The Joy of Trials

The PyroManiacs devote space at the beginning of each week to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. As our brother Phil is prolly in an airport or an airplane today making sure Darlene gets home safely, I have found a little bit of Spurgeon for your weekend/Monday enjoyment. This exerpt, delivered on Lord's Day Morning, February 4th, 1883, is a little encouragement I found in Spurgeon's archive. Given what's going on at the D-Blog and from Antonio's corner of the blogosphere, I needed a glass of water. You should read the rest of this sermon just because, well, it's just fine.And yes, I know that this is the same graphic Phil used last week. His picture server is a sort of locked box, and he only gives us a list of active links we can use on a ration system -- and the current list doesn't have any other pics of Spurgeon. So you get a repeet there.

Without further preface we will come at once to the text; and observe that in speaking about affliction, for that is the subject of the text, the apostle notes, first, the essential point which is assailed by temptation, namely, your faith. Your faith is the target that all the arrows are shot at; the furnace is kindled for the trial of your faith. Notice, secondly, the invaluable blessing which is thus gained, namely, the proving of your faith, discovering whether it be the right faith or no. This proof of our faith is a blessing of which I cannot speak too highly. Then, thirdly, we may not overlook the priceless virtue which is produced by this process of testing, namely, patience; for the proving of your faith produces patience, and this is the soul's surest enrichment. Lastly, in connection with that patience we shall note the spiritual completeness which is thus promoted:—"That ye may be perfect and entire, lacking nothing." Perhaps you have noticed that little variations I have made in the text; but I am now following the Revised Version, which gives an admirable rendering. I will read it. "Count it all joy, my brethren, when ye fall into manifold temptations; knowing that the proof of your faith worketh patience. And let patience have its perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, lacking in nothing."I. First, let us think a little upon THE ESSENTIAL POINT WHICH IS ASSAILED by temptation or trial. It is your faith which is tried. It is supposed that you have that faith. You are not the people of God, you are not truly brethren unless you are believers. It is this faith of yours which is peculiarly obnoxious to Satan and to the world which lieth in the wicked one. If you had not faith they would not be enemies of yours; but faith is the mark of the chosen of God, and therefore his foes become the foes of all the faithful, spitting their venom specially upon their faith. God Himself hath put enmity between the serpent and the woman, between the serpent's seed and the woman's seed; and that enmity must show itself. The serpent bites at the heel of the true seed: hence mockings, persecutions, temptations, and trials are sure to beset the pathway to faith. The hand of faith is against all evil, and all evil is against faith. Faith is that blessed grace which is most pleasing to God, and hence it is the most displeasing to the devil. By faith God is greatly glorified, and hence by faith Satan is greatly annoyed. He rages at faith because he sees therein his own defeat and the victory of grace.Because the trial of your faith brings honour to the Lord, therefore the Lord Himself is sure to try it that out of its trial praise may come to his grace by which faith is sustained. Our chief end is to glorify God, and if our trials enable us more fully to answer the end of our being it is well that they should happen unto us. So early in our discourse we see reason to count it all joy when we fall into manifold trials.

How God Condemned Sin -- 1870

The PyroManiacs devote space at the beginning of each week to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "How God Condemned Sin," a sermon preached at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, London, on the evening of May 8th, 1870.

Pyromaniacs: Moralism fosters immorality

The Allegories of Sarah and Hagar - 1856

THERE cannot be a greater difference in the world between two things than there is between law and grace. And yet, strange to say, while the things are diametrically opposed and essentially different from each other, the human mind is so depraved, and the intellect, even when blessed by the Spirit, has become so turned aside from right judgment, that one of the most difficult things in the world is to discriminate properly between law and grace. He who knows the difference, and always recollects it—the essential difference between law and grace—has grasped the marrow of divinity.

Read the whole sermon here: The Allegories of Sarah and Hagar

The Plea of Faith - 1856

The PyroManiacs devote space at the beginning of each week to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from The Plea of Faith, a sermon preached at Exeter Hall on Sunday evening, June 22, 1856 (during the second year of Spurgeon's ministry in London, and just three days after his 22nd birthday).


Pyromaniacs: "I am compelled to run over them"

Turning Away from Vanity - 1885

The PyroManiacs devote space at the beginning of each week to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "Deadness and Quickening," a sermon preached at the Metropolitan Tabernacle on Thursday evening, October 29th, 1885.


Pyromaniacs: Turning Away from Vanity

A Caution to the Presumptuous - 1855

It is a singular fact, but nevertheless most certain, that the vices are the counterfeits of virtues. Whenever God sends from the mint of heaven a precious coin of genuine metal, Satan will imitate the impress, and utter a vile production of no value. God gives love, it is his nature and his essence. Satan also fashioneth a thing which he calls love, but it is lust. God bestows courage; and it is a good thing to be able to look one’s fellow in the face, fearless of all men in doing our duty. Satan inspires foolhardiness, styles it courage, and bids the man rush to the cannon’s mouth for “bubble reputation.” God creates in man holy fear. Satan gives him unbelief, and we often mistake the one for the other. So with the best of virtues, the saving grace of faith, when it comes to its perfection it ripen into confidence, and there is nothing so comfortable and so desirable to the Christian, as the full assurance of faith. Hence, we find Satan, when he sees this good coin, at once takes the metal of the bottomless pit, imitates the heavenly image and superscription of assurance, and palms upon us the vice of presumption.

Read the whole sermon here.

Christ's People - Imitators of Him, 1855

But no one feature will give a portrait of a man; so the one virtue of boldness will never make you like Christ. There have been some who have been noble men, but have carried their courage to excess; they have thus been caricatures of Christ, and not portraits of him. We must amalgamate with our boldness the Ioveliness of Jesus’ disposition. Let courage be the brass; let love be the gold. Let us mix the two together, so shall we produce a rich Corinthian metal, fit to be manufactured into the beautiful gate of the temple. Let your love and courage be mingled together. The man who is bold may indeed accomplish wonders. John Knox did much, but be might perhaps have done more if he had had a little love. Luther was a conqueror-peace to his ashes, and honor to his name!-still, we who look upon him at a distance, think that if he had sometimes mixed a little mildness with it,-if while he had been fortiter in re he had been also suaviter in modo, and spoken somewhat more gently, he might have done even more good than he did. So, brethren, while we too are bold, let us ever imitate the loving Jesus. The child comes to him: he takes it on his knee, saying, “Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not.” A widow has just lost her only son: he weeps at the bier, and with a word restores life to the dead man. He sees a paralytic, a leper, or a man long confined to his bed; he speaks, they rise, and are healed. He lived for others, not for himself. His constant labors were without any motive, except the good of those who lived in the world. And to crown all, ye know the mighty sacrifice he made, when he condescended to lay down his life for man-when on the tree, quivering with agony, and hanging in the utmost extremity of suffering, he submitted to die for our sakes, that we might be saved. Behold in Christ, love consolidated! he was one mighty pillar of benevolence. As God is love, so Christ is love. Oh, ye Christians, be ye loving also. Bet your love and your beneficence beam out on all men. Say not, “Be ye warmed, and be ye filled,” but “give a portion to seven, and also to eight.” If ye cannot imitate Howard, and unlock the prison doors-if ye cannot visit the sad house of misery, yet each in your proper sphere speak kind words, do kind actions, live out Christ again in the kindness of your life. If there is one virtue which most commends Christians, it is that of kindness; it is to love the people of God, to love the church, to love the word, to love all. But how many have we in our churches of crabtree Christians, who have mixed such a vast amount of vinegar and such; tremendous quantity of gall in their constitutions, that they can scarcely speak one good word to you; they imagine it impossible to defend religion except by passionate ebullitions, they cannot speak for their dishonored Master without being angry with their opponent; sad if anything is awry, whether it be in the house, the church, or anywhere else, they conceive it to he their duty to set their faces like a flint, and to defy everybody. They are like isolated icebergs; no one cares to go near them. They float about on the sea of forgetfulness, until at last they are melted and gone; and though, good souls, we shall be happy enough to meet them in heaven, we are heartily glad to get rid of them from the earth. They were always so unamiable in disposition, that we would rather live an eternity with them in heaven, than five minutes on earth. Be ye not thus, my brethren. Imitate Christ in your loving spirits; speak kindly, act kindly, and do kindly, that men may say of you, “He has been with Jesus.”

This is a second paragraph from this sermon. Read the whole sermon here.

Christ's People - Imitators of Him, 1855

In enlarging upon this point, it will be necessary to premise, that when we here affirm that men should be such and such a thing, we refer to the people of God. We do not wish to speak to them in any legal way. We are not under the law, but under grace. Christian men hold themselves bound to keep all God’s precepts: but the reason why they do so is not because the law is binding upon them, but because the gospel constrains them: they believe, that having been redeemed by blood divine; having been purchased by Jesus Christ, they are more bound to keep his commands than they would have been if they were under the law; they hold themselves to be ten thousand-fold more debtors to God, than they could have been under the Mosaic dispensation. Not of force; not of compulsion; not through fear of the whip; not through legal bondage; but through pure, disinterested love and gratitude to God they lay themselves out for his service seeking to be Israelites indeed in whom there is no guile. This much I have declared lest any man should think that I am preaching works as the way to salvation, I will yield to none in this. That I will ever maintain-that by grace we are saved, and not by ourselves; but equally must I testify, that where the grace of God is, it will produce fitting deeds. To these I am ever bound to exhort you, while ye are ever expected to have good works for necessary purposes. Again, I do not, when I say that a believer should be a striking likeness of Jesus, suppose that any one Christian will perfectly exhibit all the features of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ; yet my brethren, the fact that perfection is beyond our reach should not diminish the ardor of our desire after it. The artist, when he paints knows right well that he shall not be able to excel Apelles; but that does not discourage him; he uses his brush with all the greater pains, that he may at least in some humble measure resemble the great master. So the sculptor; though persuaded that he will not rival Praxiteles, will hew out the marble still, and seek to be as near the model as possible. Just so the Christian man, though he feels he never can mount to the height of complete excellence, and perceives that he never can on earth become the exact image of Christ, still holds it up before him, and measures his own deficiencies by the distance between himself and Jesus. This will he do, forgetting all he has attained, he will press forward, crying, Excelsior! going upwards still, desiring to be conformed more and more to the image of Christ Jesus.

Read the whole sermon here.

The Carnal Mind Enmity Against God, 1855

And more, I will summon one other witness to the truthfulness of this act, who shall decide the question; it shall be your conscience. Conscience, I will put thee in the witness-box, and cross-examine thee this morning! Conscience, truly answer! be not drugged with the laudanum of selfsecurity! speak the truth! didst thou never hear the heart say, “I wish there were no God?” Have not all men, at times, wished that our religion were not true? Though they could not entirely rid their souls of the idea of the Godhead, did they not wish that there might not be God? Have they not had the desire that it might turn out that all these divine realities were a delusion, a farce, and an imposture? “Yea,” saith every man, “that has crossed my mind sometimes. I have wished I might indulge in folly; I have wished there were no laws to restrain me; I have wished, as the fool, that there were no God.” That passage in the Psalms, “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God,” is wrongly translated. It should be, “The fool hath said in his heart, no God.” The fool does not say in his heart there is no God, for he knows there is a God, but he says, “No God,-I don’t want any, I wish there were none.” And who amongst us has not been so foolish as to desire that there were no God? Now conscience, answer another question! Thou hast confessed that thou hast at times wished there were no God, now, suppose a man wished another dead, would not that show that he hated him? Yes, it would. And so, my friends, the wish that there were no God, proves that we dislike God. When I wish such a man dead and rotting in his grave, when I desire that he were non est, I must hate that man; otherwise I should not wish him to be extinct. So that wish-and I do not think there has been a man in this world who has not had it-proves that “the carnal mind is enmity against God.”

But conscience, I have another question. Has not thine heart ever desired, since there is a God, that he were a little less holy, a little less pure, so that those things which are now great crimes might be regarded as venial offenses, as peccadillos? Has thy heart never said “Would to God these sins were not forbidden. Would that he would be merciful and pass them by without an atonement! Would that he were not so severe, so rigorously just, so sternly strict to his integrity.” Hast thou never said that, my heart? Conscience must reply, “Thou hast.” Well, that wish to change God, proves that thou art not in love with the God that now is, the God of heaven and earth; and though thou mayest talk of natural religion, and boast that thou dost reverence the God of the green fields, the grassy meads, the swelling flood, the rolling thunder, the azure sky, the starry night, and the great universe-though, thou lovest the poetic beau ideal of Deity, it is not the God of Scripture, for thou hast wished to change his nature, and in that hast thou proved that thou art at enmity with him. But wherefore, conscience, should I go thus round about? Thou canst bear faithful witness, if thou wouldst speak the truth that each person here has so transgressed against God, so continually broken his laws, violated his sabbath, trampled on his statutes, despised his gospel, that it is true, aye, most true, that “the carnal mind is enmity against God.”

Read the whole sermon here.

The Kingly Priesthood of the Saints, 1855

Jesus our Lord is to be King of all the earth, and rule all nations in a glorious spiritual, or personal reign. The saints, as being kings in Christ, have a right to the whole world. Here am I this morning, and my congregation before me. Some persons say, “Do not go out of your parish.” But Rowland Hill used to say he never went out of his parish in his life; his parish was England, Scotland, and Wales, and he never went out of it. I suppose that is my parish, and the parish of every gospel minister. When we see a city full of sin and iniquity, what should we say? That is ours, we will go and storm it. When we see a street or some crowded area, where the people are very bad and wicked, we should say, “That is our alley, we will go and take it.” When we see a house where people will not receive the gospel, we should say, “That is our house, we will go and attack it.” We will not with the strong arm of law; we will not ask the policeman, or government to help us; but take with us “the weapons of our warfare.” which “are not carnal, but spiritual, and mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.” We will go, and by God’s Spirit we shall overcome. There is a town where the children are running about the street, uneducated; we will go and take those children – kidnap them for Christ. We will have a Sabbath School. If they are ragged urchins who cannot come to a Sabbath school, we will have a ragged school. There is a part of the world where the inhabitants are sunk in ignorance and superstition: we will send a missionary to them. Ah! Those who do not like missionary enterprise do not know the dignity of the saint. Talk of India, talk of China; “it is mine,” saith the saint. All the kingdoms of the earth are ours. “Africa is my washpot–I will triumph over Asia. They are mine! They are mine!” “Who shall bring me into the strong city?” Is it not Thou, O Lord? God shall give us the kingdom of Christ. The whole earth is ours; and by the power of the Holy Ghost, Bel shall bow, Nebo shall stoop, the gods of the heathen, Buddha and Brahma, shall be cast down, and all nations bow before the scepter of Christ. “He has made us kings.”

– (C.H. Spurgeon, New Park Street Pulpit. “The Kingly Priesthood of the Saints” Vol. 1, pp. 74.)

Election and Holiness, 1860

"He who preaches the whole truth as it is in Jesus will labor under continual disadvantages; albeit, that the grand advantage of having the presence and blessing of God will more that compensate the greatest loss. It has been my earnest endeavor ever since I have preached the Word, never to keep back a single doctrine which I believe to be taught of God. It is time that we had done with the old and rusty systems that have so long curbed the freeness of religious speech. The Arminian trembles to go an inch beyond Arminius or Wesley, and many a Calvinist refers to John Gill or John Calvin, as any ultimate authority. It is time that the systems were broken up, and that there was sufficient grace in all our hearts to believe everything taught in God's Word, whether it was taught by either of these men or not. I have frequently found when I have preached what is called high doctrine, because I found it in my text, that some people have been offended; they could not enjoy it, could not endure it, and went away. They were generally people who were best gone; I have never regretted their absence. On the other hand, when I have taken for my text some sweet invitation, and have preached the freeness of Christ's love to man; when I have warned sinners that they are responsible while they hear the gospel, and that if they reject Christ their blood will be upon their own heads, I find another class of doubt- less excellent individuals who cannot see how these two things agree. And therefore, they also turn aside, and wade into the deceptive miry bogs of Antinomianism. can only say with regard to them, that I had rather also that they should go to their own sort, than that they should remain with my congregation. We seek to hold the truth. We know no difference between high doctrine and low doctrine. If God teaches it, it is enough. If it is not in the Word, away with it! away with it! But if it be in the Word, agreeable or disagreeable, systematic or disorderly, I believe it. It may seem to us as if one truth stood in opposition to another but we are fully convinced that it cannot be so, that it is a mistake in our judgment. That the two things do agree we are quite clear , though where they meet we do not know as yet, but hope to know hereafter. That God has a people whom he has chosen for himself, and who shall shew forth his praise, we do believe to be a doctrine legible in the Word of God to every man who cares to read that Book with an honest and candid judgment. That, at the same time, Christ is freely presented to every creature under heaven, and that the invitations and exhortations of the gospel are honest and true invitations—not fictions or myths, not tantalizations and mockeries, but realities and facts- we do also unfeignedly believe. We subscribe to both truths with our hearty assent and consent."

Read the whole sermon here.

Introductory Post

This blog will post excerpts of Spurgeon's writings. It will hopefully become a resource of encouragement to many people. It will eventually become a resource of information about Spurgeon and also a place to find informative sources of Spurgeon materials.

Picture of Spurgeon