GOD’S WORD FOR  SEPTEMBER 21

We are using Charles Spurgeon book, “The Risen King.”  It’s a collection of well chosen excerpts from Spurgeon’s  “Easter” sermons in devotional form, put together by Jeff Medders.   Pastor Spurgeon lived from 1834 to 1892  in London, England, and had a unique gift of understanding and showing the depth of our faith.  Thus, his reverential title as the Prince of Preachers.   Even though we’re not in or near that season, every day is a good day to focus on Christ’s sacrifice and victory for us!

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FOR GOD SO LOVED

John 3:16-18

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.  For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.   He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”

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This text is the whole Bible in miniature.  We may speak of these verses in so many words and so many volumes, for every single syllable here is charged to the full with meaning.  We may read it and reread it, and still continue to read it day and night, yet ever find some fresh instruction in it.  Why?  It is the essence of the gospel – the good news in brief.  So, I invite those of you that have long known your Lord to take up your first spelling book and go over your ABC’s again, by learning that God so loved the world that He gave His Son to die, that we might live through Him.

I don’t call you to an elementary lesson because you have forgotten your letters, but because it is a good thing to refresh the memory and a blessed thing to feel young again.  I call you back to the cross and to Him who bled there for you.  It is a good thing for us all to return at times to our starting place and make sure that we are following the way everlasting.  It is wise to come to Him afresh, as we came on that first day when we were helpless, needy, and heavy-laden, and we stood weeping at the cross and left our burden at the pierced feet.  There we learned to look and live and love from the love of God.

If you desire to see the love of God, you must consider how He gave His Son.  He did not give His son, as you might do, in pursuit of some profession in which you might still enjoy his company.  He gave His son, to exile among men and women.  He sent Him down to that distant manger, and there He slept, where horned oxen fed!  The Lord God sent the heir of all things to toil in the carpenter’s shop:  to drive the nail and push the plane and use the saw.  He sent Him down among scribes and Pharisees, whose cunning eyes watched Him and whose cruel tongues scourged Him with base slanders.

He sent Him down to hunger and thirst amid poverty so dire that He had nowhere to lay His head.  He sent Him down to the scourging and the crowning with thorns, to the giving of His back to the whips and His cheeks to those that plucked off the hair.  At length, He gave Him up to death – and not just that — but it was a felon’s death, the death of the crucified –the worst death known to mankind!

Behold that cross and see the anguish of Him that dies upon it.  His cry of “Lema sabachthani….why have You forsaken Me?” which He cried in Matthew 27:46, tells us how fully God gave His Son to ransom the souls of the sinful.  He gave Him to be made a curse for us – gave Him that He might die “the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God.”  (1Peter 3:18).  Oh, wondrous stretch of love that Jesus Christ should die!

He is God’s free gift to all free receivers.  A full Christ for empty sinners.  If you can but hold out your empty willing hand, the Lord will give Christ to you at this moment.  Nothing is freer than a gift.

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Isaiah 53:3-4

He is despised and rejected by men,

A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;

He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

Surely He has borne our griefs

And carried our sorrows;

Yet we esteemed Him stricken,

Smitten by God, and afflicted.

Isaiah 53:5-6

But He was wounded for our transgressions,

He was bruised for our iniquities;

The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,

And by His stripes we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray;

We have turned, every one, to his own way;

And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

Isaiah 53:10

Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him;

He has put Him to grief.

Isaiah 53:12

Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great,

And He shall divide the spoil with the strong,

Because He poured out His soul unto death,

And He was numbered with the transgressors,

And He bore the sin of many,

And made intercession for the transgressors.

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