Session 3: Look and Live: The Conversion of Charles Spurgeon

Kootenai Church

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:01

All right, let's bow our heads. Father, we are on the break of another day and that you have given it to us, we are grateful for that.

00:09

And we are grateful for this place that we can gather and what we can learn here from Phil about Charles Spurgeon. We would just ask again, your blessing upon this time and your grace to us, help us to be thoughtful and considerate of the lessons that we're to learn today.

00:22

We pray that you would open our hearts to be receptive to this truth, that you would give Phil clarity in his speaking and the ability to remember all that it is that you have laid upon his heart to share with us.

00:33

And we pray that this time would be fruitful and profitable to us for all of eternity and for this life that we may honor and live for and serve you with all that we have for the glory of our great

00:43

God and King in whose name we pray, amen. All right, one announcement that I forgot to make last night and that was to introduce

00:50

Phil's wife, Darlene. So Darlene, will you please stand so that everybody can see who you are? And yeah, one of the things that we almost insist on doing is bringing speakers' wives with them to our conference so that they don't have to be away from their spouse when they're up here ministering to us.

01:10

So with that, one other further announcement that I wanna make about the schedule. We're going to try and maintain a close proximity to the schedule that you have printed in your brochure, but if Phil goes over,

01:20

I'm not caring about that. If he has something he wants to share and we go a little bit longer, we'll just put the breaks in between the sessions.

01:26

At the end of the day, it says, according to your brochure, that we're supposed to end at 3 .30. You have permission to leave at that time, but I think

01:34

Phil and I may do a little something after that as a bonus session, either talking about Spurgeon and his cigars or some other issues that are related to Grace Community Church and Phil and what they've been going through down there.

01:47

I'm not sure exactly what that is yet, but you're welcome to stay for that after 3 .30. If you wanna get up and leave, you're welcome to do that.

01:54

And we won't judge you for doing that, but I'm just letting you know now that this may run just a little bit longer than we had planned.

01:59

So with that, please welcome again, Phil Johnson. All right, well, good morning.

02:13

In our previous session last night, we looked at the childhood of Charles Spurgeon, and especially

02:19

I think we focused on his first five years when he was living in his grandparents' house. We talked about some of the influences that exposed him to the gospel from the very beginning of his life.

02:30

And in this session, I want to talk about his conversion experience. Now, it's extraordinary for someone who was nurtured and grew up in the kind of environment

02:42

Spurgeon himself describes to have the kind of conversion experience that he had.

02:49

And I want to try to give you the flavor of just how extraordinary it was. Spurgeon himself said this about it.

02:57

He said, had I never read my Bible, yes, I read it, and earnestly. Had I never been taught by Christian people, yes,

03:04

I had, by mother, my father, and others. Had I not heard the gospel?

03:10

Yes, I think I had, and yet somehow it was like a new revelation to me that I was to believe and live.

03:18

I confess to have been tutored in piety, put into my cradle by prayerful hands, and lulled to sleep by songs concerning Jesus, but after having heard the gospel continually with line upon line, precept upon precept, here much and there much, yet when the word of the

03:37

Lord came to me with power, it was as if I had lived among the unvisited tribes of Central Africa.

03:45

He's saying when he first understood the gospel, it was like he had never heard it before, and I know that experience myself.

03:53

When I gave my testimony last night, I told you I grew up in a Methodist church, and I've often said I don't remember ever hearing the gospel.

04:01

In retrospect, I know I did, because it was built into a lot of Methodist hymns, and some of the language of our responsive readings and all of that was directly from Scripture, so I know

04:11

I had heard the gospel, but it had never been explained to me. It had never penetrated, and that was sort of Spurgeon's experience.

04:19

From childhood to the end of his life, he regarded his conversion, and the day of his conversion, as a marvel and a miracle, and to hear him describe it, you would have thought that here was a guy who was living the life of a derelict and a total pagan until the

04:37

Lord snatched him like a brand from the fire, because in reality, that is what it seemed like to Spurgeon.

04:45

So hold that thought in mind. I'll come back to it, but first, I want to give you a little more background on Spurgeon as a teenager, and you can see that there was never any point in his life when he was actually far away from the gospel, and yet, in his own tortured soul, he sensed correctly that he was very far from heaven, and there's a line in Spurgeon's favorite book,

05:13

The Pilgrim's Progress. In fact, I think it's the second to the last sentence in the entire book where Pilgrim says,

05:21

I saw that there was a way to hell, even from the gate of heaven, and Spurgeon always kept that perspective, knowing that although he had every possible advantage that grace could afford, he easily could have gone to hell.

05:37

He knew he never would have responded to the gospel if God himself had not sovereignly drawn him to Christ and opened his blind eyes to see.

05:46

So let's talk about Spurgeon as a teenager, and we'll try to get a sense of how he thought and what was going on in his heart and in his mind, and in our first session, you know,

05:58

I mentioned that before he was even converted, he wrote a critique of Roman Catholicism called

06:06

Antichrist and Her Brood, subtitled Popery Unmasked, and his critique of Catholic doctrine showed a fairly sound understanding of the gospel.

06:16

If you read it, you would think this was written by a Christian. Spurgeon wrote that book at least a year before he was converted.

06:23

He was just 15 years old at the time, and it's a pretty impressive volume. Here's a description of the book from Spurgeon's biography, and this section,

06:34

Spurgeon's autobiography, it's called, but this section of the autobiography was written either by Mrs.

06:41

Spurgeon or by Joseph Harold, who was Spurgeon's personal secretary.

06:46

He called him his armor -bearer, Joseph Harold, and he says this,

06:53

I think this is Joseph Harold speaking. He says, in the library at Westwood, that's the name of Spurgeon's house, so his personal library at home, very carefully preserved is a bound volume containing 295 manuscript pages, lettered on the back,

07:10

Spurgeon's Popery Unmasked, and on the front outside cover, he says, is a red leather label.

07:17

Do you have it there? Yes, a red leather label with the following words printed upon it in gold letters, thus,

07:24

Antichrist and Her Brood, or Popery Unmasked by C .H. Spurgeon at the age of 15, so he even recorded his age on there.

07:34

This is a nearly 300 -page manuscript of Spurgeon's that was,

07:40

Spurgeon described it as his holiday pastime. As a 15 -year -old, he wrote it as an entry in an essay contest sponsored by a businessman, a man named

07:51

Arthur Morley from Nottingham, which is in central

07:56

England in the UK, and he had done this essay contest to get essays critiquing the heresies of Roman Catholicism.

08:07

The assignment apparently was to write a short essay on Roman Catholicism. It should have been a simple paper.

08:14

They called it a paper, but Spurgeon himself wrote this massive tome, 300 pages.

08:20

As far as I know, it's never been published. I don't know where the manuscript is today, if it still exists.

08:27

I presume it does somewhere, but it was bound and preserved, and it survived even after Spurgeon's death, and most of the biographies written about him at least mention this work.

08:39

The autobiography includes a full table of contents. And the manuscript has 17 chapters.

08:50

Lost my place here. With titles like this, Popery, the Apostate Spirit, Popery, A Mass of Superstition, Popery, A Complicated Idolatry with a

09:02

Focus on the Worship of the Virgin Mary. Chapter 11, Popery Teaches the

09:08

Adoration of a Breadened God. Popery, The Inventor of a False Purgation.

09:14

It's a 15 -year -old using words like that. He's talking about purgatory, of course. And my personal favorite is chapter 15,

09:21

Popery, A Gigantic Horse Leech. I wanna read that chapter.

09:30

And here's a lengthy quotation from chapter three. God addresses his gospel to sinners as such in order that hearing and believing it, sinners may be saved, but the

09:41

Church of Rome exercises her authority to prevent, as far as she is able, the word of God from reaching the ears of sinners.

09:48

She allows it to be addressed only to such as will thereby receive an increase of faith and piety.

09:55

That is, to persons who are already faithful and pious in some degree. Thus, Rome proves herself to be in league with Satan for the purpose of keeping men under the bondage of sin to the everlasting ruin of their souls.

10:09

Now, Spurgeon is correct in every criticism he makes of Roman Catholicism and the

10:16

Catholic system. And he says enough to prove that he is familiar with the language of justification by faith.

10:23

He expressly says, in the quote I just read, that through hearing and believing the gospel, sinners are saved.

10:31

But it is a remarkable fact that when Spurgeon wrote those words, he did not yet understand from any personal experience what it means to hear and believe the gospel.

10:44

He had not yet grasped the simplicity of the gospel. And he was, in some ways, just as confused and misled as the

10:52

Pope himself. Incidentally, I don't know who won the essay contest, but there is this note inside, inscribed in Spurgeon's own handwriting, explaining what the manuscript is and why he wrote it.

11:08

And the note says, did this move? Yes, the note says, written in the

11:14

November and December of 1849 as a kind of holiday amusement. Am I reading this?

11:21

Oh, no, I went one slide too far. Yes, this is Spurgeon saying, written in the

11:27

November and December of 1849 as a kind of holiday amusement and sent to Mr. Ward and Company on occasion of a competition for a prize offered by Mr.

11:38

Morley of Nottingham. Although the writer had scarcely a distant prospect of success, he received two years after the following note.

11:48

And then below that is this note from someone named G. Smith, G. Smith was a

11:54

Congregational Minister in London, and the note from Reverend Smith addressed to Spurgeon says this, dear sir, you were one of the competitors for a prize to be awarded for an approved essay on potpourri.

12:08

Your paper is not deemed entitled to the premium, it was too long basically, but the gentleman who offered it and is a relative of mine in approval of your zeal and in the hope that you may yet employ your talents for the public good had requested me to offer you a gratuity.

12:25

And Spurgeon doesn't disclose how much money it was, but it was apparently a sizable gift, not the prize that had been offered for a short essay, but it seems to have been a much more sizable amount.

12:40

Reverend Smith continues, if you will tell me how you wish the money to be sent, it shall be conveyed to you and your manuscript shall be returned in any way you direct.

12:49

I remain yours truly, G. Smith. And Spurgeon, by the way, gave a lot of that prize money away, gave it to various people who he knew were needy.

12:59

Now, let me set the scene for his conversion to Christ. You can see Spurgeon's obvious interest in spiritual matters and he wrote this essay, he says it's a holiday diversion.

13:11

This was what he did in his spare time. So he's always thinking about spiritual things, he had a concern for sound doctrine, biblical accuracy, truth in general, and you remember he had taken a remarkable interest in his grandfather's

13:28

Puritan library starting at the age four or five. The mere fact that he would write such a thorough critique of Roman Catholicism, I think shows pretty clearly that he had an intellectual awareness of gospel language and gospel themes and certain gospel doctrines, hymns that contained the gospel message were in his head all the time, and he had heard all his life the gospel preaching of both his father and his grandfather, but somehow the message of the gospel hadn't yet really penetrated his heart, and even at that age,

14:06

Spurgeon knew it. He didn't think of himself as a Christian. In fact, he had known for some time that he was outside the grasp of divine grace.

14:16

When he was about 10 or 11 years old, he began to be deeply convicted by the realization that he had no saving knowledge of Christ, and so he set out on a quest for salvation that lasted about five years, which is a long time when you're that age, and it was an agonizing time of life for him because these were issues that he considered with far more seriousness than any other boy his age would, and the knowledge that he himself was not a

14:50

Christian was something that weighed on him like a great burden that he perpetually carried around.

14:56

He kept it a secret, too. One of his biographers, you'll hear me quote him a lot, W .Y.

15:02

Fullerton, a personal friend of Spurgeon's, close friend, wrote one of the early biographies of Spurgeon, and he says this about those years of searching for salvation.

15:14

Fullerton writes, Into those years was crowded a world of experience which enabled him in his subsequent ministry to probe the secrets of many hearts.

15:23

He learned more of the things that matter in those years than most men learn in a lifetime, that one so young, so sheltered, trained from his boyhood in the ways of God could have felt so much and have had such exercise of soul may seem impossible.

15:40

His own account of his darkness and despair may appear exaggerated, but those who are versed in the ways of God will understand.

15:49

And he's right. As you listen to Spurgeon describing his own agony in those years, you think, and you're trying to imagine him as a 10 -year -old, 11 -year -old, carrying this sort of burden around, burdened about his own lostness and his sin.

16:05

It's hard to imagine that depth of angst in a child, and yet that was

16:10

Spurgeon. Here's what Spurgeon himself wrote about those dark days of conviction.

16:15

He said this, when I was in the hand of the Holy Spirit under the conviction of sin, I had a clear and sharp sense of the justice of God.

16:24

Sin, whatever it might be to other people, became to me an intolerable burden. It was not so much that I feared hell as that I feared sin.

16:34

And all the while, I had upon my mind a deep concern for the honor of God's name and the integrity of his moral government.

16:42

I had heard of the plan of salvation by the sacrifice of Jesus from my youth up, but I didn't know any more about it in my innermost soul than if I had been born and bred a primitive tribesman.

16:55

The light was there, but I was blind. It was necessary that the Lord himself should make the matter plain to me.

17:03

Here's Calvinism coming out. He's describing himself as totally depraved, unable to hear and understand the gospel.

17:09

It's precisely what the Apostle Paul describes in 1 Corinthians. And Spurgeon knew that his mind was incapable of grasping gospel truth without divine intervention.

17:24

So now listen to the poetic way he describes this sense of guilt that he felt.

17:30

He writes this. There was a day as I took my walks abroad when

17:36

I came hard by a spot forever engraven on my memory, for there I saw this friend, my best, my only friend, murdered.

17:44

I stooped down in sad affright and looked at him. I saw that his hands had been pierced with rough iron nails and his feet had been rent in the same way.

17:54

There was misery in his dead countenance so terrible that I scarcely dared to look upon it. His body was emaciated with hunger.

18:01

His back was red with bloody scourges and his brow had a circle of wounds about it.

18:08

Clearly one could see that these had been pierced by thorns and I shuddered for I had known this friend full well.

18:16

He never had a fault. He was the purest of the pure, the holiest of the holy.

18:22

Who could have injured him for he never injured any man. All his life long he went about doing good.

18:29

He had healed the sick, he had fed the hungry, he had raised the dead. For which of these works did they kill him?

18:36

He had never breathed anything else but love and as I looked into the poor sorrowful face so full of agony yet so full of love,

18:45

I wondered who could have been a wretch so vile as to pierce hands like his.

18:52

I said within myself, where can these traitors live? Who are these that would have smitten such a one as this?

18:58

Had they murdered an oppressor, we might have forgiven them. Had they slain one who had indulged in vice or villainy, it might have been his dessert.

19:08

It might have been a murderer or had it been a murderer or a rebel or one who had committed sedition, we would have said bury his corpse.

19:16

Justice has at last given him his due. But when thou wast slain, my best, my only beloved, where lodged the traitors?

19:26

Let me seize them and they shall be put to death. If there be torments that I can devise, surely they shall endure them all.

19:34

Oh, what jealousy, what revenge I felt. If I might but find these murderers, what would

19:41

I not do with them? And as I looked upon that corpse, I heard a footstep and I wondered where it was.

19:48

I listened and I clearly perceived that the murderer was close at hand.

19:53

It was dark and I groped about to find him and I found that somehow or other, whenever I put out my hand,

19:58

I could not meet with him for he was nearer to me than my own hand would go. And at last

20:03

I put my hand upon my breast. I have thee now, said I, for lo, he was in my own heart.

20:11

The murderer was hiding within my own bosom, dwelling in the recesses of my innermost soul.

20:19

Ah, then I wept indeed that I, in the very presence of my murdered master, should be harboring the murderer.

20:27

And I felt myself most guilty while I bowed over his corpse. He's saying that he felt this sense of personal guilt as a 10 -year -old, 11 -year -old child.

20:42

It's really an amazing inner experience to think of in a child.

20:47

Elsewhere, he says this. And let me preface this by saying, Mzeppa, he's gonna refer to Mzeppa, a character here, that's a 17th century

20:57

Ukrainian warrior who, according to legend, had been punished by being lashed naked to a wild horse and the horse was turned loose and just ran around until Mzeppa died from exposure and wounds and all of that.

21:15

And a generation before Spurgeon, Lord Byron, the poet, had written a poem that rather vividly described the trauma of that punishment on Mzeppa.

21:26

So you get the reference here. Spurgeon says this. There is a power in God's gospel beyond all description.

21:34

Once I, like Mzeppa, lashed to the wild horse of my own lust, was bound hand and foot, incapable of resistance, galloping on with hell's wolves behind me, howling for my body and my soul as their just and lawful prey, there came a mighty hand which stopped that wild horse, cut my bands, set me down, and brought me into liberty.

22:00

Is there power in the gospel? Yes, there is. I have felt its power in my own heart. I have the witness of the spirit within my spirit, and I know it's a thing of might because it has conquered me and bowed me down.

22:14

Spurgeon's mother was the one who was responsible for first awakening him to the claims of Christ on his life, and it was her prayers and her exhortations to him that made an indelible impact on him as a young boy and left him with this sense of his own need for salvation.

22:33

Spurgeon's father played, I think, a lesser role in his children's spiritual instruction, and in fact,

22:40

John Spurgeon himself admitted that his wife was far more responsible than he for the children's spiritual instruction.

22:49

He used to recount an incident when he was on his way to a preaching engagement, and he became convicted about the fact that he was caring for other people but neglecting the spiritual welfare of his own children, his own family, so he went back home, and he said when he got home, he heard

23:07

Mrs. Spurgeon inside praying for the conversion of her children, and John Spurgeon decided that his children's spiritual welfare was in good hands, and so he returned to his preaching engagement and said he wasn't troubled about it again, and you might be tempted to think that he was an inattentive or compassionless father who really stayed uninvolved in his children's life, but that is not the case.

23:38

Spurgeon frequently expressed great affection for his father and gratitude for the influence his father was on him.

23:44

Fullerton tells this story. He says, I'm quoting from Fullerton's biography of Spurgeon. Fullerton says, when the boy returned home from his grandfather's house, this is when he's six years old, he comes back home to live, he greatly scandalized the congregation on Sunday by singing the last line of each verse twice.

24:05

It's like I see worship leaders, I don't know if you do this in your church, but every worship leader I know when they sing a song, they don't just end it when it ends.

24:13

You have to always sing the last verse a second time, right? So apparently they were doing that in Spurgeon's grandfather's church, not the last verse, but the last line of each verse, they would sing twice, and so Spurgeon continued to do that after he came home, and in his father's church, that was not the custom.

24:35

So his father, going back to Fullerton who writes, his father took him to task, but Charles said his grandfather did it and he was going to do it too, and so his father told him if he did it again, he would give him a whipping that he would remember as long as he lived.

24:52

It sounds like he was pretty urgent, you stop doing this. Sunday came,

24:58

Fullerton says, and again, the boy sang the last lines twice, and he says it must have been amusing because Charles Spurgeon had no singing voice.

25:07

That's Fullerton saying that. After the service, his father asked him if he remembered what he said.

25:14

Charles said he remembered. Father and son then walked into the wood, passing a wheat field along the way, the father trying to win his son's repentance, and he said there they kneeled and prayed together, and both were greatly moved.

25:29

Turning back to the wheat field, the father plucked a stalk of wheat and told Charles to hold out his hand, and he took the wheat stalk and laid it gently across it and said, there,

25:40

I told you I would give you a whipping you will never forget. You'll never forget that. And Fullerton says the gentle sternness of that punishment broke him down and won him over, and he never forgot it.

25:54

Now, I don't think John Spurgeon is probably not the model, perfect model father engaged in his children's spiritual instruction, but the fact is nothing in any of Spurgeon's comments about his father suggests that his dad was sinfully aloof or apathetic.

26:12

He was a bivocational pastor for many years, which meant he had a job in addition to his pastoral work, and he was simultaneously head clerk in the shipping office of a coal company, and while he's doing that, he's the teaching pastor of a sizable congregation at Tollesbury.

26:32

He also did some itinerant preaching, and he bore the burden of providing for a very large family.

26:38

Remember, they had 17 kids, although nine of them died in infancy. He still left raising at least eight children, and he had to provide for them.

26:49

So none of that was unusual in those days, and it seems clear that there was always a great deal of affection between Charles and his father.

26:58

Spurgeon never expressed any regret or criticism about his home life or his parents' influence.

27:05

He wrote this, quote, "'I was privileged with godly parents, "'watched with jealous eyes, "'scarcely ever permitted to mingle "'with questionable associates.

27:15

"'I was warned not to listen "'to anything profane or licentious, "'and I was taught the way of God from my youth up.'"

27:21

Incidentally, John Spurgeon outlived his famous son by a full decade, and he ultimately became a full -time pastor and shepherded four different congregations across the scope of his entire career.

27:36

And anyway, every Sunday evening, Mrs. Spurgeon would gather her children around the table and read scripture to them, and she would explain it to them verse by verse.

27:47

Spurgeon said that she used to pray like this. He quoted one of her prayers, quote, "'Now,

27:53

Lord, if my children go on in their sins, "'it will not be from ignorance that they perish, "'and my soul must bear swift witness against them "'at the day of judgment, "'if they don't lay hold of Christ.'"

28:09

Spurgeon said the thought of his own mother bearing witness against him at the judgment seat ate at his conscience.

28:17

And as I said, he began to develop a keen sense of his own guilt before God by the time he was 10 or 11, and the thing that burdened him so much was this clear sense that through his sin, he was dishonoring

28:31

God. He seems not to have suffered from the common human failure where we compare ourselves with others and convince ourselves that we're really not that bad.

28:41

We look good by comparison to other people. But even as a child, Spurgeon, though he would have looked really good in comparison to any other child, he still knew better than to do that.

28:52

He wrote this. I could not believe that it was possible that my sins could be forgiven.

28:59

I don't know why, but I seemed to be the odd person in the world. When the catalog was made out, it appeared to me that for some reason,

29:07

I must have been left out. If God had saved me and not the world, I should have wondered indeed, but if he had saved all the world except me, that would have seemed to me right.

29:19

And now being saved by grace, I cannot help saying I am indeed a brand plucked out of the fire.

29:27

And that's how he looked at himself for the rest of his life. And in fact, that explains why

29:33

Spurgeon, despite the fact that he was brought up in a pastor's home, despite the fact that he never ever seems to have succumbed to any kind of gross or life -destroying sin, nevertheless, he retained until the end of his life, this very keen sense that he was the chief of sinners.

29:51

He was a horrible sinner. That's how he thought of himself. So that even though he was converted at a fairly young age,

29:58

Spurgeon included himself among the derelicts. And this is how he described himself.

30:05

He says, I was one of those who were kept by God a long time before we found him.

30:11

Those are his exact words. Because in his mind, those five years of carrying around the burden of his own sin were an eternity.

30:21

You know how it is when you're a child, a year seems forever. When you get to be my age, a year is like a week used to be.

30:29

It just goes by fast. But when you're that age, 10 years old, five years of wrestling with your own guilt within your own soul, without speaking to another soul about it, that would be a long time.

30:43

Seemed like an eternity. And so Spurgeon carried the fresh sense of that guilt until the end of his life.

30:52

And he therefore felt a close kinship with people who were converted to Christ after a long time in the depths of his sin.

31:00

He wrote this, John Bunyan could not have written as he did if he had not been dragged about by the devil for many years.

31:07

I love that picture of dear old Christian. I know that when I first read The Pilgrim's Progress and saw in it the woodcut of Christian carrying the burden on his back,

31:16

I felt so interested in the poor fellow that I thought I should jump for joy when after he had carried his heavy load so long, at last he got rid of it.

31:26

And that was how I felt when the burden of guilt, which I had borne for so long, was forever rolled away from my shoulders and my heart.

31:35

I didn't have to read that to you, you had it. Sorry. But during those years, Spurgeon was exposed to a lot of preaching about the law of God and guilt and all of this only intensified his woes.

31:50

He records that the books he read during that time include Philip Doddridge's Rise and Progress of Religion in the

31:58

Soul. I have all of these books, by the way. Richard Baxter's Call to the Unconverted, Joseph Alain's Alarm to Sinners, and John Angel James' book,

32:08

The Anxious Inquirer. Again, I have all of those books and every one of them is designed mainly to convict overconfident people, to examine themselves.

32:18

And Spurgeon said, reading those books was like sitting at the foot of Sinai. And Fullerton adds this, quote, he read the

32:26

Bible through but found that its threatenings seemed to be printed in capitals and its promises in small type.

32:34

With a perverse ingenuity, he twisted everything to his own hurt. He applied the cheering words to others, the woeful words to himself.

32:45

Spurgeon wrote about this as well. Here's how he described the awful turmoil of that time.

32:52

He said, quote, day and night, God's hand was heavy on me. If I slept at night,

32:58

I dreamed of the bottomless pit. And when I woke up, I seemed to feel the misery I had dreamed.

33:04

Up to God's house I went. My song was but a sigh. To my chamber I retired.

33:09

And there with tears and groans, I offered up my prayer without a hope and without a refuge. For God's law was flogging me with its 10 -thonged whip, and then rubbing me with brine afterwards so that I did shake and quiver with pain and anguish.

33:27

Now, as I said, Spurgeon kept this all inside. No one who knew him was aware that he was experiencing this inner turmoil.

33:37

He didn't show any sign of it outwardly. Fullerton says this, he lived two lives.

33:44

One keen, natural, bookish, observant. The other absorbed, fearful, doubting, insurgent.

33:52

If he had spoken of his trouble, there were those around him who could perhaps have helped him out of it.

33:57

But he battled alone, hiding his thoughts from all of them, save once when he spoke to his grandfather about his fear of being a lost soul, and he was somewhat comforted for a while, but he would not believe because others believed.

34:12

He must have an assurance of his own. He would not rest until he knew. Why didn't he talk to his parents or his grandparents, whom he knew might have given him help and counsel from Scripture?

34:26

He answers that question. He explained it this way. He wrote, children are often reticent to their parents.

34:33

Often and often, I have spoke with young lads about their souls, and they've told me they could not talk to their fathers about such matters.

34:41

And I know it was so with me, he says. When I was under concern of the soul, the last persons

34:46

I should have elected to speak upon religion would have been my parents, though not from want of love for them, nor absence of love on their part, but so it was.

34:57

And he describes his frustration in those dark days. Here's another excerpt that he wrote on that same era.

35:04

He talked about this a lot, by the way. He said, while under concern of soul, I resolved that I would attend all of the places of worship in the town where I lived in order that I might find out the way of salvation.

35:17

I was willing to do anything and be anything if God would only forgive my sin. I set off, determined to go around to all the chapels, and I did go to every place of worship, but for a long time

35:30

I went in vain. I do not, however, blame the ministers. One man preached divine sovereignty.

35:37

I could hear him with pleasure, but what was that sublime truth to a poor sinner who wished to know what he must do to be saved?

35:45

There was another admirable man who always preached about the law, but what was the use of plowing up ground that needed to be sown?

35:53

Another was a practical preacher. I heard him, but it was very much like a commanding officer teaching the maneuvers of war to a set of men without feet.

36:02

What could I do? All of his exhortations were lost on me. I knew it.

36:09

I knew it was said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, but I did not know what it was to believe on Christ.

36:18

These good men all preached truths suited to many in their congregations who were spiritually minded people, but what

36:25

I wanted to know was how can I get my sins forgiven? And they never told me that. I desired to hear how a poor sinner under a sense of sin might find peace with God, and when

36:38

I went, I heard a sermon on do not be deceived, God is not mocked, which cut me up still worse and didn't bring me into rest.

36:46

I went again another day, and the text was something about the glories of the righteous, but nothing for poor me.

36:52

I was like a dog under the table, not allowed to eat of the children's food. I went time after time, and I can honestly say that I do not know that I ever went without prayer to God, and I'm sure there was not a more attentive hearer than myself in the place, for I panted and longed to understand how

37:09

I might be saved. Now, I think it's likely that Spurgeon's church -hopping probably exposed him to some really bad preaching.

37:20

He doesn't explain why he didn't go with his dad and hear his dad preach. He never explains that, but he is careful not to lay the blame on the preachers.

37:31

You heard him say, you know, what they preached was good, but it was all good for other people, and they never got to the really good part of the gospel, but in another place, he wrote this.

37:41

Quote, when for the first time I received the gospel to my soul's salvation,

37:46

I thought that I had never really heard it before, and I began to think that the preachers to whom I had listened had not truly preached it, but on looking back,

37:55

I'm inclined to believe that I had heard the gospel fully preached many hundreds of times before, and that this was the difference, that this time, then

38:06

I heard it as though I heard it not, and this time, when I did hear it, the message may not have been any more clear itself than it had been at former times, but this time, the power of the

38:17

Holy Spirit was present to open my ear and to guide the message to my heart. His conversion story is pretty well known.

38:27

It occurred in the most unlikely circumstances. One morning while Spurgeon was in this phase of sampling various churches, a terrible snowstorm virtually shut that little town down.

38:39

The town is Colchester. It's in Essex in England, and that would be east of London towards the

38:48

British coast. I've been to Colchester. It's a larger town now than it was then, but the town was frozen literally by this snowstorm, and most people didn't even come out.

39:01

The date can be determined with absolute precision. It was January 6th of 1850, and one of the worst snowstorms on record, and it became absolutely worst just as Spurgeon left to try to make his way to church, and he records what happened.

39:19

Quote, I was going to a certain place of worship. When I could go no further,

39:24

I turned down a side street, and I came to a little primitive Methodist chapel.

39:31

This is a picture of the chapel as it appears in Spurgeon's, did

39:36

I go one too far? No. This is a picture of the chapel as it appears in Spurgeon's autobiography.

39:43

It's actually tucked in behind this other building so that as you walk by on the sidewalk, it's really not perfectly obvious that there's even a church back there.

39:54

It was a remarkable providence that Spurgeon found this place when he did at the peak of a blinding snowstorm.

40:01

He didn't go there because he knew there was a church. He turned down that little sidewalk on the side because he was trying to get out of the heavy wind and blinding snowstorm.

40:12

I have been to this chapel. It looks exactly the same today. That's a picture of it, and you can compare the two.

40:21

You see the false peaked roof over the entryway and the distinctive shape of the upper windows, and once you get inside, it looks the same on the inside as well, except that the pews are gone, and they've set up chairs instead, and you can see on the side over there to your left side, there's a plaque on the wall.

40:42

That is a commemorative monument that was installed five years after Spurgeon died in 1897.

40:49

He died in 1892. In 1897, they put this plaque up. Here's what it looks like in real life.

40:55

It says, near this spot on 6th January, 1850, Pastor C .H. Spurgeon found peace through Jesus Christ as described in his own words, and then it quotes from a sermon

41:06

Spurgeon preached in the New Park Street pulpit in London exactly six years to the day after his conversion.

41:14

You think about that, it's pretty remarkable as well. He's converted, accidentally walking into this church, and six years later to the day, he is preaching to the largest

41:25

Baptist congregation in London. Shows what a remarkable person he was and how quickly he matured.

41:33

This was also the first anniversary of his ministry in London. He had been pastor of that church for a full year when he gave this sermon.

41:41

Here's what the plaque says in Spurgeon's own words. Seeking rest and finding none, I stepped within the house of God and sat there, afraid to look upward lest I should be utterly cut off and lest his fierce wrath should consume me.

41:54

The minister rose in his pulpit, and as I have done this morning, read this text. Look unto me and be saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am

42:02

God and there is none else. He says, I looked at that moment, the grace of faith was vouchsafed to me in the selfsame instant, and now

42:12

I think I can say with truth, ever since by faith I saw the stream, his flowing wounds supply, redeeming love has been my theme and it shall be till I die.

42:24

Spurgeon continues with his testimony. He says, in that chapel, there may have been a dozen or 15 people.

42:30

I had heard of the primitive Methodists, how they sang so loudly that they made people's heads ache, but that didn't matter to me.

42:40

He said, I wanted to know how I might be saved, and if they could tell me that, I didn't care how much they made my head ache.

42:47

And here's how he describes the service that morning. He says, the minister didn't come that morning, he was snowed up,

42:53

I suppose. At last, a very thin looking man, a shoemaker or a tailor or something of that sort, went up to the pulpit to preach.

43:03

Spurgeon says, now, it is well that preachers should be instructed, but this man was really stupid.

43:11

He was obliged to stick to his text for the simple reason that he had little else to say.

43:18

The text was, look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth. Spurgeon says, he didn't even pronounce the words rightly, but that didn't matter.

43:27

There was, I thought, a glimpse of hope for me in that text. The preacher began this way.

43:33

My dear friends, this is a very simple text indeed. It says, look. Now, look and don't take a great deal of pains.

43:41

It ain't lifting your foot or your finger, it's just look. Well, a man needn't go to college to learn to look.

43:48

You may be the biggest fool, and yet you can look. A man needn't be worth 1 ,000 a year to be able to look.

43:54

Anyone can look, even a child can look. But the text says, look unto me.

44:00

I, he says, Spurgeon says, in broad Essex, I won't try to imitate the accent because I'm not good at that.

44:10

But he says, many of you are looking to yourselves, but it's no use looking there. You'll never find any comfort in yourselves.

44:17

Some look to God the Father. No, look to him by and by. Jesus Christ says, look unto me.

44:24

Some of you say, we must wait for the spirits working. You have no business with that just now.

44:30

Look to Christ. The text says, look unto me. And Spurgeon says, then the good man followed up his text in this way.

44:38

Look unto me, I am sweat and great drops of blood. Look unto me, I am hanging on the cross.

44:44

Look unto me, I am dead and buried. Look unto me, I rise again. Look unto me, I ascend to heaven.

44:50

Look unto me, I am sitting at the Father's right hand. Oh, poor sinner, look unto me, look unto me.

44:58

And Spurgeon says, when he had gone to about that length and managed to spin out 10 minutes or so, he was at the end of his tether.

45:07

And Spurgeon says, then he looked at me under the gallery. And I dare say, with so few present, he knew me to be a stranger.

45:14

And just fixing his eyes on me as if he knew all my heart, he said, young man, you look very miserable.

45:24

Well, I did, Spurgeon says, but I hadn't been accustomed to having remarks made from the pulpit on my personal appearance before.

45:33

However, Spurgeon says, it was a good blow and it struck right home. He continued, you look miserable and you will always be miserable.

45:42

Miserable in life, miserable in death, if you don't obey my text. But if you obey now, this moment, you will be saved.

45:53

And then lifting up his hand, Spurgeon says, he shouted as only a primitive Methodist could do, young man, look to Jesus Christ.

46:01

Look, look, look, you have nothing to do but to look and live. Spurgeon says,

46:08

I saw at once the way of salvation. He says, I don't even know what else he said.

46:15

I didn't take much notice of it. I was so possessed with that one thought. It was like when the brazen serpent was lifted up and the people only looked and were healed.

46:25

So it was with me. I'd been waiting to do 50 things. But when I heard that one word, look, what a charming word it seemed to me.

46:35

I looked until I almost could have looked my eyes away and there and then the cloud was gone.

46:41

The darkness rolled away and at that moment I saw the sun. And I could have risen at that instant and sung with the most enthusiastic of them about the precious blood of Christ and the simple faith which looks only to him.

46:54

And that somebody had told me this before. Trust Christ and you shall be saved.

47:02

Spurgeon said his burden was immediately lifted. He was filled with such a joy he had never known.

47:09

He said, I thought I could dance all the way home. I could understand what John Bunyan meant when he declared that he wanted to tell the crows on the plowed land all about his conversion.

47:20

He was too full to hold. He must tell somebody. Here's a bit from Spurgeon's written testimony that I want to read because it sums up the gospel so well.

47:33

He says, I've always considered with Luther and Calvin that the sum and the substance of the gospel lies in that word substitution.

47:43

Christ standing in the stead of man. If I understand the gospel, it's this. I deserve to be lost forever.

47:50

The only reason I should not be damned is that Christ was punished in my stead and there is no need to execute a sentence twice for sin.

47:59

On the other hand, I know that I cannot enter heaven unless I have a perfect righteousness. I'm absolutely certain that I'll never have a perfect righteousness of my own because I find sin every day.

48:10

But then Christ had a perfect righteousness and he said, there, poor sinner, take my garment and put it on and you shall stand before God as if you were

48:19

Christ and I will stand before God as if I had been the sinner. I will suffer in the sinner's stead and you will be rewarded for works which you did not do but I did for you.

48:31

Spurgeon says, I find it very convenient every day to come to Christ as a sinner. Just like I came at the first.

48:39

You are no saint, says the devil. Well, if I'm not, I'm a sinner and Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.

48:47

So sink or swim, I go to him. Other hope have I none. By looking to him,

48:53

I received all the faith which inspired me with confidence in his grace and the word that first drew my soul, look unto me, still rings its clarion note in my ears.

49:05

There I once found conversion and there I shall forever find refreshing and renewal.

49:13

Spurgeon began preaching almost immediately after his conversion. As I said, he was converted on January 6th, 1850.

49:22

Exactly five years and one day later, he preached his first sermon as pastor of the congregation that he would shepherd until the day he died.

49:31

He never attended any university or seminary. He seems to have sprung full grown into Christian maturity as both a preacher and a theologian.

49:41

But the truth is there were many circumstances arranged by divine providence that made

49:46

Spurgeon what he was. There was his father's and his grandfather's influence, of course.

49:54

And there were all those Puritan works that he had begun reading even as a child. But none of that fully explains

50:02

Spurgeon's life and ministry, how extraordinary it was. Ephesians 4 says that evangelists, pastors, and teachers are gifts from Christ to the church.

50:14

And Charles Spurgeon was quite simply a gift from Christ, a special gift from Christ to his church during a time when the church desperately needed a voice like that, tireless, bold, uncompromising, full of wisdom and with a deep understanding and abiding love for scripture and a burning passion to see souls saved.

50:39

And as we're going to see, Spurgeon stood firm in an era when other leading pastors all around him were beginning to sell out for modernism.

50:49

It was the beginning, the middle of his ministry marked really that era, the beginning of one of the worst apostasies since the

51:00

Protestant Reformation. And he ministered through it. By the end of his death, by the end of his life, time of his death, he was totally spent.

51:11

He was tired, he was discouraged, he was burdened with the wish that he could do more.

51:17

And yet I believe his greatest and most enduring legacy has been to generations, including ours, who can see clearly that he was right to fight the fights that he fought, that his voice stands out in the 19th century as the one voice we most need to listen to.

51:39

Many have learned from both his teaching and his example, and if the Lord delays his return,

51:45

I think that will continue for many generations yet to come. Now, in our next session, we're going to talk about what he is best known and most remembered for, namely his preaching.

51:59

We'll take that up in the next hour. I have time for questions? All right, go for it.

52:05

Any questions? And this time I'll repeat your question because they want it for the, yes, sir. Yes, yes, the question is, is it true that Spurgeon struggled with bouts of depression?

52:22

Yes, it is true, and in fact, that was a chronic issue with him from the earliest point in his ministry, an incident that we won't have time to talk much about, but when his congregation outgrew the original building in London, and before they had the

52:39

Metropolitan Tabernacle Building built, they met in various places, large auditoriums, and so one of the places he met was called the

52:47

Surrey Garden Music Hall. It was in the middle of a large zoological park,

52:55

I think it was, or at least botanical park. Now that location is, I think, a soccer stadium, but it was a large, very carefully maintained botanical park that was open to the public, and in the middle of it was this massive auditorium.

53:12

I think it had like three balconies, three galleries, and it seated something close to 10 ,000 people, and he began, he moved his services there, and on the very first Sunday, he preached there.

53:25

Some people who wanted to do him harm showed up, and as the service was underway, before he got up to preach even, and I think it was during one of the prayers, they began this coordinated effort in several of the places around to yell fire, the galleries are falling, and there was a panic, and people stampeded out, and several people were killed.

53:49

Spurgeon himself collapsed from the sheer trauma of it and lay unconscious for a couple of days.

53:56

It was a serious trauma to him, and it left him with a lasting, fear isn't the right word, but a tendency to depression that he struggled with for the rest of his life, and you wouldn't know it from reading what he wrote or reading what he preached, but there were times when just a sense of depression kept him from doing almost anything.

54:20

He persevered through it, and I think some of his, he said this as well, that some of his best sermons, some of his most encouraging sermons were sermons he prepared and preached during those times of depression.

54:34

The Lord definitely used that, but it was a painful thing for him that I don't think he ever quite got over.

54:40

As you read the letters he wrote towards the end of his life, you can tell that he's very melancholy and discouraged and depressed.

54:49

You can't necessarily tell that from reading his sermons, which is a remarkable thing. He also suffered from some severe and chronic illnesses.

54:58

He had gout. I used to read about this as a young man and think, I don't quite understand that, but he said, somebody asked him to describe the pains of gout, and he said, imagine putting your hand in a vice and having the strongest person you know tighten it down as tight as it could be, and he says, can you imagine that?

55:17

And the guy says, yeah. He says, now give that handle another crank and tighten it, that's gout.

55:24

So gout was a, he had a constant pain from that. Gout tends to make your toes hurt.

55:31

And he sometimes had to be helped into the pulpit. But once he got up to preach, you wouldn't know that anything afflicted him.

55:41

He could be the sickest, weakest state that you can imagine, and people around him said,

55:48

I don't know how he's gonna be able to preach, but once he got in the pulpit, the strength came and you would never know there was anything wrong with him.

55:55

He also had Bright's disease. I forget exactly what that is, but it was complications of Bright's disease, gout, and the stress from the downgrade controversy that ultimately took his life.

56:10

There's a book recently written, I don't have the title in my head so I can't tell you, but you can read all of the early biographies of Spurgeon, and they don't mention his depression much, because I think it was the

56:21

Victorian style when you did a biography, not to say much about the negative things.

56:27

But recently, there's been some research done into how he handled depression, what he said about it.

56:33

And there's also a lecture, if you want a quick treatment of it, John Piper does these annual biographical sketches of people, and about 20 years ago or so, he did one on Spurgeon, and he talked a bit about Spurgeon's battle with depression.

56:53

So if you can find that online, that may give you some information about it.

56:58

But yeah, that's one of the outstanding things about Spurgeon that I think is an important factor in his life that many of the biographies really don't touch on, his struggles with depression.

57:12

Other questions? Are we done? All right. Oh, yes, sir.

57:18

Sorry, I didn't see. Yeah, Luther, Luther definitely did.

57:29

He was almost manic depressive. He also had, I wouldn't call it hallucinations, but he had a very active sense of the devil's attacks on him, so that he famously threw his inkwell at the devil, and he has some things in Table Talk that aren't even quotable about how he dealt with the devil, you know?

57:53

But I gather with his personality that he probably also had periods of time where he was just morose and depressed.

58:04

Lloyd -Jones, I haven't read anything about him personally struggling with depression, but he was a medical doctor, and so he was very concerned about the tendency to depression, and he wrote a great book for people who are depressed called

58:17

Spiritual Depression. It's one of his best -known works,

58:23

I think. Whether he himself personally struggled with depression, if he did,

58:29

I'm not familiar with any stories about that. All right?