A Side of Charles Spurgeon You Never Hear About | Alex DiPrima

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00:10

Welcome back to another episode of the Room for Nuance podcast. I'm Sean. I'm Alex DeRima. And you're honored to be here.

00:16

Honored, privileged, yeah. Yes, all of the above. Brother, will you open us in prayer? I'd be glad to. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you that we could be here today.

00:26

We thank you for the opportunity to have this conversation together about Spurgeon and whatever else we will discuss today.

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We pray that you would use this podcast and this particular conversation to edify and to instruct and to build up.

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Please, Lord, bring blessing through this effort on Sean's part and all the guests he has here.

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And bless our conversation now. Help it to contribute to growth and health and wisdom and fruitfulness.

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We pray together in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. All right, so, brother, we flew you in.

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And are your arms tired? We flew you in to talk about Spurgeon and the Poor, published by Reformation Heritage Books.

01:08

Interesting. Let's come back. They're becoming like the Spurgeon publisher. Yeah, they recently got the

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Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit series. They're now publishing it. Pilgrim Publications is done with that.

01:20

Is Jeff Chang involved in this? A little bit. Well, he's involved with the sermon thing there.

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I just, in my mind, when I hear something is happening with Spurgeon, I just assume that Jeff's involved somehow. Jeff, if he's not in the forefront, he's usually in the background.

01:35

Yeah, doing something. Praise God for that, brother. But before we talk about this, can we just hear a little bit about your testimony? Maybe how you came to know the

01:41

Lord, what you do. Yeah, so I was born in South Florida, just north of Miami, in a wonderful church.

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I grew up in a Reformed Baptist context, like 1689 Reformed Baptist. Of the not - So truly

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Reformed. Yeah, right. Don't think like cranky, narrow Reformed Baptists. Okay, think happy.

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Yeah, happy, warm, evangelical, gracious. I feel very privileged. I tell people, you know, that book,

02:09

Gentle and Lowly, that Dan Ortlund wrote, which has helped so many people. So good. That book is not like a doctrine of Christ.

02:18

It's not like Christology. It's more about what Christ is like. Yeah. What would it feel like to come to Jesus if I came to him with my sins and my suffering?

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Yeah. That sort of thing. And the presentation of Jesus in that book was very much the kind of presentation of Jesus I got as a kid.

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And I remember thinking that if Jesus is like these pastors who are offering him to me, I could come to Jesus freely.

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And I did. In God's grace, he worked in my heart to see my sin. I was 10 years old, through the preaching of the word, believed the gospel, and trusted

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Christ. And then throughout my teenage years, grew as a disciple, as a churchman.

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It would have been early in my teenage years that I began to aspire to pastoral ministry. I had great pastors. I just sort of hung out with them, followed them around, you know, that kind of thing.

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Somewhere along the way, family moved to South Carolina. It was in the Greenville area of South Carolina when I was in high school. And then

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I went to Clemson University. I did my undergraduate degree in financial management. All the while knowing

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I wanted to be a pastor, but I had been homeschooled. I wanted my educational background to be a little more diversified so that I might better reach people, minister to people, and just develop, you know, a broader background.

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Diversified itself being a financial metaphor. We learned a lot about diversification, yeah. And so from Clemson, went on to Southeastern Seminary.

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It was part of a church in Mebane, a small town outside of Durham. Wonderful church there. And did my

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MDiv at Southeastern. Through that church, was sent to plant the church I pastor now in Winston -Salem,

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North Carolina. So I'm the pastor of Emmanuel Church of Winston -Salem. Yeah, Winston -Salem is kind of a mid -sized city.

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Fourth largest city in North Carolina. Great place to live and to minister. We feel more convinced six years in that a church like ours, a ministry like ours is needed there.

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And they've been some of the best years of our lives. Married to Jenna, three kids, five, four, and two.

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Church has been around now for a little over six years. We began with 17 charter members there in a beautiful area of Northwest Winston.

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We're given a building, which is just awesome. Unbelievable gift from the Lord. And my primary ministry there is to preach the word, to disciple the flock, to help lead the elders.

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And they've been the best years of my life. They've been wonderful. That's such a warm, encouraging testimony.

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It feels like a big hug from the Lord. Yeah, I'm covered head to toe in the grace of God and a series of astounding and remarkable kindnesses from his hand.

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I'm just sort of kind of riding the wave of blessing throughout my life. And I like that feel of a strong sense of stewardship that I wanna use my life and that of my family and our church to the glory of God, given all these advantages.

05:06

Well, speaking of that strong sense of stewardship, one of the ways that you've tried to steward your blessings is by writing this, what

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I found to be a fantastic book, brother. I mean, to be honest with you and the dozens of people who are listening,

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I'm not super into the Spurgeon fanboying or the MacArthur fanboying, right?

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Believe it or not, neither am I. Yeah, right, right. The bobbleheads, the hoodies, the, yeah. Yeah, the, you know, in Presbyterian circles, it might be more

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Calvin, you know. And sometimes as it's worse, it can lead to, you know, I'm trying to have a conversation with you about something biblical and you go, well, here's what

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Calvin thinks. I'm like, I kind of don't care, you know. Having said that, I love, appreciate Spurgeon, wanna follow his example in the

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Lord. As a tremendously faithful pastor. Amen. And your book helped me to appreciate his ministry even more.

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I found it, I found it wounded me in some ways. It convicted me of some sins, some pastoral blind spots.

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Also encouraged me, challenged me and made me feel like, oh, okay. Yes, this is revealing some stuff that we need to tighten up on, but I think by God's grace, we can do it.

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Yeah, very gracious, brother. And that's especially encouraging to me. I think the aim of the book was, if it would especially edify pastors and help them to think about their own ministries and that of their local churches.

06:24

I mean, it's - So if you're not a pastor and you're listening to this, just turn it off now. No, not at all, yeah. So it's aimed broadly at the church.

06:30

Okay. But I have been very encouraged and thankful to God to hear from numbers of pastors who have read the book and thought, all right, are we doing this as evangelicals today, as that kind of Spurgeonic vision or model?

06:43

Did you just make up that word? Well - Spurgeonic. Yeah, yeah. I think people can kind of follow the semantic track there, arrive at my meeting.

06:52

Okay. So, no, but I think the whole issue of social engagement, mercy ministry, benevolence, good works,

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I think obviously it's a kind of complicated time to be having that conversation.

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There's a lot of context in our own day that makes it hard to think about or hard to talk about the church and social ministry and social engagement.

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Yeah. The effort is to go to an older model here and to hold him up and to hear from as many pastors as I have who've said, you know, this might be a productive way, a fruitful way forward in this conversation, retrieving from an older model.

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That's, in the kindness of God, been very encouraging to me to hear those sorts of testimonies. And so I'm thankful to you for -

07:30

Yeah, that's right. Just another testimony of God's grace using this book. Let me start by reading two quotes and then we'll dig into some of the questions and let you, honestly, the subject matter expert on this, talk more.

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On page 23, Spurgeon says, now I wish I could do an English accent because I would try my best to like in a

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Victorian preacher's voice. I would be very glad if you did it. Hello, governor. No. So you may talk about your religion till you have worn out your tongue and you may get others to believe you.

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And you may remain in the church 20 years and nobody ever detect in you anything like an inconsistency.

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But if it be in your power and you do nothing to relieve the necessities of the poor members of Christ's body, you will be damned as surely as if you were drunkards or whoremongers.

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If you have no care for God's church, this text applies to you and will as surely sink you to the lowest hell as if you had been common blasphemers.

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And then a little bit later, he says, too many have given into a social gospel with its overemphasis on social ministry and fixation on creating a kind of kingdom of heaven on earth, along with its concomitant negligence of teaching doctrine and proclaiming spiritual salvation.

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However, many of those who have emphasized the preaching of truth are regrettably not known for their zeal for good works or their commitment to benevolence and mercy.

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In fact, some may even issue social ministry as unimportant, unnecessary, or even a distraction from what is to be the church's main work of preaching the gospel.

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And both of those quotes, there's a number of different places we could go in scripture, the story of the rich man and Lazarus, but it really led me to Galatians 2, verse 10, where Paul says, where he's talking about his encounter with the apostles, right?

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Am I legit or not, right? They're like, dude, you're totally legit. And then he says, only they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing that I was eager to do, right?

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And so this verse, in my mind, as I was reading the book, is the verse that I kept thinking about, like he was eager to remember the poor.

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Nobody had to worry about Spurgeon forgetting the poor, which leads me to a conversation

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I had with your brother. And he says, I love our tribe. I love our world.

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I love our circles that we move in because we move in the same church. And you're talking about my blood brother. Your blood brother, yeah, sorry, sorry, sorry. And Zach, and he said, can we say, can you think that would be said of us?

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Could we say that of ourselves in good conscience? That we remember the poor. That we're eager to remember the poor, not just that we remember them, but like it's really important to us, yeah.

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Yeah, the language that comes to mind is the language of the

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Apostle Paul in Titus 2, where we're told that Christ redeemed us to make us a people zealous for good works.

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And there in the context of Titus, good works have to do with public acts of benevolence and kindness.

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Chapter three will say, he wants the people in Crete to give themselves to good works as to help cases of urgent need.

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The idea of being zealous, you use the word eager, that we love to do good. We love to minister to the needy and to the poor and to those who are in trouble, the afflicted.

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And I do think it's important. Spurgeon, one of the quotes you read just now, Sean, there certainly is a kind of priority to taking care of the poor among the household of faith.

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That's only biblical and right. Yeah, Galatians chapter six. Sure, exactly so. But even that passage in Galatians chapter six, it's so funny to me.

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Is it 610? Yeah. Yeah, let us do good to all, especially the household of faith. That's right. I will so often hear that text quoted as sort of like, so this is about benevolence in the church.

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And if we're doing that kind of thing in the church, within the community, the covenant community of the local church, that's what we're to do.

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But the idea that we're to be engaged more broadly, that's not really something Christians are called to do. And I'm thinking, that's not at all what the verse says.

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So for example, if I said to you, Sean, or if you said to your kids, let's say, all right, your mom and I are gonna go out.

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I want you to clean up the whole house. Especially, I want you to clean the kitchen, get rid of those dirty dishes.

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And then if you came home, and your kids had only taken care of the dirty dishes in the kitchen, but the rest of the house was a mess, would you have considered your command honored?

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Yeah. Not at all. Well, Paul is saying, we should do good to all. That kind of care, generosity, benevolence, should extend to all.

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And of course, there is a special priority on the household of faith for very obvious reasons, which we can talk about. Yeah. But I think what

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Spurgeon picked up on in the biblical record, in particularly the New Testament, but also in the

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Old, is this emphasis on being, as Christians, people known for universal kindness and benevolence and charity.

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Again, he's not gonna attach that to some vast social program to get rid of all inequality and poverty in the world.

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But what should you be known for as a Christian person? You should be known as one who is zealous for good works, who does remember the poor, who is marked by Christian compassion, and a universal kind of benevolence.

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There's a quote I share in the book, which I think gets kind of at the heart of what Spurgeon's after here.

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And I might be getting it not exactly right, but it's something like, as Spurgeon says, to me, a follower of Jesus means a friend of man.

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He says, a Christian is a philanthropist by profession and generous by force of grace.

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He's as wide as the rain of sorrow is the stretch of his love. And even where he cannot help, he at least pities still.

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This idea that grace has so changed us to make us gracious in our orientation toward all others, that we are by virtue of a very calling philanthropists and -

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Can we pause right there on the philanthropist? I have that later in my notes, but let's just talk about it now. He uses that phrase a lot.

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It's not common in our day to talk about, it feels like that word has become secularized.

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Yeah, right. Is that just a difference of like Victorian English versus American English? So the word philanthropist in our day would have to do, we normally picture in our minds, rightly or wrongly, some affluent person who gives money to charitable causes.

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And that could be a celebrity in Hollywood. It could be a politician. It could be any kind of person. But what does

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Spurgeon mean when he used that word? Yeah, and Spurgeon will often refer to Jesus as the great philanthropist. It is a lover of neighbor, one who loves his fellow man and tries to engage his resources and his time to benefit and serve others.

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So a more general and broad. You see that in just the etymology of the word, love and the anthropos of man.

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Exactly, yeah. So I think it's really only in the last century, probably that word has been more narrowly attached to, particularly affluent people.

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But to be a philanthropist was not attached to having any money or resources. It was being generally benevolent and kind and wanting to benefit the people around you.

14:19

Yeah. So you break the book up into, in the introduction you explained, first few chapters is kind of Spurgeon's theological basis for his ministry to the poor.

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And then the rest is you kind of exploring how he applied that throughout his ministry, right?

14:35

Yeah, what he did in his own life. Yeah, that's right. I think the foundation for Spurgeon, at least from my reading, is his view of regeneration.

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Right, so here's a quote from you, from page 21. Spurgeon was not surprised if a stranger to God's saving grace disregarded the poor.

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He thought it would be consistent with a sinful nature for people to think primarily of themselves and be generally indifferent to the needs of others.

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However, he believed the new birth brings about the genuine heart transformation that produces a host of new attitudes and dispositions, including a heightened concern for the poor.

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So can you just speak a little bit more on that, on Spurgeon's view of the connection between regeneration and mercy ministry?

15:23

Yeah, absolutely. I think the basic idea that he's gonna pick up on in the scriptures is this idea that those who have experienced the grace of God do themselves become gracious in their orientation toward others.

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Sometimes that's expressed in different ways scripturally, but those who have received mercy do themselves become merciful.

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If you've been loved, you're loving, yeah. Exactly so. Yeah, Jesus says it will be characteristic of his followers,

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Luke 10, to be like the Good Samaritan. Sees needs around him, wants to meet those needs and be kind. Well, Spurgeon identifies that instinct as proceeding from an actual experience of the grace of God in your own heart.

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If God has been so kind and gracious to me, I am eager to show that grace and kindness toward others.

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And he will say the greatest expression of that grace and kindness toward others is in giving the gospel to others.

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So love has not reached its completion or fulfillment if you've not told the man or woman about Christ.

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That's right, what does it do to give him bread and let him go to hell? And he says almost that exact thing, yeah. But then he'll also say often the gospel does go down a little bit better with a cup of soup and a piece of bread and with Christian kindness.

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It's interesting the way he puts it. I mean, it's very intuitive, very practical. He'll say, if you ask someone to come hear your preacher, people often invite people to church, and your friend knows you to be crotchety and ungenerous and illiberal and unkind, why would he ever go to hear a message that has made you to be the way that you are, if he esteems you that way?

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Well, similarly, I think the inverse is true, that if we, as the

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Lord's people, are marked by, as a characteristic, as a distinctive, love and kindness, warmth, grace, mercy, compassion, that's gonna draw people to Christ, and they're gonna wanna know what it is that made us that way.

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And Sean, what is it that made us that way? Like, why do you see suffering in the world or see people who are in dire straits and difficult situations, and you are in your heart,

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I trust, Sean, move with compassion, whereas you don't think like a materialist that's their problem, not mine, or a

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Darwinian, well, my resources have put me where I am and his resources have put him where he is.

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You're moved with a kind of compassion. You're drawn to meet the needs of others. Well, that's fundamental to the very character of God himself.

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God is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. God is full of grace and compassion and mercy. Do we not wanna be like him and image that very same thing in our relationships with others?

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The Lord Jesus himself, constantly meeting material needs. So often we read in the scriptures him being moved with compassion when he is faced with not just spiritual needs, but material needs that are before him.

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He weeps in the presence of human need and depravity. So anyway, there are all these different motivations that I think do converge and make the

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Christian who he is, who he ought to be in terms of his attitude toward the needs of others. Yeah. You've read,

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I'm sure, many Spurgeon sermons and who knows how many articles in The Sword and the Trowel.

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Is that the church magazine? No, no, it was a separate effort on his part.

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The Sword and the Trowel was a monthly magazine that he would put out with the help of other, he was the main editor. He had different people contribute articles.

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I tell people it was kind of like Spurgeon's blog. Yeah. You know? And thankfully now, so that wasn't very accessible to most people.

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It's full of tremendous resources. If you want to know Spurgeon's, a lot about the church itself,

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Metron Tabernacle, Sword and the Trowel is a much better resource than the sermons. His Benevolence Ministries. By 1884, there's 66 of them operating out of the tabernacle.

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I know, we're going to come back and talk about that. Incredible. His political thought or his view of public engagement. You're going to find it in there.

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Tories versus the Whigs. Yeah, exactly. Talk about that too. Yeah. You're going to find that in there. And now, thanks to the good work of Jeff Chang and the brothers and sisters over at Midwestern Seminary, that, the

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Sword and the Trowel for the first time ever is now available for free digitally at the spurgeon .org website.

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You can't buy volumes otherwise, really. You can buy excerpts here and there. But now we have the whole thing that people can access and search and all that.

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And just in case somebody wants to look up Jeff Chang, it's G -E -O -F -F. Yeah. We really need to get a committee together to sort out the whole

19:41

Jeff, Jeff thing. Yeah, yeah, sure. J -E versus G -E -F. He makes it complicated because in some books and articles, he's

19:47

Jeffrey. Oh, that's even worse. And then sometimes Jeff. Yeah, so if you're trying to footnote the guy, it's a headache. Well, what

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I was going to say is that you can only say so much in one book. He doesn't really deal at all with Jesus's teaching on being poor in spirit in relation to ministry to the poor.

20:03

Or have you seen that elsewhere? Jesus himself being poor in spirit? Or us being poor in spirit? No, us being poor in spirit. I was just thinking, you were talking about, you know, those of us who have received grace, give grace, those of us, right?

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I'm just thinking like, oh, we're poor in spirit. And when we come to realize that, then we see someone who's like, you know, physically poor that leads us, we ourselves were such, you know.

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Yeah, Spurgeon definitely treated that verse and spoke often of the need to be poor in spirit. And there may be some place where he connects that with our relationship to those who are actually poor materially, but I never utilize that.

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Well, as we close out this section on regeneration in the poor, maybe let's let Spurgeon have the last word, right?

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If Christ has saved you, he will save you from being selfish. You will love your fellow men. You will desire to do them good.

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You will endeavor to help the poor. You will try to instruct the ignorant. He who truly becomes a

20:52

Christian becomes in that very same day, a practical philanthropist. Can I ask you,

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Sean, as you read those quotes, because I know you've given a lot of thought and have spoken on this in other podcast settings, things like that, on social justice kind of stuff.

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And I don't know if we're going there in this conversation, but as you read these quotes and you hear the things I'm saying, does it provoke any anxiety in you?

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Are you thinking, no, this is just simple, basic Christianity, one -on -one kind of stuff? Yeah, so what you're referring to is on the

21:25

Defendant Confirmed podcast in particular, Russell Berger and I have been very critical of critical theory and all of its iterations.

21:32

See, I wasn't going to give you free advertising for your other podcasts on this podcast, but thank you for making explicit what

21:38

I would be making implicit. Shameless self -promotion here. But yes, no, it does not make me nervous.

21:46

Any true thing can be put in the hands of a dullard and abused, right? I actually agree with what you were saying towards the beginning of this interview, which is,

21:56

I think, looking back and seeing Spurgeon's balance of these things at a time completely removed from ours, from a brother who we know was a stalwart faithful pastor who in no way wanted to compromise the gospel, which is what we're going to talk about next, for the sake of social activism.

22:13

I think that's exactly the path forward, right? Look to this brother who had a really good balance.

22:19

And when you see him saying some of the really forceful things he says about caring for the poor, you know that it's not like he's been influenced by American liberalism, right?

22:29

Yeah, or socialism or woke stuff or whatever. We're going to talk in particular about his views on socialism.

22:35

Yeah, well, I was going to say, I think a lot of that, I think today we bring more historical baggage to the conversation because of some of those developments you just mentioned, which maybe we'll talk about in a minute.

22:48

Now, I appreciate you asking me questions. Having said that, I'm kind of an idiot, but you're like really smart and articulate and you're a subject matter expert.

22:57

I don't do this, Sean, the whole, oh, I'm just, you know. Okay, well, I really mean it. The worst part of these interviews are when

23:04

I talk a lot. But would you look at that? The next thing on my notes, Spurgeon the activist. Yeah, I love it.

23:10

So I'm just going to read a quote from page 81. For a Christian minister to be an active partisan of Whigs or Tories, busy in canvassing and eloquent at public meetings for rival factions would be of ill repute.

23:24

And this is Spurgeon, by the way. For the Christian to forget his heavenly citizenship and occupy himself about the objects of place hunters, which

23:30

I assume he means climbing the political ladder, would be degrading to his high calling. But there are points of inevitable contact between the higher and lower spheres, points where politics persists in coming into collision with our faith, and there we shall be traitors both to heaven and earth if we consult our comfort by sinking into the rear.

23:51

So, Alex, talk to us a little bit about Spurgeon, the activist,

23:57

Spurgeon, the political preacher. How did he strike a balance there? That is a complex and kind of multicolored kind of portrait to paint.

24:08

So that, I will say, is one of the more kind of nuanced, and this is room for nuance.

24:14

Come on, baby. This is the room in which nuance happens. Yeah, we're in it right now. There's layers here. Yeah, is it that camera?

24:20

Yeah. You getting the branding? It's close up, right there, baby. Are those for sale anywhere, Luke? No. I'm just giving you every chance here, man, yeah.

24:28

You got any books coming out you wanna talk about? I actually do. We'll come back to that at the end. Okay, so that quote from Spurgeon, I thought,

24:36

I was tempted to say, uncharacteristically careful of him. One of my quibbles with Spurgeon is he can sometimes be given to exaggeration and overstatement, and anyone who's read a lot of Spurgeon, that won't surprise them.

24:48

So one of the things that makes the conversation about Spurgeon and his relationship to politics a little complicated is he'll make some statements that seem super strong in one direction, like we should never even think about politics, what a waste of time, and then other things where it makes it sound like politics is where it's at and all that.

25:06

Well, you've even talked about how, in the book, you talk about how he wrote a specific gospel or a specific political tract that he passed out through London, right?

25:13

Yeah, and I think that has muddied the waters in this conversation. He did that once in, whatever, 40 years of ministry in London.

25:21

So, okay, so Spurgeon believed politics had no place in preaching, generally speaking.

25:27

In lectures to my students, he warns his students against this. Don't bring partisan issues into the pulpit.

25:33

Now, that said, he acknowledges there will be issues. There are public issues that basically enter into religious territory that require us to speak to those issues, and we would be cowards then if we don't speak to those issues, just because the politicians are debating these things doesn't mean we can't talk about them.

25:52

If they have, if the text of Scripture has some bearing upon them, if we find this in the word of God, we can speak to it, but we're not supposed to bring partisan issues that have no connection to the text itself into the preaching.

26:06

So he was not a political preacher in that sense. But that said, he did try to disciples, members on how to think about the liberties and privileges that they had.

26:16

They were able to vote in elections and things like that. So he believed that you should be able to bring your religious convictions into the public arena, vote in keeping with your conscience and your convictions.

26:28

And he was open about his own vote. So he would tell people, he would encourage people to vote for the liberal party.

26:35

Now, when I say liberal, don't think like - Yeah, can you elaborate on that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So don't think like liberal conservative in the

26:41

American scene. Those words are always relative. When you say you're a conservative, you're talking about conserving something in your national identity.

26:48

Yeah. So in the English scene, in the

26:53

Victorian era, the 1800s, liberal conservative does not map on to kind of liberal conservative issues now.

27:00

That's right. So the conservatives were, especially with the Tory party, the conservatives were generally supporting kind of the longstanding institutions in British life, the monarchy and other things.

27:14

Also for state paternalism, willing to focus lots of resources in the government itself and letting the government make more decisions for the average citizen than certainly the liberals wanted them to do.

27:29

The liberals, often associated with the Whig party, W -H -I -G, were generally for low taxation, low government intervention, laissez -faire economics.

27:43

Nonconformity. Yeah, nonconformity, certainly. So nonconformists, which for those who don't know, nonconformists are basically non -Anglicans.

27:50

So Anglicanism is the state church in England. And the nonconformists were the

27:56

Baptists, the Presbyterians, the Quakers, et cetera, Congregationalists who dissented or did not conform to the

28:01

Book of Common Prayer, the 39 Articles of the Anglican Church. And they were second rate citizens. They were,

28:08

I mean, it was codified in the law that you were second rate. You shouldn't have shared burial grounds.

28:15

You couldn't go to Oxford or Cambridge. Well, until 1871, you couldn't go to Oxford or Cambridge. You had to pay taxes to the state church.

28:21

To support the Anglican Church, yeah. Yeah, and that was a big sticking point for Spurgeon. So Spurgeon is very much against the idea of a state church, very much for, kind of we think of as religious liberty and toleration and all that.

28:33

So yeah, so Spurgeon is a liberal of that stripe, a nonconformist. He is associated with the

28:40

Whig party and he was public about his vote. He felt that the Whig platform, the liberal platform, better upheld certain biblical ideals.

28:49

And so he would tell his members, he would say publicly in the vault that he voted as a liberal. And yeah, it got him into trouble at different points throughout his ministry, but it wasn't terribly uncommon.

29:02

Would you come in that practice? Well, that's becoming more complicated.

29:08

I would have said no for sure 10 years ago. I definitely agree with Spurgeon that pastors should not bring into the pulpit partisan politics.

29:19

But that said, there are, in our context now in the United States, very clear, moral, religious,

29:26

Christian issues that do require us to speak to them, to address them. But we don't address those issues as a matter of partisan politics.

29:35

We address them as a matter of honoring God and being faithful to his word. So the abortion issue would be a very obvious one.

29:41

Child murder. I think if Spurgeon were around today, he certainly would address that issue publicly. Well, certainly the way he addressed slavery.

29:46

I was about to say. In his context, he was addressing the issue of slavery and he felt this is not about a Whig -Tory thing. It's not even about an

29:52

England -America thing. This is about an image of God in man thing, about a loving neighbor thing. So I'm not interested in what votes here.

29:59

I'm interested in representing the will of God clearly and transparently without apology. So yeah, he addressed slavery very forthrightly, very directly, got tremendous heat because of it, primarily from Christians in America, lost tons of money because of it, all that kind of stuff.

30:14

So yeah, so I commend speaking forthrightly and clearly about the text of scripture, about the will of God.

30:21

And I do commend trying to inform the Christian conscience on how to be faithful to their stewardship.

30:27

Amen. Checking the Christian worldview. Yeah, exactly so. And I think in our context, everyone has a vote. It wasn't that way in Spurgeon's context that more and more people were getting the vote.

30:35

And his effort to say, you as a Christian are responsible for this, it's a gift from God in this setting, in this culture, this nation, to be able to vote.

30:42

And so you need to use that well as unto the Lord, and try to kind of shape the conscience. But what you wouldn't see Spurgeon doing is saying, you know, here's the proper economic theory, and this particular candidate is promoting that economic theory, and therefore you should vote for that economic theory.

30:57

At least he's not gonna do that in his sermons. He did that a little bit in the Sword in the Trial and some of his other publications. Yeah, that's right.

31:02

I heard a pastor recently say, I used to not tell anyone anything about how they should vote. Now I tell them,

31:08

I try to tell our congregation who you should definitely not vote for. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And then leave open who you think you can vote for.

31:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah. If that's true. Yeah, and so for Spurgeon, there were just clear black and white things that he would identify. And then he also, yeah.

31:21

So I guess on some of the more partisan things that I don't see as clearly connected to scripture, in terms of the things

31:28

Spurgeon taught, I probably would not be as public about it as he is. Yeah, okay. In my own preaching ministry, yeah.

31:34

Yeah, that's right. I'll just use one example, so just to make my meaning clear. Like immigration policy.

31:40

Yeah. I have private opinions about that. But I think there's a number of very acceptable

31:45

Christian positions on how to deal with immigration in this country. I'm not gonna be going to bat for that. But yeah, abortion,

31:50

LGBTQ stuff. I mean, you know. Pretty clear. Yeah, transparently clear. Yeah. Spurgeon was in London around the time that Christian socialism was really beginning to burgeon there.

32:01

Yeah, toward the end of his ministry. Yeah, and he spoke pretty vociferously against it. That's a great word.

32:06

It's word of the day calendar. Yeah. You know, so I found a way to squeeze it in there. Vociferous is a word that sounds like it's meaning.

32:13

Like if you say, speaking of vociferous, yeah, it's like, I'm gonna declaim, I'm gonna. Ooh. Yeah.

32:18

Yeah, that's good. Man, we work well together. You know, I'm reminded of words as we go through this conversation.

32:25

I find it interesting that socialism, as it was beginning to burgeon in his context, didn't have a lot of the historical evidence against it that it does now, and yet Spurgeon could pretty clearly see through it and see that it was not in line with the

32:40

Christian. Yeah, he was quite, one might say prescient. Yeah. Or incisive. These are also good words. Those are very good.

32:46

Yes. Spurgeon, so Spurgeon is particularly critiquing Christian socialism, which was becoming more popular among some

32:54

Christians. Can you distinguish between classical and Christian? Well, sure. So.

33:00

Were you prepared for this one? No, but I can do it, I hope. So the sort of socialist doctrines that were popular in the teachings of like a

33:16

Karl Marx were not like super well -known for most of Spurgeon's ministry. So Marx and Spurgeon aren't contemporaries.

33:22

Yeah, that's right. There's no evidence that they ever interacted. I've not come across any reference to Marx in all of Spurgeon's corpus.

33:31

Frederick Engels does reference Spurgeon at least once. Because he lived in London. Yeah. That's right, and he actually, so there's a great book.

33:37

Marx is buried in London. That's right. There's a great book on Karl Marx essentially being a Satanist. Okay. A demon worshiper.

33:43

Yeah. And Engels has some pretty strong statements against Spurgeon's ministry. Yeah, exactly. I don't have them in front of me, so I'll protect.

33:49

Yeah, well, Engels did not like Spurgeon for sure. I don't know that we know exactly why, but. Probably because he hated

33:55

Jesus. Well, it could be. Spurgeon was disliked for lots of reasons. Yeah, he was seen as a country bumpkin, backwards, uncouth, not a gentleman.

34:07

So Marx would have advanced the idea of a communist society, one in which resources are centralized at the state level and distributed according to need.

34:20

So there's such a thing as private property in Marx's worldview. Marx believes in radical materialism.

34:25

He believes in inevitability of class alienation. And people often think communism and socialism are the same thing.

34:31

That's not really true. And communism hasn't actually been tried. So yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, not like in a nation.

34:38

No. Exactly so. Socialism is the means through which we arrive at sort of the communist utopia. Yeah, and socialism involves sort of the state taking control of the means of production, centralized in the state, not through private enterprise, free markets, that kind of thing.

34:56

My comment was a little tongue in cheek because every time you talk to a socialist, they say, when we can actually practice communism, it's gonna work.

35:04

Yeah, well, no, but it's an issue. So Christian socialism is going to try to put behind the socialistic view of things, of how resources are used and all that.

35:13

Christian arguments, distinctly Christian arguments. The believers had all things in common.

35:20

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and so Christian socialism, now, some Christian socialists are trying to apply that more broadly to nations.

35:28

Others are saying, no, churches should become these kind of Christian socialist outposts. Little communes, yeah. Yeah, which is a more nuanced and complicated kind of discussion.

35:37

We got room for it. Exactly, so John Clifford would be associated with the

35:43

Christian socialist movement, opponent of Spurgeon in the downgrade controversy. Spurgeon, you're right.

35:48

Without the benefit of the historical record, you and I have to look back upon Marxism, socialism, et cetera, believed that the socialistic platform would be contrary to many principles that we see at root in Scripture.

36:06

Yeah. He would see Scripture as endorsing private property, individual responsibility, meritocracy, things like that.

36:13

Many classical liberal principles. Yeah. He would see as finding a happy home within a

36:19

Christian worldview in a lot of ways, not in every detail. I know it's a very complicated discussion now. But they are downstream from a

36:25

Christian worldview. Yeah, well, Spurgeon would believe so for sure, yeah. So, yeah, so every reference to socialism that I found in Spurgeon's corpus is very negative.

36:35

Yeah. And especially it's optimism about human anthropology. It's optimism that we can create a kind of utopia or kingdom of heaven on earth.

36:43

He's like, that's so fruitless. That's just not gonna happen. So Spurgeon is like super bullish and optimistic on the local church and on the prospects of the

36:50

Great Commission. He is super bearish on politics, policy, the wider world.

36:58

He doesn't look there for encouragement. And he found the Christian socialists naive, generally speaking, in their view of man, their view of society more broadly.

37:08

Thomas Sowell. Yeah. One of his, I think maybe his best book is A Conflict of Visions. Oh, yeah.

37:15

Tremendous book. So good. And he basically goes, why do all these people always tend to line up basically on the same side of things over here and always, and why do leftists always tend to line up on the same?

37:24

And he says, it's because different views of anthropology, right? Exactly so. And so he didn't need the Bible to see that. He did that through observation, but Spurgeon and Sowell ended up in the same place.

37:33

Like, if your view of humanity is too high, it's gonna lead to all kinds of mistakes. It's gonna hurt a lot of people.

37:38

In the book, the Sowell book, isn't it? The Constrained Vision and the Unconstrained Vision? That's right, yeah. Yeah, it's humanity basically constrained.

37:44

We might just call that the Depraved Vision versus the Non -Depraved Vision. Yeah, I don't know if Sowell was a Christian, but he definitely is picking up on something that is very clear from a biblical perspective.

37:54

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So - By the way, more important than my book, Spurgeon and the

37:59

Poor, which is bound to be a classic. Amen, brother. I would encourage your listeners to pick up A Conflict of Visions because I do think it will help.

38:06

It's one of those books that you can put a kind of a filter or a lens. You don't have to like all of Sowell's corpus and also he says like on race and stuff, but that book is a helpful lens to have through which to see a lot of things happening culturally and socially and how to assess different policy proposals and things like that.

38:22

A Conflict of Visions, Thomas Sowell, S -O -W -E -L -L. It used to be one of the main books that Mark would give away, one of the main secular books.

38:31

So Spurgeon, based on your book, believed in the social gospel, yes? Yeah, not at all. But so the term social gospel was not really being used.

38:39

It comes into use really in the generation after Spurgeon's death. I don't know when the first usage of it was, but like Walter Rauschenbusch in the social gospel, that's like a full generation or two beyond Spurgeon's life.

38:49

I'm so glad you pronounced that for me because I always, I'm always, I get, I'm confident that halfway through it,

38:54

I lose it. Rauschen - Rauschenbusch, yeah. So Spurgeon dies in 1892.

39:02

His dates were 1834 to 1892, he dies at 57. Fun fact. I don't think I say this in the book. Spurgeon's dad, did

39:09

I say this right, lived to be 91. His granddad lived to be 88. Spurgeon dies at least 30 years younger than this.

39:17

Imagine if he had been alive as long as his forebears. That would have got him past World War I into the 1920s.

39:24

You just wonder how he would have reflected on some of these things from that standpoint. Or even some of the modernist fundamentalist controversies after downgrade, you know, downgrade controversy where that kind of is like -

39:33

It's probably what killed him early. Yeah, well, yeah, a lot of things killed him early. What was the question?

39:40

Oh, he was a, he believed in the social gospel. So we do have disciples of Spurgeon repudiating the social gospel as such.

39:48

By that name, like, who's the author of the biography? And Mark's always handing this biography out.

39:53

Spurgeon's successor, Archibald Brown, yeah. Archibald Brown, yeah, repudiates the social gospel.

40:01

Spurgeon certainly would if that language was being used in Spurgeon's day.

40:06

The social gospel would be the idea that the primary work of the church and of the message of the church is not solely or even primarily about individual regeneration, individual conversion, but rather the remaking of society along the lines of like the

40:25

Sermon on the Mount or the Love for Neighbor more broadly and things like that. So Walter Rauschenbusch worked on his program in Hell's Kitchen in New York, bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth and doing that through social engineering, political policy, that kind of stuff.

40:43

Spurgeon would view that as fruitless. Not to say that we shouldn't try to advocate for good laws, but the sense of optimism that goes to that, energy that goes to that, and the sense that part of the mission of the church is to sort of remake the community and society after kind of the blessed community, the beloved community, or the

41:00

Sermon on the Mount or something like that. He wouldn't view the Sermon on the Mount as a social manifesto, but rather as a program for individual discipleship and things like that.

41:10

Yeah. We're gonna come back to that in a bit. We're gonna talk about Spurgeon and theonomy,

41:16

Spurgeon and post -millennialism. But for now, let's talk about Spurgeon and the local church.

41:24

Your book communicates the idea that Spurgeon saw that the benevolence ministry that Christians are called to should be happening primarily through the local church.

41:34

The local church is the engine by which we do our good works. A people zealous for good works, yeah.

41:39

A city set on a hill, a light to the world that they may see your good works, Matthew 5, and give glory to your

41:46

Father who is in heaven. You don't use this terminology, but I think you get at the essence of it. Either way, can you elaborate on what maybe

41:54

Spurgeon would have thought and how maybe we should think about benevolence in the church gathered versus the church scattered?

42:03

Yeah. Because every good idea, so Spurgeon, when he died, there had been 66 benevolence ministries carried out through the church.

42:11

That's a lot. Now, would you call that the church gathered? That was kind of organized ministries?

42:16

Well, I want you to parse that out. Well, I'll tell you, if a member of Sixth Avenue says, hey, there's a homeless camp over here, and I really think we should take them

42:26

Bibles and waters, right? I see. I might say, okay, that is something that Sixth Avenue Community Church can do officially, and our whole church can be in on that vision.

42:35

By putting money behind it, encouraging volunteers to do it, profiling services. Exactly. Or we can just equip you, because you feel really compelled to do that, to equip you to go do that, right?

42:46

So how would Spurgeon parse out? It's interesting you're asking me this. So Jonathan Lehman, our mutual friend, wrote, our mutual friend, also the name of a book written by Charles Dickens during Spurgeon's lifetime.

42:57

And Spurgeon appreciated Dickens very much. Oh, had a collected set of his works? Loved Dickens, yeah. Forward by Jonathan Lehman.

43:03

Forward by Jonathan Lehman, yeah. So Jonathan was very kind, wrote the book.

43:09

He seemed to really like the book. That was, I don't know if he shaped it as a critique or a question he has, but the very question you're asking, how much should mercy ministry, benevolence work, social engagement, be organized by the church as a corporate body, through its budget, through its resources, that kind of thing?

43:29

And how much of it is us encouraging benevolence and good works more broadly and individual members then pursuing the causes and works and things that they want to do?

43:38

You think about Ephesians 4, he equips, pastors equip the saints to do the work of the ministry, right?

43:44

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So that's an interesting text. It's the work of deaconing. And deacons, we know from Acts 6, were called to engage in benevolence work and actually to organize the resources of the church for benevolence work.

43:59

So that would parlay into my answer there. I think that Spurgeon will say, just to try to say what

44:05

Spurgeon would say to be accurate to him, he would say to both and, A, would say that absolutely every

44:13

Christian's life should be populated with hundreds and thousands of individual acts of charity and kindness.

44:19

You pass by a needy person, you stop to help them. If I'm at the airport a year later today and I see some woman in distress,

44:28

I stop to help her, right? We're doing kindness to our neighbors all around us all the time. Right, whatever sphere

44:34

God has placed you in, you're constantly looking for good works. Yeah, you know, it's a shame in this conversation, I'm tempted to quote these

44:40

Bible verses, these paradigms for benevolence. They've been so littered with kind of bad thinking,

44:45

I hesitate to use them, but they're in the Bible. We are called to be good Samaritans. We can say the word justice. We can say the word care.

44:51

You are called to love your neighbor. Now love your neighbor, you know, sadly, it means wear a mask and it means, you know, marching this protest or whatever.

44:58

I'm not talking about that. No, no. But I'm saying there is a command in the Bible upon which all the law and the prophets hang and it is that we're to love

45:04

God and we're to love our neighbors. So that's to just characterize your life. What is Sean DeMars?

45:10

He loves his neighbors. And that love is not just theoretical, it comes to expression and practical acts of actual generosity and kindness.

45:18

Similarly, good Samaritans, he did stuff for the guy. Okay, so we're just gonna say, yeah, all of you should be doing that or you're not a

45:24

Christian. But he also would believe like your local church, Sean, should be known as a church.

45:31

What do we know of Sixth Avenue Community Church? That is a bastion, a hub for benevolence, kindness, mercy, they do good in the community, they're known for that.

45:43

I think some of the texts that would be in his mind are some we've already quoted. Well, he used to put it this way.

45:48

I mean, if this is a group of people who are zealous for good works, what will they look like when they come together? Well, they're all sharing ideas and they're working together and they're doing good.

45:58

The church is called in Matthew five, well, I'm sorry, Christ's people in Matthew five are called to be like a city on a hill, like a light to the world.

46:06

And what is that light? It's not to be hidden, but what's the light? It's not in the first instance of preaching of the gospel, though that's downstream,

46:12

I think, of that text. Jesus says, they will see your good deeds and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

46:18

He's referring to the community of disciples, not just individual lights. He refers to a city, a polis, a corporate entity.

46:25

And I hope I'm not reading too much into that text, but I do think that Spurgeon would go to texts like that to kind of justify this perspective. And so he wanted the

46:32

Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, there in South London, to be seen, to be known, to have the reputation as a church.

46:40

The Metropolitan Tabernacle is a hub for mercy ministry and benevolence. And he wanted to direct people to the building.

46:46

And he wanted mercy ministries to be organized there that operated out of the building. And he wanted, on Sunday afternoons, lots of members.

46:53

I mean, literally, deacons will tell these stories of literally like 1 ,000 members on Sunday afternoons going out in the community and doing

46:58

Sunday schools. And those were organized by the church. The church put their money where its mouth was. They were not just saying, well, you find a way in your individual life to do benevolence work.

47:08

He would say, no, we as a church are gonna organize the church to do this kind of thing. And our ministry, the ministry of the

47:13

Metropolitan Tabernacle will be a church that is known for ministry in word as well as in deed. And it's in some way visible and demonstrable.

47:22

Literally, you could go to an address and see it happening. Wonderfully, today, I've been to the Metropolitan Tabernacle a number of times.

47:27

Still, the church is there, wonderful evangelical church. Maybe 1 ,200 people there.

47:34

Translating into six or seven languages on Sunday. Still have ministries to disabled people. Massive ministry to children.

47:40

I mean, on Sunday afternoons, that's when they do their Sunday school. Every square inch of that building is just kind of broken down, and they turn closets into classrooms and fill it with hundreds and hundreds of kids from the local community.

47:51

And they are in that work, continuing in their Spurgeonic legacy of benevolence, good works, mercy ministry that is visible and corporate and that kind of a thing.

48:01

So I think he's gonna push back on some in our tribe, Sean, and say, this has to have a kind of corporate shape to it in some form or fashion.

48:10

And that could be through money being given to it, the church organizing particular ministries, but the church itself, not just the individual members, the church itself should be known this kind of ministry, this kind of work.

48:21

What do you think about that? Push back on that? Yeah, I just disagree. Well, I don't think, not with the basic sentiment, but I do think the main emphasis for mercy ministries, benevolence ministries should be probably carried out by individual or groups of individual members within the church.

48:37

I am concerned that one of the reasons why churches tend to lapse into the social gospel stuff is because I think the church gathered is commissioned primarily along the lines of just gospel ministry, which

48:52

I understand. Good works and all that stuff is an adornment of the gospel, so there should be a measure of that. But I think my view would probably just fall right in line with DeYoung and Gilbert's book,

49:03

What is the Mission of the Church? Yeah, What is the Mission of the Church, yeah. Which I don't think you would disagree with them. No, but I don't understand DeYoung and Gilbert, at least in that book, to be saying what

49:11

Spurgeon, I don't think what Spurgeon was doing would come under their censure. Okay, yeah. Yeah, I think they're going after mission drift more broadly.

49:18

Sure. So I think when the church's mission gets taken up with social change and social justice and things like that, well, then we're running into some serious problems.

49:28

But to say as a secondary work of the church, ministry of deed, we're to remember orphans and widows and that kind of thing, and that's to adorn our gospel ministry.

49:37

Yeah. And that not just come to expression in the individual lives of members. Like, I don't think - So I agree, I agree.

49:42

So yeah, this is tricky. So I do agree with that. Like, you see very obvious commands for the church itself to be taken care of, like widows and orphans.

49:50

So yeah, I do think there should be a measure of that. Yeah, let me ask a more particular question that might -

49:58

Is that a Baptist history joke? No, not at all. Spurgeon was a particular Baptist. Yes, he was. That might narrow the gap of difference here.

50:07

Because I wonder if, and I think Jonathan might've said this at some point, he was saying it would be good to put this book in conversation with the young and Gilbert.

50:13

Okay. And I'd be interested to know what those brothers think about it. Yeah. It'd be good to read kind of like at an internship, read them alongside one another or something like that.

50:22

So would your church, out of your central budget, do you have, or would you have as a goal, supporting particular benevolent works as part of the church's like giving?

50:32

We have. This is a little tricky. We actually, we have and we do. So our church has a food bank.

50:41

In the past, we've done like a fish and loaves ministry to the homeless, which I would like for us to restart.

50:46

We had to stop it for reasons that I don't want to expound on here. Our church has a food pantry as well. Yeah, that's right.

50:52

In addition, we have the Neighborhood Christian Center here in Decatur, Alabama, which does a phenomenal job.

50:58

It was actually started by three, no, two reformed churches in town 20 years ago.

51:05

Some people would say, well, you sort of outsource that to a parachurch ministry. Maybe that's not good, but they actually do such a good job in our city that we thought like the most economic thing we could do to like actually serve the poor would just be to support the really good work that they're doing.

51:22

Because they're really gospel saturated. Don't need to reinvent the wheel. Yeah, no need to. Yeah, that's right. But there you are,

51:29

Sean, organizing. You're not telling individual members, if you want to give to this, go and do it. You're saying we are going to give to it.

51:35

That's true, yeah. And you feel that's appropriate. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Well, Spurgeon would say, great, do that.

51:41

Yeah, no, here's the thing though. I want to ask you this question before I forget. What do you think

51:46

Spurgeon would think and how should we think about the nanny state today in relation to, because like a lot of what

51:55

Spurgeon did was like, for example, provide education, right? In a system that did not have education offered to all, food to people that the government was not supporting them if they were lacking in food.

52:06

Whereas like in our day, like if you don't have food, you go EBT, right? So how does the nanny state affect the way we care for like widows and orphans?

52:13

I think it should be acknowledged by readers of this book that his social context is very different.

52:20

It's how to exactly do what he's prescribing in our own context when potentially America is going to look different.

52:26

So you're right. There was not a welfare state. There were not many social benefits available to the poor that were organized by the central government.

52:35

If you were poor or in need or needed education, like young children, think like kids in Dickens novels, working in factories.

52:43

How would those kids get educated? You depended very much on the largess of churches or other philanthropic organizations.

52:50

So the church was meeting a need socially that the church has not looked to now.

52:57

That's right. And having said that, we, listen, at least here in the Christian South, a lot of Christian ministry protects the government from bearing a burden that it probably couldn't bear on its own were it not for Christian churches doing all that they do.

53:13

Yeah, let me just, if I could get on a hobby horse for a second. The sort of dishing on conservative evangelicals as sort of heartless and they don't really care about the poor and all that is just not verifiably accurate.

53:25

No one gives more money or more time to benevolent activity, mercy ministry broadly, on a broad social scale, internationally, than conservative evangelicals.

53:34

And they're writing the checks. Almost every organization in your town right now is probably a benevolent organization, not 501C3, probably had its origins in some sort of Christian commitment, something like that.

53:48

So, and Spurgeon would say, that's like just how it should be. That's what Christians have always been doing. We're the people who help, you know.

53:55

We invented the hospital for goodness sakes. That was like the early church fathers, you know. That was our idea that we might organize medical personnel and provide free care for people in different communities.

54:06

Taking kids off of infanticide walls, you know. I mean, that's us, that's what we do. That's what Christians are known for. So, but your question about the nanny state, that's a little more complicated.

54:16

Spurgeon, I include maybe like four or five pages on this. He ended up advocating for some kind of system of public education later in his ministry, 1870s, 1870, 71 is when the first system of public education is approved and in general,

54:30

Spurgeon's for it. Yeah, because he was running all those ragged schools and he saw we're not even getting close to doing what needs to be done for the child.

54:38

And there were social conditions that made, that put stress on the churches.

54:46

Industrialization, urbanization, massive populations in these industrial centers. There's only so much the church could do. So he generally favored a system of public education.

54:54

Now, nothing like what you have today in England or today in America, but yeah. So I tend to think that some modicum of social aid, now we're speculating, right?

55:05

Because Spurgeon doesn't talk a lot about this. I think that Spurgeon would endorse some modicum of social aid for - What we would call the safety net.

55:12

Us, yeah, that'd be a good way to put it, yeah. Nanny state or that kind of thing tends to be more pejorative,

55:19

I think, yeah. So I think he would advocate certain programs for like the disabled and things like that.

55:24

I think he would think as part of just a humane nation and society, the idea of putting together taxes and resources to actually help people who find themselves in those situations wouldn't be a bad thing.

55:35

But I want to emphasize, I'm speculating here because he doesn't find himself speaking much to that because it's not in his context. What about our context?

55:41

Oh yeah, I think many of the reservations and critiques that many conservative evangelicals who continue in Spurgeon's theology have now about some of the excesses of the welfare state,

55:55

I think he would probably share them. Sure, sorry, let me ask you, let me be a better interviewer.

56:00

Yeah, could you please? Trying to try my best. A member of our church comes to us and says, hey, we're struggling with food, right?

56:07

We're having trouble buying groceries, okay. We have food pantry. Obviously we have benevolence funds.

56:14

Like we're gonna make sure that you have food, right? Unless you're not working. That's a different conversation, right?

56:20

Okay, but - Mr. Spurgeon would agree with you there. Good, he agrees with the Bible. But one of the deacons goes, hey, you know, we have

56:31

EBT for a reason, food stamps in the country. Should we lean into that?

56:37

Should we try to help this person apply for food stamps? Or should the church just sort of say, no, we don't need the government's help.

56:43

We'll just do that ourselves. And you can then extrapolate from food stamps to other examples. Are you asking what

56:49

I think or what I think Spurgeon would think? You can do whatever you wanna do with that question. I don't wanna do anything with that question.

56:55

Well, what would you do in your church? Let me ask you like that. Is that like, how would you think? Figure it out right now.

57:00

You got 30 seconds. Yeah, I think I would probably say that given that those systems are there and presumably as a society, people are paying into that system.

57:11

I would maybe quarrel with how the system is organized. Sure. But would it then be wrong? And abused.

57:18

Would it then be wrong for someone through no fault of their own to make use of that system?

57:23

If they're genuinely in need. I think that would be fine. Yeah, that's right. I probably would say, yeah. Advocate for it, yeah. Advocate for it would be an overstatement.

57:29

Like in that situation, tell that person, hey, it's there. You should probably, yeah. It's there and presumably they pay taxes into this system just like the rest of us.

57:37

I had a friend growing up who, I mean, his convictions on this were so angular that he believed it was wrong to take scholarships to schools, state schools.

57:50

Because in theory, people, in his view, people have been overtaxed and taxes shouldn't go to provide scholarships to people.

57:56

Your friend wasn't by any chance a libertarian, was he? He tended in that direction, yeah. And, but I would say, no.

58:05

I mean, I could quarrel with the system, but we are part of the system. And therefore, if we wanna make use of public education, if we wanna make use of scholarships, make use of particular aids that are available through the system.

58:16

Of course, you gotta get in the nitty gritty in the details, right? But I would say to abuse the welfare system is wrong for a

58:23

Christian to do. Amen. Yeah, so if we had a member who was not working for his bread and thought, well,

58:31

I'll just live off the government here. We'd say, we don't support you in that. Spurgeon says on page 54 of your book, go to the poor man and tell him of the bread of heaven, but first give him the bread of earth, for how shall he hear you with a starving body?

58:50

This might be an instance, you tell me, of Spurgeon kind of an overstatement.

58:56

Because I'm sure Spurgeon would agree that you don't always have to give someone bread before you preach the gospel to them.

59:02

He would say it's good practice, like you said, soup makes the gospel go down, right? I'm even thinking about Mark 8, verse three.

59:11

Jesus took pity on some of his hearers because he was worried that they were gonna faint on their way home.

59:16

But that was after they had been at this really awesome Jesus camp where he preached to them for three days and he was giving them the gospel.

59:23

The gospel was first, then he worried about them and their food situation. So, yeah, elaborate on that.

59:29

And if I've not said this clearly so far, Sean, Spurgeon absolutely believes gospel proclamation is primary.

59:34

And in fact, on the young Gilbert thing we talked about earlier, he would absolutely agree with their definition of the mission of the church.

59:43

They are playing defense against something he's not playing defense against. That's right. But the positive vision they're putting forward, he would agree with, so.

59:50

I think you actually go way out of your way to say it again and again and again. It's very like Apostle Paul, like just so you don't misunderstand me, you say it five different ways.

59:58

I like the Apostle Paul in lots of ways. Yeah, I was thinking that, yeah. No, so it's pretty clear in the book. Yeah, good.

01:00:03

Yeah, anything else you wanna say about that? Yeah, well, I mean, on that whole discussion of kind of social ministry and gospel ministry, you do have some like, is it

01:00:10

John Stott? Yeah. And he's kind of like, well, these are two wings of the same plane.

01:00:15

Yeah. And I don't think Spurgeon would endorse that idea at all. Certainly the young Gilbert did not. Gospel proclamation is way more important than social ministry.

01:00:24

Social ministry is secondary and serves gospel ministry. So I guess in the illustration, maybe it's like one really big wing and one smaller wing that make it go around in circles again and again.

01:00:33

Yeah. But yeah, so I think that point is important to emphasize. But yeah, the quote you just read,

01:00:38

I mean, he's a preacher. There will be rhetorical flourishes where he'll say things, you know.

01:00:44

Most of his sermons were extemporaneous. Yeah. Right, so. He had a little note card in front of him. Yeah, so. A few lines. I mean, if I preached most of my stuff that way, who knows how much

01:00:52

I'd be going back. He published more words in English than any Christian in history. And he also, people, a lot of people don't know this, he edited, you talk about this in the book, he edited most of his sermons.

01:01:02

Somebody was in the, would be in the conversation transcribing. He had two people transcribing. And then he would look back over it on Monday and put his notes in there.

01:01:09

Man, wouldn't that be nice if everything that you put out publicly, you could just go back and be like, all right, that was stupid, delete.

01:01:16

Would've been bad, yeah. In your book, you deal with, not at length, but you do a really good job of highlighting the nonconformist controversy in Spurgeon's day.

01:01:28

And it got me thinking about our current theonomy conversation, right?

01:01:33

And I know that's a. You're talking about the thing where he blasts the Anglican church in that sermon and things like that?

01:01:39

Yeah, that's right. Or basically just, you know, his whole ministry supporting, right?

01:01:45

The parties that support nonconformity. Yeah, and he, the whole idea that he's trying, he would love to see the disestablishment of the state church and all that.

01:01:52

That's right, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I find it interesting that in our day, we have a lot of people kind of moving in the opposite direction. Any thoughts about that?

01:01:58

About what Spurgeon thinks or about theonomy in general? Yeah, well, I mean, define theonomy, right?

01:02:05

That's part of the problem, right? You got the Roman Catholic structuralists, you got the Doug Wilson mere Christendom guys, you got the other, you got the

01:02:12

Brad Littlejohns. But anybody who wants to, I guess, put all of that camp in, people who want more church and state involvement.

01:02:21

Yeah, just as situating Spurgeon as an important historical reference point, he would want the nation to maintain some kind of Christian consciousness, some kind of Christian foundation.

01:02:35

Okay. But he would not expect that foundation to be, you want to FaceTime Zach in, in the middle of the interview?

01:02:43

Zach DiPrima, look. Look at this. And listen. You want room for nuance, brother.

01:02:49

You are going to be included on the episode. We are recording with your brother right now. Yeah. Well, while we're here, we just want to tell you that we love you.

01:03:05

We appreciate you. This was all orchestrated, by the way. This is all planned. You just wanted to be on your brother's episode and you've made it happen.

01:03:13

Good job, brother. He couldn't stand it. And he's frozen. Look at that. Look at that. All right. So, lost him.

01:03:20

All right. What were we talking about, Hunt? It's an important point. Yeah.

01:03:25

So you were saying he wants, he wants, yeah. Yeah, he's happy to have some kind of, like he believes in, that the nation was a

01:03:34

Christian nation. Yeah. When he talks about disestablishment, he wants to get rid of preference to one particular, we could say denominational group.

01:03:43

So he doesn't think, so he thinks there should be an even playing field among Christian groups. He's not going to be kind of a

01:03:49

Jeffersonian, pluralist kind of person. Gotcha. So, yeah,

01:03:55

I don't know how he would assess contemporary debates about theonomy. I mean, I think I know how he would assess the theology that says we can take

01:04:03

Old Testament judicial laws and should view them as binding upon nations today. I think I could guess what he'd think about that.

01:04:10

But the idea about whether or not we should aim to have Christian nations, creedal nations, nations that have at their foundation some kind of Christian charter.

01:04:19

Oh, I want to say, I think he'd be for that. But anytime you do that, you move beyond mere, somebody's going to get to decide the creed.

01:04:28

Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, he's on the tail end of Christendom, so a lot can be assumed. Yeah, that's right.

01:04:34

Right, so I think he would, so he advocated it in the public schools, for example, that the Bible should be read, there should be a basic theistic worldview taught, but that when he wants, he wants room for nonconformity, he wants room to be a

01:04:47

Baptist and not be persecuted for that. So that's more his context.

01:04:52

Yeah. Yeah. If I were sitting with Spurgeon, first of all, I'd be like, whoa, this is really cool. Yeah, I agree. Second of all, aren't you honored to be sitting with me,

01:05:00

Mr. Spurgeon? But third of all - As I've said a number of times in this interview, this sense of privilege, I'm awash in it, overwhelmed.

01:05:07

But if we were having this conversation, that would be the point I would want to make to him if he was, if he said, I want some form of like official national creed related to Christianity, I would just say, brother, eventually somebody has to decide what that creed is going to be.

01:05:20

And when they do that, they will do it to the neglect of other creeds. And with the use of power in combination with sin, it's just going to lead to exactly what you despise.

01:05:29

Yeah. Kind of like on the Marxism discussion or the socialism discussion earlier, you're benefiting from hindsight.

01:05:41

Oh, yeah. Very much. For sure. No doubt. So if we think about being in 1870 in England, a pretty glorious heritage on the whole in terms of what the

01:05:53

Christian foundation of that nation had achieved. Well, now it's become increasingly secular. Yeah. But the kind of secularism that we see today would have been unconscionable in around 1860, 1870.

01:06:02

Yeah, nobody would have even thought of it as an option. Yeah. So kind of the assessment of things, the data you have to make an assessment there on the utility.

01:06:09

Yeah. And then also too, the world was smaller, right? So nationalism was not debated.

01:06:18

Of course you were a nationalist. Everyone was a nationalist in 1870. So to think of nationalism now as bad or globalism as good, that's just not a category.

01:06:27

It's not a debate that's happening. Now that's interesting because you do a good job highlighting how though Spurgeon was a nationalist, he was very much opposed to imperialism.

01:06:36

Yes, absolutely. So how does that work? Oh, you're honoring your global neighbors.

01:06:43

We're not to interfere in the affairs of other nations. We're to mind our own business. Spurgeon was not a pacifist.

01:06:50

Yeah. But he was very negative about war. Yeah. And foreign interventions.

01:06:55

Can I use vociferous twice in one interview? You may, yeah. He was vociferously opposed to it, to war.

01:07:02

He thought there were certain wars that were noble wars, but the idea of going up and stirring up controversy in another nation, he thinks that's not our business.

01:07:10

Yeah. You know, typically. So yeah, I mean, I think that it's interesting though to consider in that debate today over nationalism, just recognize until a hundred years ago,

01:07:22

I think I'm pretty much right in this, every single person that ever lived in history was a nationalist of some kind or another. Nobody was like, yeah,

01:07:30

I hate my country. Yeah, I hate my nation. Yeah, and so, yeah, in Spurgeon's case, he loves the

01:07:37

English tradition, the British tradition. He loves his national heritage. And he would think one of the things that sets apart

01:07:43

Britain among the nations of the world is the heavy influence of Christianity on the nation.

01:07:50

And he would think that's something to be preserved. But having that conversation in England in 1870 is different from having it in America in 2023.

01:07:59

Okay, so while we're still slightly connected to theonomy, post -millennialism, did

01:08:04

Spurgeon write on that at all? Because I mean, it's a fairly new eschatology. Yeah, someone recently said that to me. They said, oh, Spurgeon's a post -millennialist.

01:08:09

And I'm like, no, that's definitely not true. He would have probably been a pre -millennialist. Hard word.

01:08:15

Yeah, he's not especially interested in debates over the millennium. I think he thinks like many reformed people before him that there's one of those things in the scriptures that's a little more obscure.

01:08:24

Not about the, sorry, what about the utopian aspect of, because you said he wasn't very big on it.

01:08:29

So he would have looked at that post -millennial, it's just right around the corner. The gospel's gonna change all of the nations and make them

01:08:36

Christian. He would have pretty strongly opposed that. Well, I think he'd be delighted if that happened.

01:08:43

Yeah. But I think he would say, I'm not expecting that to happen. Right, based on, yeah. And there's nothing in the book of God to lead me to believe that that is going to happen.

01:08:50

What you see in Spurgeon is great optimism about the Great Commission. Amen. The heathens are gonna be saved.

01:08:56

We're gonna see more and more people becoming Christian. And he seems to think that might happen against the backdrop of increasing wickedness in the world, darkness in the world.

01:09:06

This light's gonna grow ever brighter. But I don't think, he did not attach that to more nations becoming Christianized.

01:09:12

So that kind of especially muscular theonomy of post -millennialism that we're going to see whole nations where the majority of the population or the charter of those nations are gonna be distinctly

01:09:22

Christian, he didn't expect that to happen at all. So some people will sometimes say, oh, he was a post -millennialist. Look, he expected all these people to get saved.

01:09:28

And I'm thinking - No, that's just what we all believe. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, I appreciate the posture of like a

01:09:34

John Murray. He used to say he was an optimistic amillennialist. Yeah. And what he meant by that was, yeah, more people are gonna get saved.

01:09:41

We're gonna see the gospel unprecedented growth in places all over the world. And that will probably happen while nations grow darker and darker.

01:09:52

We're never gonna cease to live in a crooked and perverse generation. The world is never not gonna be characterized by the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life.

01:09:59

And those things make it even more aggressively flagrant in their expressions as time goes on. But the church, church will be built and the gospel advance and frontiers will be pushed further and further and further as the heathen is converted and that kind of a thing.

01:10:15

Which I find, if I were to say personally, very exciting. I think I say this in the book. Spurgeon gives us encouragement to be endlessly optimistic about the local church and the great commission, which makes me excited to be a pastor and be excited to invest my energies in the local church.

01:10:32

I mean, can you just imagine trying to devote your life to doing good and investing primarily in the political realm versus the church?

01:10:39

I mean, no offense to any Christian who's listening to this whose life work is politics. But I think one of our friends has said politics is kind of like the anus of society, right?

01:10:49

It's just where most of the, like, I mean, but like when I go to work every day, I just trust eternal fruit, assuming that Jesus is with me in this ministry, is gonna be born in this, you know?

01:11:01

It just, it makes it so much easier, even in the hard days. I was just at Capitol Hill Baptist Church who did one of their Nine Marks Weekenders, took a bunch of our guys up there,

01:11:08

Mark Devers, the pastor. I remember, I was thinking in the service itself, on the Sunday service, from the perspective of God himself and the interest of thousands of immortal souls, what's happening here right now is far more important than what's happening a few blocks down the road.

01:11:28

Now, that's not, people hear you say something like that, they think, oh, so we're just supposed to, you know, not care about politics and, you know, we're not gonna get involved, we're not gonna devote.

01:11:36

I'm not saying that at all. Yeah. But it's a truism, a biblical truism that the work of the church is a far more immortal significance than the passing sort of work of politics and different nations and things like that, you know?

01:11:52

Do I have to wait to the end of the interview until we're done maybe eating chips and salsa over lunch to give you an encouragement?

01:11:58

Can I do it now? You may do it now and at lunch too. Yeah. Hey, brother, you are very intelligent.

01:12:05

I've known that since the first time I met you and articulate and I'm just like overjoyed to be on the same team with you as you're like putting all of those powers that God has given you in this direction.

01:12:17

You know, just sitting here listening to you talk, I'm just like, oh, I'm just so glad to be on the same team as this guy, you know? Well, as Spurgeon was prone to exaggeration, you may be also in exaggerating, but that's a very generous statement to make.

01:12:28

And brother, I'm so encouraged to be together for the gospel with you and together for a lot more than that, as you and I agree on lots of things.

01:12:35

Not a mere confession. And I'll say, Sean, just to bring it back to Spurgeon for a second, I do feel uniquely grateful. I don't mean like I'm more grateful than others.

01:12:43

I mean, I feel - Especially grateful. Well, I do think you and I, knowing your church and my church and also the way we think,

01:12:50

I do think we do have a claim to a lineage from Spurgeon theologically. Okay.

01:12:56

And then also just spiritually, temperamentally. I think he would identify the churches we're a part of as keeping in the tradition he was trying to promote, the men who were trying to pastor and all that.

01:13:08

And I feel thankful to be part of that tradition, to be connected to him in that way. God's grace abounding to sinners, brother. Yeah. Here's another quote from old

01:13:18

Spurgey. Is that, what is his nickname? I got a little limerick for you. There once was a preacher called Spurgey who greatly detested liturgy.

01:13:27

But his sermons are fine and I use them as mine and so did the rest of the clergy. Wow. Who's that from?

01:13:34

Oh, it was probably written on a bathroom stall somewhere in London in the 1860s. They used to write very different things on bathroom stalls than they do now.

01:13:42

Just a lot of swastikas these days. Sure. All right, here we go. Quote, you ready? And now, could we only get the church of God to awake?

01:13:51

We should soon have the whole city moved. Let our ministers preach the gospel or let them preach it with something like force.

01:13:58

Let the members of the church back them up by vehement zeal, earnestly praying with incessant labors.

01:14:04

We should want nothing else than to stir this city from end to end. Let the church awake and that influence shall be had whereby the city shall be moved.

01:14:14

And he's, of course, talking about London, the city that he was reluctant to minister in, but in many ways despised, but also in many ways loved.

01:14:22

But was Spurgeon doing the Keller thing before Keller was doing it? Like, you know, love for the city, right?

01:14:28

It's all about the city. You know, I remember now sitting in this chair on an earlier episode was

01:14:34

Colin Hanson. Yep. And Colin wrote the book on Tim Keller.

01:14:40

And I thought it was interesting. I think it was in the interview with you, he described Keller as, was it a reformed revivalist?

01:14:46

He described him as a revivalist. Yeah. Which I don't think of him in that way, but I think that's fair given the, having read

01:14:54

Colin's book. Spurgeon, though, in terms of what he thinks, the means by which the city's gonna be transformed, like in that quote and in other quotes, he seems to be after, you know, kind of widespread revival, more people becoming

01:15:09

Christians, embracing the gospel. So think like great awakening kind of stuff. As towns were overwhelmed by gospel preaching and literally you stop having drunks in the street, the saloons close up, you know, that kind of thing.

01:15:22

Yeah. Taking places in New England. Richard Baxter in Kidderminster writes about the transformation of the town and all that.

01:15:28

Yeah. So Spurgeon was very, he was, he prayed vigorously, fervently for revival all the time.

01:15:37

And had a very kind of banner of truth, Ian Murray view of revival, book revival, revivalism.

01:15:42

And he promoted that vision all the time and was praying for revival, seeking revival. I think experienced something of it first in his, first ministry at Waterbeach, a small town that was really,

01:15:52

I think, transformed through his ministry. But then to some degree in London, and there's some momentum building, he's training men for the ministry who are continuing in kind of that Puritan tradition like him,

01:16:02

Reformed and Baptistic tradition, the view of revival that he has. He trains nearly 900 men over the course of his ministry and they're taking up churches and staying in those churches.

01:16:11

I mean, these guys aren't burning out. And so there is an optimism, like we, are we seeing revival? Might we see revival?

01:16:18

Let's get after it, brothers. Let's preach the gospel. Let's pray that the fire would come down from heaven. And who knows what

01:16:23

God might do in a place like London. I don't know enough about Tim Keller to know.

01:16:30

Oh, that was just tongue in cheek. That was just my side of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, all right. Yeah, so I think my sense of Tim Keller is that there's a more,

01:16:38

I'm gonna use the word sophisticated, not to say I prefer Keller's view to Spurgeon's, but a more sophisticated approach to cultural transformation that had to do with reaching the elites and things like that and letting the elites influence the culture of a city in different ways.

01:16:51

So probably different sorts of approach. But Spurgeon will say, we're not gonna see any progress unless individual regeneration happens on a large scale, unless we see widespread revival.

01:17:00

That's gonna be the only method through which a society will in a lasting way change. Yeah, while we're talking about Spurgeon, his love for the city, his desire to see the gospel impact the city, he was also pretty clear -eyed about how sinful

01:17:15

London was. You get a bunch of sinners tightly packed into one space, it's gonna be - I was just talking to a friend of mine who's church planting and I was teasing.

01:17:22

I was like, well, if you do this by the book, what the book was like 15 years ago, you have to buy like all the sports gear from your city and we're like in the city, for the city, you know, that kind of thing.

01:17:31

So you have like a guy from like Greenville, South Carolina and then he decides to plant a church in Boston and he starts being decked out in like red socks and Celtic skier, like, yeah,

01:17:39

Boston. He starts talking that way, you know. Spurgeon was not that way at all. Like London was a dive to him, you know.

01:17:45

It just like depressed him. Well, I texted this quote that I'm gonna read to you now to a buddy of mine in Portland, a pastor out there, because I was recently with him and he did the pastoral prayer.

01:17:56

I preached that Sunday, he did the pastoral prayer and his prayer was essentially like this. He was like, Portland, you suck, right?

01:18:03

Like that was the essence of his prayer. Like, Lord, do something with this place. But Spurgeon says, oh, this

01:18:08

London of ours, it is a horrible place for Christian people to live. Round about this neighborhood scarcely can a decent person remain by reason of the vice that abounds in the language that is heard on every side.

01:18:19

Many of you are as much vexed today as Lot was when he was in Sodom. I confess I can never go through this huge city without feeling unhappy.

01:18:27

I never pass from end to end of London without feeling a black and dark cloud hanging like a pail over my spirit.

01:18:33

How my heart breaks for thee, oh city, full of sin, that is London. Is it not so with you, my brethren?

01:18:40

Think of its slums, its sins, its poverty, its ungodliness, its drunkenness, its vice. These may well go through a man's heart like sharp swords, how

01:18:48

Jesus would have wept in London. Mm, mm -hmm. Even just when you think about - Do you feel that way about Decatur when you walk through the pleasant downtown?

01:18:55

I feel different problems with Decatur, but you think about, just do the math on it, right?

01:19:02

There's more lostness per city block in larger metropolitan areas than there are -

01:19:08

Well, and it's British, and London was the biggest city in the world. That's right, yeah. So yeah, as a man who loves people, the great philanthropist, how could he not feel like that in London?

01:19:19

Yeah, I think that he just saw London as kind of this tower of human misery.

01:19:26

People, the overcrowding was immense. You have children who are going through garbage to sustain their lives, prostitution.

01:19:35

You need a certain population density for a big network of prostitution to work.

01:19:42

It's why human trafficking thrives in certain cities as opposed to others. Yeah. And I think he saw the industrialization, the massive growth of London.

01:19:53

He wouldn't disagree much with the way Dickens, in a lot of ways, portrays London in his books, that there were unique vices and human depravity was kind of portrayed and displayed and exhibited on a massive and extraordinary scale in London.

01:20:07

And keep in mind, Spurgeon was a country bumpkin. He grew up in Essex, East Anglia, 50 to 100 miles east of London.

01:20:16

He was in Cambridgeshire for a while. I've been to those places. I mean, it's like as quaint and charming a place as you could be.

01:20:22

He was in the village of Stambourne that literally has like 12 buildings in it. He grew up around sheep and open fields and flowers.

01:20:31

And that's his heart language. And actually in his ministry, he lives in three houses over the course of his time in London.

01:20:37

And each one he moves kind of further out of the city with each one. This is a guy who loves to read poetry, pastoral scenes are like his thing.

01:20:45

So I think just in his heart, growing up in the country, it was hard for him to be in that industrial setting.

01:20:51

But I do, I think say this someplace in the book, or maybe I said this elsewhere, Spurgeon loved

01:20:57

Londoners. He hated London, but he loved Londoners. And I think that is all that really is needed to minister in a city like that.

01:21:05

You don't have to - So you don't need all the garb. You don't need to, yeah, you go to New York, you don't need the Carmelo jersey or something like that. But you need to love

01:21:12

New Yorkers. Is Carmelo a particular brand of jersey? No, he was a very overrated and washed up New York Knicks player that never achieved very much in his career.

01:21:21

Got you, Knicks, classic New York baseball. So no, but yeah, Spurgeon, he wept for London.

01:21:28

He cared about London. He wanted to see people in London saved, but he felt that, yeah, there were all kinds of vices and wicked things tied up in that city and wanted to see it changed.

01:21:36

Which is why he stayed. Amen, yeah. This is a little bit of a random question, but I have it in here.

01:21:42

I don't want to forget to ask you this. It's not mentioned in the book anywhere, but I'm assuming you probably have four versions.

01:21:49

I mean, you could probably amplify the content of this book with all of your research times like four or five. How did

01:21:55

Spurgeon deal with like charlatans, hustlers, scammers, and the lazy? At one point in the book, you talked about how certain people would even like send him letters telling them about their dire straits and he would send them like $5 or five pound notes.

01:22:10

So that made me think like, okay, was Spurgeon willing to be taken advantage of? I mean, he gave away most of his wealth throughout his life.

01:22:17

He basically died with a balanced ledger book. Yeah, pretty much. But anyways, yeah. So how did he deal with like hustlers, scammers, people who might take advantage of that?

01:22:25

A funny little anecdote. So begging for alms and things was very common in London.

01:22:32

You'd have people in the street trying to get money off of people. And you had gangs and networks of beggars or crooks or things like that that would try to, they would know, okay, if you go and pick the garbage over here, you're going to probably find something nice.

01:22:46

If you go to this area at a certain time of day, no one's home, you can break in there. And they discovered some network of folks that would beg for money and they had on the list, they called them the soft touches.

01:22:58

And Spurgeon was at the top of the list. They knew if you found Mr. Spurgeon out, he very often would give.

01:23:05

So yeah, so he was very generous. He would, and he was aware though, he does talk like,

01:23:13

I think I have a quote in the book, maybe not, about, he talks about, you want to be on guardians giving money to feed a wicked man's vice or something like that.

01:23:21

Not in the book, but that's good advice. Yeah, he talks about men who are spending all their money on alcohol and things like that and ruining their families.

01:23:28

You know, if people are wanting you to support that, you shouldn't do that. You know, which is, I know something a lot of people run into today is they think about, well, no,

01:23:35

I'm going to give money to the guy on the corner. It's probably the most common, like, how do I wrestle through this?

01:23:41

Yeah, exactly. So, no, but he tended toward sort of very liberal generosity.

01:23:48

Okay, what do I have? I have a couple of pounds on me. Let me give this to this guy. You know, would you come back to the church with me?

01:23:54

We have this on today. We'll do tea over here. I got, you know, sandwiches there. That was definitely the way he was oriented.

01:24:00

Yeah. Well, let me skip ahead then to, I'm going to come back to these other notes, but Spurgeon's personal charity.

01:24:08

You do a really good job of highlighting that this was not something that he preached.

01:24:14

It was what he practiced. Mike Nichols, a quote that you have in there, Spurgeon was a big man with a big heart, and this found expression in his many acts of charity.

01:24:23

Soon after, I mean, within a decade of arriving at Metropolitan Tabernacle, he stopped taking a salary.

01:24:31

He gave away most of the money that he got from his sermons that were sold to the pastor's college, right?

01:24:41

So, yeah, I mean, anything you want to highlight there with his personal generosity? Just to,

01:24:47

I mean, it's not uncommon if you have, Spurgeon was an international celebrity, and he's selling massive amounts of books, and he's pretty much writing those checks away.

01:24:55

That's actually not terribly unusual. You have big evangelical ministries today. Yeah, Piper does that. They bring in lots of money, and they're just giving away tons of money, you know?

01:25:02

But one of the things that's very encouraging, and frankly, sweet about Spurgeon and his wife is that they really did organize their house in this way.

01:25:10

So, very hospitable. But also, they, a million different little anecdotes,

01:25:16

I could tell. First of all, they are setting up shop for different ministries, even in their own home. They'd make rooms available if the cold portage society needed to have inventory kept over, excess inventory at Spurgeon's house.

01:25:27

Like, sure, we got a room where you could do that. Yeah, books for poor pastors. Yes, Susanna Spurgeon had, they called it

01:25:34

Mrs. Spurgeon's book fund. She basically is just collecting money to send parcels of books. And she sends, over the course of her life, something like 200 ,000 parcels of books to poor pastors all over the country.

01:25:43

By the way, I try to say this on interviews and things. If there is some sister out there who wants to honor the legacy of Susanna Spurgeon, there's no reason you can't start a ministry like that.

01:25:52

Basically, she just said, look, we have pastors across the country who need good literature, and I wanna get it to them, and I'm gonna start contributing to it myself, and I'm gonna encourage my friends to give money to this.

01:26:02

And I would just tell sisters out there, if someone wanted to organize a ministry like that, you would be like, you and me,

01:26:07

Sean, pastors like us, she'd be our heroine. She'd be like, oh my goodness, the amount of good that could be done by that kind of ministry.

01:26:14

So someone take up that flag and carry it on. But they, at their home,

01:26:21

Spurgeon loved flowers, grows tons of flowers on his property. They start the flower mission at the

01:26:27

Mitchell -Vaughn Tabernacle. The girls would come over and clip his flowers, and they would append scripture text to them. Susanna would help with it, his wife, and they would send it to just random sick people in the hospital.

01:26:37

Hey, we have the tabernacle praying for you. Here's a Bible verse. Here's some flowers. And he would just grow flowers for that purpose.

01:26:43

They get, what, 10 milk cows for the express purpose, just milking them and selling the milk in a town so they could give the money to a needy woman down the street.

01:26:52

That kind of stuff is happening all the time. So Spurgeon's one of these guys who is just looking at all these different opportunities.

01:26:59

We have letters where he's just trying to make, I think I can sell this, and with that money, I can give to this. He's just always trying to think that kind of way about resources.

01:27:07

Oh, which is not like John Wesley, if you're familiar with his story. You know, every, he has the quote about make as much as you can, give as much as you can.

01:27:15

Every time he would get a raise, he would still live, yeah, well below this. Spurgeon's exactly that way. Yeah, George Mueller was a huge influence on him.

01:27:21

Contemporary Mueller even preached his pulpit at one point in the 1870s. That same kind of ethic, you know, he definitely carries on.

01:27:29

Let's talk about the pastor's college, okay? You say that it was basically his life's work, right?

01:27:38

He thought of the pastor's college as the most important thing he was doing outside of being a pastor of his local church.

01:27:44

I texted Mark to ask him about the internship. Would you agree with that sentiment about the internship? He said, yes.

01:27:50

Oh, in terms of, in relation to Mark and his ministry. Yeah, so I text our mutual friend, Mark Dever, who has a legacy of training men in an internship capacity, and I said, you know,

01:27:59

Spurgeon said this about the pastor's college. Would you say that about your internship? So Mark, outside of Capitol Hill Baptist, what's the most important thing you're doing?

01:28:06

Yeah. Yeah, it's not the books I'm writing. It's not Together for the Gospel. Internship. It's this, yeah, training of younger men. And there's so much good to talk about here, if I can find the words to do it, but tell us how this connects to the poor.

01:28:21

Well, okay, so the pastor's college is founded entirely as a benevolent ministry that Spurgeon himself funds fully by himself until he can no longer do it.

01:28:30

So it's all got too big for him to support out of his own. So it was entirely free education. So on page 113,

01:28:37

Spurgeon was especially eager to train students who were at an economic or educational disadvantage. He wanted to raise up men from the working class who could in turn reach the working class.

01:28:47

Yeah, oh, he was, I tell you, from one angle, the admission standards are very high, and from one angle, they're very low.

01:28:53

And they're low in the sense that there were no educational prerequisites required. Some men were permitted, they didn't even know how to read.

01:29:01

Oh, wow. And he would provide them with remedial education to learn how to read and grow. And he did want to draw men from the working class.

01:29:08

So financial disability was no problem. Education was in almost every instance offered for free.

01:29:15

And more than that, they'd offer free healthcare, they'd offer free books, they'd offer free housing. Oftentimes, he'd offer them just spending money to help them, you know?

01:29:24

Now, you kind of just breeze past the fact that he paid for this out of his own pocket for a while.

01:29:30

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so he began his informal beginnings in 1855, formally kind of constituted in 1857.

01:29:38

And he is providing, one of the reasons why Spurgeon could provide for the school, even as it's growing to like north of 100 students, he was able to do so in part because his sermons were selling so spectacularly, particularly in the

01:29:52

American South. And so, think of the timeline, 1857 up to about 1860,

01:29:59

Spurgeon becomes aware that his publishers in the United States were editing out of his sermons and he references the slavery.

01:30:08

Now, by this time in England, slavery is outlawed, it's illegal. You know, I think this speaks a lot to Spurgeon's integrity.

01:30:15

He could have just kind of winked at that. Well, that's on them. I don't really talk about this very much anyway.

01:30:21

It's not a big deal to me. And besides all this money I'm making, six, 800 pounds a year it was,

01:30:27

I think, I'm able to fuel this college. A very pragmatic will.

01:30:33

He instead goes kind of scorched earth on them. I mean, he's just like, you ain't seen nothing yet.

01:30:39

Tells them, keep this all in there. And then he starts actually very actively campaigning against slavery in the

01:30:44

United States in terms of things he's saying and writing. He's sending articles to a newspaper in Boston, asking him, hey, release this stuff.

01:30:52

And he makes some of his boldest statements at this time. Can I read one of those? Yeah, please. Scorched earth.

01:30:58

Yeah, he's like Braveheart on this issue. On page 174, slavery is the foulest blot which ever stained a national eschaton and may have to be washed out with blood.

01:31:08

America is in many respects a glorious country, but it may be necessary to teach her some wholesome lessons at the point of a bayonet, to carve freedom into her with a

01:31:17

Bowie knife and send it home to her heart with a revolver. Better far should it come to this issue that North and South should be rent asunder and the

01:31:26

States of the Union shivered into a thousand fragments, than that slavery should be suffered to continue.

01:31:32

Some American divines seem to regard it indeed with wonderful complacency. They have so accustomed themselves to wrap it up in soft phrases that they lose sight of its real character.

01:31:41

They call it a peculiar institution until they forget in what its peculiarity consists.

01:31:48

It is indeed a peculiar institution just as the devil is a peculiar angel and hell is a peculiarly hot place.

01:31:54

For my part, I hold such miserable tamperings with sin in abhorrence and can hold no communion of any sort with those who are guilty of it.

01:32:02

Yeah, apart from that being blessedly true, what are you saying? He's just the coolest, isn't he?

01:32:09

Who talks like that, you know? So yeah, I mean, he put him on blast and he would not allow slaveholders at the communion table.

01:32:17

Yeah. And so they started burning his books. Oh yeah. Talking about if he comes here, we'll hang him.

01:32:23

In North Carolina, my home state, there was pressure put on the legislator to make the publication of his sermons actually illegal.

01:32:30

He's receiving death threats, although we're in Alabama. I think I might even have in the book,

01:32:35

I know I've read accounts of newspapers where they said, hey, y 'all come out, let's burn our Spurgeon books. You have it in here, yeah.

01:32:41

Yeah, and so you talk about the pastor's college, he loses his funding. That's right. Yeah, so he's making nothing now in the

01:32:47

American South of his sermons because of his stand against slavery. I think it's great. Here he is trying to help these poor men get education.

01:32:53

His stand against other poor people, oppressed people in the United States ends up hurting his effort to do this.

01:33:00

It's at that point he starts to raise funds and eventually becomes a ministry of the Metropolitan Tabernacle. He continues throughout the rest of his life to give to it, but he did not want to compromise the commitment of the pastor's college to provide free education.

01:33:10

Now it's important to emphasize, to qualified men. So he had very high expectations in terms of the piety of these men, the gifts that they would have in the area of preaching and things like that, actual experience doing church work and Christian work.

01:33:25

But in terms of educational financial prerequisites, there were basically none. And now Rick Warren is the chancellor?

01:33:32

That was a segue. What? Yeah. Okay. One of the things that I really appreciated -

01:33:38

Spurgeonic man, if there ever was one. Oh, if there ever was one. Page 121,

01:33:44

Spurgeon says, our men seek to preach efficiently to get to the heart of the masses, to evangelize the poor.

01:33:50

This is the college ambition, this and nothing else. And there's a lot more that I could read. Excellent quotes that you put in the book.

01:33:58

Where Spurgeon's like, listen, it's really the opposite of the Keller, like reach the elite portions of the city.

01:34:05

He's like, this is an every man ministry. And he has this great section where he's like, even the way you preach, stop preaching like that.

01:34:14

Preach like the people that you're preaching to talk. He says, don't preach in a stuffy way. He says, don't preach with stained glass in your throat.

01:34:20

Talk like the man on the street, bring him in. Very J .C. Ryle, plain speech.

01:34:26

Well, you say J .C. Ryle. J .C. Ryle, I would commend to your listeners, simplicity in preaching. Well, if you can only read one thing by him, read

01:34:32

Holiness. It's like one of the greatest books ever. But then simplicity in preaching, short little pamphlet. Great for preachers, but not only for preachers.

01:34:39

If you want to get better as a writer or just a communicator in general, fantastic. But he actually cites

01:34:45

Spurgeon as one who exemplifies. And it's funny the way he puts it, because J .C. Ryle's an Anglican. And he's like,

01:34:51

I'm not embarrassed to say, you know, as a clergyman, that I actually read Spurgeon's sermons to my great prophet.

01:34:57

I think the way he is speaking to the common man is a way that my students should emulate this, you know, and people reading this, you know.

01:35:03

So yeah, he is going to provide no cover for,

01:35:09

Spurgeon is going to provide no cover for preachers who preach in a really preachy, academic, yeah, stultified kind of a way.

01:35:19

He's going to say, you need to talk to people with common Anglo -Saxon, you know, the kind you learned from your mama, you know, and speak to them as plain men, you know, as a plain man to plain men about the concerns of the man's soul.

01:35:31

Yeah, yeah, and that last line in particular with like evangelical fervency, which is a conversation that you and I have kind of been having for over the last like year.

01:35:44

And basically like is a lot of the preaching in our sermons kind of, in our circle, excuse me, kind of capturing both the everyday man, evangelical fervency.

01:35:54

And when I was reading about that, I was like, yeah, Spurgeon, he does it perfectly. I was recently at a conference with the

01:36:00

Ocean City Bible Conference where Brian Davis preached a sermon. And when we got done,

01:36:05

I just texted you and I was like, Brian Davis does this. I see it so well in him. I think that the quality, the word for that, that Spurgeon would use, at least this is in my mind when you and I are having this conversation.

01:36:15

Because I don't think you've given me a single word, so I'm all for it. Well, I like this word a lot, earnestness. Yeah, blood earnest, as Martyn Lloyd -Jones would say.

01:36:23

So someone said to Spurgeon, one of his biographers said, earnestness was to Spurgeon's preaching as Samson's hair was to his strength.

01:36:30

So he preached great high theology, lofty doctrines.

01:36:37

He had mastered the English language. But he preached as though he actually believed, you could feel this in Spurgeon, that he believed your eternal state hangs on what you do with the words that I'm saying.

01:36:51

He preached in a thus saith the Lord kind of way. He appeared as an ambassador for Christ and he pleaded with men, he appealed.

01:36:58

He wept often in the pulpit. And that earnestness, I think of all things, what is the high watermark characteristic of Spurgeonic preaching?

01:37:09

It was that quality of earnestness. I think that's what set him apart. Because there's plenty of people who preach the doctrines of grace.

01:37:15

There's plenty of preachers who kind of mastered the English language, but he pleaded with many, urged many, wanted to move men.

01:37:24

Personally, I think that's in part the difference between preaching and teaching. Not that you have to be especially emotional, but preaching is seeking to move people to some course of action, to embracing some kind of truth.

01:37:34

It's not just intellectual, it's not just. It's a proclamation. It's a proclamation precipitating a kind of response.

01:37:40

You're trying to persuade, you're trying to move. If I show up at your city gates pronouncing the good news, the enemy's destroyed, if that doesn't do something in you.

01:37:50

Well, yeah, and also, we're preaching about, we're bringing a message that will determine where eternal souls will spend their fate.

01:38:03

Yeah, and so there's a kind of quality that should come through in the communication. There's a kind of manner of speaking that should accord something of such great weight and of such great eternal moment as sin and eternity and heaven and hell and holiness and God.

01:38:20

And so I just think Spurgeon spoke as if he really did believe the veil between eternity and this life is very thin.

01:38:31

And we don't have more than this moment in this hour. Christ is real. The imminence of the world to come is upon us.

01:38:39

And I have before you the word of God, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and I want to appeal to you.

01:38:45

That came through in his preaching in a way. There was an anointing upon him. I think the Puritan word would be unction.

01:38:50

I think earnestness is a good word. And I say earnestness because it's an especially prominent word in Spurgeon's lexicon.

01:38:56

He has a lecture, a lecture to my students if you want to read more about this. His lecture, it's called Earnestness, It's Marring and Maintenance.

01:39:02

I think it's probably the foremost quality that distinguished Spurgeon's preaching from that of many in the

01:39:11

Victorian age of what characterized Victorian preaching. Again, very stuffy, very prim and proper.

01:39:16

He would say preach, these are like lectures more suited for the university lecture hall than for pleading with men the concerns of the gospel upon their souls.

01:39:27

Amen. So let's talk a little bit about the Stockwell Orphanage. Local church, pastor's college,

01:39:36

Stockwell Orphanage, right behind that in the list of his priorities. Yeah, that's right. So my wife lived in a children's home for about four years.

01:39:46

When she was 14, she was pretty severely abused by her stepfather and the state came, got involved and basically gave her mom a choice.

01:39:56

You can choose the man or you can keep your daughter in the home. She chose the man. So my wife grew up four years in the

01:40:02

Alabama Baptist Children's Home. And so this part of the story really touched me, man.

01:40:08

Just thinking, especially the way that Spurgeon went about orphanages, let's not cram a hundred kids into a big space.

01:40:14

Let's try to have little cottages set up for them with house parents. That was exactly, it actually got me to wondering if the people at the

01:40:21

Alabama Baptist Children's Home modeled what they did after what Spurgeon did. They might have. So what

01:40:26

Spurgeon was doing was not terribly unusual. It was a guy named Thomas Barnardo, who's a little more well -known for orphan care in London.

01:40:33

And he had a similar kind of arrangement to how they took care of the orphans. So praise God for his ministry to the orphans.

01:40:38

Yeah, this is really cool. So 1 ,500 orphans that he serves throughout the course of his life. And it was not uncommon.

01:40:46

This happened a number of times where you would have a child that he brought into his orphanage. Child grows up, hears the gospel, is baptized, believes, baptized, becomes part of the church, enters the pastor's college, becomes a pastor, is sent as a missionary elsewhere.

01:40:59

That happens a number of times. Can I read something? This to me is almost why I wouldn't wanna write the book.

01:41:05

When I read this, I just thought, that Spurgeon needs to be more well -known. Hold on, there's

01:41:11

Jonathan's lovely foreword. Okay, this American Temporist activist named John B. Goff, I start the book with this story.

01:41:18

He comes and visits Spurgeon. You heard about Spurgeon's ministry, loves Spurgeon. They become friends. Spurgeon takes him to visit the

01:41:24

Stockwell Orphanage and wants to kind of show him around. Actually, John B. Goff requested that.

01:41:31

And so what happens is while he's there, Spurgeon and Goff are there at the orphanage,

01:41:37

Spurgeon gets called to the infirmary, to the bedside of a dying orphan. And I just love this story.

01:41:43

So Goff records it. He's journaling there as this is all going on. So it says, while the two men were visiting the orphanage,

01:41:49

Spurgeon received a call to the bedside of a boy who was terminally ill. As he sat with the dying boy, Spurgeon placed the child's hand in his and told him, this is

01:41:58

Goff recording this now. Spurgeon said to the boy, Jesus loves you. He bought you with his precious blood and he knows what is best for you.

01:42:07

It seems hard for you to lie here and listen to the shouts of the healthy boys outside at play, but soon

01:42:13

Jesus will take you home and then he will tell you the reason and you will be so glad.

01:42:19

Spurgeon then inched forward in his chair, laid his hand on the boy's head and quietly prayed aloud. Oh Jesus, master, this dear child is reaching out his thin hand to find thine.

01:42:29

Touch him, dear savior, with thy loving warm clasp. Lift him as he passes the cold river that his feet be not chilled by the water of death.

01:42:38

Take him home in thine own good time. Comfort and cherish him till that good time comes.

01:42:44

Show him thyself as he lies here and let him see thee and know thee more and more as his loving savior.

01:42:51

After a moment's pause, he said with a warm smile, now dear, is there anything you would like? Would you like a little canary in a cage to hear him sing in the morning?

01:42:59

Nurse, see that he has a canary tomorrow morning. Goodbye, my dear. You will see the savior perhaps before I shall.

01:43:07

And then Goff, who had quietly witnessed the scene, recorded his recollections in his autobiography, writing, I just love this.

01:43:14

He says, I had seen Mr. Spurgeon holding by his power 6 ,500 persons in a breathless interest.

01:43:20

I knew him as a great man, universally esteemed and beloved. But as he sat by the bedside of a dying pauper child whom his beneficence had rescued, he was to me a greater and grander man than when swaying the mighty multitude at his will.

01:43:37

I grew up knowing about Spurgeon the preacher, the prince of preachers, you know, great defender of orthodoxy and downgrade controversy.

01:43:44

I didn't know that. I didn't know he had an orphanage. I didn't know about the 66 benevolent institutions. I didn't know that this celebrity preacher, you know, took appointments with dying orphaned boys, even when he has this important man with it.

01:43:57

He's by the bedside of that kid praying over him, seeking to give him sweet gifts. And this is what he wanted to do.

01:44:02

He used to spend all his Christmases with his orphans. He was the kind of guy, you know, there's some of us who if we find we have a free afternoon, all our meetings are canceled.

01:44:10

Oh, great, I'll go golfing. For him, it's like, oh, let me get the carriage. I could probably get down to the orphanage in time for their 3 p .m.

01:44:16

class. And I could teach that time or read a book to them or something like that. That's, the guy just burned calories for needy people.

01:44:23

This is what he gave himself to do, you know? And I think, especially in a setting now,

01:44:29

I mean, we were talking about this earlier, Sean, about a guy very publicly who was involved in scandal.

01:44:35

And how many pastors do we know? We've run into guys kind of in the big evil world or the celebrity pastor world who don't have the time of day at all for needy people or people that, you know, aren't high rollers or something like that.

01:44:48

What a rebuke Spurgeon is to us. And thankfully, you and I, Sean, have known men of great significance and influence who would be exactly like that.

01:44:56

Well, I just want to kind of wave Spurgeon around and say, hey, you know, brothers today, if you find yourself being given by God some degree of influence and some degree of authority, this is a model to follow.

01:45:08

A guy who, yeah, could thunder in front of 6 ,500 people. But privately, this was the man he was.

01:45:14

And this is some guy recording this in his journal. And those two things aren't detached. Like his ability to thunder to 6 ,500 people with that blood earnest preaching, it flows out of the same place that empowers him to have that one -on -one conversation with the orphan.

01:45:26

Amen. Yeah, well, Jesus, the King of kings and the Lord of lords. And what a picture. He is not willing that they would go without bread, that they might perish.

01:45:34

The woman with the flow of blood, here's the man being marshaled through the crowds as this very important messiah and rabbi.

01:45:40

And he's going on to do the next big thing. And this woman touches him. Someone touched me.

01:45:45

I felt power grow out of me. And he wants to single her out, love her and encourage her. Faith has made her well. That's who

01:45:51

Jesus is. And those of us who would represent Jesus as his specially called the ambassadors and ministers, we should be like that.

01:45:59

And we should be eager, zealous to do good to those who come under the sphere of our ministry.

01:46:05

Especially to the most needy. Amen, amen. To children. Oh my goodness. Jesus, who took up children in his arms when his disciples were kind of like, hey, he's too busy for this, too important for this.

01:46:16

Jesus is angry at his spirit that they're seeking to keep the little ones away from him. He puts a child in their midst.

01:46:22

Whoever of you would be great, Mark 10, Mark 9, let him be the servant of all, servant of the least of these.

01:46:29

What a model, what a picture. This is less about Spurgeon, just a general theological thing

01:46:34

I would like for you to touch on. Widows and orphans, that's what you always see kind of as like the archetype encapsulating all of the poor and needy, the most destitute and discreet.

01:46:45

Because of James 1 .27. That's right. Triviality and undefiled, widows and orphans. That's right, yeah. And that's because widows and orphans were most disadvantaged, right?

01:46:55

Like you are literally in a position where you can't care for yourself, right? Or it's very difficult.

01:47:01

And then there are a lot of people today who would kind of view themselves as being amongst the poor who are capable of caring for themselves.

01:47:09

And whether it's laziness or whatever the case may be. And what would your advice be for pastors as they work with deacons?

01:47:17

And we're gonna talk about deacons next. To set up strong, healthy gospel benevolence ministries in their church.

01:47:23

Do you have any like guidelines or books that they should read to help them think through caring for the most needy?

01:47:30

Yeah, sadly, I don't think there are lots of good books on this subject. Okay, so next book.

01:47:37

Well, part of the reason why I wrote this book was just was gonna, here's something, you know. Pastors, here's something you could consider.

01:47:45

So no, I don't have lots of books to recommend on this subject of mercy ministry. I think it's a big lacuna in. Sorry, can you translate?

01:47:52

A big open crater. Big vacuum. There you go. Yeah, in terms of literature out there right now.

01:47:59

Keller has his ministries of mercy thing, which I think is pretty good. But you're not excited to recommend that book.

01:48:06

Not thrilled about it, it's fine. I think we need something better. I'd love to see

01:48:11

Nine Marks put out something on, okay, what would mercy ministry look like in a

01:48:16

Nine Marks key, Nine Marks frame? Have you said anything about that to Lehman? Oh yeah, we've talked about it a couple of times.

01:48:22

We'll see what gets done. There was Church in Hard Places. I think he hates mercy though. Yeah, I don't think that's true. He wrote the foreword to the book, man.

01:48:28

Give him some credit. Church in Hard Places, kind of some of this?

01:48:33

Yeah. I hope I'm not forgetting another book. Well, it would be good to have like a manual, like a one -stop shop.

01:48:39

I agree. Like we can just give this, we can hand this out at conferences. Like this is the mercy ministry manual.

01:48:46

Yeah, it's a bit of an awkward time to be talking about mercy ministry. Guys in our tribe right now are playing defense against cultural

01:48:55

Marxism and woke -ism. I mean, the theonomy thing is kind of a new weird thing, but the sort of CRT, you know.

01:49:00

Well, I actually see that in large part as a response to that. I agree, yeah, it's so keen. Yeah, a mirror image of each other in some ways.

01:49:09

I won't go there. No, but yeah, the, hey, let's help needy people message is not like a winning message right now.

01:49:18

Yeah, that's right. Because everyone's a victim, everyone's oppressed, and what loving your neighbor looks like, the reason

01:49:23

I have to put an asterisk every time I say that phrase, love your neighbor as yourself, and qualify it 10 times is because of people who are telling us things, they're putting burdens on us about what love for a neighbor looks like, that we would not at all recognize as biblical.

01:49:36

So, and yeah, the nature of the word oppressed or justice, these words allude definition and by stealth are loaded up with freight that is,

01:49:46

I think, frankly ungodly and not honoring the scriptures at all. And so a lot of it's being written right now is trying to clarify, hey, what kind of the limits are.

01:49:56

Yeah. You know, so - Which is good and necessary, but we need a more positive, bountiful, happy vision.

01:50:03

I'd love to see that happen, man, yeah, yeah. All right, looking forward to it. Yeah, well - On your pin. Yeah, yeah, I would just say though, on this point, one of the things

01:50:13

I try to do in the book and others have done really well, if you're gonna use words like oppression or like victim or abuse or whatever, define those terms.

01:50:20

It's really clear. The Bible, it's not very hard to arrive at a definition of justice, biblically speaking. And make them like good, crisp definitions, right?

01:50:28

Like don't obfuscate to the point where your definition is worthless. Yeah, exactly so. I mean, if people quote

01:50:35

Micah, is it Micah 6, 8 all the time? You're to do justly or do justice, love, mercy, walk humbly with your God. Go read the first two or three chapters of Micah and get a sense of what he regards as justice issues.

01:50:47

They will not align, I think, with the typical kind of leftist social justice platform. And again, it's not hard to actually arrive at an answer to that question, what biblical justice is.

01:50:58

Yeah, that's right. And Spurgeon's more kind of working out of that framework, what biblical justice might look like. Yeah, that's right.

01:51:04

So let's talk about Spurgeon and his deacons. The church owes, says Spurgeon in your book on page 159, the church owes an immeasurable debt of gratitude to those thousands of godly men, men only,

01:51:17

Spurgeon believe in female deacons? No. Okay, godly men who study her interests day and night, contribute largely of their substance, care for her poor, cheer her ministers, and in times of trouble as well as prosperity, remain faithfully at their posts.

01:51:32

Deprive the church of her deacons and she would be bereaved of her most valiant sons. Their loss would be the shaking of the pillars of our spiritual house and would cause desolation on every side.

01:51:44

Again, who writes like that? Doesn't that make you want to be a deacon right now? It makes me want to text my deacons and be like, guys, I haven't told you enough recently.

01:51:50

I send that out about every year to our deacons. I'll see that again and I'll send it out to them, love it. So good. Did Spurgeon have elders?

01:51:58

He did, he actually introduced elders to the church. The church had moved away from having elders, they had had elders in the days of one of his predecessors,

01:52:05

Benjamin Keech in the 1600s, but they kind of moved away from it. Which is wild, I didn't realize that Keech was the previous pastor there.

01:52:11

Benjamin Keech, John Gill, John Rippon. So wild. 150 years between those guys. The church, like a lot of Baptist churches, had begun to see elders as more a

01:52:23

Presbyterian institution. Spurgeon sees it just as basically a biblical one. He saw it in the church's documents previously that they had elders, so he revised the office of elder during his ministry in the 1850s, he revives it.

01:52:35

Deacons had always been there. And Spurgeon gives a much larger role to deacons than many in our circles would today.

01:52:43

They were his best friends, they had lifetime appointments, the elders had terms. And the deacons, man, they did like everything, a lot of heavy lifting around there.

01:52:52

Now they weren't primarily. Sorry, go ahead. Well, they weren't primarily responsible for visitation and pastoral oversight.

01:52:58

But in terms of a lot of the major decision -making connected to the life of the church, a lot of the organization of the church, the running of so large a congregation, they were given tremendous responsibility.

01:53:10

What would Spurgeon say to many Southern Baptist churches today that have kind of a elder as CEO with a board of deacons model?

01:53:19

Oh, he'd reject that entirely. He'd say that's pragmatic, not biblical. He said, in the Bible, you have these offices of elder and deacon.

01:53:26

You should have both of them. I think he would think deacons acting like elders are playing out of position.

01:53:33

Deacons have particular responsibilities. Chief among them is to oversee the benevolence work of the church. That's where Keller has done a lot of good work, actually.

01:53:40

He's come on four times in this interview, but he wrote his dissertation or his demon thing on -

01:53:45

Demon? D, D, men. Oh, okay. I think it was his, his demon or his

01:53:51

PhD, I can't remember, on the ministry of deacons. I think it was the longest dissertation in the history of Westminster or something like that.

01:53:57

Oh, wow. It was like 600 pages on deacons. Okay. But going back to an earlier conversation, should the church organize itself for benevolence work?

01:54:06

Should there be a corporate shape to that? I don't think you have deacons if there shouldn't be. Okay. Deacons, I think, are founded in part to handle the benevolence concerns of the church.

01:54:14

Sure. Needy widows being overlooked. Let's organize as a church. Let's gather together, brothers and sisters, and let's pick out from among us seven men who will help organize the resources of the church to care for the needy widows among us.

01:54:27

So I'm just trying to advocate for something of a corporate shape. Yeah. For the benevolence ministry of the church. Otherwise, I don't think you have deacons in the

01:54:34

Bible. So, and Spurgeon would agree with that. But yeah, Spurgeon is not, Spurgeon tried not to operate like the CEO.

01:54:39

Yeah. It's kind of hard for him not to in some ways. I mean, he's got this massive personality and gift.

01:54:46

At times it was like whatever Spurgeon said goes, but that said, you do see him trying to give away authority and give away opportunity to other men.

01:54:55

And then of course, he's raising up hundreds of men himself. Do you think Spurgeon read Matt Smithhurst's book on deacons?

01:55:01

You know, Matt, I sent him that quote. Yeah. And cause

01:55:07

Matt wrote the book on deacons, the little purple book for Nine of Marks. And he said, I wish I had this when I wrote the book. Oh, isn't that a bummer?

01:55:12

It would've been like the capstone quote, you know? Right, right, right. Yeah, I think, you know, interestingly, this is not a criticism of Matt's book.

01:55:18

I think it's excellent. I have our deacons read it. Spurgeon would want to see us ask more of deacons than Matt's book asks.

01:55:25

Okay. The very like highly task -oriented nature of deacons, Spurgeon would say no. He wants his deacons meeting as a deliberative body.

01:55:32

He wants them to be a kind of advisory board to the elders. Advisory, not over the elders. Sure, yeah.

01:55:37

But he often is assembling his deacons to tell him, what do you think we should do? And he wanted them deliberating and making decisions and that kind of thing.

01:55:44

So the kind of deacon of the Lord's Supper, deacon of the bookstall, deacon of the whatever, he's not really doing that kind of thing.

01:55:49

He wants more out of his deacons than that. And again, that's it. Do you agree? Yes, I would stop a little bit short of where Spurgeon goes.

01:56:00

I would expect a little less of my deacons, but I have a concern, and this is not a criticism of Matt's book.

01:56:06

Matt's book is superb. And it's the first book I give to our deacons. The first book I recommend on deacons.

01:56:13

I am not sold on the whole task -oriented deacon thing. Don't love that. Our deacons meet as a deliberative body.

01:56:20

Our deacons do function, I mean, they do lots of tasks, but we also ask our deacons to function as a de facto,

01:56:27

I'm sorry, an ad hoc advisory board for us on different issues. The elders are absolutely - Two Latin phrases,

01:56:32

I don't know what either of them mean, so. Ad hoc being as - As needed.

01:56:38

Yeah, as needed, yeah. The whole, oh, I'm just a poor boy. No, no, you said as -

01:56:43

I'm so blue collar, I don't have any education. It's good to have a smart, I don't do that. I don't buy it at all.

01:56:50

No, but yeah, so I just think deacons, I think we could ask more of our deacons, and in the tradition of the Reformation, I think more was asked of deacons than often.

01:56:58

Let me just say, I mean, you and I, you probably have a broader listenership. I would say readership.

01:57:05

You have a broader group of people listening to this than just the Nine Marks world. Okay, hopefully, yeah. If I can critique that group, of which

01:57:11

I am a very happy member, I do think I'd love to see a more muscular job description for deacons, yeah.

01:57:20

Yeah. So to use an illustration, if we're talking about the job description,

01:57:26

I would like to look less like my physique. I have a body like Gumby, okay? And more like your physique.

01:57:32

Muscular. To illustrate it, yeah. Muscular, muscular role for deacons. Which camera should I show them what the deacons should be like? Yeah, you know, I'm like SpongeBob.

01:57:39

Like when I make the muscle, it goes down. But dude, your brain muscles? Oh man, it's crazy.

01:57:45

One of the most touching anecdotes in the book is his tribute to one of his favorite and most long -standing deacons who passed away.

01:57:54

I don't have it right here, but - Yeah, William Olney. Yeah, I mean, just reading that - Oh, Thomas Olney, sorry. Thomas is the older one, yeah, sorry.

01:58:00

Okay, good catch. Nobody's gonna listen to this or read the book anyway. Who's the father of the son? I always get confused which one's the dad, which one's the son.

01:58:06

Thomas and William Olney. Okay, can you remind me the name of your local church? Emanuel Church. Emanuel Church. God with us.

01:58:12

Oh, wait, what does it matter? I versus E? E would be the

01:58:18

Greek spelling. I would be the Hebrew spelling. We're in the New Covenant. Greeks seem better to go with.

01:58:23

Now, for contextualization, if you're trying to reach a Hispanic neighborhood, can we say Emanuel? For a minute,

01:58:30

I thought you were gonna make fun of me not having Baptist in the name, but thank you for sparing that. No, no, no, no, we don't have it in ours. Right. What was

01:58:36

I gonna say? Oh, at your church. How long did it take you to write this book?

01:58:43

That's a little complicated because I did write my dissertation on these kind of issues, but basically like a year to write it. Okay. But like a decade of reading and studying and all that stuff.

01:58:52

There was a lot of reading. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I went into it. I mean, how has writing this book changed the way that you guys do things at Emanuel?

01:59:00

It definitely - Or influenced. Yeah. I wish it would. Well, our church is more engaged in benevolent ministry now than it was when

01:59:10

I started writing the book. I've preached topical sermons and then sermons in particular series on the subject of why they're both in the individual

01:59:19

Christian life and in the corporate work of the church. We must care for needy people and love needy people.

01:59:25

Now, some of the concerns that you've raised in like the Defend and Confirm podcast with Russell.

01:59:32

With Russell Berger? Yeah, with Berger, yeah. Defend and Confirm, great podcast.

01:59:37

Defend and Confirm. Yeah, C -O -N -F -I -R -M. I wish we have that. I share with you.

01:59:45

So in our church, I was in adult classes playing defense against CRT stuff.

01:59:51

We did a class on race, social justice, and the mission of the church. Talked about cultural Marxism, all that kind of stuff. Good. Addressed LGBTQ stuff, banded and wounded stuff.

02:00:00

You know, all stuff you guys talked about. Yeah. We did a Sunday school class called Our Cultural Moment where we kind of did -

02:00:07

All that with Truman kind of combined. We read Truman's book as part of a pastor's kind of book study thing. Yeah, but I was very concerned that that not kind of shrivel up our hearts.

02:00:19

Amen. Against kind of the, so a lot of people were surprised I wrote this book given some of my other - Which they shouldn't be.

02:00:24

Well, I agree. You shouldn't be, right? Like, I'm not gonna seed the ground of caring for the poor to leftists.

02:00:30

Yes, please. Yes, or theological liberals. Yeah. Yeah, so people think social engagement, social concern is, yeah, that's what the social gospel people do.

02:00:40

We're word people. Oh. We're gospel people, you know, and I'm thinking - Just preach the gospel. Yeah, well, in the appendix of the book,

02:00:46

I try to make this point that this kind of ministry we're doing is what Christians have always been doing. Yeah. Going back to like Basil of Caesarea, then going back to the

02:00:54

New Testament, but going back to generations, centuries. I highlighted many of the reformed confessions that came out during the 16th and 17th centuries.

02:01:03

Many of them included clauses about serving the poor, not only in the church, but in the community and things like that. The church covenants often had statements about helping the poor of the community and things like that.

02:01:11

So this is an ancient vision. But I felt the need in our congregation, which is made up of largely conservative people and those who are concerned about leftist ideology and agendas and cultural things going on, that we not forget the poor.

02:01:26

Yeah. And I just think there's a unique danger for Calvinistic people like us and conservative people like us to think, what have we to do with poor people?

02:01:37

There's the welfare state. There's the social gospel. We're Bible people. We're word people.

02:01:42

Well, that Bible and that word call us to be people zealous for good works, to have regard for the poor, to do good to all.

02:01:50

We will be judged, Matthew 25, for the degree to which we have done good to those who were in cases of extreme need, not particularly among the brothers, but still.

02:01:58

Yeah. So even when you think about the way that people make decisions, very little of, people aren't going, oh, proposition

02:02:10

A, proposition B, therefore proposition C. They're sort of intuiting. Yeah. And reacting.

02:02:15

And reacting, right? So wouldn't it be nice if everyone in our camp so full -throatedly and wholeheartedly embraced this and embodied this, that people who were kind of on the fence, do

02:02:27

I go left or do I go conservative right? They would just be like, you know what? This is my tribe. I love the aroma of what they're doing here.

02:02:34

I'll just say, and Sean, you could read a lot more into this. You have more context than probably most people listening to this would for a statement like this.

02:02:42

But I do think if this kind of vision for social engagement and helping needy people and engaging in mercy ministry was more prominent among our tribe.

02:02:51

Yeah. Just call that whatever, Calvinistic Baptist or Young Restless Unreformed or whatever.

02:02:57

Yeah. Some variation thereof. We would have lost far fewer people to the left than we have.

02:03:03

I think that's true. And to the right. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. I just think this was safer ground to stand on.

02:03:10

It was theologically robust and it had a heartbeat. It was merciful, compassionate, gracious.

02:03:17

Yeah. And I think we withdrew from this. And I think we were pushed away from this kind of vision by folks on the left, by Rauschenbusch and by theological liberalism.

02:03:28

And I think the last hundred years has sort of shriveled up our hearts a bit. Understandably so.

02:03:34

Because it was, well, anyway, I think I've said enough on that. I think you get the point.

02:03:40

But I think that people would have seen something compelling in this. There's a space for regard for the poor and the needy within a reformed and evangelical framework, conservative evangelical framework.

02:03:50

Yeah. And this is our heritage. This is what our forebears did. Yeah. And we should do it again. Praise God.

02:03:55

I was challenged, encouraged, convicted by this book. I'm gonna have our deacons read it and then do a meeting with them where we kind of walk through it and pray through it together and see what the

02:04:05

Lord might have us do in light of that. So thank you for writing it. Now to the most important part of the interview, the rapid fire questions.

02:04:14

Okay. Questions like, what's your favorite candy, right? Questions, these are the, these are the, this is what the people want.

02:04:20

If of your dozens, now three or four people have hung around. Yeah. If they've made it all the way to the end. So yeah, what's your, let's do most favorite and least favorite candy.

02:04:30

Most favorite, it would be a, well, it's a candy bar work, yeah. A Reese's. You take it. A Reese's fast break.

02:04:36

A fast break. Okay. I'm feeling you. It's a little bit like the ontological argument for the existence of God.

02:04:42

It is a candy bar of which none greater can be conceived. Oh, wow. Yeah. Worst candy?

02:04:48

So you're really into that, speaking to the common man, I can see. Like, let me, let me extol to you the glories of a

02:04:55

Reese's. Hey, you know, just blue collar, white collar, they both love the fast break. I could enjoy a candy bar with just about anybody.

02:05:02

I mean, honestly, if you eat a fast break, you probably watch NASCAR. No, you don't, but most people probably do.

02:05:08

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And then worst, worst candy? Wait, sorry, do you do that room temperature or do you freeze it?

02:05:15

Oh, room temperature. Room temperature, yeah. Worst candy, worst candy. I don't like, like Dots and Mike and Ikes, I really like gummy candy.

02:05:23

I could do without that. Oh, Skittles, gross. Oh my goodness. Skittles, gross? Yeah. Nah.

02:05:29

What about, would you not consider like black jelly beans to be way up there and terrible? Yeah, they're gross.

02:05:35

Okay. I don't, I didn't think of them. You know what's not very good? I recently had Turkish Delight, readers of CS Lewis.

02:05:41

It's so bad. Gross, gross, yeah. So bad. Don't know why, I mean, Edmunds sold his soul to the

02:05:46

White Witch for Turkish Delight. I can't comprehend that. Well, it further reinforces the fact that some ethnic generalizations are true and the

02:05:54

British have terrible food, bro. They're not known for their food. They have great like bread and cheese and wine and stuff. They have vegetables, but no.

02:06:01

Great vegetables, is that your claim to food base? Well, they grow, yeah, they got the optimal, you know, temperature and soil and all that.

02:06:06

Whatever. Anyway. Nobody cares about vegetables, bro. Okay, favorite movie?

02:06:15

You can take that any way you want. And if you say, Sean, I don't, superlatives. Can I say two? Yeah, you can. Lord of the

02:06:20

Rings, I love the books, I love the movies. And I love Master and Commander. Master and Commander.

02:06:26

Based on the novel series. Well, yeah, I mean, it's based on one of them, yeah. Yeah, with - Master Commander Russell Crowe.

02:06:32

With Russell Crowe, yeah. Oh, superb. I tried to read the book, couldn't get into it. No, no, but the movie is basically perfect in my mind.

02:06:39

The interplay between the doctor and his view of leadership, and then of course the very demanding

02:06:45

Jack Aubrey, and they talk about leadership often, and they kind of come toward each other in different ways.

02:06:51

Being at sea, on a boat, you know? Ooh, yeah. Yeah, I sent my wife a meme. A meme?

02:06:56

Yeah, a meme. That, you know, it's just a picture of like Jack Aubrey standing on the boat, you know, in Master and Commander.

02:07:05

And the caption was, men have only one thing on their mind, and it's disgusting. And it was wanting to be on a boat with your mates at sea.

02:07:11

And the Roman Empire. Yeah. Think about it at least five, six times a week. Yeah.

02:07:17

Yeah. Is there a book, theological book that you, maybe not theological, that you reread?

02:07:27

I don't reread books. Do you reread books? Oh, all the time. Okay, what do you reread? What's your go -to? The Ian Murray II volume on Martin Lee Jones.

02:07:35

Oh, I love Ian Murray. It's my favorite book ever written, yeah. He is a good example of just meerness in his writing, but because the story he's telling is so good, it just, you don't need anything else, you know?

02:07:45

It's just, he's giving you the - Murray's a hero of mine. And he actually was a big advocate for this book.

02:07:51

I think he got it on, I mean, I was the unknown writer, his first book I read, and he wrote basically a recommendation that this is a book that should be written and published.

02:07:58

He wrote it to the publisher. Oh, praise God, man. Revival and revivalism, so good. Evangelicalism divided, so good.

02:08:04

Yes, his stuff on Spurgeon is great. He wrote a biography of J .C. Ryle that's superb. Amy Carmichael, did he write that one?

02:08:11

Uh -huh, he wrote on Amy Carmichael, yeah. So encouraging. Oh, it's 50 different books, he's awesome. Yeah, that's right. And he's still writing.

02:08:18

Yes, he's working on a book now. Well, oh, is it on, oh,

02:08:24

I can't remember now. That's okay. Martin Lloyd -Jones likes Spurgeon, and I'm starting to notice this trend, like many other pastors, cut his teeth in a small town country church, preached through the

02:08:35

Bible a whole bunch, and then goes on to a major metropolitan area, and then has a larger, more fruitful, in some sense, ministry.

02:08:42

What's wild is, in that biography, Murray shares, it's so interesting, he had this fruitful ministry in Aberavon in Wales, and then he talks about how

02:08:51

Lloyd -Jones came to conclude that he wasn't really preaching the biblical gospel faithfully. Not that he had never preached the gospel, but that there was a distortion in his mind, and that he had this shift in his later 30s before he gets to London, and how he preached, which

02:09:05

I thought was interesting. Tons of lessons for godliness, piety, leadership, pastoral ministry, preaching, it's just tremendous.

02:09:12

We should not have bathhubs in our homes, that's for sure. Yeah, I'm not gonna follow that, but he smoked,

02:09:19

Mart Lloyd -Jones smoked, and he quit because one day he came home looking for his cigarettes, and was all upset at Bethan, and he's getting all mad, and he can't find his cigarettes, and he realized in that moment, it's not that it's bad for you, it's that I've become a slave to this, and he quit cooking turkey that day.