C.H. Spurgeon

Christmas Cheer and Mounting Bills

Tony Reinke C.H. Spurgeon, Christmas

One Thursday evening in late December, 1876, Charles Spurgeon preached a sermon on the comforting words of the Psalmist, “I flee unto thee to hide me” (Ps. 143:9). Near the end of his message he said this:

Suppose that twenty troubles should come to us in a day, and that we should flee unto God twenty times with them, I think that was might almost pray to God to send twenty troubles more, so that we might flee unto him forty times a day. Any reason for going to God must be a blessing to us, for going to God is going to bliss; so we may even turn our troubles into blessings by making them drive us unto him.

Have you been worrying yourself, since you have been here [in the service], about a trial that you expect to fall upon you towards the close of this year! You fear that Christmas is not likely to be “a merry Christmas” to you; there are many bills coming in, and not much hope of the money with which to meet them; well, then, flee unto God with that trouble; and whatever is burdening your heart or your mind, flee unto God about it, and leave it all in his hands, and go on your way rejoicing.

The Miracle of Spurgeon

Tony Reinke C.H. Spurgeon, Preaching

Helmut Thielicke, Encounter With Spurgeon (Fortress, 1963):

It is evidence of the substance and also of the excellence of form in Spurgeon’s sermons that — removed from the situation in which they were originally preached, and also from the magnetism of Spurgeon’s personality! — they lose very little in print. Not for a moment do they give the impression that we are reading merely historical testimonies to which we no longer have any immediate access and which come alive only in the act of reinterpretation. Even for us they are still a bubbling spring whose water needs no filtering or treatment. And I venture to ask: Of what other preacher of the nineteenth century could this be said? …

But this bush from old London still burns and shows no signs of being consumed. Here Christians dare to speak of miracle. (pp 3-4)

Later:

I am almost tempted to shout out to those who are serving the eternal Word as preachers, and to those who are preparing to do so, in what I hope will be productive hyperbole: Sell all that you have and buy Spurgeon (even if you have to grub through the second-hand bookstores). (p 45)

Thankfully that’s not necessary. Many of Spurgeon’s works can be read online for free. And his massive sermon manuscript archive is still in print thanks to the folks at Pilgrim Publications. We are blessed to have such easy access to his publishing legacy.

Cheerful Labor

Tony Reinke C.H. Spurgeon, Joy

Charles Spurgeon said the following in sermon #537 delivered on October 18, 1863:

Labor is light to a man of cheerful spirit!

You can work all day and almost all night, when the spirits are right. But once let the heart sink and your soul lack encouragement, and then you grow weary, and cry, “Would God it were evening, and the shadows were drawn out, that we might rest from our toil.”

Success waits upon cheerfulness.

The man who toils, rejoicing in his God, believing with all his heart, has success guaranteed.

He who sows in hope shall reap in joy.

He who trusts in the Lord and laughs at impossibilities, shall soon find that there are no impossibilities to laugh at, for to the man who is confident in Jehovah, all things are possible. It is thus of paramount importance that the spirits of the Christian should be constantly kept up.

Spurgeon: Good Friday is No Funeral

Tony Reinke C.H. Spurgeon, Easter

Charles Spurgeon wasn’t too hip on the whole Good Friday idea. In his opinion, too many people ignored the church until “Holy Week,” a week so sacred that attendance on Good Friday and Easter atoned for neglecting the church for the remainder of the calendar year. In this way Good Friday became, in his words, “a superstitious ordinance of man.” It was too rote, too structured, too formalized. “The kind of religion which is ordered by the Almanac, weeping on Good Friday, and rejoicing two days afterwards, measuring its motions by the moon, is too artificial to be worthy of my imitation.”

Yet for all his criticisms, Spurgeon hosted Good Friday services at the Tabernacle. So how did he approach those services? Sermon no. 2248, “Sad Fasts Changed to Glad Feasts,” gives us a glimpse into his thinking.

The Lord of life and glory was nailed to the accursed tree. He died by the act of guilty men. We, by our sins, crucified the Son of God.

We might have expected that, in remembrance of his death, we should have been called to a long, sad, rigorous fast. Do not many men think so even today? See how they observe Good Friday, a sad, sad day to many; yet our Lord has never enjoined our keeping such a day, or bidden us to look back upon his death under such a melancholy aspect.

Instead of that, having passed out from under the old covenant into the new, and resting in our risen Lord, who once was slain, we commemorate his death by a festival most joyous. It came over the Passover, which was a feast of the Jews; but unlike that feast, which was kept by unleavened bread, this feast is brimful of joy and gladness. It is composed of bread and of wine, without a trace of bitter herbs, or anything that suggests sorrow and grief. …

The memorial of Christ’s death is a festival, not a funeral; and we are to come to the table with gladsome hearts and go away from it with praises, for “after supper they sang a hymn” [Matt 26:30, Mark 14:26].

Scholars believe the disciples would have closed their Passover-turned-Lord’s-Supper gathering with a hymn taken from the joy-filled Hallel Psalms (113–118), perhaps even the majestic Psalm 136. Thus we see that for Spurgeon Good Friday, like any celebration of the Savior’s death in the Lord’s Supper, was a proper and suitable context for worship, joy, and gladness.

I think we can safely assume loud, joyful singing could be heard in the streets as the Spurgeon’s Good Friday service came to a close. In Spurgeon’s mind, Good Friday was no funeral.

Criminal Inconsistency

Tony Reinke C.H. Spurgeon, Discernment

Charles Spurgeon, in sermon no. 1516:

My love of consistency with my own doctrinal views is not great enough to allow me knowingly to alter a single text of Scripture.

I have great respect for orthodoxy, but my reverence for inspiration is far greater. I would sooner a hundred times over appear to be inconsistent with myself than be inconsistent with the word of God.

I never thought it to be any very great crime to seem to be inconsistent with myself; for who am I that I should everlastingly be consistent? But I do think it a great crime to be so inconsistent with the word of God that I should want to lop away a bough or even a twig from so much as a single tree of the forest of Scripture.

God forbid that I should cut or shape, even in the least degree, any divine expression. So runs the text, and so we must read it, “God our Savior; who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.”

“To be laughed at is no great hardship to me”

Tony Reinke C.H. Spurgeon, Evangelism, Preaching

What does it look like when a preacher implores sinners to be reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5:20)? Perhaps it resembles something like this excerpt taken from the conclusion to a sermon by Charles Spurgeon (The New Park Street Pulpit Sermons, vol. 4, sermon 171):

Preaching, you see, takes away my voice. Ah! it is not that. It is not the preaching, but the sighing over your souls that is the hard work. I could preach for ever: I could stand here day and night to tell my Master’s love and warn poor souls; but ’tis the after-thought that will follow me when I descend these pulpit steps, that many of you, my hearers’ will neglect this warning.

You will go; you will walk into the street; you will joke; you will laugh. …

To be laughed at is no great hardship to me. I can delight in scoffs and jeers; caricatures, lampoons, and slanders, are my glory; of these things I boast, yea, in these I will rejoice. But that you should turn from your own mercy, this is my sorrow.

Spit on me, but oh! repent!

Laugh at me: but oh! believe in my Master!

Make my body as the dirt of the streets, if ye will but damn not your own souls!

Oh! do not despise your own mercies.

Put not away from you the gospel of Christ. There are many other ways of playing fool beside that. Carry coals in your bosom; knock your head against a wall: but do not damn your souls for the mere sake of being a fool, for fools to laugh at.

Oh! be in earnest upon an earnest subject. If there be no hereafter, live as you like; if there be no heaven, if there be no hell, laugh at me!

But if these things be true, and you believe them, I charge you, as I shall face you at the judgment bar of the Lord Jesus in the day of judgment—I charge you, by your own immortal welfare, lay these things to heart.

HT: JT