Spurgeon Collected works by Charles H. Spurgeon. Illustrated

LECTURES TO MY STUDENTS. LIFE IN CHRIST. EVENING BY EVENING. FAITH'S CHECKBOOK
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-0-88000-456-5
Verlag: Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 3045 Seiten

Charles Haddon Spurgeon was a reformed pastor who adhered to the 1689 Baptist Confession of faith. Spurgeon was a prolific writer and preacher. Spurgeon sometimes preached as often as ten times in a week. The quality, as well as the quantity, of his sermons earned him the nickname 'Prince of Preachers.' Spurgeon adhered to Calvinist views and supported a conservative approach to biblical interpretation while categorically denying the allegorical method. He opposed all liberal and pragmatic tendencies of the church. Witnesses claim that he delivered powerful sermons that mesmerized listeners with his oratorical prowess. The sermons were unfailing accurate and plumbed the depths of spiritual thought. Spurgeon authored many works, including thousands of sermons, an autobiography, biblical commentaries, a book on prayer, as well as multiple prayers, poems, and hymns. Contents: LECTURES TO MY STUDENTS LIFE IN CHRIST EVENING BY EVENING FAITH'S CHECKBOOK

Charles Haddon Spurgeon was a reformed pastor who adhered to the 1689 Baptist Confession of faith.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Spurgeon, Charles H.

Leseproben

Lecture 1

The Minister

Every workman knows the necessity of keeping his tools in a good state of repair, for If the workman loses the edge on his axe, he knows there will be a greater pull upon his energies, or his work will be badly done.

Michelangelo, the best in the fine arts, understood so well the importance of his tools that he always made his own brushes with his own hands, and in this he gives us an illustration of the God of grace, who with special care fashions for Himself all true ministers. Like Quentin Matsys in the story of the Antwerp school, the Lord is able to work with the faultiest kind of instrumentality, as He does when He occasionally makes very foolish preaching to be useful in conversion. He can even work without agents, as He does when He saves men without a preacher at all, applying His Word directly by His Holy Spirit; but we cannot regard God’s absolute sovereign acts as a rule for our action. He may, in His own sovereignty, do as He pleases, but we must act as His clearer dispensations instruct us.

One of the clearer facts is that the Lord usually adapts means to ends, from which the plain lesson is that we are likely to accomplish most when we are in the best spiritual condition. In other words, we shall usually do our Lord’s work best when our gifts and graces are in good order, and we shall do our worst when they are most out of order. This is a practical truth for our guidance; when the Lord makes exceptions, they do but prove the rule.

We are, in a certain sense, our own tools, and therefore must keep ourselves in order. If I want to preach the gospel, I can only use my own voice, and so I must train my vocal powers. I can only think with my own brains and feel with my own heart; therefore, I must educate my intellectual and emotional faculties. I can only weep and agonize for souls in my own renewed nature; therefore, I must watchfully maintain the tenderness which was in Christ Jesus. It will be in vain for me to stock my library or organize societies or project schemes if I neglect the culture of myself; for books and agencies and systems are only remotely the instruments of my holy calling. My own spirit, soul, and body are my nearest machinery for sacred service; my spiritual faculties and my inner life are my battle-axe and weapons of war. M’Cheyne, writing to a ministerial friend who traveled with a goal of perfecting himself in the German tongue, used language identical with our own:

I know you will apply hard to German, but do not forget the culture of the inner man – I mean of the heart. How diligently the cavalry officer keeps his sabre clean and sharp; every stain he rubs off with the greatest care. Remember you are God’s sword, his instrument – I trust, a chosen vessel unto him to bear his name. In great measure, according to the purity and perfection of the instrument, will be the success. It is not great talents God blesses so much as likeness to Jesus. A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God.

For the herald of the gospel to be spiritually out of order in his own proper person is, both to himself and to his work, a most serious calamity; and yet, my brethren, how easily is such an evil produced, and with what watchfulness must it be guarded against!

Traveling one day by express from Perth to Edinburgh, we suddenly came to a dead stop because a very small screw in one of the engines – every railway locomotive consisting virtually of two engines – had been broken. When we started again we were obliged to crawl along with one piston rod at work instead of two. Only one small screw was gone. If that screw had been right, the train would have rushed along its iron road, but the absence of that insignificant piece of iron disarranged the whole. Similarly, a train is said to have been stopped on one of the United States railways by flies in the grease box of the carriage wheels. The analogy is perfect: a man fitted to be useful in all other respects may by some small defect be exceedingly hindered or even rendered utterly useless. Such a result is all the more grievous because it is associated with the gospel which in the highest sense is adapted to produce the grandest results. It is a terrible thing when the healing balm loses its efficacy through the blunderer who administers it. You all know the injurious effects frequently produced upon water flowing through lead pipes. Even so, the gospel itself, in flowing through men who are spiritually unhealthy, may be debased until it grows harmful to its hearers.

We should fear the Calvinistic doctrine that becomes a most evil teaching when it is set forth by men of ungodly lives and exhibited as if it were a cloak for licentiousness. Arminianism, on the other hand, with its wide sweep of the offer of mercy, may do most serious damage to the souls of men if the careless tone of the preacher leads his hearers to believe they can repent whenever they please, and therefore, no urgency surrounds the gospel message. Moreover, when a preacher is poor in grace, any lasting good which may be the result of his ministry will usually be feeble and utterly out of proportion with what might have been expected. Much sowing will be followed by little reaping; thus, the interest upon the talents will be insignificantly small.

In two or three of the battles which were lost in the American Civil War, the result is said to have been due to bad gunpowder supplied by certain “shoddy” contractors to the army. Consequently, the due effect of a bombardment was not produced. So it may be with us. We may miss our mark, lose our end and aim, and waste our time by not possessing the true vital force within ourselves, or not possessing it in such a degree that God could consistently bless us. Beware of being shoddy preachers.

That a teacher of the gospel should first be a partaker of it a simple truth, but at the same time, it is a rule of the uppermost importance. We are not among those who accept the apostolic succession of young men simply because they assume it. If their college experience has been more vivacious than spiritual, and if their honors have been connected more with athletic exercises than with labors for Christ, then we demand evidence of another kind than what they are able to present to us. No amount of fees paid to learned doctors and no amount of classics received in return appear to us to be evidences of a call from above. True and genuine devotion to God is necessary as the first indispensable qualification. Whatever a man may pretend to have, if he has not been called to holiness, he certainly has not been called to the ministry.

“First be trimmed thyself, and then adorn thy brother,” say the rabbis. “The hand,” says Gregory, “that means to make another clean must not itself be dirty.” If your salt be unsavory, how can you season others? Conversion is essential in a minister. You who are candidates to our pulpits, The possession of this first qualification is not a thing to be taken for granted by any man, for there is a very great possibility of our being mistaken as to whether we are converted or not. Believe me, it is no child’s play to . The world is full of counterfeits and swarms with panderers to carnal self-conceit, who gather around ministers as vultures around a carcass. Our own hearts are deceitful, so that truth lies not on the surface, but must be drawn up from the deepest well. We must search ourselves very anxiously and very thoroughly, lest by any means, after having preached to others, we ourselves should be castaways.

How horrible to be a preacher of the gospel and yet to be unconverted! Let each man here whisper to his own inmost soul, Unconverted ministry involves the most unnatural relationships. A graceless pastor is like a blind man elected to a profession of optics, philosophizing upon light and vision, distinguishing to others the nice shades and delicate blending of the prismatic colors, while he himself is in absolute darkness! He is a dumb man elevated to the chair of music; a deaf man fluent upon symphonies and harmonies! He is a mole professing to educate eaglets; a marine gastropod mollusk elected to preside over angels. To such a relationship one might apply the most absurd and grotesque metaphors, except that the subject is too solemn. It is a dreadful position for a man to stand in, for he has undertaken a work for which he is totally, wholly, and altogether unqualified, but not from the responsibilities of which his unfitness will not screen him, but because he willfully invites them. Whatever his natural gifts, whatever his mental powers may be, he is utterly out of court for spiritual work if he has no spiritual life; and it is his duty to cease the ministerial office till he has received this first and simplest of qualifications for it.

Unconverted ministry must be equally dreadful in another respect. If the man has no commission, what a very position for him to occupy! What can he see in the experience of his people to give him comfort? How must he feel when he hears the cries of penitents or listens to their anxious doubts and solemn fears? He must be...