Preaching

Spurgeon on earnestness (Pt. 2)

Tony Reinke C.H. Spurgeon, Earnestness, Great Preachers, Great Quotes, Pastoral Ministry, Preaching, Pupit Seriousness

“Those who attend our ministry have a great deal to do during the week. Many of them have family trials, and heavy personal burdens to carry, and they frequently come into the assembly cold and listless, with thoughts wandering hither and thither; it is ours to take those thoughts and thrust them into the furnace of our own earnestness, melt them by holy contemplation and by intense appeal, and pour them out into the mold of the truth. A blacksmith can do nothing when his fire is out and in this respect he is the type of a minister. If all the lights in the outside world are quenched, the lamp which burns in the sanctuary ought still to remain undimmed; for that fire no curfew must ever be rung. We must regard the people as the wood and the sacrifice, well wetted a second and a third time by the cares of the week, upon which, like the prophet, we must pray down the fire from heaven.”

– C.H. Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students

Spurgeon on earnestness

Tony Reinke Boldness, C.H. Spurgeon, Earnestness, Fresh preaching, Great Preachers, Great Quotes, John Angell James, Preaching, Pupit Seriousness

This week I am hoping to complete the wonderful book on earnestness by John Angell James. Spurgeon also has much to say on this topic in Lectures to My Students. Here is just one example …

If I were asked – What in a Christian minister is the most essential quality for securing success in winning souls for Christ? I should reply, “earnestness”: and if I were asked a second or a third time, I should not vary the answer, for personal observation drives me to the conclusion that, as a rule, real success is proportionate to the preacher’s earnestness. Both great men and little men succeed if they are thoroughly alive unto God, and fail if they are not so. We know men of eminence who have gained a high reputation, who attract large audiences, and obtain much admiration, who nevertheless are very low in the scale as soul-winners: for all they do in that direction they might as well have been lecturers on anatomy, or political orators. At the same time we have seen their compeers in ability so useful in the business of conversion that evidently their acquirements and gifts have been no hindrance to them, lint the reverse; for by the intense and devout use of their powers, and by the; anointing of the Holy Spirit, they have turned many to righteousness. We have seen brethren of very scanty abilities who have been terrible drags upon a church, and have proved as inefficient in their spheres as blind men in an observatory; but, on the other hand, men of equally small attainments are well known, to us as mighty hunters before the Lord, by whose holy energy many hearts have been captured for the Savior. I delight in M’Cheyne’s remark, “It is not so much great talents that God blesses, as great likeness to Christ.” In many instances ministerial success is traceable almost entirely to an intense zeal, a consuming passion for souls, and an eager enthusiasm in the cause of God, and we believe that in every case, other things being equal, men prosper in the divine service in proportion as their hearts are blazing with holy love.

C.H. Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students (Passmore and Alabaster: London), 1881. 2:145.

Spurgeon’s example of earnestness

Tony Reinke Boldness, C.H. Spurgeon, Earnestness, Experiential preaching, Great Quotes, Preaching, Pupit Seriousness

This weekend I have the great honor to preach on the topic of Psalm 73. And in my study I was given a great example of the pulpit earnestness that we have been talking so much about over the past several weeks. It’s from the pulpit of C.H. Spurgeon:

“Please remember we are not speaking now of people in the street, of drunkards, and harlots, and profane swearers, and such like — we know that their damnation is sure and just — but, alas, I need not look far. If I glance along these seats and look into faces upon which my eye rests every Sabbath day, there are some of you, some of you who are unconverted still. You are not immoral but you are unregenerated; you are not unamiable but you are ungracious, you are not far from the kingdom, but you are not in the kingdom. It is your end I speak of now, yours ye sons of godly mothers, yours ye daughters of holy parents — your end, unless God give you repentance. I want you to see where you are standing today. “Surely thou didst set them in slippery places.”

Spurgeon sermon #486, 12/28/1862

The overwhelming influence of the media and earnest preaching

Tony Reinke Banner of Truth, Biblical Quotes, Culture, Earnestness, Fresh preaching, Great Quotes, Imagination, John Angell James, Pastoral Failure, Pastoral Ministry, Preaching, Pupit Seriousness, Spiritual Warfare, Worldliness

We don’t live in the Stone Age or Bronze Age, our era is rightly called the Information Age. We are buried alive in books, blogs, emails, websites, magazines, etc. And so are the hearers of our sermons. So why is the message of the Bible more important than the latest war headline from CNN? The listeners to our sermons may not see a big difference between the two, especially as the Middle East is birthing the next world war and gas prices close in on $4 a gallon. And those seem to have more ‘real’ impact today on sinners then dangers of a spiritually loose life now and eternity to come. What is needed (no, required!) in the Information Age is earnest preaching. Long before blogs and websites John Angell James wrote the following:

“Will anyone deny that we want an earnest ministry to break in some degree the spell, and leave the soul at liberty for the affairs of the kingdom which is not of this world? When politics have come upon the minds, hearts, and imaginations of the people, for six days out of the seven, invested with the charms of eloquence, and decked with the colors of party; when the orator and the writer have both thrown the witchery of genius over the soul; how can it be expected that tame, spiritless, vapid common-places from the pulpit, sermons coming neither from the head nor the heart, having neither weight of matter, nor grace of manner; neither genius to compensate for the want of taste, nor taste to compensate for the want of genius; and what is still worse, having no unction of evangelical truth, no impress of eternity, no radiance from heaven, no terror from hell; in short, no adaptation to awaken reflection, to produce conviction, or to save the soul; how can it be expected, I say, that such sermons can be useful to accomplish the purposes for which the gospel is to be preached? What chance have such preachers, amidst the tumult, to be heard or felt, or what hold have they upon public attention, amidst the high excitement of the times in which we live? Their hearers too often feel, that listening to their sermons on the Sabbath, after what they have heard or read during the week, is as if they were turning from brilliant gas-light to the dim and smoking spark of tallow and rush [a candle].”

– John Angell James, An Earnest Ministry: The Want of the Times (Banner of Truth, 1847/1993) pp. 194-195.

“And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” (1 Cor. 2:3-5, ESV).

The god of laughter and earnest preaching

Tony Reinke Banner of Truth, Earnestness, Great Quotes, Idolatry, Idols, John Angell James, Pastoral Ministry, Preaching, Pupit Seriousness, Sin in Culture, Worldliness

Our era is marked by an addiction to humor. Plot-less movies bring in millions of dollars in revenue simply because of their power to make fun of life or otherwise humor the viewer. At the same time this era we live could be much more serious about the eternal world about to crash into each soul. Preaching must stand in contrast to this god of laughter because we serve a God who expects a seriousness and fear from us.

The following quote by John Angell James, written before television and the entertainment/comedy boom, says this addiction to entertainment is another motivation for serious and earnest preaching.

“It is hard to conceive how earnestness and spirituality can be maintained by those whose tables are covered, and whose leisure time is consumed, by the bewitching inspirations of the god of laughter. There is little hope of our arresting the evil, except we make it our great business to raise up a ministry who shall not themselves be carried away with the torrent; who shall be grave, without being gloomy; serious, without being melancholy; and who, on the other hand, shall be cheerful without being frivolous, and whose chastened mirthfulness shall check, or at any rate reprove, the excesses of their companions. What a demand does this state of things prefer for the most intense earnestness in our Sabbath-day exercises, both our prayers and our sermons! In this modern taste we have a new obstacle to our usefulness of a most formidable kind, which can be subdued only by God’s blessing upon our fidelity and zeal. Men are wanted, who shall by their learning, science, and general knowledge, give weight to their opinions, and influence to their advice, in their private intercourse with their flocks; and shall, by their powerful and evangelical preaching, control this taste, and counter it by a better.”

John Angell James, An Earnest Ministry: The Want of the Times (Banner of Truth, 1847/1993) pp. 198-199.

“Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others” (2 Cor. 5:11, ESV).

Sermon notes: God sings over the justified sinner!

Tony Reinke Biblical Quotes, C.H. Spurgeon, Cross of Christ, Eloquence, Gospel, Grace, Great Quotes, Humble orthodoxy, Legalism, Omaha NE, Preaching, Preaching notes, Pride, Sermon notes

I had the great opportunity to preach on grace tonight here in Omaha. The sermon notes can be downloaded here (The Grand Canyon of God’s Grace, Tony Reinke, 07/15/06 PM). One of the chief texts was Zephaniah 3:14-17:

“14 Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem! 15 The LORD has taken away the judgments against you; he has cleared away your enemies. The King of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst; you shall never again fear evil. 16 On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: ‘Fear not, O Zion; let not your hands grow weak. 17 The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing’” (ESV).

On this incredible text, C.H. Spurgeon said:

“I can understand a minister rejoicing over a soul that he has brought to Christ; I can also understand believers rejoicing to see others saved from sin and hell; but what shall I say of the infinitely happy and eternally-blessed God finding, as it were, a new joy in souls redeemed? This is another of those great wonders that cluster around the work of divine grace! … The Lord takes pleasure in them that fear him, imperfect though they be. He sees them as they are to be, and so he rejoices over them, even when they cannot rejoice in themselves. When your face is blurred with tears, your eyes red with weeping, and your heart heavy with sorrow for sin, the great Father is rejoicing over you. The prodigal son wept in his Father’s bosom, but the Father rejoiced over his son. We are questioning, doubting, sorrowing, trembling; and all the while he who sees the end from the beginning knows what will come out of the present disquietude, and therefore rejoices. Let us rise in faith to share the joy of God.” (sermons from 1837, #1990)

Amen, let us prepare to rise and share the joy of God in Sunday morning worship! – Tony