From the Heart of Spurgeon

A String of Pearls (S948)

We too easily cease to wonder at the marvel of divine love and the splendour of divine blessing. This sermon, as so many, puts on display Spurgeon’s persistent joy in the salvation of God, in itself and as bestowed upon others. It is one of the sermons in which, rather than deal with a theme suggested by a verse, he engages in close dealing with the text itself—on this occasion, 1 Peter 1:3–5. He simply, sweetly, works his way through the text, exploring the particular favours which the Lord God has bestowed upon his people, culminating where the verse itself begins, with the blessed God, who himself is the portion of his people and the source of all their good. It is our privilege to be so blessed by the blessed God, the Most Merciful and Most Gracious, and therefore right for us to rise up and bless the God of our salvation.

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The Way (S942)

We ought to have a burning appetite for people to know Christ in salvation. We will do that if we delight in him for ourselves. Spurgeon pre-eminently combines that personal delight and that urgent concern. He therefore sets the Lord Jesus before us in the simplicity of his character as the way from sin and to God, impressing upon us the blessings he brings and constantly persuading his hearers to come to Christ, seeking to attract them with his beauties while also warning them of the dangers of not coming on to the way. The preacher shows his talent for conversational close dealing here—nothing is left in the abstract, nothing is allowed to remain theoretical, but the earthiness of the image lends itself to developing metaphors which call us to come to Christ and keep with Christ in order that we may arrive at heaven at last. As so often, we are left saying, on the one hand, that there is little spectacular in the sermon itself, and yet it is full of Christ Jesus, set forth with a winsome earnestness that we would do well to cultivate.

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The Winnowing Fan (S940)

This is a sermon both weighty and cutting. Spurgeon evidently feels it as he preaches it, and it comes across in the plainness of his language and the starkness and roughness of the structure. The sermons barrels along, heaping thought upon thought. There is clarity and order in it, but there is also a sort of relentless around a straightforward assertion that two things are to be followed and two things are to be avoided. The preacher takes no prisoners in pressing upon our consciences the need to take seriously the divine exhortations, holding before us both vigorous encouragements and unblushing warnings about the seriousness of the matter in hand. No pulpit comic here, no casual entertainer, but a man in deep earnest about the souls of his hearers, and determined that they should know the way of everlasting life, and be turned away from the path of death.

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Martha and Mary (S927)

Spurgeon’s assessment of Martha and Mary is not just a crass comparison between the two women, but is rather used to throw light on a disposition he perceives in the church as a whole. It may not be the kind of sermon that all men are in a position to preach, for not all are exposed to the range of activity, the range of influence, and the range of censure to which Spurgeon was exposed. That opportunity enables him to ask about attitudes he perceives rising in the church of his day, the kinds of critiques perhaps thrown about in the Christian journals and popular newspapers of his day. He responds and instructs by identifying the Martha spirit and its consequences (being careful to acknowledge what is good by desire or intent in her approach) as well as underscoring the important of the Mary spirit. No-one who recognises the kind of labour in which Spurgeon engaged will accuse him of dismissing Martha’s activism or of pursuing mere pietism in insisting that Mary’s communion with Christ was the foundation of all her usefulness. The warning is still well taken today: that mere activity is not enough; we must be close to Christ.

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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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Work In Us and Work By Us (S914)

Spurgeon always strives to keep divine sovereignty and human responsibility in their proper and scriptural relationship. The principle he derives from Colossians 1:29 is “that the work of Christ in us and for us does not exempt us from work and service, nor does the Holy Spirit’s work supersede human effort, but rather excites it.” He presses that doctrine in two directions, firstly with regard to a man’s own salvation, and secondly with regard to a man’s ministry for the salvation of others. So stated (in Spurgeon’s words) it may all seem a little stark, but he does a masterful job of weaving together the two strands of the Holy Spirit’s powerful operations and the believer’s active dependence upon and response to those operations. The whole rises to something more than an exhortation, something more than an encouragement—it is a charge to the church, in the light of some particular effort then being made, to throw themselves into the work of the kingdom in expectation of the divine blessing. Our situation may be less specific than when Spurgeon first preached, but the sermon is no less worthy of being taken to heart.

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Overwhelming Obligations (S910)

Catching our ears and our hearts, Spurgeon subverts our expectations with a sermon on overwhelming obligations that is about grace and goodness and gratitude. He carries us to the bright depths of our experience of God’s favour toward us, and lifts us to the heights of praise in response to the divine blessing. He is equally ready to draw attention to our experience, surveying the range of God’s kindnesses toward us, and to look through a more doctrinal lens, contemplating the distinct mercies of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Then, at some length, he probes our souls as a true pastor, being very “personal and practical,” asking a series of very searching questions which challenge us on a number of levels about the response we are making to the benefits which the Lord has bestowed. Again, we have a sermon remarkable for the territory it covers, for the depths it plumbs, for the heights it scans, and for the praise it draws forth.

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The Upper Hand (S901) Rom 6:14

Our preacher’s theological convictions and pastoral compassions are on display once more. He opens his text first as a test of our profession of faith. Are we genuinely free of the dominion of sin—we know sin is remaining, but is it reigning? Spurgeon calls us to a stern and searching self-examination in this respect. Next he takes the text as a promise. Again there is both honesty and sensitivity, rooting our freedom from the power of sin in the divine plan and purpose, especially in that God’s people are not under law but under grace. Spurgeon takes pains to explain that the law cannot promote and secure holiness because of the sinfulness of the human heart, but that grace has a power that sweetly constrains to holy obedience. Finally, he takes his text as an encouragement, directing it toward various different characters in his congregation—the careless, the weak, the embattled, the immature, the backslider, and the unconverted. So he takes in more or less all his hearers in a great sweep, pointing these truths particularly at those in particular need.

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A Word With Those Who Wait for Signs and Wonders (S898)

Spurgeon is the kind of man who—not least because of the volume of material he produced, as well as the range of issues he addressed in various contexts—can be easily claimed by any number of different people and groups, each of whom are able to find something he said which (more or less, in some way) might appear to support their own distinctive opinions. Certainly he has been claimed by Charismatic Christians, and certainly he is a man conscious of his dependence on the Holy Spirit and often immediately responsive to the operations of the Spirit in a way that can make some Christians uncomfortable. Nevertheless, to take some of those occasions and comments and to turn Spurgeon into something he was not is neither just nor honest. We do not know if there were a specific occasion for this sermon, but it sets forth a robust concern for and critique of those who set ‘signs and wonders’ against the clear revelation of God’s Word. It may be that most of us might take some issue with some of what Spurgeon says, but what is clear is his insistence upon the supremacy of Scripture, and the folly of putting something else in the place of or even alongside the Word of the living God as the source of truth and the guide for a life that pleases the Lord.

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Serving the Lord (S885)

Our preacher has a talent for developing a particular phrase, not necessarily ripping it out of context, but developing a theme or issue from its context. He does that here with the matter of ‘servantising’ (as he calls it), waiting upon the Most High as his servants. So he lays down the foundations of service, then the modes of our service, then he commends such service, and finally he exhorts us to such service. As ever, there is a holy boldness in Spurgeon’s address. We might legitimately suggest that Spurgeon can speak very directly to a very large congregation without necessarily pointing his finger at one or two people, as might happen when dealing with something like inactivity or laxity in a smaller congregation. The flip side of such an assertion is that he is speaking very directly to thousands of people, and he does not pull his punches. As hearers and readers, we feel the force of Spurgeon’s challenge about our service for the Lord; as preachers, we might be reminded of the kind of fortitude that is required to look any number of men and women in the eye, and—with compassion and integrity—point out where they fall short and exhort them to greater endeavour in the Lord’s work.

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