From the Heart of Spurgeon

Isaiah contrasts the confidence of Babylon with the hope of God’s people. God’s people have a sure and certain hope. False confidences pass away—whether as evidently as the ruins of Babylon have declared, or in any other case. By contrast, our God abides always the same. Even to old age—and this is a particular emphasis of Spurgeon in the sermon, given its textual context—he will carry us. Whatever else may change in us or around us, God himself does not change in himself or in his disposition toward us. And so it remains true that he has made us, both as creatures and as his people. He carries us, and those mercies toward us never alter. He also will deliver us. The structure of the sermon toward the end gets a little ragged, but the point is clear. We have the same God and the same mercy all through life. Spurgeon’s two primary applications go in two opposite directions. The first is to the young, with whom he pleads to begin life with God, in order that they may enjoy him to the end. The second is to the aged, urging them to trust a God who has never let them down.

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Charles Spurgeon increasingly inhabited the paradox of which he preached in this sermon: “Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2Cor 12:10). How can a man be weak and strong at the same time? How can he be made strong out of his weakness? To answer this question, Spurgeon first turns the words the other way up, and makes them into a warning of sorts, exposing the pretended strength of the strong, whether that is unbelievers who imagine that they can save themselves, or believers who are resting in their own imagined excellences. So the high-minded are humbled, before Spurgeon flips his text into the right orientation and asks about the ‘when’ and the ‘then’ of the verse, asking especially how the weakness of the saints brings us to Christ, and brings Christ to us, in such a way as to glorify the Lord, as empty self seeks the fulness of him who fills all in all. Are you feeling your weakness? Are you weary and washed out in the way? Then do not pretend to be anything else, and do not try and find strength in yourself, but cast yourself upon Christ and find in him the strength which he alone supplies.

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This is Spurgeon at his most heartfelt, delighting in grace and urging to holiness. Taking quite a substantial text, and holding fast to its substance and arrangement, he brings us face to face first of all with what we are by nature, what we once were in the evils of our minds, our pursuits, and our hearts. Here he urges us to tears of repentance as he ploughs up our souls. Then he considers what the Lord has done for us, ranging over the wonderful declarations of grace contained in the text, and stirring us up to grateful joy, considering not least the merciful works of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit toward us. Then he brings us to the practical punch, that we should be careful to maintain good works. Here he robustly dismisses any suggestion that this is mere legalistic preaching, making clear that to the unbeliever he calls not to good works, but to Christ only. The exhortation to live as a cheerful servant goes not to the slave but to the son, to those who have been redeemed by grace. Inaction here, careless or passive living, brings dishonour to the Lord who has saved us, and so we must embrace this “faithful saying,” and show by our good fruit the sweetness of our new root.

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Throughout this sermon, Spurgeon complains that he is falling short of the subject which he has taken. I think other preachers, reading and responding to what he says, might long for such a failure as this! The text itself is a casket of pearls, and Spurgeon, after giving us a survey of them, urges us to ponder them more carefully for ourselves: “Yes, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will assuredly plant them in this land, with all my heart and with all my soul.” Having considered some of what that means, perhaps the high point of the sermon then comes as Spurgeon considers the fact that this whole-hearted, whole-souled demonstration of practical love comes from the triune God, and is manifest in all the dealings of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Those paragraphs are worth soaking in! Finally, he offers consolation and exhortation to the people of God, as we consider God’s heart toward us and examine our own hearts toward him. The whole closes with a heartfelt plea from the preacher for those who do not yet know God’s love in this way to come to him and receive all that is held out. I would urge you to read the whole sermon. I am persuaded it will do much good to our souls.

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Spurgeon turns us to the field of the lazy man, the vineyard of the sluggard, to learn lessons for our souls and for our lives. While I suppose the sermon could have descended into mere moralism, Spurgeon keeps it from doing so by connecting the life we live to the state of our souls, and by constantly drawing parallels between our attitude to our lives and our attitude to our spiritual well-being. Emphatic about not just the fruitlessness of the natural heart, but about its proper tendency to abound in things vile and pestilential, he urges us to use every proper means to root out what is ugly and to cultivate what is beautiful in God’s eyes. He pleads with us to look to our own fields—our own hearts, the homes over which we are called to govern and in which we serve, the congregations for which we care and the classes which we teach, the towns and cities where we dwell, and the world in which we live. Good intentions produce nothing—the sluggard only wants a little more sleep, a few more minutes in bed, and he will make everything good…but he never quite gets up and gets round to anything. So Spurgeon calls us not to vague assertions of action to come, but of immediate practical engagement, for the sake of our own souls, and the souls of all those around us.

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1 John 5:13 reveals the purpose for which the apostle wrote his first letter: “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God.” Again emphasising that the Scriptures are written by the Holy Ghost for our profit, and to be received as such, Spurgeon then gets closer to his text. Under the influence of the Holy Spirit, John has written with a particular purpose, and this is a purpose which we ought to pursue. The bulk of the sermon is given over the first heading, as the same Spirit who gave the Word carries along its preacher, exploring the assurance of the believer in connection with the faith which is in the believer’s heart. This being thoroughly established, Spurgeon also insists that we ought to follow up on John’s purpose. If the apostle so wrote, we ought not to neglect what he has said, and the direction he has given, but rather to rejoice in the prospect and engage in the pursuit of this assurance. It is a rich sermon, doctrinally careful and experimentally full, with a practical edge.

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There are a number of sermons which touch on this topic, or deal with it directly, during this season of Spurgeon’s ministry. It is not a change of emphasis so much as a change of tone. He often, throughout his ministry, celebrates the reliability and clarity of the Word of the Lord. In the background here, though, is the Downgrade Controversy, the increasing theological liberalisation of Christianity, revealing where real faith and mere nominalism divide. That context means that some of Spurgeon’s sermons, while remaining essentially pastoral, also become more polemical. Some take on an edge, as this one does, as the preacher considers what it means that “the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.” This is our warrant for teaching scriptural truth; this is the claim of God’s Word upon your attention; this gives to the Word of God its distinct character; this makes the truth of Scripture a ground of great alarm to many; and, this makes the Word of God the reason and the rest of our faith. While there is conviction to establish and comfort the child of God, so there is a persistent resistance to and assault upon the errors that were becoming current, and sadly remain so, undermining the confidence that we may and must have in the Scriptures as the breathed-out and written-down Word of God.

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A thoroughly experimental sermon, in which Spurgeon takes Job as something of a template for all believers, suggesting that Job was favoured (as others may sometimes be) with particularly vivid impressions of God, some striking sense of his majesty and the glory of his perfections. Such views of the Lord truly make an impression upon us, bringing us low in ourselves. This is no generic sense of lowness, according to Spurgeon, but rather a profound consciousness of sin, which in turn leads to a heartfelt repentance, which our preacher unpacks in some detail. Here, particularly, Spurgeon brings the truth of God’s Word close to home, pressing it into your hearts, and asking how we hope to deal with God if such a man as Job was so profoundly humbled by this glimpse of his glory. Of course, his answer lies in the righteousness of Christ alone, by whom only we can stand accepted before God, our sins put away and a righteousness established for us in which God himself delights. Incidentally, it might be worth a glance at the texts read before Scripture noted, as usual, at the end of this sermon. Usually, it would be a chapter, or a portion of one. On this occasion, it is the bulk of two chapters, with a selection from two others. If nothing else, this reminds us that Spurgeon is conscious of the broader context of the texts which he preaches, and seeks to situate each sermon within the broad sweep of Scripture, the book in question, and the immediate scope of the text itself.

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This sermon is numerically significant on several levels. It is the two thousandth sermon, the last sermon of Volume XXXIII in the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, and a sermon prepared to be read on the first day of the year of 1888. As so often with these ‘major marker’ sermons (ones that break through particular numerical boundaries), and all the more so when those markers are loaded up like this, Spurgeon deliberately returns to the very core of his ministry and the delight of his own soul—the atoning sacrifice of the Lord Jesus. The sermon is itself is of the utmost simplicity, as Spurgeon seeks to come to the text, and to come at the congregation. He shows how, in the verse in question, God treats sin as a disease and provides a cure for that disease in the stripes of the Lord Christ, a disease which is immediately and completely effective wherever it is applied. In truth, Spurgeon never strays very far from this theme, but an occasion like this makes it all the more imperative for him to state once more the touchstone of his ministry.

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This briefer sermon is ‘intended for reading’, which usually indicates a sick man writing or editing a previous address for distribution. Brevity here does not undermine simplicity, clarity, or pungency! The text is short: “My son, give me your heart.” The sermon is straightforward, looking at the love which lies behind the request for wisdom, then at the wisdom which guides the loving request, and then a pressing application to be wise by attending to this wise admonition. Here the more practical elements of the sermon come to the fore, although—as we often see with Spurgeon—he usually sows fruitful seeds of thought along the way, quite apart from any more formal element of application. The last paragraph confirms our earlier expectations as well as informing our understanding: the sermon is an ‘occasional address’ (delivered on a specific occasion), in this case an appeal for funds for hospitals (when such were typically privately and charitably supported). Now we know not only when the address came, but we appreciate more fully why Spurgeon has been pressing for the heart—because once our heavenly Father has our heart, he has our hands, too, in cheerful dispensation of our good things. In addition, the final appeal is pleasingly quirky—before the plate is being passed round for the collection of money, Spurgeon passes around his own invisible plate, for the collection of hearts.

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