Showing posts with label Charles Spurgeon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Charles Spurgeon. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

"Hope which is laid up for you"...Spurgeon...take time to read...it will be a blessing :)

What an honor and a bliss for the younger Brethren to be like the Firstborn! To what higher honor could God Himself exalt us? I know not of anything which could surpass this! Oh, matchless joy to be as holy, harmless and undefiled as our own beloved Lord! How delightful to have no propensity to sin remaining in us nor trace of its ever having been there! How blissful to perceive that our holy desires and aspirations have no weakness or defect remaining in them! Our nature will be perfect and fully developed in all its sinless excellence! We shall love God as we do now, but oh how much more intensely! We shall rejoice in God as we do now, but oh what depth there will be in that joy! We shall delight to serve Him as we do now, but there will, then, be no coldness of heart, no languor of spirit, no temptation to turn aside.

Our service will be as perfect as that of angels! Then shall we say to ourselves without fear of any inward failure, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless His holy name.” There will be no recreant affection then! No erring judgment, no straying passion, no rebellious lust! There will remain nothing which can defile, or weaken, or distract! We shall be perfect, altogether perfect. This is our hope—victory over evil and perfection in all that is good! If this were all our hope it would be marvelous, but there is more to be unfolded. We expect to enjoy security, also, from every danger. As there will be no evil in us, so there will be none around us or about us to cause us alarm. No temporal evil such as pain, bereavement, sorrow, labor, or reproach shall come near us!

All will be security, peace, rest, and enjoyment. No mental evil will intrude upon us in Heaven. No doubts, no staggering difficulties, no fears, no bewilderments will cause us distress. Here we see through a glass darkly and we know in part—but there we shall see face to face and know even as we are known! Oh, to be free from mental trouble! What a relief will this be to many a doubting Thomas! This is a marvelous hope! And then no spiritual enemy will assail us. No world, no flesh, no devil will mar our rest above. What will you make out of it, you tried ones? Your Sabbaths are very sweet now on earth, but when they are over, you have to return to yon cold world again. But there your Sabbath shall never end and your separation from the wicked will be complete!

Heaven is a paradise of pleasure and a palace of glory! It is a garden of supreme delights and a mansion of abiding love! It is an everlasting Sabbatismos, a rest which never can be broken, which evermore remains for the people of God! It is a kingdom where all are kings, an inheritance where all are heirs! My soul pants for it! Is not this a charming hope? Did I not say well when I declared it to be marvelous? Nor is this all, Brothers and Sisters, for we expect to enjoy in Heaven a happiness beyond compare! Eye has not seen it, nor ear heard it, nor has the heart conceived it—it surpasses all carnal joy! We know a little of it, for the Lord has revealed it unto us by the Spirit, who searches all things, even the deep things of God. Yet what we know is but a mere taste of the marriage feast—enough to make us long for more, but by no means sufficient to give us a complete idea of the whole banquet! If it is so sweet to preach about Christ, what must it be to see Him and be with Him?

 But to sit at my Lord’s feet and look up into His countenance and hear His voice, and never, never grieve Him, but to participate in all His triumphs and glories forever and forever—what a Heaven will this be! Then shall we have fellowship with all His saints in whom He is glorified and by whom His image is reflected. And thus shall we behold fresh displays of His power and beams of His love. Is not this surpassing bliss? Said I not well when I declared that ours is a marvelous hope? Had I eloquence and could pile on good words—and could a poet assist me with his sweetest song—to tell of the bliss and joy of the eternal world, yet must preacher and poet both confess their inability to describe the Glory to be revealed in us! The noblest intellect and the sweetest speech could not convey to you so much as a thousandth part
of the bliss of Heaven!

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Behold, How He Has Loved Us__Spurgeon

There Is A Fountain   [Youtube Video Link]

It was at the grave of Lazarus that Jesus wept, and his grief was so manifest to the onlookers that they said, "Behold how he loved him!" Most of us here, I trust, are not mere onlookers, but we have a share in the special love of Jesus. We see evidences of that love, not in his tears, but in the precious blood that he so freely shed for us; so we ought to marvel even more than those Jews did at the love of Jesus, and to see further into his heart than they did, and to know more of him than they could in the brief interval in which they had become acquainted with him. When we think of his love to us, we may well cry, "Behold how he has loved us!"   

When did Christ's love begin to work for us? It was long before we were born, long before the world was created; far, far back, in eternity, our Saviour gave the first proof of his love to us by espousing our cause.
Remember, too, that in that eternal secret council, the Lord Jesus Christ became the Representative and Surety of his chosen people.
 In the fulness of time, our Lord Jesus Christ left the glories of heaven, and took upon him our nature. We know so little of what the word "heaven" means that we cannot adequately appreciate the tremendous sacrifice that the Son of God must have made in order to become the Som of Mary. 
Then, "being found in fashion as a man," he took upon himself human sickness and suffering.  
But if you want to see the love of Jesus at the highest point it ever reached, you must, by faith, gaze upon him when he took upon himself the sins of all his people, as Peter writes, "who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree." Oh, how could one who was so pure, so absolutely perfect, ever bear so foul a load? Yet he did bear it, and the transfer of his people's sin from them to him was so complete that the inspired prophet wrote, "The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all," and the inspired apostle wrote, "He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." 
Further, than that, Christ has so completely given himself to us that all that he has is ours. He is the glorious Husband, and his Church is his bride, the Lamb's wife; and there is nothing that he has which he is not also hers even now, and which he will not share with her for ever. By a marriage bond which cannot be broken, for he hateth putting away, he hath espoused her unto himself in righteousness and truth, and she shall be one with him throughout eternity. He has gone up to his Father's house to take possession of the many mansions there, not for himself, but for his people; 

I must, however, mention one more proof of Christ's love, and that is this, he has made us long for heaven, and gives us at least a measure of preparation for it.