Welcome to the 2012 Shepherds
Conference. Charles Spurgeon, the evangelistic
zeal of a 19th century Calvinist, Steve Lawson. We're going to
have a wonderful time this afternoon together. My prayer is that God
will not just encourage us, but ignite us, as He did Spurgeon,
to be great preachers of the Word of God. By way of introduction,
I would tell you this. When I was in seminary, I began
my time in school as an Arminian. I came from a very man-centered
background, and when I went to seminary, it was the first time
I was ever confronted with the doctrines of grace. I don't think
anyone ever hit a brick wall harder than I did. I hit that
brick wall, bounced back, got up, ran at it again, and couldn't
not get the brick wall to come down. I argued with professors,
argued with fellow students, argued with pastors. The doctrines
of grace just cannot be true. And it was a two-year turnaround
process for me to come to an understanding of the sovereign
grace of God in salvation. Having come to that understanding,
I then began to wonder, if everyone is going to be saved, then why
have I left the bank, come to seminary, why am I living a pauper's
existence in a garage apartment on the back alley of a house
in Dallas, Texas? And as I wrestled then with evangelism,
I walked into the seminary bookstore one day and I looked across the
way and I saw some books containing the sermons of Charles Haddon
Spurgeon. I had heard the name. I really
did not know anything about him. And as I pulled these sermons
off the shelf, I began to read them. And it was immediately
apparent to me, based on the sermons that I was reading, that
this man was a Calvinist. This man believes in the sovereignty
of God in salvation. And as I continued to read these
sermons, I also read and felt the warmth of his preaching that
this man is fiercely committed to evangelistic preaching. And
by that, I do not mean simply telling the gospel, but that
this man was doing far more than just explaining the gospel, because
that's not enough. You must exhort and urge and
call people to commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ. If you're
to be a fisher of men, it's not enough just to get in your boat
and get out into the water, and it's not enough just to cast
your nets. You must draw your nets. You must draw the fish
into the boat. And as I read these sermons by
Charles Haddon Spurgeon, I came to an understanding that this
is what it looks like to be fiercely committed to the sovereignty
of God in salvation and at the same time have an evangelistic
fervor and passion for lost souls. I saw in Charles Haddon Spurgeon
a man who held Calvinism in one hand and evangelism in the other
hand and was a force for God. In fact, I will go so far to
say is the only person, the only preacher who plays with a full
deck is a Calvinistic evangelist. That man has all the cards to
play with. He has the full counsel of God,
and he is a force to be reckoned with. So having said that, I
want to introduce you to a man you probably already know, Charles
Haddon Spurgeon, but I want to give special emphasis to his
Calvinism and his evangelism, how these two streams flowed
together to form one mighty river of truth. And there is a reason
why we call Spurgeon today the Prince of Preachers. I would
say he is the greatest preacher the church has ever known since
the Apostle Paul. He stands at the head of the
list, I believe, of every survey of great preachers. So, Charles
Haddon Spurgeon, easily the greatest preacher of the English language.
If John Calvin was the greatest theologian, if Jonathan Edwards
was the greatest philosopher, If George Whitefield was the
greatest evangelist, then Charles Haddon Spurgeon was the greatest
evangelistic pastor to occupy one pulpit over an extended period
of time. I want to ask the question, why
Spurgeon? And Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the great doctor, said, one of
the greatest preachers of the last century, if not the greatest
of all, was Charles Haddon Spurgeon. I would add my amen to that.
Not only the greatest preacher of the 19th century, I believe
he is the greatest preacher of any century, going back to the
first century. S. M. Houghton, who has written
that wonderful book, Sketches of Church History, has said,
there is no doubt that in England the greatest preacher of the
century was Charles Haddon Spurgeon. It could be argued that the 19th
century in Victoria, England was the greatest assembly of
red-hot preachers of the Word of God, and Spurgeon stands at
the head of that list. Hughes Oliphant Old, who is,
I think, arguably the greatest living authority on the history
of preaching today, writes, there is no voice in the Victorian
pulpit as resonant, no preacher as beloved by the people, no
orator as prodigious as Charles Haddon Spurgeon. James Montgomery
Boyce, the great pastor of 10th Presbyterian, has written, Spurgeon
was one of the greatest evangelists England has ever seen. I would say he is second only
to the greatest of all evangelists, George Whitefield. But Boyce
goes on to say, not only was he one of the greatest evangelists,
but he was one of the country's staunchest defenders of the doctrines
of grace. Dr. Al Mohler, who is with us
in this conference, has said, Spurgeon was a legend in his
own day. He stands alone as the most widely
appreciated and influential preacher of his century. And now the key
part of this quote, Spurgeon preached a full-bodied gospel
with Calvinistic convictions and evangelistic appeal. In other words, he had the depth
of Calvinism and the breadth of evangelism. That is what we
need in our ministries. For all of us who are called
of God to preach the Word, we need the depth of Reformed thinking
as well as the breadth of evangelistic zeal and fervor. And when you
bring that depth and that breadth together, it is like gas and
fire. There is an explosion that takes
place. Carl Henry, former editor of
Christianity Today, writes that Spurgeon is one of evangelical
Christianity's immortals. He's easily on the Mount Rushmore
of great preachers of church history. B.H. Carroll, who was
the founding president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary,
has said, with whom among men can you compare Spurgeon? He
combined the preaching power of Jonathan Edwards and Whitefield
with the organizing energy of Wesley and the energy, fire,
and courage of Luther. In many respects, he was most
like Luther. In many, most like Paul. In other words, like Luther and
like Paul, Spurgeon was bold, he was courageous, he was a larger-than-life
personality. As he stood in the pulpit, he
roared like a lion. Theolike Helmholt writes, the
fire he thus kindled turned into a beacon and was an inexhaustible
blaze that glowed and burned, and there was fed by the wells
of the eternal Word Here was the miracle of a bush that burned
with fire and yet was not consumed. He stood in one pulpit for thirty-eight
years, and he preached the Word of God with never an empty seat,
and thousands upon thousands came to faith in Jesus Christ.
What about Spurgeon's life? Let me give you a quick flyover
of Spurgeon's life. He was born June 19, 1834 in
Kelvington near Essex, England. He was born into a family of
preachers. His father was a preacher. His grandfather was a preacher. And he grew up with great exposure
to Puritan literature. His soul was unconverted growing
up in a pastor's home. And yet, he was saturated with
the truth from his own father and grandfather's preaching,
as well as reading the Puritan classics. The wood was being
stacked on the altar. At the appointed time, the fire
from heaven would fall upon that wood. And that happened in January
the 6th, 1850, at age 15. Charles Haddon Spurgeon was dramatically
converted to Christ. You no doubt are familiar with
that story. He was walking to church when
a snowstorm suddenly blew in, and he was unable to make the
destination to where he was attending, wanting to attend, so he turned
into a Methodist chapel, and there the preacher was unable
to even make it to the church. So a layman had to stand up.
There were only twelve people in attendance that day. And the
layman, who was not prepared to preach, yet took for his text
Isaiah 45 verse 22. Look unto me and be saved all
the ends of the earth. And Spurgeon said as he was under
that simple layman's preaching, as he was under that preaching
of the gospel, the Spirit of the Lord found him and he looked
to Christ by faith and he was saved. There was life in a look.
He looked away from himself, he looked away from dead religion,
he looked away from the church, he looked away from anything
and everything, and he looked exclusively by faith to the Lord
Jesus Christ. He was dramatically converted.
And almost immediately, Spurgeon began to preach. At age 16, he
preached his first sermon, and it was obvious that this young
man is gifted. The hand of the Lord is upon
him in a very peculiar way. He began to pastor his first
church at age 17 and became a preaching prodigy. The church more than
doubled in a matter of a short period of time, and his reputation
as a mere teenager was spreading around England. There in London,
the New Park Street Church, the most famous Reformed Baptist
church in all of England. heard of this young preaching
prodigy and at age 19 invited him to come and preach in view
of a call. He was to come for six months.
and to preach under the investigation of this church that was meeting
in a sanctuary that had been built to hold 1,200 people, and
the church was so dwindled down and was dying and in decline
that there were only 200 people in this very large sanctuary
that was meeting. It became immediately apparent
that this gifted young man had the fire of heaven upon his ministry
and upon his preaching. It's interesting that J. I. Packer,
when he would begin his famous classic, Knowing God, page 1,
he quotes one of these early sermons from Spurgeon when Spurgeon
was only 20 years old on the profound subject of knowing God. So at age 19, he became the pastor
of the New Park Street Church, and the church suddenly began
to grow. Within a year, it was standing
room only. You had to have a ticket to even
get into the midweek prayer meeting. The tickets were distributed
free. People were standing around the edges. They were sitting
in the windowsills. They were sitting at the base
of the platform to hear this gifted young man open the Bible
and proclaim and preach the Lord Jesus Christ and the power of
the Holy Spirit. So many people were coming that
they had to make the decision to move to another location.
And so this tiny little church that was now exploding moved
into Exeter Hall, which held 5,000 people. Spurgeon was only
20 years of age. Every service morning and evening
for the next couple of years was standing room only. Hundreds
were turned away as the giftedness of Spurgeon's preaching became
the talk of London. London had not experienced anything
like this for a hundred years since the preaching of George
Whitefield. Spurgeon was literally taking
London by storm as a twenty-year-old young man. Within two years,
they had to move to a larger facility, and so the church moved
into Music Hall at Royal Gardens, Surrey. It held 12,000 people. There were traffic jams, such
as London was not used to, as people were flocking to hear
the preaching of the Word of God by Spurgeon. And in the year
1859, which was one of these years while they were meeting
in the music hall, it was known as the revival year. You ought
to get a set of those sermons and just read these sermons of
Spurgeon preaching as a 22-year-old young man and a 23-year-old young
man. It has the profundity of a seasoned
expositor who would be 72 years of age. It was known as the revival
year, and every time he stepped into the pulpit, it was as though
heaven was coming down. They began to work on the building
of a permanent home. But in the meantime, at age 23,
Spurgeon preached to the largest gathering of people at that time
that had ever been assembled for such an occasion. At age
23 in 1857, he preached on the national day for prayer and humiliation. England had suffered an ignominious
defeat in India, and the nation was humbled and truly humiliated,
and so they called for a national day of fasting, and they asked
Spurgeon to address the nation, yet but 23 years of age. And
there were over 23,000 people jammed into the Crystal Palace.
And Spurgeon declared that it was the rod of the Lord to bring
about the discipline upon this… this… this proud nation, to bring
this nation to its knees, to… to look up in repentance and
faith to God who had so abundantly blessed the life of this nation. Finally, in 1861, they moved
into the Metropolitan Tabernacle that was the largest Protestant
house of worship in the world. As Spurgeon became arguably the
first megachurch pastor, it seated 6,000 people with room for others
to stand around the perimeter. They moved in at age 26. And
when they moved in, Spurgeon's first sermon to inaugurate this
house of worship was a message entitled, The Exposition of the
Doctrines of Grace. He preached the five points of
Calvinism. and that it would be a statement
to the entire city that this is a church that is built upon
the pure, sovereign grace of God. That was then followed by
five individual sermons by five ministers that Spurgeon had invited,
preaching on each of the five doctrines of grace. That was
the launching pad for the Metropolitan Tabernacle. It seemed as though
God's hand was upon everything that this young man did as it
related to ministering the Word of God. A few years before that,
at age 23, he founded the Pastors College. Though he himself had
never attended a Bible college, he had never attended a seminary,
Yet he founded his own pastor's college, and the men began to
be attracted, and you could not be admitted unless you were already
preaching the Word of God. This was not a school for novice.
This was a school to train and to sharpen the skills of those
who were truly called of God. Everyone who enrolled had to
have a private interview with Spurgeon. he would sift through
the life to try to discern if one was truly called of God.
He founded many other ministries, so many that it would be impossible
to list them all, but he founded a girls' orphanage, a boys' orphanage,
He started the sword and trowel. This is taken from Nehemiah's
book, where Nehemiah was on the wall, he had a sword in one hand
and a trowel in the other. And with the trowel, Nehemiah
was building up the wall, and with the sword, he was fending
off the enemies of God. That is how Spurgeon saw his
ministry, that he was to build up the saints of God, and at
the same time, fend off those enemies of the truth. He had
a sharp two-edged sword. He both taught sound doctrine
and refuted those who contradicted, as Titus 1, 9 calls for. Now, this was Spurgeon's life. His sermons were distributed
on a weekly basis, sold on the street corners of London and
around England and around Scotland. It was known as the penny pulpit.
You could purchase it for the equivalent of a penny, and it
would be a transcript of His sermon. It would be taken down
word for word. Spurgeon would edit it on Monday. The type would be reset, and
it would be on the streets by Thursday selling. They would
sell 25,000 copies just on the street corners of London every
week for the rest of His ministry. It was then cabled across the
Atlantic and printed in full in many American newspapers. It was cabled down to Australia
and to New Zealand. There were times when people
would purchase 250,000 copies of a sermon and distribute them.
One man purchased a million copies of Spurgeon's sermons in print
and distributed them around Europe. These sermons were read in hospitals. They were taken into prisons.
They were preached by laymen who did not know how to preach,
but they would take a Spurgeon sermon and use that as the skeleton
in the form for what they would preach. They were cherished by
sailors on the open seas. carried by missionaries. In fact,
when David Livingston died in the heart of Africa and they
cut out his heart and buried his heart in Africa and shipped
his body back to London to be buried in Westminster Abbey,
he had on him one of Spurgeon's sermons. And it was handed to
Spurgeon as Livingston was brought back to London. And it was a
very cherished possession for Spurgeon to think about how the
Word of God was being circulated around the world. His sermons
collected together form 63 volumes. It is the largest such collection
by any author on any subject that is in print. There are over
almost 4,000 sermons, and they have sold over 300 million of
these sermons. is the Undisputed Prince of Preachers,
and these are only the top 63 volumes each per year. They continued to print them
after he was dead in 1892, and the only reason they stopped
printing them was the bombing of London in World War I had
to bring the project to a conclusion. But each individual volume is
for each year, and it's only the top 50 sermons. He preached
hundreds and hundreds of sermons. He would preach on Sunday and
spend his week preaching throughout the week. He died January 31st,
1892 in France, Mentone, France. He died basically of a broken
heart. because of the downgrade controversy
as he stood in his day for the authority and the inspiration
of the Word of God. There were some five funerals
for Spurgeon, and this picture that is being shown overhead
is just his casket being taken to the cemetery for the graveside,
and there are 12,000 people just standing in the rain there at
the entrance into the cemetery. He is, I believe, the strongest
voice to stand in a pulpit and to preach the Word of God. As
Spurgeon's foundation, What did he build his ministry upon? And the answer to that is the
authority of the Word of God. Spurgeon was anchored in the
Scripture. Spurgeon said, thus says the
Lord is the motto of our standard, the only authority in God's church. He was the personification of
sola scriptura. This virgin said, I hold one
single sentence out of God's Word to be of more certainty
and of more power than all the discoveries of all the learned
men of all of the ages. In other words, one ounce of
what God has to say is worth more than 40 tons of what man
has to say. And so his pulpit was a proclamation
of the Word of God. As Spurgeon said, if you shall
quote 15, 16, or 17 centuries of antiquity, meaning going back
and quoting the church fathers and the medieval theologians
and even the Reformers, Spurgeon said, we burn the whole as so
much worthless lumber. unless you put your finger upon
the passage of holy writ which warrants the matter to be of
God." In other words, unless you can point to chapter and
verse, we do not believe it. We will believe only what the
Scripture teaches. He said, I believe nothing merely
because Calvin taught it, but because I have found his teaching
in the Word of God. And we believe something not
because John Calvin taught it, we believe it because Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John teach it. And because the great head of
the church, the Lord Jesus Christ, teaches these matters. As Spurgeon
would say, I am content to be a mere repeater of Scripture. In other words, if it's new,
it's not true. All we have to say is what the
Bible teaches. So this was his foundation. Everything
must rest upon the pure teaching of the Word of God. Spurgeon
said, Calvinism did not spring from Calvin. We believe that
it sprang from the great Founder, capital F of all truth. Perhaps Calvin derived it mainly
from the writings of Augustine. Augustine obtained his views
without doubt through the Spirit of God from the diligent study
of the writings of Paul, and Paul received them of the Holy
Spirit from Jesus Christ. Is this not true with our ministries?
And we believe what we believe because the Bible teaches it.
Great men in the church help us to understand and they give
insight. God has given gifted men to the
church. But we believe what we believe, not because great men
have taught it. We believe because we can put
a finger on chapter and verse. So, what was Spurgeon's Calvinism? And when I say Calvinism, I simply
mean to believe what the Bible teaches on the sovereignty of
God in salvation. Spurgeon said, the old truth
that Calvin preached, that Augustine preached, that Paul preached
is the truth that I must preach today or else be false to my
conscience and my God. I cannot shape the truth. I know
of no such thing as paring off the rough edges of a doctrine.
John Knox's gospel is my gospel and that which thundered through
Scotland must thunder through England again. And I want to
tell you it must thunder in California and in Alabama. It must thunder
around the globe yet in this hour because it is the truth
of the written Word of God. So let's work our way, just very
quickly, through some quotes of Spurgeon's commitment to the
sovereignty of God in salvation. And we begin with the doctrine
of total depravity. As Spurgeon said, the venom of
sin is in the very fountain of our being. It has poisoned our
heart. It is the very marrow of our
bones. It is as natural to us as anything that belongs to us.
That's what total depravity means. The totality of our humanity
is tainted and corrupted and poisoned by sin. From the top
of our head to the bottom of our feet, every inch, every ounce,
as being born into this world in Adam's fallen race, we are
all under the plague of sin. Our mind, our heart, our will,
everything about us is under the dominion of sin. including the will. Spurgeon
said, the human will is so desperately set on mischief, so depraved,
so inclined to everything that is evil, and so disinclined to
everything that is good, that without the powerful, supernatural,
irresistible influence of the Holy Spirit, no human will will
ever be constrained towards Christ. That is the moral inability of
every son and daughter of Adam's race. A moral inability to commend
ourselves to God, nor to come to God, nor to believe upon Christ. Spurgeon fully understood this. He taught the doctrine of unconditional
election. Spurgeon said, whatever may be
said about the doctrine of election, it is written in the Word of
God as with an iron pen, and there is no getting rid of it.
In other words, it is forever etched in God's Word, and God's
Word is His eternal Word. The grass withers, the flower
fades away, but the Word of our God abides forever. Spurgeon
said, before there was any created being, in that loneliness of
deity. And in that deep, quiet and profundity,
His bowels moved with love for His chosen. Their names were
written on His heart, and then they were dear to His soul. He championed the doctrine of
God's sovereign choice of whom He will save from before time
began. He taught definite atonement,
particular redemption, if you will. As Spurgeon said, Christ
came into this world with the intention of saving a multitude
which no man can number. And we believe that as a result
of this, every person for whom He died must, beyond a shadow
of a doubt, be cleansed from sin. and stand washed in the
blood before the Father's throne." Spurgeon believed in an actual
atonement, not a hypothetical atonement, that if you will only
believe, then you will be saved. No, Spurgeon believed that at
the cross, the words of the hymn are true, Jesus saves, Jesus
saves. And all for whom He died, He
has saved. Spurgeon taught and said, a redemption
which pays a price but does not ensure that which is purchased,
a redemption which calls Christ as substitute for the sinner,
but yet which allows the person to suffer, is altogether unworthy
of our apprehensions of Almighty God. He taught irresistible grace. Spurgeon said, a man is not saved
against his will, but he is made willing by the operation of the
Holy Ghost. A mighty grace which he does
not wish to resist enters into the man, disarms him, and makes
a new creature of him, and he is saved. In other words, the
Holy Spirit of God overcomes our resistance. He conquers our
proud heart. He will not take no for an answer. He will triumph in the heart
of all those whom the Father has chosen. As Spurgeon said
regarding irresistible grace, by the power of His effectual
grace, He said, I will come in. And then He turned my heart and
made me love Him." He believed in preserving grace, the perseverance
of the saints. If ever one child of God did
perish, or if I knew it were possible that one could, I would
conclude at once that I must. In other words, if anyone could
be lost after they're saved, Spurgeon said, it would surely
be me. I suppose each one of you would
do the same. As Spurgeon said, I knew that
I could not keep myself. But if Christ promised to keep
me, then I should be safe forever. He would not give me a temporary
and trumpery salvation such as some preach, but eternal life
which could never be lost." And by his own testimony, he said
before he was saved, he saw others who professed Christ but who
fell away. We know that they were never
saved to begin with, but Spurgeon said he did not want to commit
his life to Christ and then to fall away. He said, then when
the truth was made known to him of preserving grace, it was a
bait for my soul that I found irresistible, that if I once
committed my life to Christ, he would save me forever. That is sovereign grace. Spurgeon's
positive, triumphant commitment to the sovereignty in God in
salvation can be summarized in a sermon that he preached on
Matthew 8 verse 11. The text says, many shall come
from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac
and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. And in this sermon, Spurgeon
drew emphatic focus upon the word shall. that many shall come
from the east and the west. Many shall sit down at Abraham's
table." Spurgeon said, oh, I love God's shalls and wills, as there
is nothing to compare to them. Let a man say shall, what is
it good for? A man says, I will, and he never
performs. A man says, I shall, and he breaks
his promise. But it is never so with God's
shalls. If God says, shall, it shall
be. When God says, I will, it will
be. Now, He has said, many shall
come. The devil says, they shall not come, but God says, they
shall come. You yourselves say, we won't
come. God says, you shall come. Yes,
there are some who are laughing at salvation, who scoff at Christ
and mock at the gospel. But I tell you, some of you shall
come to Christ. What you say, can God make me
become a Christian? I tell you, yes. For herein lies the power of
the gospel. It does not ask for your consent,
it gives it. It does not say, will you have
it, but it makes you willing in the day of God's power. The
gospel knocks the enmity out of your heart. You say, I do
not want to be saved. Christ says, you shall be saved. He makes your will turn around. And then you cry, Lord, save
me or I perish. Heaven exclaims, I knew I would
make you say that. And then He rejoices over you
because He has changed your will and made you willing in the day
of His power. If Jesus Christ were to stand
on this platform tonight, what would many people do with Him? If He were to come here and say,
here I am, I love you, will you be saved by me? Not a single
one of you would consent if you were left to your own will. He
himself says, no man can come to me except for the Father who
sent me, draw me. Draw him. Ah, we want that and
here we have it. They shall come, they shall come. You may laugh, you may despise
us, but Jesus Christ will not die for nothing. If some of you
reject Him, there are some who will not. If there are some who
are not saved, others shall be saved. Christ shall see His seed,
He shall prolong His days, and the good pleasure of the Lord
shall prosper in His hand. They shall come, and not in heaven,
not on earth, not in hell can stop them from coming." Close
quote. When is the last time you heard
anybody on this planet preach like this? When is the last time
you heard a man possessed by the Spirit of God, saturated
with sound doctrine, with an evangelistic passion and soul,
proclaim the gospel and declare a positive, triumphant, sovereign
grace? Spurgeon's Calvinism? He said,
I question whether you have preached the whole counsel of God unless
predestination with all of its solemnity and sureness is continually
declared. Spurgeon said, I have never preached
this doctrine without seeing conversions and I believe I never
shall. Oh, the evangelistic power of
preaching even the doctrines of grace. I mean, some preachers
say, well, we can't preach this on Sunday morning. People will
be offended. We'll save it for Wednesday night.
And that is the very reason you do not see souls saved on Sunday
morning, because pride must be crushed in order for sinners
to come to faith in Christ. Spurgeon went on to say, some
of you have never preached upon election since you were ordained.
These things, you say, are offensive. And so, gentlemen, you would
rather offend God than you would offend man? But your reply, these
things will not be practical. I do think that the climax of
all man's blasphemy is centered in that utterance. Not practical? These truths that are the great
pride crusher, worship enlarger, soul purifier, life mature, evangelism
inflaming. Spurgeon said, tell me that God
put a thing in the Bible that I am not to preach. And he would
later say, let me stop at this point, he would say, that is
nothing but potpourri. for God to put something in the
Bible and you not proclaim it from the housetops. That is exactly
what the Roman Catholic Church does. It withholds the truth
from the people in the pew. It claims an elitism in Rome
and with the pope and with the cardinals. And we cannot let
these truths be made known among mere peasants and pedestrians
in life. To withhold the preaching of
the doctrines of predestination and election, to withhold those
truths is nothing more than Roman Catholicism in an evangelical
church. Spurgeon said, tell me that God
put a thing in the Bible that I am not to preach? You are finding
fault with my God, but you say it will be dangerous. What? God's truth dangerous? I would
not like to stand in your shoes when you have to face your Maker
on the day of judgment after such an utterance as that. On another occasion, Spurgeon
said, I do not ask whether you believe Calvinism. It is possible
you may not, but I believe you will before you enter heaven. I am persuaded that as God may
have washed your hearts, He will wash your brains before you enter heaven. Spurgeon said of these great
doctrines, God gave me this great book to preach from, and if He
has put anything in it you think is not fit, go and complain to
God, not to me. Let me tell you the reason why
many of our churches are declining. It is just because this doctrine
has not been preached. If we are to have revival in
our churches, we must dust off these old doctrines and preach
them under the power of the Holy Spirit of God. As Spurgeon said, I am often charged
with preaching doctrines that do a great deal of hurt. I have
my witnesses here present to prove that the things which I
have preached have done a great deal of hurt. But they have not
done hurt either to morality or to God's side. The hurt has
been on the side of Satan. Spurgeon said, it is no new novelty
then that I am preaching, no new doctrine. I'd love to proclaim
these strong old doctrines that are called by nickname Calvinism.
but which are surely and verily the revealed truth of God as
it is in Jesus Christ. By this truth, I make a pilgrimage
into the past, and as I go, I see father after father referring
to church father after church father, confessor after confessor,
martyr after martyr, standing up to shake hands with me." There is a long line of godly
men. down through the centuries. They would pass this baton down
to us. And it is a blood-stained baton
of truth that has been put in our hands to run this lap in
this hour of history. And these men who have preceded
it have stood up like men and have preached the truths of the
sovereign grace of our God from eternity past to eternity future. And many of them were branded
and nailed and burned at a stake. But it was the means by which
God advanced His church. So Spurgeon's commitment to the
doctrines of grace is indisputable. I remember attending a pastor's
conference a few years ago, and a very noted Christian author
with a Ph.D. and who teaches in a seminary
came up to me and said, well, I guess you know that Spurgeon
was not a Calvinist. I really wanted to say, what
planet have you been living on? So he held the doctrines of grace
in another hand, and I want to say to every man in this room,
I trust that you have come to understand and be taught by the
Spirit of God these God-centered, God-exalting, God-glorifying
truths that are found in the Word of God. And I want to challenge
you to preach the full counsel of God. If they are in the Bible,
declare it from the housetops. God is the defender of His own
truth. But in the other hand, Spurgeon
held with equal passion and fervency the cause of evangelism in the
other. Spurgeon understood that not
only has God appointed the end, But he has appointed the means
to that end, that God has ordained gospel preaching and prayer for
lost souls and holy and godly living and personal witnessing,
and that it's not an either-or, it is a both-and. Spurgeon said that he had only
one model in the ministry, and it was George Whitefield.
John Calvin was not his model in the ministry. He drew his
theology from this body of truth. But it was the great English
evangelist of the eighteenth century, George Whitefield, who
was the one mentor by historical example that Spurgeon followed
in his ministry. Spurgeon said other men seemed
to be only half alive. But Whitefield was all life,
fire, wind, force. My own model, if I may have such
a thing, induce subordination to my Lord, is George Whitefield. With unequal footsteps must I
follow his glorious track. Men, George Whitefield is worthy
of all of our emulation. Would to God we would have the
burning evangelistic zeal and fire and passion of George Whitefield. Martin Lloyd-Jones said of Whitefield,
other men merely existed, Whitefield lived. Robert Murray McShane
said of Whitefield, oh, for but one week of Whitefield's life, It was from the example of Whitefield
that Spurgeon pressed on to be an evangelist and to throw open
the gates of paradise and to call sinners to come to faith
in Jesus Christ. When asked, how do you reconcile
divine sovereignty and human responsibility, Spurgeon thus
replied, I never have to reconcile friends. Divine sovereignty and human
responsibility have never had a falling out with each other.
I do not need to reconcile what God has joined together. What
these two truths, where these two truths meet, I do not know,
nor do I want to know. They do not puzzle me since I
have given up my mind to believing both truths. He held them with
equal commitment and confidence and fervency and passion. And again, it was like gas and
fire coming together. The fire by itself or the gas
by itself is impotent, but when you bring the two together, there
is a fire and an explosion. What I want to do briefly is
I want to take three sermons. He preached almost 4,000 sermons
that we have recorded. Thousands and thousands and thousands
more. But I want to do a flyover of
just three of these sermons, and I want to give you a feel
for how these two were married together. The first sermon that
I want to set before you is a sermon that he preached on November
the 13th, 1864, from John 6, verse 37, all that the Father
has given me shall come to me. and the one who comes unto me
I will in no wise cast out." The title of the sermon is The
Certainty and Freeness of Divine Grace. And so, with this text,
Spurgeon had two homiletical headings. The first is on the
sovereignty of God. The second is on human responsibility. And in one sermon, Spurgeon preached
the unconditional election of God and particular redemption
and irresistible grace all under the first heading. And then under
the second heading, he preached with evangelistic fervor and
passion to come to the Lord Jesus Christ and to believe upon Him. In fact, it could be argued Spurgeon's
favorite word is come. Come unto Me, all you who are
weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. If any man thirsts,
let him come unto Me and drink." Come. But note, under the first
heading, Spurgeon entitled it, Grace Triumphant in Speciality. And just a historical footnote,
Spurgeon did not select his text nor begin to craft his sermon
until Saturday evening. He would go into his study. He
would open the Bible. He said, it was as though every
verse in the Bible was crying out, preach me, preach me. Take
me to church with you. Tell everyone what I have to
say tomorrow. Spurgeon would isolate a particular
text and then He would write out a sentence outline on one
side of one piece of paper, slide it into his Bible, and that is
what he took into the pulpit with him. So, on that little
envelope that he would preach from, the first heading, Grace
Triumphant in Speciality. He had structured subheadings. There were five subheadings in
this sermon. The first, the original position
of all men. all that the Father has given
Me." He says, that presupposes they were in the Father's hand
before the Father could give them to Him. and that it is the
Father's sovereign prerogative and the Father's sovereign discretion
to do with them as He would please. He may give them to Christ or
He may not give them to Christ. Second, a great transaction that
the Father chose a people and did actually, by His grace, give
them to the Lord Jesus Christ before the foundation of the
world. Third, a certain change in time. He said, they shall come. All that the Father gives me
shall come to me. To come to Christ is to believe
upon Christ. Fourth, power to constrain, that
God alone has the power to change the stony heart and to draw that
lost sinner to faith in Jesus Christ. And then the fifth subheading
is there is no exception. He says, not some will come,
but all, all that the Father gives me shall come to me. Not a one shall fail to be brought
to faith in Jesus Christ. And Spurgeon said, as plain as
Saxon language can possibly make it, this is what this teaches. He says, do not kick at this
doctrine because you do not like it. It is plainly taught from
the lips of our Lord. But then having spent the first
part of the sermon, Spurgeon then went to the second heading,
which he entitles, Grace Triumphant in its Liberality. And he speaks
with these subheadings, and he was a Puritan, very well structured
in the layout and development of his thought and thinking as
he arranged his sermon. He spoke of the liberality of
the character, him. He says, him who comes unto me. He says, what him? He says, any
him, rich or poor, great or obscure, a moral man or a debauched man,
any man in London, any man on the face of the earth, a liberality
in his coming. He is to come to me, Jesus said. He is not to come to baptism.
He is not to come to the Lord's Supper. He is not to come to
church. He is not to come to worship.
He is to come to me and to come to me alone. He spoke of the
liberality of the time. He says, whether you be 70 years
old, whether you be 7 years old, no matter how old you are, no
matter how young you are, whosoever you are, come to the Lord Jesus
Christ. And whether you have declined
the invitation a thousand times, the invitation of our loving
Savior is still extended to you this day. Just come to Christ,
no matter how many times you have declined His invitation.
The liberality and the duration shall never be cast out, whether
you are the last to the marriage supper of the Lamb, whether you
are the first, whether you are young, whether you are old, and
then the liberality in its certainty. Him that comes unto me shall
not be cast out." What an amazing sermon this was. And Ian Murray
commenting on sermons like this said that the sinner's conscience
was like in a vice grip. On one side is divine sovereignty
saying only God can save you. And on the other side the vice
grip tightening around your conscience saying that you must come. One
side saying you cannot come, the other side saying you must
come until the sinner is so crushed and humbled on the inside that
like on the day of Pentecost, the sinner gives the invitation
and the sinner says, what must I do to be saved? And that is
powerful preaching. There's a second sermon I want
to draw to your attention. is one of the most famous sermons
that Spurgeon preached. He preached it to 12,000 people
at Music Hall at Royal Surrey Gardens. The title of the sermon
is, Compel Them to Come In. And as Spurgeon preached this
sermon, there literally is no introduction. The text is Luke
14, verse 23, go out into the highways and along the hedges. and compel them to come in so
that my house may be full." Spurgeon announced a two-part sermon with
two main headings. The first is, I must find you
out. And then the second, which we'll
look at in a moment, I must compel you to come in. First he says,
I must find you out. And earlier in this passage,
two verses earlier, Jesus said, go out into the streets and lanes
of the city and bring in here the poor and crippled and blind
and lame. And so Spurgeon says, I am finding
you out now. And he identifies the poor as
those who have no faith and no virtue and no good works and
no grace. And they are so defiled, they
have nothing to commend themselves to God. And they have no liquidity
and no coinage by which they may contribute to their own salvation. They are crippled, he says, the
law has cut off their hands and cut off their legs. And they
are unable to come to Christ. They are unable to do any works
of righteousness. They are lame, therefore they
are halting between two opinions. They are blind. They cannot see
themselves. They cannot see their need of
grace. They cannot see the glories of Christ. And then he puts his
arms around everyone for all people and gathers up everyone
on the earth and says that all must come to the marriage, to
the banquet feast that has been prepared. So after preaching,
I must find you out. He then says, I must compel you
to come in. I want every one of us to note
these subheadings. I want to say again, and especially
we who believe in Reformed truth, that it is not enough merely
to present the gospel. It is not enough merely to tell
people about the gospel. We must plead with them. We must
persuade them. We must reason with them. We
must urge them. We must compel them to come in. I believe that too many of us
who hold to Reformed truth, we are too proud to beg. We are
too proud to beg for lost souls to be saved. Spurgeon pled with
those 12,000 there that day. He began by saying, I invite
you to come. He says, I have the great privilege
this day of telling you the good news that the King has prepared
all that is necessary for your salvation. And he has entrusted
to me this privilege to come and tell you and to invite you
to come to the King's feast. But he says, with some of you,
it's not enough just to hear the invitation. It's not enough
just to know that you are invited because you resist and you turn
down the invitation. So he says, I must change my
tone with you. And I must now command you to
come because I am sent by the king himself and I am his ambassador
and I come in the authority of the king. I come in the name
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I command you in heaven's
name to believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you do not,
you are a rebel against this King. He then says, but with
some of you this is still not enough. And I must exhort you. I must plead with you. I must
urge you. I must beg you to come. But some
of you still resist, so I must reason with you. And I must tell
you and remind you, how could you turn down the only Savior
that there is who is given to sinners? And he says, oh, sinner,
there will come a day when you will want a Savior. You will
come to the end of your life and you must have a Savior. He
said, deathbeds are stony places upon which to lie without a Savior. I remind you that there is a
great judgment that is coming on the last day. And he reasoned
with the minds of those to whom he preached. And then he says,
I entreat you to come. He said, do you know who it is
you are rejecting? You are rejecting the Lord Jesus
Christ, the Prince of life. You are rejecting the very one
who has laid down His life for sinners. I entreat you this day
to come to Him. And then Spurgeon said, But it
is not enough with some of you. I must yet go further with you. I must threaten you. Come with me to the deathbed.
Come with me down into the bowels of hell. Hear the shrieks and
the groans and the moans of the damned in hell. I must threaten
you that you are on the broad path. You are headed for destruction. You must come to Christ today
lest you perish. And Spurgeon threatened those. And then he said, if this will
not work with you this day, I will weep for you. How can you resist
the messenger, the king, who pours out scalding hot tears
for you, who weeps for you? How can you resist your weeping
mother who has prayed for you and begged you to give your life
to Christ? And you are cold hearted to her
and to the gospel. Oh, I plead with you as Jesus
wept for Jerusalem. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if
you had only known the hour, you would have come. Oh, London,
I weep for you. Come. And then he says. I pray for you. I turn you over
to the Lord Jesus Christ. I turn your soul over to God,
and I intercede and pray for you, and I pray that God will
have mercy on your soul, and that God will break through your
proud conscience. I pray for you." What an incredible
sermon this was. This was not just a mere litany
of word studies and cross-references and historical background and
this and that and this and that and this and that, which are
all necessary and all proper, and we give it in our exposition
of Scripture. But Spurgeon would not pull up
short of the divine calling to compel sinners to come to the
Lord Jesus Christ and to come to the banquet table and be saved. Do you plead for souls to be
saved? Do you beg the lost to come to Christ? Do you reason
with them and try to remove every excuse that they would offer
up? Time did not permit me to take
you through all of the excuses that Spurgeon was imagining in
his mind that people would be having as he was preaching. Are you an evangelist at heart?
Paul told young Timothy, and he says to each and every one
of us, as you preach the Word, do the work of an evangelist.
And there is one other message that I want to simply set before
you. It is one of my very favorite sermons. I remember reading this
in the library when I was at seminary. It is a sermon on 2
Corinthians 6, verse 2. Behold, now is the accepted time. Behold, today is the day of salvation. The title of the sermon is simply,
Now. Spurgeon said, the most of men
procrastinate. It is not that they resolve to
be damned, but they resolve to be saved tomorrow. It is not
that they reject Christ forever, but that they reject Christ today.
And truly, they might as well reject Him forever, as continue
perpetually to reject Him now. This is a kind of urgency that
we must have. There must be a sense of immediacy. This very moment, believe upon
the Lord Jesus Christ. Not go home and think about it.
Now believe. Spurgeon said, now is the day
of salvation. Thou needest it now. God is angry
with you now. You are condemned already. Now
without God. Now without hope. Now an alien
from the commonwealth of Israel. Now dead in trespasses and sins. Now in danger of the wrath to
come. Now forever you need to be saved. But sir, I do not think such
a thing should be done in a hurry. A hurry? What does David say? I made haste
and delayed not to keep your commandments. A hurry when a
man is on the edge of damnation and on the borders of the grave?
Do not talk of hurry, sir, when it is a case of life and death.
Let us fly swift as a flash of lightning. He goes on to say,
if the gospel command were to think and be saved, I would cheerfully
allow you a month's thinking. But the command is, believe in
the Lord Jesus Christ, and now is the accepted time. Well, says
one, I do not feel convinced enough. Dear friend, you do not
think that now is the accepted time. Here is a quarrel between
God and you. God says now, you say, no, no,
it cannot be true. You say, yes, I should like to
go home and pray. My text does not say it will
be the accepted time when you get home and pray. It says now. And as I find you are now in
this pew, now is the accepted time. Hey, I want to tell you something,
you and I need to preach like this. We are hyper-Calvinists
if we do not preach like this. If you trust Jesus or Christ
now, you will be accepted. If now you are unable to throw
yourself simply into the arms of Christ, now is the accepted
time between you and God. Some of my hearers who listened
to me last year and in the years that are past are now, now in
hell. Now they're where no hope can
come. Now where no gospel shall be
preached. Now where they bitterly reject
their wasted Sabbaths and despised opportunities. Now where memory
holds a dreadful reign. Now where their worm dies not
and the fire is not quenched. Behold, now is the accepted time. Behold, today is the day of salvation. Tomorrow is the devil's day. Today is God's day. As Spurgeon said, I always feel
I have not done my duty as a preacher of the gospel if I go out of
this pulpit without having clearly set before sinners the way of
salvation. Listen, the cross is not in every
text, but Spurgeon said, as every road leads to London, every text
leads to the cross. Spurgeon said, no man who preaches
the gospel without zeal is sent of God to preach at all. An idler has no right in the
pulpit. He is an instrument of Satan
and damning the souls of men. This virgin said, get on fire
from God and people will come and see you burn. He said, I have not softened
down the Bible to suit the carnal tastes of men. I have said, damn
where God says damn. I have not sweetened it into
condemn. Preach the gospel, the gates
of hell shake. Preach the gospel, prodigals
return. Preach the gospel to every creature. It is the master's mandate. Spurgeon
believed in the free offer of the gospel of Jesus Christ to
every living creature on the earth. He had the absolute confidence
that God would call out the elect, that God would save those whom
he had chosen from eternity past by the powerful working of the
Holy Spirit and the definite atonement of Jesus Christ, but
that it was his responsibility to lift up his voice and to proclaim
Christ. I leave you with this quote, if sinners will be damned, at
least let them leap to hell over our bodies. And if they will perish, let
them perish with our arms around their knees, imploring them to
stay. If hell must be filled, at least
let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not
one go there unwarned and unprayed for." This is the heart of a
Spirit-filled man who has a burden and a passion for souls and to
preach the saving gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is
the mind and the intellect and the doctrinal convictions of
a man who is honest with the Word of God and sees the sovereignty
of God from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 and stands on this firm foundation
of the electing, atoning, drawing, preserving, sovereign grace of
God. and then to stand on that firm
foundation and to proclaim, whosoever shall call upon the name of the
Lord shall be saved. Men, we must have the depth of
the sovereign grace of God, and we must have the breadth of the
Great Commission and the proclamation to every living soul. And we
must do so with urgency. We must do so with passion. We
must do so with zeal or we are just asleep in the pulpit and
so will our people be. May God put fire from heaven
into our souls and may we burn for the glory of God. May God
raise up from this conference mighty men of valor who will
go forth and storm the gates of hell. the preaching of the
gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And it is only
as we have confidence in the doctrines of grace do we have
confidence to stand and preach in the authority of God. May God give you such confidence,
and may God give you such passion. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven,
these are serious, sobering, and urgent matters. We speak
of matters of life and death. We speak of matters of heaven
and hell. We speak of matters of salvation
and damnation. Father, I pray that these truths
would lay hold of every heart in this room this day. Father,
for those who are still yet searching to know the truth of sovereign
grace, I pray that You would open their eyes to behold the
clear teaching of Scripture. Give them insight. Give them
illumination. Give them illumination. Holy Spirit, be their teacher
and bring them all the way to the truth of these doctrines
of grace, may every man in this room be rooted and grounded in
the fertile soil of Your sovereignty and salvation. And Father, I
pray that You would put within our hearts an evangelistic fervor,
an evangelistic passion about our preaching, that we would
that we would preach to men and women as a dying man, as to dying
men, as never to preach again. May we preach to those who are
perishing and may we urge them, behold, now is the accepted time.
Behold, today is the day of salvation. Father, we confess our passivity. We confess to You the sin of
indifference, We confess to you the sin of the paralysis that
holds us back. Father, I pray that you would
move us out and that we would be like our older brother Spurgeon,
the example that he provides for us and the example of Whitefield
and the example of thousands and thousands and thousands of
others who have preceded us. And may you bless our ministries.
as we do not equivocate, as we proclaim the kingship of Your
Godhead. And I pray that You would honor
the going forth of the gospel from us. May we not be dispassionate,
but may we be full of zeal for lost souls and for the power
of the gospel of Christ. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.