{"id":692,"date":"2011-07-14T12:47:47","date_gmt":"2011-07-14T12:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/?p=692"},"modified":"2011-07-14T12:47:47","modified_gmt":"2011-07-14T12:47:47","slug":"the-vital-spark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/?p=692","title":{"rendered":"The vital spark!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The vital spark!<\/strong><br \/>\nThe following is from Spurgeon\u2019s sermon,<br \/>\n\u201cLight, Natural and Spiritual\u201d No. 660.<br \/>\n\u201cYou must be born again.\u201d<br \/>\nDo not think Christians are made by<br \/>\neducation; they are made by creation.<br \/>\nYou may wash a corpse as long as you please,<br \/>\nand that corpse could be clean, but you cannot<br \/>\nwash life into it!<br \/>\nYou may deck it in flowers, and robe it in scarlet<br \/>\nand fine linen, but you cannot make it live!<br \/>\nThe vital spark must come from above!<br \/>\nRegeneration is not of the will of man, nor of blood,<br \/>\nnor of the will of the flesh, but by the power and<br \/>\nenergy of the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of God alone!<br \/>\nSee then, the ruin of nature and the freeness of grace!<br \/>\nVoid and dark, a chaos given up to be covered with<br \/>\nblackness and darkness forever, and, while as yet<br \/>\nit is un-seeking God, the light arises, and the promise<br \/>\nis fulfilled, \u201cI am found of them that sought me not;<br \/>\nI said, behold me! behold me! to a people that were<br \/>\nnot a people.\u201d<br \/>\nWhile we were lying in our blood, filthily polluted,<br \/>\ndefiled, he passed by, and he said in the sovereignty<br \/>\nof his love, \u201cLive!\u201d and we do live. The whole must be traced to sovereign grace!<br \/>\nFrom this sacred well of discriminating distinguishing<br \/>\ngrace we must draw water this morning, and we must<br \/>\npour it out, saying, \u201cOh Lord, I will praise your name,<br \/>\nfor the first origin of my light was your sovereign<br \/>\npurpose, and nothing in me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The vital spark! The following is from Spurgeon\u2019s sermon, \u201cLight, Natural and Spiritual\u201d No. 660. \u201cYou must be born again.\u201d Do not think Christians are made by education; they are made by creation. You may wash a corpse as long as you please, and that corpse could be clean, but you cannot wash life into [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c-h-spurgeon","category-regeneration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=692"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":694,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions\/694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}