From the Heart of Spurgeon

The Marvelous Magnet (S1717)

This is one of the sermons preached “on an evening when the regular hearers left their seats to be occupied by strangers.” Imagine asking some five thousand people to vacate their places, only to see another five thousand pressing in to hear the good news of Jesus Christ! On such an occasion, Spurgeon gives himself especially to explaining, demonstrating, reasoning, pleading, and persuading that sinners will turn to Christ Jesus. Thus he here holds up our Lord Jesus as the “marvellous magnet,” zeroing in on his crucifixion as that reality, that sight, by which he draws men to himself. So he considers first the attractive force which lies in the crucified Saviour himself. Then he asks how this force is exercised, considering the means and the power by which the Holy Spirit draws sinners to Christ Jesus. Finally, he asks what the implications of all this must be for those who are hearing him, pressing home the claims of Christ upon every soul. As you read it you will find that it is not an unusually short sermon, nor is it crassly simplistic. It is lively and it is direct, and the preacher labours to keep every fixed upon the Redeemer. In this, it is an example of truly evangelistic preaching, without bells or whistles, and with no special measures other than this: that Christ is resolutely at the centre and in the forefront throughout.

Read the sermon here: https://www.mediagratiae.org/resources/the-marvellous-magnet

Check out the new From the Heart of Spurgeon Book!

British: https://amzn.to/48rV1OR

American: https://amzn.to/48oHjft

Connect with the Reading Spurgeon Community on Twitter! https://twitter.com/ReadingSpurgeon

Sign up to get the weekly readings emailed to you: https://www.mediagratiae.org/podcasts-1/from-the-heart-of-spurgeon.

Check out other Media Gratiae podcasts at www.mediagratiae.org

Download the Media Gratiae App: https://subsplash.com/mediagratiae/app

Herein is Love (S1707)

There are no themes sweeter than the love of God toward us in Christ Jesus our Lord, and there are few themes upon which Spurgeon is more happy and eloquent. In this sermon he digs into the text of his text, working through the language of love which John speaks. Love begins in and with God: he is its source. That love flows out in the sending of God’s beloved Son to be the propitiation for the sins of his people, and then flows over in the people so loved, filling their hearts and spilling out into the lives of others. Here again you will find a familiar emphasis in Spurgeon, that it is love revealed in the gospel which draws out love and secures obedience, something which the law in itself could never do. But there is more, the love with which we have been loved does not just stimulate love of another kind, but produces love of the same kind, drawing from us a Godlike, Christlike love which operates in a similar direction and fashion. So it is that we need to consider and enjoy that love with which God has loved us in Christ Jesus, in order that we might not only appreciate its benefits for ourselves but also demonstrate it in our responses to God himself and to those around us, both in the church and in the world.

Read the sermon here:

Check out the new From the Heart of Spurgeon Book!

British: https://amzn.to/48rV1OR

American: https://amzn.to/48oHjft

Connect with the Reading Spurgeon Community on Twitter! https://twitter.com/ReadingSpurgeon

Sign up to get the weekly readings emailed to you: https://www.mediagratiae.org/podcasts-1/from-the-heart-of-spurgeon.

Check out other Media Gratiae podcasts at www.mediagratiae.org

Download the Media Gratiae App: https://subsplash.com/mediagratiae/app

Gladness for Sadness (S1701)

With a wonderful pastoral sensitivity, Spurgeon preaches a sermon to a congregation which has recently lost two esteemed, elderly deacons. Without artificiality, and without clumsiness, he takes full account of the sorrow of the congregation, while offering them hope and joy in proportion to their grief. He zeroes in on the gladness for which Moses prayers at the end of Psalm 90, looking at the way in which the Lord is able to supply a gladness to balance out sadness, and at the distinctiveness of the gladnesses which the Lord is pleased to grant his praying people. These joys are both real and enduring, and as he contemplates the future—and asks his people to contemplate a future without two eminent servants of God in their midst—Spurgeon does so with eyes lifted to heaven, fixed upon the hand of Almighty God. So he encourages himself, and them, and us, with the prospect of God’s work in and after our days, giving us our own work to do and then smiling upon that work. It is a genuinely encouraging sermon, and I hope that you will find it so.

Read the sermon here:

Check out the new From the Heart of Spurgeon Book!

British: https://amzn.to/48rV1OR

American: https://amzn.to/48oHjft

Connect with the Reading Spurgeon Community on Twitter! https://twitter.com/ReadingSpurgeon

Sign up to get the weekly readings emailed to you: https://www.mediagratiae.org/podcasts-1/from-the-heart-of-spurgeon.

Check out other Media Gratiae podcasts at www.mediagratiae.org

Download the Media Gratiae App: https://subsplash.com/mediagratiae/app

Without Carefulness (S1692)

“A delicious carelessness of holy confidence.” That is the beautiful phrase which Spurgeon uses to describe the state he encourages in this sermon. Many people are full of care, and the apostle Paul, writing to the Corinthians, wants them to be without care, not oppressed and flustered by a weight of trouble. And so, following Paul, Spurgeon urges the saints first of all to avoid those states which necessarily involve a burden of care which might be avoided—unwise marriages, immersion in business, public service that overwhelms our capacity, jobs which prevent attending or serving in God’s house, and any forms of speculation (risk-taking, gambling). He also tells us to steer clear of those pursuits which necessarily involve this kind of care: pursuing wealth, craving a reputation, desiring respectability, idolising anything in this life. Finally, and very positively and practically, he urges us to exercise a childlike faith in the ever-blessed God. Don’t drag your troubles, real or imagined, out of the future and into the present; be content with God’s will; be confident in God’s love; believe in the power of prayer. Do not live loaded with care, pleads Spurgeon, but ask first of all how you may live to God’s glory, and you will live as Christ lived—in a delicious carelessness of holy confidence.

Read the sermon here: https://www.mediagratiae.org/resources/without-carefulness 

Check out the new From the Heart of Spurgeon Book!

British: https://amzn.to/48rV1OR

American: https://amzn.to/48oHjft

Connect with the Reading Spurgeon Community on Twitter! https://twitter.com/ReadingSpurgeon

Sign up to get the weekly readings emailed to you: https://www.mediagratiae.org/podcasts-1/from-the-heart-of-spurgeon.

Check out other Media Gratiae podcasts at www.mediagratiae.org

Download the Media Gratiae App: https://subsplash.com/mediagratiae/app

The Law Written on the Heart (S1687)

What is your attitude to the law of God? Spurgeon’s is typically Particular Baptist, typically Puritan, with a strong emphasis on the blessings of the new covenant in Christ bringing us into a new, true, happy relation to the law which God wrote on Adam’s heart in creation and inscribed on tablets of stone at Sinai. Spurgeon emphasises in this sermon that the law of God is written now on the tablets of our heart. Having given us a few biblical-theological insights by way of introduction, he brings us soundly into the realm of the new covenant, showing us that the same law given at Sinai is now inscribed into the core of the inner man, and becomes a part of every believer. Then he shows us what this writing is, the whole, unaltered law, written so that memory, will, and affection are fully engaged, and he considers how the Holy Spirit uses various means to keep that writing legible. He thinks of God as the one who alone is entitled and able to write perfectly and permanently upon the human heart, and then briefly closes with the result of this writing. Here he presses home both the radical change which occurs, in terms of battle joined against all sin, but also by way of the new principle of obedience which characterises the regenerate soul. By way of this he points us toward the heaven which is prepared for those who love God, those who are themselves prepared for heaven by a lifelong pursuit of that which pleases him. This sermon is a powerful corrective to those who would put aside the law of God at any point, as well as to those who think to impose and enforce it by any means other than the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Read the sermon here: https://www.mediagratiae.org/resources/the-law-written-on-the-heart

Check out the new From the Heart of Spurgeon Book!

British: https://amzn.to/48rV1OR

American: https://amzn.to/48oHjft

Connect with the Reading Spurgeon Community on Twitter! https://twitter.com/ReadingSpurgeon

Sign up to get the weekly readings emailed to you: https://www.mediagratiae.org/podcasts-1/from-the-heart-of-spurgeon.

Check out other Media Gratiae podcasts at www.mediagratiae.org

Download the Media Gratiae App: https://subsplash.com/mediagratiae/app

Ask and Have (S1682)

The challenges, rebukes, and encouragements of this sermon all carry their proper weight. Preaching from James 4:2–3, Spurgeon first exposes the poverty of lusting, how all the carnal and self-reliant effort in the world never produces that for which we seek. Then, and painfully, he points out how Christian churches may suffer from spiritual poverty, declining and drifting, neither desiring anything worthwhile nor seeking after it. Such churches are often competing for the wrong things in the wrong spirit, even with bitterness. Where, asks the preacher, is the asking? Where is the praying and the pleading for God’s blessing, and for God’s glory in the blessing? All this leads to stirring encouragements to take God at his word, and to ask rightly of a God who is only too ready to bestow his favours upon those who seek him. Spurgeon really hammers this point home, exhorting us to persistent prayer to the God of heaven, assuring us that the Lord Almighty stands ready to pour out his goodnesses on those who call upon him. So, shall we believe the Word of God? Shall we give ourselves to prayer? Shall we look for the answer, because we are persuaded of what God himself has said?

Read the sermon here: https://www.mediagratiae.org/resources/ask-andhave

Check out the new From the Heart of Spurgeon Book!

British: https://amzn.to/48rV1OR

American: https://amzn.to/48oHjft

Connect with the Reading Spurgeon Community on Twitter! https://twitter.com/ReadingSpurgeon

Sign up to get the weekly readings emailed to you: https://www.mediagratiae.org/podcasts-1/from-the-heart-of-spurgeon.

Check out other Media Gratiae podcasts at www.mediagratiae.org

Download the Media Gratiae App: https://subsplash.com/mediagratiae/app

Brought Up from the Horrible Pit (S1674)

It is very easy—perhaps too easy—for us to accommodate the language of the psalms to ourselves, as if we were the primary reference point. Spurgeon here reminds us that, while it is not wrong to see our own experience written in the psalms, nevertheless we are typically pointed first and plainly to Jesus Christ (indeed, it is this which enables us to interpret our own experience, and learn from it). Thus, here, he takes us to our Lord’s deepest trouble, and bids us observe our Lord’s behaviour, then to consider our Lord’s deliverance, then our Lord’s reward for his sufferings, and finally, the Lord’s likeness in his redeemed people. The result is a sermon which is vivid and realistic in its depiction of our Saviour’s distresses, but which also shows the spirit in which he bore those distresses, and the smile of his Father upon his labours. All this puts our own sorrows in perspective, and helps us to understand Christ’s sympathy with us in our distresses, and our confidence that—trusting in him—the God of heaven will also lift us up out of the horrible pit, out of the miry clay.

Read the sermon here: https://www.mediagratiae.org/resources/brought-up-from-the-horrible-pit

Check out the new From the Heart of Spurgeon Book!

British: https://amzn.to/48rV1OR

American: https://amzn.to/48oHjft

Connect with the Reading Spurgeon Community on Twitter! https://twitter.com/ReadingSpurgeon

Sign up to get the weekly readings emailed to you: https://www.mediagratiae.org/podcasts-1/from-the-heart-of-spurgeon.

Check out other Media Gratiae podcasts at www.mediagratiae.org

Download the Media Gratiae App: https://subsplash.com/mediagratiae/app

#spurgeon #podcast #fyp #preacher #reformed #Christian #sermon #history #churchhistory #pastor

The Exceeding Riches of Grace (S1665)

Sometimes you get a sense of the preacher’s excitement from the very first sentence of his sermon. It is the case here, as Spurgeon bubbles over from the opening line! With such a verse and theme before him, Spurgeon feels his utter inadequacy to express all that is contained in the exceeding riches of God’s grace in Christ Jesus. But, confident that others could preach the gospel better, but could never preach a better gospel, he gives us his best…and what a delight it is! Overflowing with spiritual excitement, his first point really frames the substance along the lines of the text. It is in the second point that his soul begins to soar, telling us that this exceedingly rich grace in Christ is above all limit, observation, and expression, above all our ways of action, our understanding, and all our sins. It is greater than God’s promises, greater than anything we have yet received. It is above all measure! What an incitement to come and trust in the Christ through whom all blessings flow! Finally, Spurgeon sets out to illustrate his text just a little more, trying to add a last few strands of thought concerning the patience, the freeness, the effectiveness of divine grace, and its beautiful endurance, carrying us in to eternity future as we wonder how we shall ever be able to tell not just what we now know, but all that we do not now know, as it is unfolded in ages to come.

Read the sermon here: https://www.mediagratiae.org/resources/a-feast-for-the-upright-e8l4z-zrlgl

Check out the new From the Heart of Spurgeon Book!

British: https://amzn.to/48rV1OR

American: https://amzn.to/48oHjft

Connect with the Reading Spurgeon Community on Twitter! https://twitter.com/ReadingSpurgeon

Sign up to get the weekly readings emailed to you: https://www.mediagratiae.org/podcasts-1/from-the-heart-of-spurgeon.

Check out other Media Gratiae podcasts at www.mediagratiae.org

Download the Media Gratiae App: https://subsplash.com/mediagratiae/app

A Feast for the Upright (S1659)

Spurgeon says that this text overpowers him: “It is a gem of priceless value.” Even before he gets to the formal substance of his sermon, his unusually long introduction has turned that gem in the light so that its facets begin to reflect something of the goodness of God, and set us up for the main elements of his address. In fact, he effectively gives us a couple of mini-sermons before he gets to the sermon proper! When he eventually begins to work through five particulars to which he wants to draw our attention, he first considers blessings in their fullness—God as our sun. Then there are blessings in their counterpoise—that God is also a shield. Developing that thought, he then turns us to blessings in their order. Building on that, we have blessings in development and in maturity. Finally, there are blessings in their universality. The sermon is less one of sequence and more one of layering, thought laid upon thought, and insight upon insight, giving us a rich and sweet feast for those who walk uprightly, and closing with urgent entreaties to enjoy and expect the good things that the Lord has laid up for his people.

Read the sermon here: https://www.mediagratiae.org/resources/a-feast-for-the-upright

Check out the new From the Heart of Spurgeon Book!

British: https://amzn.to/48rV1OR

American: https://amzn.to/48oHjft

Connect with the Reading Spurgeon Community on Twitter! https://twitter.com/ReadingSpurgeon

Sign up to get the weekly readings emailed to you: https://www.mediagratiae.org/podcasts-1/from-the-heart-of-spurgeon.

Check out other Media Gratiae podcasts at www.mediagratiae.org

Download the Media Gratiae App: https://subsplash.com/mediagratiae/app

The Resurrection of our Lord Jesus (S1653)

This is a sermon full of life and strength preached by a man full of sickness and weakness. The introduction surveys all the key facts contained in the text, giving us the scope of the whole, and then the preacher zeroes in on the reality of the resurrection, unpacking it in its bearing upon other great truths, its bearing on the gospel itself, and its bearing upon us. The sermon is packed full of theology and of Scripture, as Spurgeon uses the opportunity to join the dots for us, connecting the resurrection of Jesus to various other doctrines, demonstrating how it lies at the very heart of all our gospel hope and joy, and then pressing it home in terms of personal expectation and confidence: we must remember this! His last words are a stirring call to grasp that this risen Jesus is ruling still, and that—whatever may be the eulogies, mournful or mocking, pronounced over the religion of Christ—the Saviour who lives and reigns has obtained and must obtain the victory, and we with him. It is a fine sermon for a sick man to preach, no doubt full of comfort to himself, and so flowing forth from his heart to comfort others also.

Read the sermon here: https://www.mediagratiae.org/resources/the-resurrection-of-our-lord-jesus

Check out the new From the Heart of Spurgeon Book!

British: https://amzn.to/48rV1OR

American: https://amzn.to/48oHjft

Connect with the Reading Spurgeon Community on Twitter! https://twitter.com/ReadingSpurgeon

Sign up to get the weekly readings emailed to you: https://www.mediagratiae.org/podcasts-1/from-the-heart-of-spurgeon.

Check out other Media Gratiae podcasts at www.mediagratiae.org

Download the Media Gratiae App: https://subsplash.com/mediagratiae/app