Lectures to My Students by Charles Spurgeon: A Review

Lectures to My Students is a collection of lectures delivered to the students of The Pastor’s College in London, England by the “Master Pulpiteer”, Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Lectures has become an essential collection of practical advice for the pastorate. God has continued to use Spurgeon mightily for the spread of the gospel long after his forty-year ministry; as exemplified in this compendium. These twenty-eight lectures cover a range of disciplines within the pastorate. Spurgeon is not bland nor imprecise, he speaks with personableness and brevity. The pastor who has little formal training will receive stimulant from Spurgeon’s admonitions on preaching, prayer, sermonizing, and one’s self-conduct. I am surprised that there is little said about the minister’s family life concerning his children and wife. As well, a couple arguments could be brought up to speed. Such as "on the voice", since the invention of microphones, and his comments on the pastor’s library, since the all-pervasive online libraries. His speech occasionally contains archaisms and uncommon colloquialisms common to the KJV but is to be expected in the 1800s; it then being the primary translation of English speakers. If a pastor doesn’t mind checking his dictionary and Bible translation on occasion for clarity, he will benefit from the use of the Lectures within his own ministrations. Spurgeon’s wisdom from the pastorate is worth the divulgence.

Preparing for Revival: Part II

Continuing from yesterday's post from Spurgeon's sermon on walking with God comes this quotation on putting off those vices which offend God:

Before God appeared upon Mount Sinai, the children of Israel had to cleanse themselves for three days. Before Israel could take possession of the promised rest of Canaan, Joshua had to see to it that they were purified by the rite of circumcision. Whenever God would visit his people, he always demands of them some preparatory purging, that they may be fit to behold his presence; for two cannot walk together, unless that which would make them disagree be purged out.

A few suggestions then, as to whether there is anything in us with which God cannot agree. Here I cannot preach to you indiscriminately, but put the task into the hand of each man to preach to himself. In the days of the great weeping, we read that every man wept apart and his wife apart, the son apart, and the daughter apart, all the families apart. So it must be here. Is there pride in me? Am I puffed up with my talent, my substance, my character, my success? Lord purge this out of me, or else thou canst not walk with me, for none shall ever say that God and the proud soul are friends: he giveth grace to the humble; as for the proud, he knoweth them afar off, and will not let them come near to him. Am I slothful? do I waste hours which I might usefully employ? Have I the levity of the butterfly, which flits from flower to flower, but drinks no honey from any of them? or have I the industry of the bee, which, wherever it lights, would find some sweet store for the hive? Lord, thou knowest my soul, thou understandest me.

Am I doing little where I might do much? Hast thou had but little reaping for much sowing? Have I hid my talent in a napkin? Have I spent that talent for myself, instead of spending it for thee? Slothful souls cannot walk with God. "My Father worketh," saith Jesus, "and I work"; and you who stand in the market-place idle, may stand there with the devil, but you cannot stand there with God. Let every brother who is guilty of this, purge away his sloth. Or am I guilty of worldliness. This is the crying sin of many in the Christian Church. Do I put myself into association with men who cannot by any possibility profit me? Am I seen where my Master would not go? Do I love amusements which cannot afford me comfort when I reflect upon them; and which I would never indulge in, if I thought that Christ would come while I was at them? Am I worldly in spirit as to fashion? Am I as showy, as volatile, as frivolous as men and women of the world? If so, if I love the world, the love of the Father is not in me; consequently he cannot walk with me, for we are not agreed.

Again, am I covetous? do I scrape and grind? is my first thought, not how I can honour God, but how I can accumulate wealth? When I gain wealth, do I forget to make use of it as a steward? If so, then God is not agreed with me; I am a thief with his substance; I have set myself up for a master instead of being a servant, and God will not walk with me till I begin to feel that this is not my own, but his; and that I must use it in his fear. Again, am I of an angry spirit? Am I harsh towards my brethren? Do I cherish envy towards those who are better than myself, or contempt towards those who are worse off? If so, God cannot walk with me, for he hates envy, and all contempt of the poor is abhorrent to him. Is there any lust in me? Do I indulge the flesh? Am I fond of carnal indulgences by which my soul suffers? If so, God will not walk with me; for chambering, and wantonness, and gluttony, and drunkenness, separate between a believer and his God: these things are not convenient to a Christian.

Before the great feast of unleavened bread, a Jewish parent would sweep out every piece of leaven from his house; and so anxious would he be, and so anxious is the Jew at the present day, that he take a candle and sweeps out every cupboard, no matter though there may have been no food put in there at any time, he is afraid lest by accident a crumb may be somewhere concealed in the house; and so, from the garret to the cellar, he clears the whole house through, to purge out the old leaven. Let us do so. I cannot think you will do so as the effect of such poor words as mine; but if my soul could speak to you, and God blessed the utterance, you would. For my own part, I cry unto my Master, that if there be anything that can make me more fit to be the messenger of God to you and to the sons of men, however painful might be the preparatory process, he would graciously be pleased not to spare me of it. If by sickness, if by serious calamities, if by slander and rebuke, more honour can be brought to him, then hail! and welcome! all these things; they shall be my joy; and to receive them shall be delight. I pray you, utter the same desire: "Lord, make me fit to be the means of glorifying thee."

"The dearest idol I have known,
Whate'er that idol be;
Help me to tear it from its throne,
And worship only thee."

What! do you demur? Do you want for ever to go on in the old dead-and-alive way in which the Churches are just now? Do you feel no sacred passion stirring your breast to anguish for the present, and to hope for the future? O ye cravens, who dread the battle, slink to your beds; but ye who have your Master's spirit in you, and would long to see brighter and better days, lift up your heads with confidence in him who will walk with us if we be agreed. 

Amen.

(Retrieved from the Spurgeon Archive: http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0597.htm) 

Preparing for Revival: Part I

Every month I receive a sermon of C. H. Spurgeon in the post through Bathroad Baptist Church's ministry (Spurgeon Ministries). If you haven't heard of this impacting ministry I encourage you to jump on the bandwagon and support it. This past week I spent some of my morning reading time going through February's sermon, entitled "Preparing for Revival". It's a delightful and straightforward message expounded from Amos 3:3 on walking with God, in agreement with God, whilst casting off all that offends God.
From this sermon I am compelled to share 2 points pertaining to the church as it desires to see God's work of revival within the people Christ died for. The first point he stresses is conducive to the member's prayer life corporately and in private:

Yet again, dear friends, are we agreed this day as to our utter helplessness in this work? I caught a good sentence the other day. Speaking with a Wesleyan minister, I said to him, "Your denomination during the past year did not increase: you have usually had a large increase to your numbers. You were never so rich as now; your ministers were never so well educated; you never had such good chapels as now, and yet you never had so little success. What are you doing - knowing this to be the fact, what are you doing? How are the minds of your brethrren exercised with regard to this?" He comforted me much by the reply. He said, "It has driven us to our knees: we thank God that we know our state and are not content with it. We have had a day of humiliation, and I hope," he said, "some of us have gone low enough to be blessed." I do fear me that some of us never do go low enough to be blessed; and when you and I pray to God with pride in us, with self-exaltation, with a confidence in our own zeal, or even in the prevalence of our own prayers of themselves, we have not come low enough to be blessed. A humble church will be a blessed church; a church that is willing to confess its own errors and failures, and to lie at the foot of Christ's cross, is in a position to be favoured of the Lord. I hope we are agreed, then, with God, as to our utter unworthiness and helplessness, so that we look to him alone.

Spurgeon On Neglecting the Spiritual Life

From Spurgeon's artillery of illustrations in Barbed Arrows comes this simile on the neglect of spiritual life:

"The other day we read in the newspapers of two persons in America being found dead from "starvation and cold," and we also read that each of these persons was possessed of a considerable sum of money. We say, 'What fools!' Men with sums of money about their persons, or hidden away in their rooms, and yet suffering the ills of want till they actually die of hunger - what madness is this! Are those more sane who injure and dwarf their spiritual life for the sake of intellectual pride, or carnal joy, or the esteem of men? Is not the spirit infinitely more precious than the body? Brethren, if we starve at all, let us starve our bodies, and not our spirits. If anything must be stunted, let it be the baser nature. Let us not live eagerly for this world, and languidly for the world to come. Having the Divine life within us, let us not neglect to feed it and supply its wants. "

-Spurgeon, Charles Haddon. Barbed Arrows: From the Quiver of C. H. Spurgeon (Toronto: Fleming H. Revell, 1896), 228-229.

On Temptation

No temptation has overtaken you
that is not common to man.
God is faithful,
and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability,
but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape,
that you may be able to endure it. 
1 Corinthians 10:13


This text is a needed encouragement in the times of temptation of God's faithfulness to those who trust in Jesus. 
Charles Spurgeon puts that ol' English preacher spin on it:


"It may help such a person if I remind him that there is no sin in being tempted. The sin is that of the tempter, not of the tempted. If you resist the temptation, there is something praiseworthy about your action. There is nothing praiseworthy about the temptation; that is evil, and only evil; but you did not tempt yourself, and he that tempted [you] must bear the blame of the temptation. You are evidently not blameworthy for thoughts that grieve you; they may prove that there is sin still remanining in you, but there is no sin in your being tempted. The sin is in your yielding to the temptation, and blessed shall you be if you can stand out against it. If you can overcome it, if your spirit does not yield to it, you shall even be blessed through it. "Blessed is the man that endureth temptation." There is a blessedness even in the temptation, and though for the present it seemeth not to be joyous, but grievous, nevertheless, afterward, it yieldeth blessed fruit to those who are exercised thereby.

C.H. Spurgeon Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington (Thursday Evening September 27th, 1883).