Old Testament or Considerable Portions Thereof. We have not yet the royal robes which become the princes of the blood; we are wearing in this flesh and blood just what we wore as the sons of Adam; but we know that when he shall appear who is the "first born among many brethren," we shall be like him; that is, God will dress us all as he dresses his eldest son "We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." Man! Make thou thyself assured, then, that thou art in union with Christ, for out of him thou hast no rights whatever. Should thine house of business threaten to tumble about thine ears so long as thou hast acted honourably, still bear thy cross. I heard of one who sat up at the end of last year to groan last year out; it was ill done, but in truth it was a year of groaning, and the present one opens amid turbulence and distress. Sinner! We have this. And let the idle and slothful remember that they are a great anomaly; they are blots in the great work-writing of God; they mean nothing; in all the book of letters with which God has written out the great word "work," they are nothing at all. I have thus given you the four props and pillars of the believer's faith. So in regard to God. We morally speak of work, especially on this day, as being the opposite of sacred rest and worship. ", I. Cataracts of trouble descend if you will, and you, ye floods of affliction, roll if so it be ordained, for God has written my name in the book of life. Ah! This is a fact which he takes for granted because he has perceived it in the hearts of believers. If his heart is against God, we ought to tell him it is his sin; and if he cannot repent, we ought to show him that sin is the sole cause of his disability that all his alienation from God is sin that as long as he keeps from God it is sin. So it must be, "If so be that we suffer with him that we also may be glorified together." At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington. Let us take these things for granted, and never dispute about them any more, but go on to still higher matters. Every priest stands daily ministering and offering sacrifice for sin. We hear of tornadoes, of earthquakes, of tempests, of volcanoes, of avalanches, and of the sea which devoureth its thousands: there is sorrow on the sea, and there is misery on the land; and into the highest palaces as well as the poorest cottages, death, the insatiable, is shooting his arrows, while his quiver is still full to bursting with future woes. Spurgeon's Bible Commentary Romans 8:28-39 Romans 8:28. Do you know I am one of the best churchmen in the world; the very best, if you will judge me by the articles, and the very worst, if you measure me in any other way. Remember the bloody day of St. Bartholomew, the valleys of Piedmont, and the mountains of Switzerland. Beside that, I suppose that the apostle was persuaded through reasoning with himself from other grand truths. Pentateuch and Other Historical Books of the Old Testament. They love him as their King, they are willing to obey him, to walk in his commands is their delight; no path is so soft to their feet as the path of God's precepts, the way of obedience thereunto. Why is this? : I took pleasure in sin; but, "he, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame." Romans 8:38-39. I think I see him sitting on a jutting crag by the edge of Jordan, listening to the harpers on the other side, and waiting till the pitcher shall be broken at the cistern, and the wheel at the fountain, and the spirit shall depart to God that made it. "There are 400 youths," says he, "in Rome as brave as I am, and that will bear fire as well; and tyrant," he says "you will surely die."" "We have," says the text, not "we hope and trust sometimes we have," nor yet "possibly we may have," but "we have, we know we have, we are sure we have." What if Christ died for all your past sins? May you be holy, harmless, sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. Brutus slays his sons; but some Christians would spare their sins. Here are beings that know evil, and know also good, beings placed under infinite obligations by bonds of love and gratitude to choose for ever the good, beings with a nature so renewed that they always must be holy beings; and these beings can commune with the incarnate God upon spurring as angels cannot, upon the penalty of guilt as angels cannot; upon heart-throes, conflicts, reproaches, and brokenness of spirit as angels cannot: and to them the Lord Jesus can reveal the glory of holiness, the bliss of conquering sin, and the sweetness of benevolence as only they can comprehend them. "Oh," say some, "it may be true that we are at times opposed to God, but surely we are not always so." We must understand the word "together," also in another sense. They told him to go home to Rome, and see if he could not make peace. I pray you consider yourself as being in Christ. In heaven's logic it is true, "if children, then heirs.". Take care that you pay your debts before you spend money upon your pleasures. Such and so bright shall our glories be in the day of the redemption of the body. Over them all the believer triumphs. It is not optional with him, it is an inevitable law of the universe. diabolical crime! You discover that Christ had his cross, and you are asked to administer to the will. If according to law we are only heirs-presumptive, whose rights may be superseded, then our great joint heir, so far as he is co-heir with us, is superseded also. If we are joint heirs with him, we, too, must partake of the same. We are called "joint heirs with Christ" what meaneth this? "We know it. You have walked on, and on, and on, and there has hitherto always been something beneath your footfall; but the next step may precipitate you into the abyss. Of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; Let us go from the school to the university, let us have done with our first spelling-books, and advance into the higher classics of the kingdom. He turned round upon the men who carried him, as they thought, to his death, and said to them, "Now will you believe that all things work together for God?" Whatever happens to him sickness or health, adversity or prosperity, everything is his here below. If I cannot understand I will not question, for I am not his counsellor, but I will adore and obey, for I am his servant. There is not only a sea in which to drown our sins, but the very tops of the mountains of our guilt are covered. William Nicoll Sermon Bible Commentary - Romans 8:28-30. How is this? To this end Jesus Christ came into the world and bore our image, that we, through his grace, might bear his image. At all times, at all hours, at every moment, (I speak this as God speaketh it), if ye are carnal, ye are each one of you enmity against God. He first of all stirred up their pure minds by way of remembrance as to their sonship, for saith he "as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." Brethren, we are like warriors fighting for the victory; we share not as yet in the shout of them that triumph. If you are living in sin, you are not called; if you can still continue as you were before your pretended conversion, then it is no conversion at all; that man who is called in his drunkenness, will forsake his drunkenness; men may be called in the midst of sin, but they will not continue in it any longer. It is a traveller lost in the deep snow on the mountain pass. That man is not called who cannot look back upon darkness, ignorance, and sin, and who cannot now say, that he knows more than he did know, and enjoys at times the light of knowledge, and the comfortable light of God's countenance. All these things are insufficient for the salvation of any man; there must be superadded the special call, the call which man cannot resist, the call of efficacious grace, working in us to will and to do of God's good pleasure. But in addition to his sermons, he regularly reading a Bible passage before his message and gave a verse-by-verse exposition, rich in gospel insight and wisdom for the Christian life. Ah! He hears a sonnet. Angels know not evil; have never had to battle with evil known and felt within; they have not tried the paths of sinful pleasure, and through grace been turned from them, so as with full purpose of heart to cleave to holiness for ever. I want you to notice, however, that these intercessions of the Spirit are only in the saints. Now, in considering this solemn subject, let me remark that there are two kinds of callings mentioned in the Word of God. Words fail, and even the sighs which try to embody them cannot be uttered. Paul points us to the cross in two ways. Others will say, "It is a family of children who have no bread." In illustrating the effectual call of grace, which is given to the predestinated ones, I must first use the picture of Lazarus. Whatever God would have done under the circumstances, that Jesus did. Some of you have a trouble perhaps, in her who is dearest to you. poor Abraham, as the world would have had it, what a trial his call cost him! Our prayers, let men laugh at them as they will, and say there is no power in them, are the indicators of the movement of the wheels of Providence. The newly discovered negative theology, which, I fear, has done some damage to the Baptist denomination, and a very large amount of injury to the Independent body the new heresy is to a large degree, founded upon the fiction of the Universal Fatherhood of God. AMEN. methinks I see the martyrs and confessors rising from their tombs I mark their hands still stained with blood, and their bodies scarred with the wound of persecution. The Christian understands the word "good" in another sense. "Oh, I want to get home to my dear wife and children. We groan within ourselves. Would you have David's crown, but not his caves of Adullam, and rocks of the wild goats? Moreover, Christ wrought miracles of mercy towards men, which proved him to be the Son of God. Yonder woman is one of the daughters of the King, but see how pale she is, what furrows are upon her brow! Amen. Why did not his imagination work when his body was in a normal state when it was healthy? Lecture 1: A Chat about Commentaries. Who would be the pleader in such a case? Oratory may stand back, and eloquence may hold her tongue. It does not appear on the surface of the text; but if you look a minute, you will see that PAUL WAS PERSUADED THAT HE AND ALL THE SAINTS ARE JOINED TO GOD BY LOVE. Ah! I know that I have robbed God of his glory, but Christ has brought all the glory back again. Yet, what liberty was it? And if thou be called, it follows as a natural inference thou art predestinated. "Loose him and let him go," saith the Redeemer; and then he walks in all the liberty of life. Who can tell the fearful consequences to future generations if we now betray our trust. Ay, and when Christ would have pulled you away, you held hard on to your sin! It is not merely that our judgment leads us in that direction, though usually the Spirit of God acts upon us by enlightening our judgment, but we often feel an unaccountable and irresistible desire rising again and again within our heart, and this so presses upon us, that we not only utter the desire before God at our ordinary times for prayer, but we feel it crying in our hearts all the day long, almost to the supplanting of all other considerations. The tail feathers of pride should be pulled out of our prayers, for they need only the wing feathers of faith; the peacock feathers of poetical expression are out of place before the throne of God. Now that is the way to act; to feel and acknowledge that you are a debtor; when there is a thing to be done, to do it, and to say, "Do not thank me for it, I have only done what I ought to have done; I have only paid the debt that I owed.". And so addressing you, who love the Lord, under that title; I come at one to the text, "Brethren, we are debtors." REV. "Surely," said he, "the minister knew me, and spoke something personally to me, because he knew my case." I will make no answer to that accusation but this: "It is Christ that died." Have I been born again from above? 13 For if you live after the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.. I did not know till afterwards, when I was led to know Christ as all my salvation, and all my desire, that the Lord had called the child, for this could not have been the result of nature, it must have been the effect of grace. I am sure I feel, myself, the force of this word "brother," with regard to many of you. Earth wears upon her brow, like Cain of old, the brand of transgression. C. H. Spurgeon At Exeter Hall, Strand. I think I could indeed plead if I were pleading for myself. THE PROTEST OF an innocent man against the charge of an accuser may well be strong and vehement. Romans 8 - A New and Wonderful Life in the Spirit A. The world has always been in a crisis, but this seems to use to be a peculiar one. So is it with our text. We love Jesus now, and esteem him our head and chief. Another will say, "If I am a child of God, I shall not want to live as I like, but as God likes, and I shall be led by the grace of God into the path of holiness, and through divine grace I shall persevere in that way of holiness right to the end." We are thankful to have such a groaning. Then the apostle says, "nor things to come." Now the Spirit never did work effectually in any but the children of God; and inasmuch as the Spirit works in you, he doth by that very working give his own infallible testimony to the fact that you are a child of God. It Jesus is thine all-prevailing king, and hath trodden thine enemies beneath his feet, if sin, death, and hell, are now only parts of his empire, for he is Lord of all, and if thou art represented in him, and he is thy guarantee, thy sworn surety, it cannot be by any possibility that thou canst be condemned. "For all things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." They are gone, and gone for ever! Perhaps after those great fires of which Peter speaks when he says, "The heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat," earth will be renewed in more than pristine loveliness. Christ loved you when he died; he will love you when you die. The heathen may rage, and the kings of the earth take counsel together, but God saith, "I will declare the decree, yet have I set my Son upon any holy hill of Zion." He sees a throne, and on it sits one who is glorious; but it is his enemy. ", II. This was thought to be a singular instance of his affability, and his kindness to his courtiers. He will guide you both negatively and positively. It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who sitteth on the right hand of God, who maketh intercession for him. Come, take your cross up and bear it with joy. If they say that Christ's death does not repair the injury you have done to your fellow-men, tell them that, as far as you can, you mean to make restitution to them; and wherein you have done the world an ill turn, let them know that your Master has done it more good than you ever did it harm. And that my sins are gone is further clear, for he rose again from the dead. But our Lord has told us that greater works than his own shall we do, because he is gone to his Father; and these greater works we do. The wolf may sleep, but it is a wolf still. Look! Whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec. If one says, "I was christened, and confirmed," answer him by saying, "Christ has died." Simply because it is depraved; and until he had entered a foul element until the body had begun to quiver with a kind of intoxication the fancy would not hold its carnival. So shall we when his Father shall say, "Well done, good and faithful servant." The whole of the mind is enmity against God. Jesus now heads a race assailed but victorious; sorely tempted but enabled to overcome. There is a general wail among nations and peoples. 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