Slow to Speak

 By Charles Spurgeon

Slow to Speak

But he gave him no answer, not even to a single charge. Matthew 27:14

Jesus had never been slow of speech when He could bless the sons of men, but He would not say a single word for Himself. “No man ever spoke like this man,” and no man was ever silent like Him. Was this singular silence the index of His perfect self-sacrifice? Did it show that He would not utter a word to prevent His crucifixion, which He had dedicated as an offering for us? Had He so entirely surrendered Himself that He would not interfere on His own behalf, even in the smallest details, but be crowned and killed an unstruggling, uncomplaining victim? Was this silence a type of the defenselessness of sin? Nothing can be said to excuse human guilt; and, therefore, He who bore its whole weight stood speechless before His judge. Patient silence is the best reply to a world of cruel opposition. Calm endurance answers some questions infinitely more conclusively than the loftiest eloquence. The best apologists for Christianity in the early days were its martyrs. The anvil breaks a host of hammers by quietly bearing their blows. Did not the silent Lamb of God furnish us with a grand example of wisdom? Where every word was occasion for new blasphemy, it was the line of duty to provide no fuel for the flame of sin. The ambiguous and the false, the unworthy and mean will soon enough confound themselves, and therefore the true can afford to be quiet and find silence to be its wisdom. Evidently our Lord, by His silence, furnished a remarkable fulfillment of prophecy. A long defense of Himself would have been contrary to Isaiah’s prediction: “Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.”1 By His silence He declared Himself to be the true Lamb of God. As such we worship Him this morning. Be with us, Jesus, and in the silence of our heart let us hear the voice of Your love.

Weep for His Pain

 By Charles Spurgeon

Weep for His Pain

With his wounds we are healed. Isaiah 53:5

Pilate delivered our Lord to be scourged. The Roman scourge was a most dreadful instrument of torture. It was made of the sinews of oxen, and sharp bones were intertwined among the sinews, so that every time the lash came down, these pieces of bone inflicted fearful laceration and tore off the flesh from the bone. The Savior was, no doubt, bound to the column, and thus beaten. He had been beaten before; but this from the Roman soldiers was probably the most severe of His flagellations. My soul, stand here and weep over His poor, stricken body. Believer in Jesus, can you gaze upon Him without tears as He stands before you, the mirror of agonizing love? He is at once fair as the lily for innocence and red as the rose with the crimson of His own blood. As we feel the sure and blessed healing that His stripes have wrought in us, does not our heart melt at once with love and grief? If ever we have loved our Lord Jesus, surely we must feel that affection glowing now within our hearts. See how the patient Jesus stands, Insulted in His lowest case! Sinners have bound the Almighty’s hands, And spit in their Creator's face. With thorns His temples gor’d and gash’d Send streams of blood from every part; His back’s with knotted scourges lash’d. But sharper scourges tear His heart. We may long to go to our bedrooms and weep; but since our business calls us away, we will first ask the Lord Jesus to print the image of His bleeding self upon the tablets of our hearts all the day, and at nightfall we will return to commune with Him and sorrow that our sin should have cost Him so dearly.

Awakened to New Life

 By C. H. Spurgeon

Awakened to New Life

God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

Ephesians 2:4-5

Some claim that mankind’s problem is not that we’re sinful but that we’re sick. If only we could provide for ourselves the right kind of care, medicine, or technology, then our lives would be transformed and we’d be ok, for surely man is essentially good, not innately sinful. At least, so goes the thinking. According to the Bible, however, the only adequate explanation for the predicament we face is that man is spiritually lifeless. It’s not even that we are spiritually sick; outside of Christ we are “dead in [our] trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1, emphasis added). And how much can a dead person do to make themselves alive? Nothing. So you and I quite literally have a grave problem—unless, that is, there is one who is able to speak into the deadness of our experience and, by His very words, bring us to life. And that, of course, is Christianity’s great message: “As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). The best physical picture of this spiritual reality is the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Imagine the scene. Lazarus was gone, and everyone knew it. He had been buried for four days. And yet Jesus walked up to the tomb and addressed the dead man: he “cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out.’” (John 11:43). And Lazarus came out. How was it that Lazarus came to life? It was a result of the voice of Jesus, who alone can speak so that the spiritually dead hear. Just as Jesus brought life to lifeless Lazarus, so He breathes life into the deadness of men’s and women’s spiritual condition. Spiritually, we are corpses—just as dead and decaying as Lazarus in his tomb. But when God chooses, He utters His word and awakens us to life. As the hymn writer puts it: He speaks, and, listening to His voice,  New life the dead receive. The mournful, broken hearts rejoice; The humble poor believe.[1] We are not to think too much of ourselves. Left to our own devices and efforts, we are dead. We can never think too much of Jesus. He and He alone is the reason we have life. And we must never think too little of the call to share His gospel with those around us; for we have been given the inestimable privilege of being the means by which Jesus calls dead people to come out of their spiritual grave and discover eternal life with Him. To whom is He prompting you to speak of Him today?

The Kingdom and the Cross

By Alistair Begg 

The Kingdom and the Cross

My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.

John 18:36

When Jesus arrived in Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday, He was a king on a donkey, a king without a palace, a king without a throne—a king with no apparent kingdom. It rapidly became abundantly and controversially clear that Christ had come as the suffering king whom the Scriptures had foretold, not as the triumphant king whom people wanted. Many who admired Jesus on that day in Jerusalem eventually discarded Him. They said, I don’t want any suffering. I only want victory. I only want power. I only want rule. Not much is different today. We often ignore what we don’t like in Jesus’ ministry and content ourselves with Jesus the great example, Jesus the problem-fixer, Jesus the guru, or Jesus the political reformer. But God’s kingdom centers on the cross: “I decided to know nothing among you,” says Paul, “except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2, emphasis added). In other words, we will never understand Jesus—never truly know Him, never really love Him, never actually be in His kingdom—until we understand that the entrance to and the heart of Christ’s kingdom is His death and resurrection. It is the means by which we come into it and the pattern by which we live in it. A renewed culture comes about not because we transform institutions and policies but because that cross-centered kingdom transforms human hearts. Never in history has a revival been sparked by political activity; it has always resulted from Christians praying, preaching, pleading, and living as Christ calls us to live. The world will only ever be changed when we ourselves are changed. God’s kingdom is a cause great enough to live for and great enough to die for. Do you want to give up your small ambitions and give yourself to God? Then give up championing a political cause as a means of safeguarding the health of the church or your society or of making revival happen. Instead, go somewhere where nobody knows Jesus and tell them. Maybe it’s your office. Maybe it’s your neighborhood. Or maybe it’s Tehran, Jakarta, or Algiers. It could be anywhere, for God is everywhere and is needed by everyone. Give up living by the maxims of the systems of this world and follow the King who tasted death before He entered His glory (Luke 24:26). Believers have the immense privilege and the incredible challenge of offering the good news of God’s kingdom to a society that fears death and knows little of true life. That is no easy commission, and heeding it may very well cost you dearly in this life. But no one who gives much for Jesus has cause to regret it, now or through all eternity.

Will You Flee?

 By C.H. Spurgeon

Will You Flee?

Then all the disciples left him and fled. Matthew 26:56

He never deserted them, but they in cowardly fear of their lives fled from Him at the very outset of His sufferings. This is but one instructive instance of the frailty of all believers if left to themselves; they are but sheep at best, and they flee when the wolf appears. They had all been warned of the danger and had promised to die rather than leave their Master; and yet they were seized with sudden panic and took to their heels. It may be that I, at the opening of this day, have braced myself to bear a trial for the Lord’s sake, and I imagine myself able for the challenge; but let me be careful in case with the same evil heart of unbelief I should depart from my Lord as the apostles did. It is one thing to promise, and quite another to perform. It would have been to their eternal honor to have stood manfully at Jesus’ side; they fled from honor. May I be kept from imitating them! Where else could they have been so safe as near their Master, who could presently call for twelve legions of angels? They fled from their true safety. O God, let me not play the fool also. Divine grace can make the coward brave. The smoking flax can flame forth like fire on the altar when the Lord wills it. These very apostles who were timid as hares grew to be bold as lions after the Spirit had descended upon them, and even so the Holy Spirit can make my wretched spirit brave to confess my Lord and witness for His truth. What anguish must have filled the Savior as He saw His friends so faithless! This was one bitter ingredient in His cup; but that cup is drained dry; let me not put another drop in it. If I forsake my Lord, I shall crucify Him afresh and put Him to an open shame. Keep me, O blessed Spirit, from such a shameful end.

A New Kind of Peace

 By Alistair Begg

A New Kind of Peace

Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad.

John 20:19-20

Many of us who have lost someone dear can recall evenings in the aftermath of loss when it felt difficult even to breathe. We sat there with others, grieving in a silence punctuated every so often by reflection. On the Sunday evening following Jesus’ death, we can imagine His disciples going through a similar experience. Maybe one said, Do you remember how excited and hopeful we were when He walked on water? Perhaps another added, I remember Him weeping at the tomb of Lazarus. I won’t ever forget it. In all their reminiscence, they doubtless felt a stabbing awareness that they would never again on earth see Jesus’ face. Of that they were convinced. They were fearful of the future. They had just witnessed Christ’s execution, and they had locked the door behind them (John 20:19), worried that they would be the next targets. Jesus knew this. Therefore, when He appeared quietly among them that night, the first word to come out of His mouth was “Peace,” or Shalom. This was a customary Semitic greeting that came with warmth and without rebuke, blame, or disappointment. Then He showed them His hands and His side. It was Him. The Jesus whom they were convinced they would never see again was actually standing among them! “Peace be with you” gave the disciples an indication not simply that their gladness should be prompted by the awareness that He was no longer dead but of something far greater: that by His resurrection, Jesus had now come to bestow a new kind of peace as a result of His blood shed upon the cross. And the peace with which He greeted them is the same peace that He gives to every pardoned sinner. Shalom takes on a whole new meaning for those who discover this peace. In our weary world, bowing under the weight of all that is difficult and broken, tainted by indifference toward or denial of Almighty God in all His majesty, we know that He still seeks us out. Just as He came up behind Mary Magdalene at the open tomb (John 20:11-18) and the two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35), so He pursues you and me in love, bidding us find peace in Him, the one at whose birth the angels sang, “Peace on earth” (Luke 2:14, CSB). In the face of fear, our world aches for peace. But longing for it and singing about it will not create it. Peace can only be found in Jesus’ words: “In me you may have peace” (John 16:33; emphasis added). The resurrection doesn’t simply mean there is a Christ. It means that Christ is alive forever and that He gives us peace with the Father and peace in ourselves, today and forever. Whatever storms are raging around you or inside you, make sure you hear the voice of your risen Savior today, saying, “Peace be with you.”

A Temple With Foundations

 By Alistair Begg

A Temple With Foundations

The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord’s throne is in heaven; his eyes see, his eyelids test the children of man. The Lord tests the righteous.

Psalm 11:4-5

It’s possible for all of us to read certain passages or verses of Scripture many times yet miss goldmines of truth. Sometimes we pass by because we’re overly familiar with what we’ve read, and other times it’s because we don’t take the time to meditate and savor the wealth before us. So let’s take the opportunity to dwell on the truth that “the LORD is in his holy temple.” This simple truth offers both comfort and chastening. Its reality is affirmed in many places in the Old Testament (for example Habakkuk 2:20; Psalm 18:6; Micah 1:2), but David provides some additional angles from which to consider it here in Psalm 11. The first is that “the LORD’s throne is in heaven,” making Him the exalted Lord. He reigns not as a mortal with limited perspective and control but as the all-powerful, immortal, all-knowing God of heaven. He outlasts all rulers, and all nations are as nothing before Him. Second, God is the observing Lord: “His eyes see.” From the exalted position of His heavenly throne, nothing is hidden from God’s sight. No good thing done in His name goes unobserved, and no impure motive or thought is secret to Him. What a comfort to know that every day of our lives, going back to when we were merely “unformed substance,” is visible to God (Psalm 139:15-16)! And what a sobering reality to realize that every word, thought, and deed is laid bare before Him! Third, God is the examining Lord: “The LORD tests the righteous.” His tests are not always or often easy, but they are always precisely what we need. None of us will reach heaven without tests and trials along the way. This may be an unpleasant reality to consider, but it should be precious to us, for it means we will not panic when God, in His sometimes inscrutable wisdom, routes our path through a valley. God’s tests are never without a purpose; they are always for the sake of preparing us for the day when we shall see Him in His holy temple. Keep the truth of this verse in mind the next time you feel as though “the foundations are destroyed” (Psalm 11:3). The instability we sometimes feel is meant to remind us that worldly stability is only an illusion and that true security is found in God alone. He alone is exalted, He alone sees all, and He alone directs our lives and tests us for our good. When the foundations tremble, we can remember that this world is not our home and that our sovereign God is leading us to one day inhabit a city with foundations that will not shake (Hebrews 11:10; 12:28). You can know that He is in His holy temple—and He has promised to bring you to that very place.