Maidenbower Baptist Church

"Who can say, "I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin"?" This is a question for us all to ask, whatever our outward condition. This is a problem for us all to face, for no-one is able to cleanse their own heart. This pushes us to a favour we all must plead, going to the God who alone is able to make our heart clean.

Paul's first full recorded sermon is a sustained gospel plea, preached in Antioch near Pisidia. He surveys Israel's favoured past, brings them to their happy day, and presents them with a pressing choice. In it all, he is pointing the Jews and the God-fearers in the Antiochian synagogue to Christ as the Son of David and the fulfilment of God's promises, and the Saviour of all who trust in him.

Spurgeon hates sin, and rightly so. It is, in part, a reflection of his love to Christ, and his love to Christ only increases as he considers the sinfulness of sin. This is a profoundly insightful sermon, with shades of John Owen's books on temptation and the mortification of sin, a sort of anatomy of sin, at least in the way that it tries to draw us into darkness and wickedness. So first we think about the way in which sin deceives, given that its very nature is to assault the truth of God and the God of truth. Spurgeon spends a large proportion of the sermon telling us the kinds of lies which sin whispers in our ears and to our hearts. If we have never thought about this, then the sermon will shock us and teach us. Then we think about the way in which this deceit tends to harden the heart, and again we are in the realm of spiritual experience, and the gradual coarsening of the conscience, the increasing carelessness with regard to conduct, that comes when we listen to sin's lying tongue and begin to act accordingly. Finally, branching out a little from the text, we are urged to fight against deceiving sin by faith, by confession, by tenderness of heart, and by exhorting one another daily—and that means a willingness both to receive and to give appropriate exhortation. We are not a pack of barking dogs, nipping at each other constantly and unkindly, but we are to look out for each other, both as we commit sins and omit duties. Loaded with pastoral wisdom, here is an outstanding reminder of our susceptibility to sin, and our need to be on guard against it.

This sermon was first delivered on a Thursday evening in the March of the previous year, and then repurposed for reading on the first Lord's day of the year 1890. It is a delight to think that Spurgeon would preach something so sweet and substantial at an ordinary midweek service, and no surprise to find such a topic so well suited to the opening of a year. Here he develops the sermon with us, moving us on from point to point, thinking about the wonder of man blessing the God who blesses, the spirit in which we go about that happy work, the God whom we bless—that Jehovah who has made himself known to us in mercy—, and the self-awareness that we ought to exercise, as we address ourselves in the face of all discouragements within and without, to go on blessing the God of our salvation. Here is a preacher marked by simplicity of speech, plainness of address, and warmth of tone. Here we are stirred not just to think about what it means to bless the Lord, but to get involved with the business, and to get on with it, that the Lord shall not lack a witness to his majesty and mercy from us.

While Spurgeon is probably typecast as a classic three-pointer, his sermons actually show quite a variety in structure. This is a simple two-headed sermon, reflected in the title itself. How can peace be gained? How can peace be broken? Under the first heading, Spurgeon insists that true peace, the only peace worth having, is God's own gift, spoken to his people who are holy. He celebrates the certainty of it and explores something of the beauty of it. Then he comes down from the heights and considers the loss of our peace. Here the preacher shows himself the pastor. The text emphasises that we can lose our peace by turning back to folly, and while that is a proper consideration, Spurgeon takes a few moments to consider some of the other ways in which peace can be lost, not all of them through the sins and failings of true believers. His intention is not to offer us excuses, but not to lay the wrong burden on the wrong heart. The ground cleared, he asks very bluntly about the kinds of sins which lurk in our souls, and which can be the reason why we lose the peace which the Lord speaks. The probing is painful, the speech being plain, and a sensitive heart will find good reason to lament its own folly. Spurgeon concludes with exhortation, giving us a brief barrage of reasons to turn our backs upon folly once and for all, and not to go back to the paths which, because of grace, we have left.

Barnabas and Saul are sent out by the Holy Spirit and by the church. As we follow them on this first missionary campaign, we simply observe where they went, what they did, who and what they found, what they said, and what the Lord God accomplished. Here is a tale of gospel opportunity and spiritual opposition, of the triumph of the good news of Jesus Christ.