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| CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON: “The Prince of
Preachers”, they called him.
The last in this series on Famous
Conversions, Spurgeon shows
us the vital rôle of God’s Word in conversion. If Augustine shows us God taking the initiative in conversion, if Fox reveals how close Jesus is to each of us, and how willing to bring us all to salvation, and if Wesley declares that personal conversion through response to Christ is vital to the salvation of every man, woman and child, then Spurgeon shows us how the Word of God will not return empty, but will accomplish what it was sent out to do. In many ways, Spurgeon is the Apostle of the Preached Word. I never much liked Spurgeon. There was too much of the “Baptist saint” about him. I didn’t yet realise that that was something that we Baptists had done to him. Shortly before I Chris and I got married, a new pastor came to our area. His sermon notes were always yellowed and worn. One day his son confessed to a few of us, “Dad just has a set of sermons he prepared in his first church, and he keeps preaching them. They are all Spurgeon’s sermons with modern illustrations.” Spurgeon died in 1892, and I’m sure that pastor’s illustrations were as recent as 1910, maybe even 1912. Anyway, I thought that Spurgeon was a large frog in a tiny pond, someone who didn’t mean much beyond Baptists. It’s like the main character in the film, To Be, or Not to Be. He is a Polish actor, who auditions for a military plan to mimic Adolf Hitler. His wife explains, “You should give my husband the part. He is a very good actor. He is world famous in Poland.” I thought Charles Haddon Spurgeon was world famous among Baptists. Then I got two shocks. My History lecturer at University, who wasn’t a Baptist, took nearly an entire lecture to talk about Spurgeon as a 19th Century equivalent to John Wesley. He told us how thousands were influenced by Spurgeon’s preaching and published sermons. The other shock was in Theological College. Although my German isn’t bad, I couldn’t understand most of the German theologians. The exception was the Reformed preacher and theologian, Helmut Thielicke. And Thielicke said that he learned from Spurgeon how to speak and write plainly, directly and Biblically. Spurgeon became a man of great influence lasting well beyond his death. Here is his story. Again, I am using part of the account from Spurgeon’s Autobiography, as reprinted in Famous Conversions, edited by Hugh T Kerr and John M Mulder. Spurgeon was 15 when he came to personal faith in Jesus, on 6 January 1850. Here’s his story: In my conversion, the very point lay in making the discovery that I had nothing to do, but look to Christ, and should be saved. I believe that I had been a very good, attentive hearer; my own impression about myself was that no one ever listened much better than I did. For years, as a child, I tried to learn the way of salvation; and either I did not hear it set forth, which I think cannot quite have been the case, or else I was spiritually blind and deaf, and could not see it and could not hear it... Spurgeon records that, despite an upbringing which brought him regularly into contact with the Bible and the plan of salvation, when he finally heard with a responsive heart, it was so fresh to him that he might as well have been someone from the most remote, pagan area, who had never heard the good news of a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel’s veins. Yet he adds, ...when I did hear it, the message may not have been any more clear in itself than it had been at former times, but the power of the Holy Spirit was present to open my ear and to guide the message to my heart. Perhaps you are like Spurgeon. You have been in church repeatedly, you have heard many sermons, and yet you have a feeling that you have never really heard the good news. It seems that there is a gulf between you and God, and all the words in creation take you no closer to the other side. Perhaps Spurgeon’s story will encourage you to keep trusting, because the day comes when suddenly it all makes sense. For me, that day came in 1960 at the end of a school Scripture class. It’s different for everyone. I sometimes think I might have been in darkness and despair until now had it not been for the goodness of God in sending a snowstorm, one Sunday morning, while I was going to a certain place of worship. When I could go no further, I turned down a side street, and came to a little Primitive Methodist Chapel. In that chapel there may have been a dozen or fifteen people. I had heard of the Primitive Methodists, how they sang so loudly that they made people’s heads ache; but that did not matter to me. I wanted to know how to be saved, and, if they could tell me that, I did not care how much they made my head ache. The minister did not come that morning; he was snowed up, I suppose. At last, a very thin–looking man, a shoemaker or tailor, or something of that sort, went up to the pulpit to preach. Now, it is well that preachers should be instructed; but this man was really stupid. He was obliged to stick to his text for the simple reason that he had little else to say. The text was, — “LOOK UNTO ME, AND
BE YE SAVED, ALL THE ENDS OF THE EARTH.”
He did not
even pronounce the words rightly, but that did not matter. There was, I thought, a glimpse of hope for me in that text. The preacher began thus:— My dear friends, this is a very simple text indeed. It says, “Look.” Now lookin’ don’t take a deal of pains. It ain’t liftin’ your foot or your finger; it is just, “Look.” Well, a man needn’t go to College to learn to look. You may be the biggest fool, and yet you can look. A man needn’t be worth a thousand a year to look. Anyone can look; even a child can look. But then the text says, “Look unto Me”. Aye — he says in broad Essex, many on ye are lookin’ to yourselves, but it’s no use lookin’ there, You’ll never find any comfort in yourselves. Some look to God the Father. No, look to him by–and–by. Jesus Christ says, “Look unto Me.” Some on ye say, “We must wait for the Spirit’s workin’.” You have no business with that just now. Look to Christ.” Spurgeon tells us that the man then went on with his sermon like this: “Look unto Me; I am sweatin’ great drops of blood. Look unto Me; I am hangin’ on the cross. Look unto Me; I am dead and buried. Look unto Me; I rise again. Look unto Me; I ascend into heaven. Look unto Me; I am sittin’ at the Father’s right hand. O poor sinner, Look unto Me! Look unto Me! Spurgeon tells us that the man went on in much the same way for a little while, and then, suddenly, looked down from the pulpit into the congregation, where Spurgeon was the only stranger present. Just fixing his eyes on me, as if he knew all my heart, he said, “Young man, you look very miserable!” Well, I did; but I had not been accustomed to have remarks made from the pulpit about my personal appearance before. However, it was a good blow; struck right home. He continued, "And you always will be miserable — miserable in life, and miserable in death — if you don’t obey my text; but if you obey now, this very moment, you will be saved." Then, lifting up his voice as only a Primitive Methodist could do, “Young man, look to Jesus Christ. Look! Look! Look! You have nothing to do, but look and live!” I saw at once the way of salvation... I had been wanting to do fifty things, but, when I heard that word, “Look!” what a charming word it seemed to me! Oh! I could almost have looked my eyes away. There and then the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun; and I could have risen that instant, and sung with the most enthusiastic of them, of the precious blood of Christ, and the simple faith which looks alone to Him. Oh, that someone had told me this before, “Trust Christ, and you shall be saved”... Does it take months of struggle for a person to find Christ? Spurgeon’s story shows us that a person might wander in lost desperation for many months or even years, but the new birth need only be a matter of moments. When he reached home after that momentous service, Spurgeon’s entire appearance had changed so much that his family’s first question was about what wonderful thing could have happened to him that day. Without ever attending a College, armed only with the same Bible in which he had found the answer to his own need of salvation, Spurgeon became a pastor at the age of 19, in a church which immediately began growing. He was my age when he died in 1892. At the height of his preaching career, he preached twice a week to packed congregations in the 6 000 seat Metropolitan Tabernacle. University lecturers teaching courses we would now describe as communication theory would arrange field trips for their students to hear Spurgeon. Actors came to learn delivery and timing by watching him. He preached from a single page of notes, but his entire sermon was taken down by a stenographer before being corrected by Spurgeon and sent out for publication. Spurgeon’s sermons were so popular that a large part of the print run was sold in the US as well as in other parts of the English–speaking world. Untrained preachers of many denominations learned their craft by reading and re-preaching Spurgeon. He founded and taught at Spurgeon’s College, which became a world–recognised ministerial training College, and was the source of many of Australia’s first Baptist pastors. Spurgeon summed up his teachings on salvation like this: I have always considered, with Luther and Calvin, that the sum and substance of the gospel lies in that word, substitution, — Christ standing in the stead of man. If I understand the gospel it is this: I deserve to be lost for ever; the only reason why I should not be damned is, that Christ was punished in my stead, and there is no need to execute a sentence twice for sin... I find it very convenient every day to come to Christ as a sinner, as I came at the first. “You are no saint,” says the devil. Well, if I am not, I am a sinner, and Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. Sink or swim, I go to him; other hope I have none. By looking to him, I received all the faith which had inspired me with confidence in his grace; and the word that first drew my soul — “Look unto me” — still rings its clarion note in my ears. There I once found conversion, and there I shall ever find refreshing and renewal. If we think about Augustine, Fox, Wesley or Spurgeon, although their stories are different in many ways, the similarities are also great — we wouldn’t expect them not to be. It is the same Lord Jesus who, by his word and his Spirit, creates faith in our hearts to receive the promise of salvation and to find eternal life from this moment on. What we do find is differences in emphasis, consistent with the kind of person each one is. Augustine had adopted a false religion which suggested that God is not really in full control of the universe. Theories like that may talk a lot about God, but, in the end, they promote humans into the gap left by the weakness they see in God. God had to take control in Augustines situation, and break in so that he knew that salvation is God’s initiative, never our own. Fox was desperate to cut through all falsity and all pretended knowledge of Christ not founded on a real experience of him. For Fox, in a series of revelations, he found the presence and power and grace of God in Jesus Christ. This was no remote God who needed to be prompted to think of us, this was Christ our Teacher, so close that, if anyone chooses to give him the time, he will teach us all that we need to know of life and salvation. Wesley, the failed minister, the failed missionary, knew it all, had all the training and the self–discipline, but he had never surrendered his life to Jesus as his Lord and Saviour. Broke through all his effort, and broken from all his effort, Wesley slipped almost without effort, but with great joy, into God’s Kingdom, and discovered that this experience of salvation is the exact thing which makes a person a true Christian. Each individual must turn in faith to Christ. And Spurgeon discovered that the Word of God will do its work in our hearts if we heed its message and look or turn to Christ and be saved. If someone declares it, no matter how poorly, the Holy Spirit will take that word and apply it to hearts so that some will be saved. Let’s learn from these people. I was going to say, “...from these great men of the past.” But what we have seen is not so much that they were great men, as that their God is great and, through Jesus Christ, brought each of them to himself to be used in his purposes. And each one was used mightily by the God who called him out of darkness into the light. Someone we have not looked at in this series is a salesman in a shoe shop whose Sunday School teacher led him to Christ and then told him that the world has yet to see what the Lord can do through one person, fully committed to himself. That young salesman, Dwight Lyman Moody, determined, by God’s grace, to be such a person. I challenge us all: turn to Jesus, look and live! And determine so to submit yourself to his will that he will be able to do mighty deeds for, in and through you. AMEN |
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| © Peter R. Green 2003. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. | |
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