Tom Carter

Someone You Should Know: Charles Spurgeon

“No ministerial success story is more fascinating than that of Charles Haddon Spurgeon” (Fant and Pinson, 20 Centuries of Great Preaching, Vol. 6, p. 3).

Spurgeon was a Baptist preacher who lived from 1834-1892. Church historians call him “the Prince of Preachers.” In his first year as pastor of a Baptist Church in London, attendance rose from 200 to 5,000. They built a sanctuary seating 6,000, and it was filled every Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Thursday evening for 35 years. On certain nights, Spurgeon’s church members agreed not to come, and the church would be packed with strangers.

During Spurgeon’s ministry, an English schoolboy was asked, “Who is the Prime Minister of England?”

He answered, “Mr. Spurgeon?”

Spurgeon preached an unprepared sermon in his sleep on a Saturday night. His wife woke up, took notes, and gave them to him in the morning. He delivered that sermon to his people that morning, which was Sunday, April 13, 1856, and it’s a sermon in Spurgeon’s published collection (The New Park Street Pulpit, Vol. 2, pp. 161-168).

The famous painter, Vincent Van Gogh, used to preach Spurgeon’s sermons in the ghettos of England. When missionary David Livingstone was found dead in Africa, he had a Spurgeon sermon booklet in his pocket. The day after Spurgeon preached his sermons, they appeared in their entirety in American newspapers. More than a century later, they are still popular, practical, and useful.

He had a keen sense of humor: “A man walking with me once said, ‘I don’t believe as you do. I’m an agnostic.”

“Oh,” Spurgeon said, “That’s a Greek word, isn’t it? The Latin equivalent, I think is ignoramus.

“He did not like it at all. Yet I only translated his language from Greek to Latin. These are strange waters to swim in, when all your philosophy brings you is the confession that you know nothing, and the stupidity that enables you to glory in your ignorance.”

“My mother said to me, ‘I prayed that you might become a Christian, but I never prayed that you might become a Baptist.’ Nevertheless, I became a Baptist, for as I reminded her from Ephesians 3:20, the Lord was able to do exceeding abundantly above what she asked or thought. And he did!”

Spurgeon suffered from severe gout and smoked cigars to relieve his pain. When told that he smoked too much, he replied, “I’ll tell you when I’m smoking too much.”

“When will that be?” the man wanted to know.

Spurgeon answered, “When I have two cigars in my mouth at the same time.”

He said that the prayer, “Lead me not into temptation,” for him, meant, “Lead me not into a committee.”

When criticized for making horses pull his carriage on Sundays, he replied, “These horses are Jews. They rested yesterday, on the Sabbath, so they can work today, on the Lord’s Day.

In my teenage years, I started reading Spurgeon’s sermons. Many of his statements sank into my heart like David’s stone into Goliath’s forehead. I quoted him to people and saw his remarks make a profound impression in them. Over the years, I gathered more and more striking quotations from the sermons of Spurgeon.

This led to my book, 2200 Quotations from the Writings of Charles H. Spurgeon, formerly published as Spurgeon at His Best. It contains 2,292 striking quotations from all 63 volumes of his published sermons. These quotations are illustrations of biblical doctrines, keen insights into verses of Scripture, and dagger-like applications of scriptural teachings. Other quotations are stories from his personal life. The first half of my book covers several hundred topics from “Adultery” to “Zeal.” There are more than 100 quotations, for example, on the theme of “Prayer.” The second half of 2200 Quotations covers hundreds of Scripture passages. These quotations serve as valuable illustrations for Bible teaching and preaching!

From my study of Spurgeon, I want to share with you ten qualities that made him a person God loved to use. All the quotations below come from my book 2200 Quotations from the Writings of Charles H. Spurgeon.

1. He was completely surrendered to Christ.

· “I would sooner lie on a bed and ache in every limb, with the death sweat standing on my brow, by the month and year persecuted, despised, and forsaken, poor and naked, with the dogs to lick my sores and the devils to tempt my soul—and have Christ for my friend—than I would sit in the palaces of wicked kings with all their wealth and luxury and pampering and sin” (Quotation #730).

· “I cannot describe all that Christ is to us, for what is he not to us? He is the sun of our day, he is the star of our night, he is our life, he is our life’s life, he is our heaven on earth, and he shall be our heaven in heaven” (Quotation #734).

2. He centered his ministry on Christ.

· “Preaching that leaves out the cross is the laughingstock of hell” (pp. 2-3).

· “To deny the great doctrine of atonement by the blood of Jesus Christ is to hamstring the gospel and to cut the throat of Christianity” (Quotation #41).

· “If you leave Christ out of your preaching, you have left the sun out of the day and the moon out of the night. You have left the waters out of the sea and the floods out of the river. You have left the harvest out of the year, the soul out of the body, you have left joy out of heaven, you have robbed all of its all. There is no gospel worth thinking of, much less worth proclaiming, if Jesus be forgotten. We must have Jesus as Alpha and Omega in all our ministries” (Quotation #743).

· “A sermon without Christ as its beginning, middle, and end is a mistake in conception and a crime in execution” (Quotation #747).

· “The best sermons are the sermons that are fullest of Christ. A sermon without Christ, it is an awful, a horrible thing. It is an empty well; it is a cloud without rain; it is a tree twice dead, plucked up by the roots. It is an abominable thing to give men stones for bread and scorpions for eggs, yet they do so who preach not Jesus. A sermon without Christ! As well talk of a loaf of bread without any flour in it. How can it feed the soul? Men die and perish because Christ is not there, and yet his glorious gospel is the easiest thing to preach, and the sweetest thing to preach. There is more attractiveness in it than in all the world besides” (Quotation #1075).

3. He hated sin.

· “It would be better to die a thousand times than to sin” (Quotation #1326).

· “Sin is worse than the devil, for sin made the devil the devil. He would have been an angel if it had not been for sin” (Quotation #1328).

· “We could bear disease if we were cured of sin. We could bear the world’s troubles if there were not these spiritual sorrows. We could be content to pine in prison on bread and water all the rest of our natural lives if we could be clear from sin. The darkest dungeon would be a bright paradise to a believer, if there he could be exempt from the temptation, from the remembrance, and from the presence of sin” (Quotation #1331).

4. He was unafraid of people.

· “There is dust enough on the covers of some of your Bibles to spell out ‘damnation’ with your fingers” (Quotation #102).

· “A sermon often does a man most good when it makes him most angry. Those people who walk down the aisles and say, ‘I will never hear that preacher again,’ very often have an arrow rankling in their breast” (Quotation #229).

· “A man wanted to see me on a Saturday night, when I had shut myself up to make ready for Sunday. He was very great and important, and so the maid came to say that someone desired to see me. I directed her to say that it was my rule to see no one at that time. Then he became more important still, and said, ‘Tell Mr. Spurgeon that a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ desires to see him immediately!’ The frightened maid brought the message, but the sender gained little by it, for my answer was, ‘Tell him I am busy with his Master and cannot see servants now’” (Quotation #1106).

5. He spoke in vivid word pictures.

· Here’s a quotation about coming under the conviction of sin: “My heart was fallow and covered with weeds, but one day the great Farmer came and began to plow my soul. Ten black horses were his team, and it was a sharp plowshare that he used, and the plowers made deep furrows. The Ten Commandments were those black horses, and the justice of God, like a plowshare, tore my spirit. I was condemned, undone, destroyed, lost, helpless, and hopeless. I thought hell was before me. But after the plowing came the planting. God, who plowed the heart, in mercy made it conscious that it needed the gospel, and then the gospel seed was joyfully received” (Quotation #239).

· “If your religion does not make you holy, it will damn you. It is simply painted pageantry to go to hell in” (Quotation #650).

· “The more a church flourishes, the more do hypocrites get in, just as you see many a deadly creeping thing come and get into a garden after a shower of rain. The very things that make glad the flowers bring out these deadly things. And so hypocrites get in and steal much of the church’s sap away” (Quotation #689).

· “The very word murmur, how simple it is, made up of two babyish sounds—mur mur. No sense in it, no wit in it, no thought in it. It is the cry of an animal rather than that of a man. Murmur—just a double groan” (Quotation #853).

· “You stand over the mouth of hell on a single plank, and that plank is rotten. You hang over the jaws of perdition by a solitary rope, and the strands of that rope are snapping one by one. Frailer than the spider’s web is your life, and yet that is the only thing that divides you from a world of despair. The slightest insect commissioned by God’s providence may end your unhappy life” (Quotation #1245).

· Here is Spurgeon’s description of unbelief: “Oh, believe me, if you could roll all sins into one mass—if you could take murder and blasphemy and lust, adultery and fornication, and everything that is vile, and unite them all into one vast globe of black corruption, they would not equal even then the sin of unbelief. This is the monarch sin, the quintessence of guilt, the mixture of the venom of all crimes, the dregs of the wine of Gomorrah. It is the A-1 sin, the masterpiece of Satan, the chief work of the devil” (Quotation #1455).

6. He considered preaching a high and holy calling.

· “We are told that men ought not to preach without preparation. Granted. But, we add, men ought not to hear without preparation. Which, do you think, needs the most preparation, the planter or the ground? I would have the planter come with clean hands, but I would have the ground well-plowed and harrowed, well-turned over, and the clods broken before the seed comes in. It seems to me that there is more preparation needed by the ground than by the planter, more by the hearer than by the preacher” (Quotation #1069).

· “Life, death, hell, and worlds unknown may hang on the preaching and hearing of a sermon” (Quotation #1091).

· “I cannot help feeling that the man who preaches the Word of God is standing, not on a mere platform, but on a throne” (Quotation #1102).

7. He was passionate in prayer.

· “It is a good rule never to look into the face of man in the morning till you have looked into the face of God” (Quotation #965).

· “I could as soon think of living without eating or breathing as living without prayer” (Quotation #969).

· “Prayer is the thermometer of grace” (Quotation #978).

· “If you are sure it is a right thing for which you are asking, plead now, plead at noon, plead at night, plead on. With cries and tears spread out your case. Order your arguments. Back up your pleas with reasons. Urge the precious blood of Jesus. Set the wounds of Christ before the Father’s eyes. Bring out the atoning sacrifice. Point to Calvary. Enlist the crowned Prince, the Priest who stands at the right hand of God. And resolve in your heart that if souls be not saved, if your family be not blessed, if your own zeal be not revived, yet you will die with the plea on your lips and with the importunate wish on your spirit” (Quotation #1023).

8. He had a zeal for evangelism.

· Here’s how Spurgeon replied to the complaint of some people that they are too wicked for God to save, or so wicked that God would not want to save them: “A man is never so ‘fit for believing’ as when, in himself, he is most unfit. It is unfitness, not fitness, that is really required. What is fitness for being washed? It is filth, and filth alone. What is fitness for receiving charity? It is poverty, abject need. What is fitness for receiving pardon? It is guilt, and only guilt. So if you are guilty, if you are foul, you have all the fitness that is required. So come and find in Jesus Christ all that meets your greatest and most urgent need” (Quotation #1241).

· “You say, ‘But I have many sins.’ Jesus had many drops of blood. ‘But I am a great sinner.’ He is a great Savior. ‘But I am so old.’ Yes, but he can make you born again. ‘But I have rejected him so often.’ He will not reject you. ‘But I am the last person in the world to be saved.’ Then that is where Christ begins. He always begins with the last person” (Quotation #1253).

· “I am sometimes accused of using language too harsh, too ghastly, too alarming with regard to the world to come, but I shall not soon change my note. I solemnly believe that if I could speak thunderbolts, and my every look were a lightning flash, and if my eyes dropped blood instead of tears, no tones, words, gestures, or descriptions of dread could exaggerate the awful condition of a soul that has refused the gospel and is delivered over to judgment” (Quotation #2214).

9. He overflowed with compassion for people.

· “The affliction of today may have no reference to the circumstances of today, but to the circumstances of 50 years ahead. I do not know that a blade of grass required the rain on a certain day in February, but God was looking not to February as such, but to February in its relation to July, when the harvest should be reaped” (Quotation #2). When trials hit in our lives, we tend to believe that God is punishing us for some sin in our past. But here Spurgeon takes away our false guilt and shows us that the trial could be preparing us for a future ministry for Christ. How kind of Spurgeon to point this out!

· “If you are lost, it is not for lack of praying for you. It is not for lack of weeping over you. It is not for lack of faithful gospel preaching to you” (Quotation #176).

· “I cannot bear the thought that any of you should ever be bound in bundles to be burned. What, will any of you ever be lost, and be thrown into the flame that never can be quenched? It must not be! Turn, turn! Why will you die?” (Quotation #177).

· “I sometimes jump awake from my sleep at the thought of one of my hearers being in hell. Ah, if you do not care about your own souls, I at least will care about them for you” (Quotation #183).

· “It seems to me as if every hair on my head must stand on end to think of any hearer of mine being damned” (Quotation #260).

· “If sinners will be damned, at least let them leap into hell over our dead bodies. And if they will perish, let them perish with our arms around their knees, imploring them to stay. If hell must be filled, at least let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let no one go there unwarned and unprayed for” (Quotation #406).

10. He had a knack for making Scripture simple.

· “Did you ever notice that when God gave Job twice as much as he had before, he gave him only the same number of children as he formerly had? The Lord gave him twice as much gold and twice as much property, but he gave him only the exact number of children that had died earlier. Why did he not give Job double the number of children? Because God reckoned the first ones as being his still. They were dead to Job’s eye, but they were visible to Job’s faith. God numbered them still as part of Job’s family. And if you count up how many children Job had, you will find that he had twice as many in the end as he had in the beginning” (Quotation #1618). I’ve used this illustration many times in funeral services to show that the Christian who has died still belongs to us who remain here.

· “Almost persuaded to be a Christian, as Agrippa said he was in Acts 26:28, is like the man who was almost pardoned, but he was hanged. Like the man who was almost rescued, but he was burned to death in the house. A man that is almost saved is damned” (Quotation #2002).

· After reading John 3:18, “He that does not believe is condemned already,” Spurgeon remarked, “I have heard some pastors talk of people being in a state of probation. There is no such thing. You are condemned already. My unregenerate hearers, you are not today prisoners at the bar about to be put on trial for your lives. No, your trial is over, your sentence is passed, and you are now this day condemned already” (Quotation #1896).