Spurgeons Gems 3140

Preface

For more than a century, Charles Haddon Spurgeon’s sermons have been consistently recognized, and their usefulness and impact have continued to the present day, even in the outdated English of the author’s own day.

Why then should expositions already so successful and of such stature and proven usefulness require adaptation, revision, rewrite or even editing? The answer is obvious. To increase its usefulness to today’s reader, the language in which it was originally written needs updating.

Though his sermons have served other generations well, just as they came from the pen of the author in the nineteenth century, they still could be lost to present and future generations, simply because, to them, the language is neither readily nor fully understandable.

My goal, however, has not been to reduce the original writing to the vernacular of our day. It is designed primarily for you who desire to read and study comfortably and at ease in the language of our time. Only obviously archaic terminology and passages obscured by expressions not totally familiar in our day have been revised. However, neither Spurgeon’s meaning nor intent have been tampered with.

Tony Capoccia

All Scripture references are taken from the HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION (C) 1978 by the New York Bible Society, used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers. Spurgeon’s Gems #31 – #40 by Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)

Gem #31 – National Salvation

If there were such a thing as national salvation; if it could be possible that we could be saved in the whole and in the mass, that so, like the sheaves of corn, the few weeds that may grow with the stubble, would be gathered in for the sake of the wheat, then, indeed, it might not be so foolish for us to neglect our own personal interests; but if the sheep must, every one of them, pass under the hand of him that tells them, if every man must stand in his own person before God, to be tried for his own acts–by everything that is rational, by everything that conscience would dictate, and self-interest would command, let each of us look to our own selves, that we be not deceived, and that we find not ourselves, at last, miserably cast away.

Gem #32 – The Great Worker of Salvation

The great King, immortal, invisible, the Divine person, called the Holy Spirit: it is He that stimulates the soul, or else it would lie dead for ever; it is He that makes it tender, or else it would never feel; it is He that imparts power to the Word preached, or else it could never reach further than the ear; it is He who breaks the heart, it is He who makes it whole; He, from first to last, is the great worker of Salvation in us, just as Jesus Christ was the author of Salvation for us.

Gem #33 – God’s Salvation for Sinners

As sure as God is God, if you this day are seeking Him correctly, through Christ, the day shall come when the kiss of full assurance shall be on your lip, when the arms of sovereign love shall embrace you, and you shall know it to be so. You may have despised Him, but you shall know Him yet to be your Father and your friend. You may have scoffed His name; you shall one day come to rejoice in it as better than pure gold. You may have broken His Sabbaths and despised His Word; the day is coming when the Sabbath shall be your delight, and His Word your treasure. Yes, marvel not; you may have plunged into the wretched house of sin and made your clothes black with sin; but you shall one day stand before His throne white as the angels are; and that tongue that once cursed Him shall yet sing His praise. If you are a real seeker, the hands that have been stained with lust shall one day grasp the harp of gold, and the head that has plotted against the Most High shall yet be encircled with gold. Does it not seem a strange thing that God should do so much for sinners? But strange though it seem, it shall be strangely true.

Gem #34 – God’s Word vs Man’s

We do not care about 50,000 cliches, or syllogisms, or anything else. God’s word against man’s any day.

Gem #35 – The God Who Hears

Our God is no god who sits in one perpetual dream; nor does He clothe Himself in such thick darkness that He cannot see; He is not like Baal who does not hear. True, He may not be concerned about battles; He does not care for the pomp and pageantry of kings; He does not listen to the rise of martial music; He does not regard the triumph and the pride of man; but whenever there is a heart big with sorrow, wherever there is an eye filled with tears, wherever there is a lip quivering with agony, wherever there is a deep groan, or a sorrowful sigh, the ear of Jehovah is wide open; He marks it down in the registry of his memory; He puts our prayers, like rose leaves, between the pages of His book of remembrance, and when the volume is finally opened, there shall be a precious fragrance springing up from there.

Gem #36 – A New World Coming

God’s good pleasure is, that this world shall one day be totally redeemed from sin; God’s good pleasure is, that this poor planet, so long covered in darkness, shall soon shine out in brightness, like a new-born sun. Christ’s death has done it. The stream that flowed from His side on Calvary shall cleanse the world from all its blackness. That hour of midday darkness was the rising of a new sun of righteousness, which shall never cease to shine upon the earth. Yes, the hour is coming, when guns and cannons shall be forgotten things, when the harness of war and the pageantry of pomp shall all be laid aside for the food of the worm or the contemplation of the curious. The hour approaches when old Rome shall shake upon Her seven hills, when Mohammed’s crescent shall no longer increase on the earth, when all the gods of the heathens shall lose their thrones and be cast out to the moles and to the bats; and then, from the equator to the poles Christ shall be honored, the Lord paramount on earth, when from land to land, from the river even to the ends of the earth, one King, shall reign, one shout shall be heard, “Hallelujah, hallelujah, the Lord God Omnipotent reigns.”

Gem #37 – Christ Our Food

Without bread, I become thin like a skeleton; and, at last, I die. Without thought, my mind becomes dwarfed, yes, and it deteriorates until I become the idiot, with a soul that just has life, but little more. And without Christ, my newborn spirit must become a vague, shadowy emptiness. It cannot live unless it feeds on that heavenly manna which came down from heaven. Now the Christian can say, “The life that I live is Christ;” because Christ is the food on which he feeds, and the sustenance of his newborn spirit.

Gem #38 – The Joy of a Newborn

Sinner, let this be your comfort, that God sees you when you begin to repent. He does not see you with His usual gaze, with which He looks on all men, but he sees you with an eye of intense interest. He has been looking on you in all your sin, and in all your sorrow, hoping that you would repent; and now He sees the first gleam of grace, and He beholds it with joy. Never a soldier on the lonely castle top saw the first gray light of morning with more joy than that with which God beholds the first desire in your heart. Never a physician rejoiced more when he saw the first heaving of the lungs in one that was supposed to be dead, than God does rejoice over you, now that He sees the first symptom of good.

Gem #39 – Christian, Do Not Worry

I have seen the Christian man in the depths of poverty, when he lived from hand to mouth, and scarcely knew where he should find the next meal, still with his mind unruffled, calm, and quiet. If he had been as rich as an prince, he could not have had less care; if he had been told that his bread should always be delivered to his door, and the stream which ran fast by should never run dry–if he had been quite sure that ravens would bring him bread and meat in the morning, and again in the evening, he would not have been one, bit more calm.

Gem #40 – Our Friends in Heaven

Oh, I reckon on the day of death if it were for the mere hope of seeing the bright spirits that are now before the throne; to clasp the hand of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, to look into the face of Paul the apostle, and clasp the hand of Peter; to sit in flowery fields with Moses and David, to bask in the sunlight of bliss with John and Magdalene. Oh, how blessed! The company of poor imperfect saints on earth is good; but how much better the society of the redeemed. Death is no loss to us by way of friends. We leave a few, a little band below, and say to them, “Fear not, little flock,” and we ascend and meet the armies of the living God–the hosts of His redeemed. “To die is gain.”

Transcribed by:

Tony Capoccia
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