Nathanael and the Fig Tree (S921)

This simple sermon gives a good example of preaching from the human experience recorded in the Scripture. It is an approach often frowned upon today (almost any preaching of human life can be easily dismissed as mere moralism) and yet to throws light on our own thinking and feeling when we can see and hear through the eyes and ears of those whose histories are recorded in Scripture. Spurgeon does that well here, using Nathanael as an example of someone in whom the Spirit had been at work to prepare his heart before he actually encountered our Lord for himself. He introduced us to Nathanael, before stepping through Nathanael’s interaction with and responses to our Lord, with helpful insights into human nature that both flow out of and into what happened to Nathanael. These are not left lying on the surface of our minds, but pressed into our hearts by way of instruction and appeal. Spurgeon is concerned for all kinds of hearers, and Nathanael becomes in this sermon a type of a certain kind, turned to good effect as he pleads with those whose hearts have been awakened to something of a sense of their sin and stirred to desire salvation to come to the Saviour.

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