A Great Transformation

I sometimes meet with persons who claim to be Christians and believers and all that, but they have never experienced any change that they can remember from their babyhood. Well, dear friend, there must have been such a change if you are a Christian. I will not say that you ought to know the day and the hour, but, depend upon it, if you are now what you were when you were born, you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity. If there has not been a turning you are going the wrong way; every man must be turned from the way in which father Adam set his face, for our face is towards sin and destruction, and we must be turned right round so as to have our faces towards holiness and everlasting life. Where there is not such a turning there is the most solemn cause for heart-searching and humiliation and for the seeking of salvation.

Have you undergone a great transformation?

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Idols Abolished." Image by on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

Get To Work!

Oh, Christian men and women, you will not glorify God much unless you really put your strength into the ways of the Lord, and throw your body, soul, and spirit - your entire manhood and womanhood - into the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. To do this you need not leave your families, or your shops, or your secular engagements. You can serve God in these things. They will often be vantage grounds of opportunity for you, but you must throw yourself into it.

A man does not win souls to Christ while he is himself half asleep. The battle that is to be fought for the Lord Jesus must be fought by men who are wide awake and quickened by the Spirit of God. “My son, go work to-day.” Do not go and play at teaching in Sunday schools. Do not go and play the preacher. Do not go and play at exhorting people at the corners of streets, or even play at giving away tracts. “My son, go work.” Throw thy soul into it. If it is worth doing it is worth doing well; and if it is worth doing well, it is worth doing better than you have ever done it yet; and even then it will be worth doing better still, for when you have done your best you have still to reach forward to a something far beyond; for the best of the best is all too little for such a God and for such a service. “My son, go work.”

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Work For Jesus."  Image by on Flickr by Smudge 9000 under Creative Commons License.

Set Your Face To The Wall And Pray

Brother, pray if you are between the jaws of death and hell. Pray, brother, if all hope seem to be utterly slain; ay, and if thou canst put thy finger on passages of God’s own word which apparently condemn thee, still pray. Whether thy fears have contorted those threatening passages or not, though many of them frown upon thee, still pray. Perish with thy hand on the horn of the altar if perish thou must. Never believe thy case to be utterly hopeless so long as thou canst plead with God. There can be no hurt come of thy supplication, but good must come of it in some form or other. If God do not prolong life in answer to prayer, as often as he may not, or nobody would ever die, yet still he may give a greater blessing than continued earthly existence; and if it be a greater blessing in God’s judgment, it is better for us to receive it than to have the precise thing we have craved.

In all cases “pray without ceasing.” The mercy seat once stood within the veil where none could approach it except at one set season in the year; but now the veil is rent from top to bottom, and you may come to it when you will. Therefore I charge you come boldly unto the throne of the heavenly grace in every time of need; yea, draw near in the darkest night, and in the most wintry season, when God seems to have forgotten to be gracious, and when thou thinkest he will be favorable no more.

“Men ought always to pray and not to faint.” Pray in the teeth of difficulty, pray though impossibility seem to stand in the way, pray against death and the devil; pray like Manasseh in the low dungeon, and like Jonah out of the belly of hell. Pray against conscience and carnal reason; I was going to say even pray against thy terrifying interpretation of God’s word itself, for thou must surely have misread it if thou hast thought that it forbids thee to pray: it cannot be so, since Jehovah’s glorious memorial is that he is the God that heareth prayer. He has never said to the seed of Jacob, seek ye my face in vain. He may say, and he knows his own meaning when he says it, “Thou shalt die, and not live,” and yet he may afterwards declare, “I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will add unto thy days fifteen years.” He will be favorable unto the voice of thy supplication.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Love's Medicines and Miracles," delivered January 21, 1877. Image by mendhak on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

Enough of Questioning

Noah came into the ark and his wife, and his sons and their wives. Their obedience was unquestioning. We do not find them asking anything at all, about the reason for the command; but they came as they were bidden. They passed through the doorway, and they were all in the ark. Fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and their wives, daughters and their husbands, and all of you, oh that the blessed Spirit would put you now into such a frame of mind that you should at once yield to the divine precept which says, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.”

Have you not asked questions enough? You have had some of them answered, but every answer has only helped you to invent another dozen questions. Oh, those questions! these quibbles! those debates! those doubts! those cavillings! They are ruining thousands.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "A Family Sermon." Image by Mizrak on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

Faith Makes Men Strong

Faith makes men strong - not in the head, but in the heart. Doubting people are generally headstrong - the Thomas-sort of people who obstinately declare that they will not believe unless they can have proofs of their own choosing. If you read certain newspapers, journals, quarterly reviews, and so on, you will see that the doubting people who are always extolling scepticism and making out that there is more faith in their doubt than in half the creeds, and so on, are particularly strong in the upper region, namely, in the head, only it is that sort of head-strength which implies real weakness, for obstinacy seldom goes with wisdom. They are always sneering at believers as a feeble folk, which is a clear sign that they are not very strong themselves; for evermore is this a rule without exception, that when a man despises his opponent he is himself the party who ought to be despised.

When certain writers rave about “evangelical platitudes,” as they commonly do, they only see in others a fault with which they are largely chargeable themselves. Anybody who glances at the sceptical literature of the present day will bear me out that the platitudes have gone over to the doubting side of the house. No people can write such fluent nonsense, and talk such absurdity, as the school of modem doubt and “culture:” they think themselves the wisest of the wise, but, professing to be wise, they have become fools, and I know what I say.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "A Cheery Word In Troublous Times." Image by flatworldsedge on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

The Best Way To Come To Christ

The best way to come to Christ is to come meaning to get everything, and to obtain all the plenitude of grace, which he has laid up in store, and promised freely to give. Some poor souls who come to Jesus Christ seem as if they wanted a little relief from fear, a hope that they may just get saved, and a fair chance of going to heaven when they die. Pray do not come in that way, my dear friend. Come intending to obtain the fullness of love, the uttermost of grace.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Coming - Always Coming," delivered. Image by on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

Treasures Hidden in the Scriptures

Man’s books have usually far less in them than we expect, but the book of the Lord is full of surprises, it is a mass of light, a mountain of priceless revelations. We little know what yet lies hidden within the Scriptures. We know the form of sound words as the Lord has taught it to us, and by it we will abide, but there are inner store-houses into which we have not peered; chambers of revelation lit up with bright lamps, perhaps too bright for our eyes at this present. If Paul, when the Spirit of God rested upon him, could see so much in the songs of David, the day may come when we also shall see still more in the epistles of Paul, and wonder at ourselves that we did not understand better the things which the Holy Ghost has so freely spoken to us by the apostle. May we at this time be enabled to look deep and far, and behold the sublime glories of our risen Lord.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Christ The Destroyer Of Death," delivered December 17, 1876. Image by Wei Zhang on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

You Are A New Creation

A man in Christ is not the old man purified, nor the old man improved, nor the old man in a better humor, nor the old man with additions and subtractions, nor the old man dressed in gorgeous robes. No, he is a new creature altogether. As for the old man, what is to be done with him? Can he not be sobered, reformed, and made to do us useful service? No, he is crucified with Christ, and bound to die by a lingering but certain death. The capital sentence is passed upon him, for he cannot be mended and therefore must be ended. “The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.”

You cannot change the old nature, it is immutably bad, and the sooner it is put away as a filthy and unclean thing the better for us. The believer, so far as he is in Christ, is a new creation: not the old stuff put into a new fashion, and the old material worked up into an improved form, but absolutely a new creation.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Christ The Maker Of All Things New," delivered December 10, 1876. Image by nosha on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

With The Weapon Of Love

He did not use that form of power which is peculiar to the world even for unselfish purposes. I can conceive a man even apart from the Spirit of God rising superior to riches, and desiring only the promotion of some great principle which has possessed his heart; but you will usually notice that when men have done so, they have been ready to promote good by evil, or at least they have judged that great principles might be pushed on by force of arms, or bribes, or policy. Mahomet had grasped a grand truth when he said, “There is no God but God.” The unity of the godhead is a truth of the utmost value; but then here comes the means to be used for the propagation of this grand truth, — the scimitar. “Off with the infidels’ heads! If they have false gods, or will not own the unity of the godhead, they are not fit to live.”

Can you imagine our Lord Jesus Christ doing this? Why then the world would have conquered him. But he conquered the world in that he would not employ in the slightest degree this form of power. He might have gathered a troop about him, and his heroic example, together with his miraculous power, must soon have swept away the Roman empire, and converted the Jew; and then across Europe and Asia and Africa his victorious legions might have gone trampling down all manner of evil, and with the cross for his banner and the sword for his weapon, the idols would have fallen, and the whole world must have been made to bow at his feet. But no, when Peter takes out the sword, he says, “Put up thy sword into its sheath, they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” Well did he say, “My kingdom is not of this world, else would my servants fight.”

And he might if he had pleased have allied his church with the state, as his mistaken friends have done in these degenerate times, and then there might have been penal laws against those who dared dissent, and there might have been forced contributions for the support of his church and such like things. You have read, I dare say, of such things being done, but not in the Gospels, nor in the Acts of the Apostles. These things are done by those who forget the Christ of God, for he uses no instrument but love, no sword but the truth, no power but the Eternal Spirit, and, in the very fact that he put all the worldly forces aside, he overcame the world.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Christ, The Overcomer Of The World," delivered December 3, 1876. Image by Steve Dunleavy on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

More Than A Mere Man

There are certain persons who deny the godhead of our Lord and yet think well of Jesus as a man; indeed, they have uttered many highly complimentary things with regard to his character: but I wonder it should not strike them that there is a great deal of assumption, presumption, pride, egotism, and all that style of folly in this man if he be nothing more than a man. For what good man whom you would wish to imitate would say to others “Be of good cheer: I have overcome the world.” This is altogether too much for a mere man to say.

The Lord Jesus Christ frequently spoke about himself and about what he has done, and commended himself to his disciples as one who was only a man and of a lowly mind could never have done. The Lord was certainly meek and lowly in heart, but no man of that character would have told others so. There is an inconsistency here which none can account for but those who believe him to be the Son of God. Understand him to be divine, put him in his true position as speaking down out of the excellency of his deity to his disciples, and then you can comprehend his so speaking, Yea, it becomes infinitely seemly and beautiful. Deny his Godhead, and I for one am quite unable to understand how the words before us, and others like them, could ever have fallen from his lips, for none will dare to say that he was boastful. Blessed be thou, O, Son of man, thou art also Son of God, and therefore thou dost not only speak to us with the sympathizing tenderness of a brother man, but with the majestic authority of the Only Begotten of the Father. Divinely condescending are thy words, “I have overcome the world.”

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Christ, The Overcomer Of The World," delivered December 3, 1876. Image by Steve Dunleavy on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

The Devil has been vanquished by Christ

Though Satan is not dead, my brethren, I was about to say, would God he were, and though he is not converted, and never will be, nor will the malice of his heart ever be driven from him, yet Christ has so far broken his head that he has missed his mark altogether. He intended to make the human race the captives of his power, but they are redeemed from his iron yoke. God has delivered many of them, and the day shall come when he will cleanse the whole earth from the serpent’s slimy trail, so that the entire world shall be full of the praises of God. He thought that this world would be the arena of his victory over God and good, instead of which it is already the grandest theater of divine wisdom, love, grace, and power. Even heaven itself is not so resplendent with mercy as the earth is, for here it is the Savior poured out his blood, which cannot be said even of the courts of paradise above.

Moreover he thought, no doubt, that when he had led our race astray and brought death upon them, he had effectually marred the Lord’s work. He rejoiced that they would all pass under the cold seal of death, and that their bodies would rot in the sepulcher. Had he not spoiled the handiwork of his great Lord? God may make man as a curious creature with intertwisted veins and blood nerves, and sinews and muscles, and he may put into his nostrils the breath of life; but, “Ah,” saith Satan, “I have infused a poison into him which will make him return to the dust from which he was taken.” But now, behold, our Champion whose heel was bruised has risen from the dead, and given us a pledge that all his followers shall rise from the dead also. Thus is Satan foiled, for death shall not retain a bone, nor a piece of a bone, of one of those who belonged to the woman’s seed. At the trump of the archangel from the earth and from the sea they shall arise, and this shall be their shout, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” Satan, knowing this, feels already that by the resurrection his head is broken. Glory be to the Christ of God for this!

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Christ The Conqueror Of Satan," delivered November 26, 1876. Image by Paulo Brandão on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

No longer slaves but children

Since we have put our trust in an atonement provided and applied by grace through Christ Jesus, we are no longer slaves but children, not working to be saved, but saved already, and working because we are saved. Neither that which we do, nor even that which the Spirit of God worketh in us is to us the ground and basis of the love of God toward us, since he loved us from the first, because he would love us, unworthy though we were; and he loves us still in Christ, and looks upon us not as we are in ourselves, but as we are in him; washed in his blood and covered in his righteousness. Ye are not under the law, Christ has taken you from the servile bondage of a condemning covenant and made you to receive the adoption of children, so that now ye cry, Abba, Father.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Christ The End Of The Law," delivered November 19, 1876. Image by nosha on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

The Way To Be Saved

The way to be saved is to come to Christ. Christ is a person, a living person, full of power to save. He has not placed his salvation in sacraments, or books, or priests, but he has kept it in himself; and if you want to have it you must come to him. He is still the one source and fountain of eternal mercy. There is no getting it by going round about him, or only going near to him: you must come to him, actually to him, and there must be a personal contact established between the Lord Jesus and your spirit. Of course it cannot be a natural contact, for his body is in the heavens and we are here; but it must be a spiritual contact, by which your mind, heart, thought, shall come to Christ, and faith, like a hand, shall touch him spiritually, grasp him by believing upon him, and receive life and grace from his divine power.

Just as when the woman of old touched his garment’s hem, the virtue went out of him to her, and she was healed; so now, though he be yonder, faith’s long hand can touch his divine and human person, by confiding, trusting, and resting in him, and so virtue will flow from him into our soul, and our mind shall be healed of whatsoever disease it hath.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Unwillingness To Come To Christ," delivered November 2, 1876. Image by Adam Sparks on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

The Soul of Religion

What wretched communities some churches are, where the soul of religion is absent. There is a company of people called a Christian church, and a man called a minister who gives them a pious essay every Sunday morning, and they go in and out, and go home, and there is an end of the whole thing: meanwhile their neighbors are perishing for lack of knowledge, but they care nothing, the heathen are dying without Christ, but they heed it not. So much is given to the cause of God as must be paid out of sheer necessity for the maintenance of outward ordinances, but there is no zeal, no consecration, no fervor of love. May we never come down to this.

O my beloved, I long to see among us yet more and more abundantly the spirit of divine life, energetic life, fervent, self-denying life, life which consumes everything to achieve God’s glory. Beloved, ye have this and may have more of it, but ye may also lose it. Life and power may soon depart; pastor and people may alike sleep in spiritual sloth, and then at such times, the power having gone from the church, its energy is no longer felt among the unconverted. A living church grasps with a hundred hands all that comes near to it; it is a mighty soul-saving institution, which with its far-reaching nets draws thousands from the sea of death. A living church attracts even the Sabbath-breaker, and arouses the infidel. It startles those whom it does not save. When the church is in this state her converts are plenteous; then her teaching and preaching are with power, and truth pushes down its adversaries....

I tremble lest we should go to sleep, and do nothing: I am alarmed lest there should be no conversions, and nobody caring that there should be any, and yet everything seeming to be prosperous. I know that people may be growing more respectable, and appearing to be more pious than ever they were, and yet everything may be going back. God forbid that the dry rot of indifference should seize upon the heart of the church while she yet appears to be sound and strong. Before that occurs may God be pleased to take me home.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "And Why Not?," delivered November 12, 1876. Image by Dion Gillard on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

Godly Ambition

Perhaps, young man, you are laboring after fame. You despise gold, but you pant to obtain a great name. Alas, ambition’s ways are very weary, and he who climbs the loftiest peak of honor finds that it is a slippery place, where rest is quite unknown. Young brother, take a friend’s advice and care no longer for man’s praise, for it is mere wind. If thou wouldst rise to a great name, become a Christian, for the name of Christ is the name above every name, and it is bliss to be hidden beneath it, and overshadowed by it. Christ will not make thee great among men, but he will make thee so little in thine own esteem that the lowest place at his table will more than satisfy thee. He will give thee rest from that delirious dream of ambition, and yet fire thee with a higher ambition than ever.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Rest For The Laboring," delivered October 22, 1876. Image by Eduards Pulks on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

Rejoice that your name is written above!

Gifts, attainments, labors, successes, all heaped together, cannot support a soul on the verge of eternity. There is ever present the fact that such things are no sure sign of regeneration. Did not the sons of the Pharisees cast out devils? Did not the people say of Simon Magus, “This man is the great power of God”? Yet these were graceless deceivers. We must have sure evidence of the new birth, we must know that our citizenship is in heaven, we must know that we belong to Jesus, in one word, we must know that our names are written in heaven, or else we shall find ourselves utterly undone in our dying hours. For all these reasons, then, be not too elated, because of devils conquered, crowds gathered, or souls saved; but hearken to your Lord’s voice while he points you to other reasons for rejoicing.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Why May I Rejoice?," delivered October 29, 1876. Image by Diego Torres Silvestre on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

Never Cease To Pray For The Lost

Never cease to pray until your sons and your daughters are safe landed on the Rock of Ages, and so secured there that they will need no other rock to hide them in the day when Christ shall come. I beseech you, beloved Christian friends, ask for tenderness towards sinners, towards all sinners, and let your tenderness be shown in fervent prayer, in incessant effort, and in holy sympathy towards the wandering ones.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Wherefore Should I Weep?," delivered October 22, 1876. Image by Diego Torres Silvestre on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

The Sinner's Savior

Gospel blessings are intended for those who have transgressed and are under condemnation, for who else would value forgiveness and justification? I know myself of no gospel for men who have not sinned. I know of no New Testament promises intended for those who have never broken the law; but I perceive all through the wondrous pages of the gospel that mercy’s eye and heart are set upon those who are guilty and self-condemned.

The Eternal Watcher is looking over the vast ocean of life, not that he may spy out the vessels which sail along proudly in safety, but that he may see those who are almost wrecks. “He looketh upon men, and if any say, I have sinned, and perverted that which was right, and it profiteth me not; he will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the light.” Our Lord was more moved at the sight of sickness than of health, and wrought his greatest wonders among fevers, leprosies, and palsies. This is the end and object of the gospel, namely, to save the unrighteous; the God of the gospel is he that “justifieth the ungodly,” “for when we were yet without strength, Christ died for the ungodly.” “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "The Sinner's Savior," delivered October 1, 1876. Image by Jenny Downing on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

Lord, Increase My Faith!

Faith is not a weed to grow upon every dunghill, without care or culture: it is a plant of heavenly growth, and requires divine watching and watering. He who is the author of faith and the finisher of it, is the only one who can increase it. As no man ever obtains his first faith apart from the Spirit of God, so no man ever getteth more faith except through the working of that selfsame divine power. The Spirit which rests upon Jesus must anoint us also, or the measure of faith will not be enlarged.

Breathe then the prayer to God, my brother, “Increase my faith:” this will be a far wiser course than to resolve in your own strength, “I will believe more,” for, perhaps, in rebuke of your pride you will fall into a decaying state, and even believe less. After having made so vainglorious a resolution, you may fall into grievous despondency: do not therefore say, “I will accumulate more faith,” but pray “Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief.” Herein is your wisdom.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Increased Faith The Strength Of Peace Principles," delivered October 15, 1876. Image by Jackie on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

Love Must Be Your Life

You believe yourselves to be twice born, you have received a new and heavenly life; what do ye more than others? Ought ye not to show that there is more in you than in others, by letting more come out of you than comes out of others? Much more is expected of us than of the unregenerate, naturally and rightly expectation runs high in reference to men who make such high professions; and if the professed Christian be no better in his daily conversation than the ungodly, depend upon it he is no Christian man at all. We possess a higher life, and we are lifted to a nobler platform than the common sons of men, and therefore we must lead a nobler life and be guided by sublimer principles. Let the children of darkness meet evil with evil, and carry on their wars and fightings, their strifes and their envyings, their malice and their revenge: but as for you, O believers, ye are the children of the God of love, and love must be your life.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Overcome Evil With Good," delivered October 8, 1876. Image by nosha on Flickr under Creative Commons License.