you help singing with Jude, ‘Now to Him who is able to keep us from stumbling’?”
From Christians Kept In Time And Glorified In Eternity
When the devil says, “Your most recent sin made your salvation iffy,” you remind him what God says: “The strong love of My Son will hold you secure forever!”
To Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy—to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen. (Jude 1:24-25)
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
I call on the Lord in my distress, and He answers me (Psalm 120:1).
What power and love is packed into this short verse! “I call…He answers.” There’s nothing else I need to do—just called to my God. There is no delay or deliberation on His part—He answers me.
“Distress” comes from the root word that can mean a tight spot, or it can mean a hard pebble. The distress we face may be a full frontal assault or it may be a nagging, almost indefinable, annoyance. Since Psalm 120 is a Psalm of Ascent, whatever the distress is, the psalmist feels like it is keeping him from going up into God’s presence. He lists three known distresses:
Deceit—people around him were lying or distorting the truth.
Separation—he wants to ascend into God’s presence but feels held back by those among whom he lives.
Turmoil—he’s looking for peace, but everyone around him wants to stir up trouble and controversy.
What about those annoying, hard-to-identify distresses? In the next Psalm of Ascent the call is for us to trust God and to not worry. But in this psalm, there’s no calling to God for help because no specific threats have been identified. Still we learn that our Heavenly Father, who does not slumber, perpetually watches over us. Our Father knows our needs before we can even perceive them, and He is fully prepared to handle them.
So we are promised:
I can sleep securely
I can travel safely
I can work each day confidently
I can pass through the night unharmed
I can move around without having to look around
The LORD will watch over my coming and going both today and forevermore!
Father, may any distresses I experience today send me ascending into Your presence. Whether I know what the threats are or not, I know that You are watching over me and will answer me whenever I call to You. I thank You for this confidence that I have both today and forevermore!
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple or Spotify.
Psalm 93 opens with these powerful words: The LORD reigns.
Consider this: When we see the word LORD in all capital letters in our English translations of the Bible, we are reading God’s covenant name—Yahweh or Jehovah. This Limitless Power allows us to call Him by His personal name!
How can our finite minds even begin to fathom this? Listen to the psalmist’s words—
The LORD reigns, He is robed in majesty; the LORD is robed in majesty and is armed with strength. The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved. Your throne was established long ago; You are from all eternity. The seas have lifted up, O LORD, the seas have lifted up their voice; the seas have lifted up their pounding waves. Mightier than the thunder of the great waters, mightier than the breakers of the sea—the LORD on high is mighty. Your statutes stand firm; holiness adorns Your house for endless days, O LORD.
You can almost hear this psalmist struggling to help us comprehend the majesty of God. But how does a molecule comprehend the vastness of a planet? Creation sometimes roars and sometimes thunders, but even that only shows us a small glimpse of the Creator.
Do you see how established, orderly, firm, and secure this universe is? Even it had a starting point. Its Creator, however, has existed for all of eternity!
Have you ever been to the ocean and felt the pounding of the waves and heard the deafening roar of the breakers? That’s barely a toe-tapping of the might of Yahweh.
In the closing verse of this psalm, we read these words: “Your statutes stand firm.” Jehovah has given us a way to begin to comprehend Him. He has given us His statutes. This God who is unlimited in power has given us words we can live by. We can rely on them because they are backed by this limitless God! His promises stand firm forever. Nothing can shake God or His Word, so that means nothing can shake me when I stand on Him.
Standing on God’s Word means we are standing on Limitless Love and Limitless Strength.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple or Spotify.
When I see words like truly (3 times), surely (2 times), and yes (1 time) occurring so frequently in a rather short psalm, it catches my attention. Combined with the call for a Selah pause another two times in this twelve-verse psalm, and this is clearly a chapter that we should read slowly and deliberately.
Because of these words truly and surely, I find five truisms that David makes clear to us, and I also find that they are linked together in a beautiful circular chain.
Truism #1—God keeps me secure. He alone is my source of security (vv. 1-2).
Truism #2—Evil people are envious of a righteous person’s secure position and will try to pull them down (vv. 3-4). When this happens I need to take a Selah pause to remember Who holds me secure.
Truism #3—These attacks by evil people do not put my security in jeopardy, but instead it gives me a been-there-done-that testimony to share with others (vv. 5-8). Again, I need to Selah to remember that my challenges are often for the benefit of others as much as they are for my strengthening.
Truism #4—Poor people are not excluded from God’s help, and rich people are not above God’s help (vv. 9-10). God sees every human being as infinitely valuable.
Truism #5—God is both All-Loving and All-Powerful. He gets the final word on both judgment and reward (vv. 11-12). This fifth truism should refuel my understanding of the first truism—that God holds me securely—which continues my confident journey through this chain of beautiful truisms all over again.
This 37th Psalm is filled with the contrasts of the temporary advantages of evil versus the eternal rewards of righteousness. Wicked people may flourish for a moment in time, but righteous people have both an inheritance that lasts forever and God’s help every single day too! In other words, the righteous get to securely live in a win-win relationship.
With this in mind, David instructs the righteous how to live out their days:
not fretting over evil people
trusting God to supply their needs
doing good for others
delighting in God
remaining steadfastly committed to God
patiently
refraining from anger
full of hope
generously
securely in God’s peace
Righteous people can live securely every single day because they know that not only does God holds them securely today, but He will continue to hold them securely for all of eternity. Secure people are empowered to live a joy-filled, others-centered, God-glorifying life.
If you know Jesus as your Savior, you can say “Amen!” to this secure way of living.
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.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on iTunes or Spotify.
Our Daily Doctrine Of Experience
[God] alone is my rock and my salvation (Psalm 62:2).
Doctrine is nothing unless it is proved in our experience. Most of God’s doctrines are only to be learned by practice—by taking them out into the world and letting them bear the wear and tear of life. …
Think how many enemies you have. How many rivers you have to cross, how many mountains to climb, how many dragons to fight, how many lions’ teeth to escape, how many fires to pass through, how many floods to wade. … Can your salvation be of anything except God? …
I beseech you, remember this. I hope you know it by experience in the past, but try to remember it in the future—wherever you go, ‘Salvation is of the Lord.’ Do not get to looking at your heart; do not get to examining to see whether you have anything to recommend you; just remember, salvation is of the Lord. ‘He alone is my rock and my salvation.’ …
I say, Christian, your highest and noblest experience is not to be groaning about your corruption, is not to be crying about your wanderings, but is to say, ‘With all my sin and care and woe, His Spirit will not let me go.’ ‘Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!’ (Mark 9:24). …
Now we must have the great duty. The great duty is this: If God only is our rock and we know it, are we not bound to put all our trust in God, to give all our love to God, to set all our hope upon God, to spend all our life for God, and to devote our whole being to God? … Trace your mercies to God and say perpetually, ‘He alone is my rock and my salvation.’
From God Alone The Salvation Of His People
If you will look through the pages of the Bible, you will see that people struggled when they forgot what God had done for them and therefore they began to take matters into their own hands. In the Old Testament, the prophets called this idolatry and adultery; in the New Testament, Jesus called this a lack of faith.
An old hymn reminds us:
Oh, to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter
Bind my wandering heart to Thee
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it
Prone to leave the God I love
Here’s my heart, Oh, take and seal it
Seal it for Thy courts above (Robert Robinson, Come Thou Fount)
I think this is the reason why Jesus taught us to pray, “Give us today our daily bread.” We need to be perpetually reliant on God’s grace—a perpetual debtor. This posture reminds us, “He alone is my rock and my salvation,” and guards us against the spirit of self-reliance that would lead us astray.
Let our doctrine be proven in our daily experience of coming to God as our one and only Source again and again and again.
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.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on iTunes or Spotify.
Security
[God] alone is my rock and my salvation (Psalm 62:2).
I do not reckon that is salvation that regenerates me and then puts me in such a position that I may fall out of the covenant and be lost. I cannot call that a bridge that only goes halfway over the stream. I cannot call that salvation that does not carry me all the way to heaven, wash me perfectly clean, and put me among the glorified who sing constant hosannas around the throne. …
Do I live to God a holy life? It is not I, but Christ who lives in me. Am I sanctified? I did not sanctify myself. God’s Holy Spirit sanctifies me. Am I weaned from the world? I am weaned by God’s chastisements. Do I grow in knowledge? The great Instructor teaches me.
From God Alone The Salvation Of His People
A few months ago I began designing a series of graphics under the heading, “Says who?” I took some of the lies of satan and put them side-by-side with the truth from God’s Word.
When God is our Savior, we are secure. The devil would love to make us think that our salvation is hanging by a thread, that we have to work harder to make sure we don’t miss out, that a single sin can disqualify us from God’s favor, and a hundred other lies. But they are all just that: lies!
We have to learn to capture each of these thoughts, and if they are thoughts that don’t align with God’s Word, then we need to confront them with the truth. I have found it very helpful to speak these truths out loud. To see some of the ways I suggested thinking differently about the devil’s lies, check out this post on reversing your thinking.
As the old hymn says, “Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe.” You don’t have to earn your salvation or make your position secure—your salvation has been paid-in-full and you are perfectly secure! Now what you owe to Jesus is to allow Him to take you safely home.
Prepare a thankful song
Craig T. Owens 