“Oh!  I love God’s ‘shalls’ and ‘wills.’  There is nothing comparable to them.  Let a man say ‘shall,’ what is it good for?  ‘I will,’ says man, and he never performs; ‘I shall,’ says he, and he breaks his promise.  But it is never so with God’s ‘shalls.’  If he says, ‘shall,’ it shall be; when he says, ‘will,’ it will be.  Now He has said here, ‘many shall come.’  The devil says, ‘they shall not come’; but ‘they shall come’.  You yourselves, say, ‘we won’t come’; God says, ‘You shall come’. 

Yes!  There are some here who are laughing at salvation, who can scoff at Christ, and mock at the gospel; but I tell you some of you shall come yet.  ‘What!’ you say, ‘can God make me become a Christian?’  I tell you yes, for herein rests the power of the gospel.  It does not ask your consent; but it gets it.  It does not say, will you have it, but it makes you willing in the day of God’s power… 

The gospel wants not your consent, it gets it.  It knocks the enmity out of your heart.  You say, ‘I do not want to be saved;’ Christ says you shall be.  He makes your will turn round, and then you cry, ‘Lord, save, or I perish.’  Ah, might heaven exclaim, ‘I knew I would make you say that;’ and then he rejoices over you because he has changed your will and made you willing in the day of his power.

If Jesus Christ were to stand on this platform tonight, what would many people do with Him?  If He were to come and say, ‘Here I am, I love you, will you be saved by me?’ not one of you would consent if you were left to your will.  He Himself said, ‘No man can come to me except the Father who hath sent me draw him.’  Ah!  We want that; and here we have it.  They shall come!  They shall come!  You may laugh, you may despise us; but Jesus Christ shall not die for nothing.  If some of you reject Him there are some that will not.  If there are some that are not saved, others shall be.  Christ shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hands.  They shall come!  And nought in heaven, nor on earth, nor in hell, can stop them from coming.” Charles Spurgeon

Lord, Help Me To Glorify You

Lord, help me to glorify you;
I am poor, help me to glorify you by contentment;
I am sick, help me to give you honor by patience;
I have talents, help me to extol you by spending them for you;
I have time, Lord, help me to redeem it, that I may serve you;

I have a heart to feel, Lord,
let that heart feel no love but yours,
and glow with no flame but affection for you;

I have a head to think,
Lord, help me to think of you and for you;

You have put me in this world for something, Lord,
show me what that is,
and help me to work out my life-purpose:

I cannot do much, but as the widow put in her two mites,
which were all her living,
so, Lord, I cast my time and eternity too into your treasury;

I am all yours;
take me, and enable me to glorify you now,
in all that I say, in all that I do, and with all that I have.

-Charles Haddon Spurgeon

How To Become Full of Joy...By Charles Haddon Spurgeon

'LET US CONSTANTLY READ THE SCRIPTURES. Let us read them, I would say, in preference to other books. There is a great, deal of reading nowadays, and a great deal of that is a kind of chaff-cutting, and nothing more. Why, even in religious newspapers and magazines they cannot command readers and make them pay, so they say, unless they include a religious novel. People’s minds must be in a queer state, when they can relish nothing but these whipped creams, and juvenile syllabubs. If they were robust and healthy, with a good appetite for divine things, they would demand something far more solid and satisfying. You will never grow sturdy men and women on such poor stuff as that: you may rear lackadaisical imitations; but the thinking soul with something in it, the Christian woman who serves God and is a true helper to the Christian ministry, the young man who is fired with the longing to proclaim Christ and win souls to him, must have stronger nutriments than this, that modern religious journalism ladles out so plentifully! Oh! my brethren and sisters, read the Bible, read the Bible’; and these things that enfeeble, will lose all their attraction for you.

If the worldling must have these things, let him; but if you have a soul that is above rubbish, and has been accustomed to live on great, solid verities and substantial truths, you scarcely need that I should say, "Search the Scriptures diligently, and your joy shall spread and deepen."

Be this your happy confession,-

“Lord, I have made thy Word my choice,
My lasting heritage;
There shall my noblest powers rejoice
My warmest thoughts engage.”

We say further, prefer the Scriptures even to all religious books. We say this of the best book, and sermons. We do our best to teach you God’s truth: but we are, like gold-beaters, we get a little bit of truth, and we hammer it out so thin. Some of us are mighty hands at this, and can make a tiny fragment of truth-gold cover an acre of talk. But the best, of us, those who really do seek to bring out the doctrines of grace and love, are but poor workers at it. Read the Bible more, and do not care so much about us. If my sermons kept people from reading the Bible for themselves, I would like to see the whole stock in a blaze and burned to ashes’. But if they serve as finger-posts, pointing to the Scriptures and saying, “Read this, and this, and this;” then I am thankful to have printed them. But if they keep you from your Bibles, burn them, burn them, burn them. Do not let them overlay the Scriptures, but lie beneath them, for that is their proper place. Keep you first, to God’s revealed Word.

Let me here say, that when you read the Bible, remember there are several ways of doing it. There is the superficial reading: being satisfied with the mere letter of it. There is, however, a diving into it, a going deep down into the soul of it. Read it in natural sections. What would Milton’s “Paradise, Lost “ be if you only read one line a day, and began at the middle and went back to the first line? You would never understand his meaning thus. Read the Bible through. Read Johns gospel: not a bit of John and then a snippet of Mark, but read John through, and find out what John is at. Remember that Matthew-, though he speaks of the same Savior as Mark, yet he does it not in the same style, nor for the same purpose; as he. There is a very distinct purpose in each gospel. Matthew tells of Jesus, the King; the parables he records all hold references to the King. “Then shall the kingdom, of heaven be likened,” Mark show us Christ as the Servant devoted and tireless in his activity of loving toil; Luke as the Man Christ Jesus, full of human tenderness and sympathy, and his parables begin “A certain man.” John reveals to us Christ in his true Deity and God-head; and gloriously does he preface it, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Get a hold of what the books mean, and may the Holy Spirit to show you the aim of each writer’-the one book, and that studied, not scampered through, and you shall stand firm where others fall.'

Spurgeon, C. H., 'How To Become Full of Joy'. 1865.

A Quote

"Churches that tolerate the Gospel & yet have 'a sweet tooth for error' do more damage than outright heretics." --Charles Haddon Spurgeon

True then, true now.

A Quote

"If the devil comes to my door with his horns visible,I will never let him in; but if he comes with his hat on as a respectable gentleman, he is at once admitted.The metaphor may be very strange, but it is quite true--many a man has taken in an evil thing, because it has been varnished and glossed over, and not apparently an evil; and he has thought in his heart, there is not much harm in it; so he has let in the little thing, and it has been like the breaking forth of water- the first drop has brought after it a torrent.

The beginning has been but the beginning of a fearful end."

-Charles Haddon Spurgeon

A Quote

“Discernment is not simply a matter of telling the difference between what is right and wrong; rather it is the difference between right and almost right.”

"Long before time began or space was created, God had written upon His heart the names of His elect people, had predestinated them to be conformed unto the image of His Son, and ordained them heirs of all the fullness of His love, His grace, and His glory. What comfort is here! Having loved us for so long, will the Lord then reject us? He knew how stiff-necked we would be, He understood that our hearts were evil, and yet He made the choice.

Our Savior is no fickle lover. He does not feel enchanted for awhile with some gleams of beauty from His Church's eye and then afterwards reject her because of her unfaithfulness. No, He married her in old eternity; and He hates divorce! The eternal choice is a bond upon our gratitude and upon His faithfulness, which neither can disown."

-Charles Haddon Spurgeon

A quote

"There may be Arminians here, but they will not be Arminians there; they may here say, "It is of the will of the flesh," but in heaven they shall not think so. Here they may ascribe some little to the creature; but there they shall cast their crowns at the Redeemer's feet, and acknowledge that he did it all. Here they may sometimes look a little at themselves, and boast somewhat of their own strength; but there, "Not unto us, not unto us," shall be sung with deeper sincerity and with more profound emphasis than they have even sung it here below. In heaven, when grace shall have done its work, this truth shall stand out in blazing letters of gold, "Salvation is of the Lord."
-Charles Haddon Spurgeon

A quote

"It may be, that during a sermon two men are listening to the same truth; one of them hears as attentively as the other, and remembers as much of it; the other is melted to tears or moved with solemn thoughts; but the one though equally attentive, sees nothing in the sermon, except, may be, certain important truths well set forth; as for the other, his heart is broken within him and his soul is melted. Ask me how it is that the same truth has an effect upon this one, and not upon the other: because the mysterious Spirit of the living God goes with the truth to one heart and not to the other."
-Spurgeon

A quote

25"It is enough for the disciple that he become like his teacher, and the
slave like his master" (Matthew 10:25)

"No one will dispute this statement, for it would be unseemly for the servant to be exalted above his Master. When our Lord was on earth, what was the treatment He received? Were His claims acknowledged, His instructions followed, His perfections worshiped, by those whom He came to bless? No; 'He was despised and rejected of men.' Outside the camp was His place: cross-bearing was His occupation. Did the world yield Him solace and rest? 'Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay His head.' This inhospitable country afforded Him no shelter: it cast Him out and crucified Him. Such---if you are a follower of Jesus, and maintain a consistent, Christ-like walk and conversation---you must expect to be the lot of that part of your spiritual life which, in its outward development, comes under the observation of men. They will treat it as they treated the Savior---they will despise it. Dream not that worldlings will admire you, or that the more holy and the more Christ-like you are, the more peaceably people will act towards you. They prized not the polished gem, how should they value the jewel in the rough? 'If they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they them of His household?

'If we were more like Christ, we should be more hated by His enemies. It were a sad dishonor to a child of God to be the world's favorite. It is a very ill omen to hear a wicked world clap its hands and shout 'Well done' to the Christian man. He may begin to look to his character, and wonder whether he has not been doing wrong, when the unrighteous give him their approbation. Let us be true to our Master, and have no friendship with a blind and base world which scorns and rejects Him. Far be it from us to seek a crown of honor where our Lord found a coronet of thorn."

--Charles Spurgeon

Spurgeon on Election

I was reading a blog and came across this piece of a sermon entitled “The Sum and Substance of all Theology” from Spurgeon (online here). I thought you might enjoy it.

I was preaching, not very long ago, at a place in Derbyshire, to a congregation, nearly all of whom were Methodists, and as I preached, they were crying out, “Hallelujah! Glory! Bless the Lord!.” They were full of excitement, until I went on to say in my sermon, “This brings me to the doctrine of Election.” There was no crying out of “Glory!” and “Hallelujah!” then. Instead, there was a great deal of shaking of the head, and a sort of telegraphing round the place, as though something dreadful was coming. Now, I thought, I must have their attention again, so I said, “You all believe in the doctrine of Election?” “No, we don’t, lad,” said one. “Yes, you do, and I am going to preach it to you, and make you cry ‘Hallelujah!’ over it.” I am certain they mistrusted my power to do that; so, turning a moment from the subject, I said, “Is there any difference between you and the ungodly world?” “Ay! Ay! Ay!” “Is there any difference between you and the drunkard, the harlot, the blasphemer?” “Ay! Ay! Ay!” Ay! there was a difference indeed. “Well, now,” I said, “there is a great difference; who made it, then?” for, whoever made the difference, should have the glory of it. “Did you make the difference?” “No, lad,” said one; and the rest all seemed to join in the chorus. “Who made the difference, then? Why, the Lord did it; and did you think it wrong for Him to make a difference between you and other men?” “No, no,” they quickly said. “Very well, then; if it was not wrong for God to make the difference, it was not wrong for Him to purpose to make it, and that is the doctrine of Election.” Then they cried, “Hallelujah!” as I said they would.

He goes on to say

The doctrine of Election is God’s purposing in His heart that He would make some men better than other men; that He would give to some men more grace than to other men; that some should come out and receive the mercy; that others, left to their own free will, should reject it; that some should gladly accept the invitations of mercy, while others, of their own accord, stubbornly refuse the mercy to which the whole world of mankind is invited. All men, by nature, refuse the invitations of the gospel. God, in the sovereignty of His grace, makes a difference by secretly inclining the hearts of some men, by the power of His Holy Spirit, to partake of His everlasting mercy in Christ Jesus. I am certain that, whether we are Calvinists or Arminians, if our hearts are right with God, we shall all adoringly testify: “We love Him, because He first loved us.” If that be not Election, I know not what it is.

I love this guy.