Another sermon in which personal experience adorns divine truth: Spurgeon makes a careful point about the necessity of the Christian’s grief and distress in trials, tribulations and temptations. He explains why such experience is necessary for God’s people, and shows how Christian joy, rooted in enduring spiritual reality, is entirely consistent with such experience. For God’s people burdened by sorrows and troubles, here is comfort, standing on the rock of truth as the storms of affliction batter our hearts.

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This hard-hitting sermon seems to flow hot from the preacher’s own heart. He brings to bear Christ’s charge to the church in Ephesus from Revelation 2:4, that we have left our first love. There’s nothing soft and cuddly about this sermon: it comes with real and necessary force. There is nothing half-hearted about this sermon: Spurgeon puts himself in the firing line first, and only then does he bring the gun to bear upon the congregation. But who would suggest that there has been no decline in our love for Christ? This is a sermon to bring us low, and then bring us back, God willing.

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Anyone who has run the Christian race for any length of time becomes conscious of their own frailty. Spurgeon does not hold back in bringing us face to face with the reality of our weakness as pilgrims, setting it forth plainly and feelingly. At the same time, he reminds us of the richness of the promise that God gives to his pilgrim people, that he shall match strength to the days he gives us, and so enable us to run with endurance the race that is set before us. These are not soft comforts, but full of good substance, cold water for weary souls.

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Conscious of God’s mighty works in other places, Spurgeon here stirs up the members of the church he serves to pray to God to accomplish what he alone can do, to cry out for the Holy Spirit. Spurgeon is emphatic about what the Spirit does and why we depend upon him utterly, and earnest about us getting on our knees to cry out for the mercies which he alone can bestow in bringing Christ into the hearts of men and making us truly to live for the praise of the glory of God. A wonderful call to prayer!

Preaching at Epsom Racecourse, Spurgeon speaks about what it truly means to run the heavenly race. A great example of ‘situational preaching,’ it grips the mind with its liveliness even without the immediate physical context. Spurgeon insists here not only on the fact that salvation is all of grace, but also that we must preach the absolute necessity of a religious life in order that we may reach heaven at last. Full of exhortations and encouragements, it calls us to genuine endeavour in the heavenly race.

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It might surprise us, but Spurgeon had no high opinion of what many call revival. If it were a genuine work of God, he was all heart, but he had seen too many abuses for him to jump to conclusions. So, conscious of God’s work in America, he sets before us a scriptural notion of revival, identifying the work of God’s Spirit through preaching and praying, identifying the glorious effects of such a work when true, cautioning against errors and excesses, before pleading that God’s people would never obstruct but only labour and plead for such blessings as God alone can give.

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Spurgeon is very much aware of his congregation, and of its composition, and its need of instruction. Conscious that he is now preaching to a more settled group, he sets out to teach them some of the basics, beginning with the great reality of the definite work of Christ in laying down his life for his people. Here is a good example of instruction lightened by devotion, of devotion established upon instruction. Light and heat combine to give us a beautiful portrait of the wonder of redeeming love, in Christ’s purchase of a people for himself.  

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Spurgeon preaches this sermon with ministers of lesser gifts and slender means in mind. It is a reminder of the sovereign dispensation of God in the gift he gives to his church, and the grace he shows in so dealing with both those to whom the gifts are given, and those who are so gifted. His applications are, of course, a little broader, but it is stirring reminder that there are many blessings and no excuses in serving such a God and King as we have. Spurgeon’s exhortatory sermons allow both for particular encouragements and particular challenges, and this sermon is full of both.

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This is one of Spurgeon’s heavier sermons, drawn from the sobering reminder of Ezekiel 33:6 that someone who neglects the watchman’s warning is responsible for his own destruction. Spurgeon considers this in the light of faithful gospel ministry, considering the adequacy of the warning given, exposing the excuses used for ignoring the warning, and pressing home the fearful consequences of such neglect. It is as relevant today as ever, for the excuses of men’s hearts do not really change, and neither does the consequence of neglecting the warnings of God’s watchmen.

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Having previously considered the command to love our neighbour as ourselves, here Spurgeon considers “the first and greatest commandment”: that we should love the Lord our God supremely and entirely. Again, he is very conscious that this great law contains within it other laws, and presses home both the weight of it and the proper consequences of it, in terms of recognition of our sin and gratitude for salvation, as well as the life of love we ought to live if we have been redeemed from the sin and shame of disobedience at this point. A great conception of God governs this sermon, and without that we shall never grasp the force of this commandment.

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