Great Christian Biographies with John Piper: Charles Spurgeon 1

Psalm 16 as a Prayer for Spurgeon and His Ministry

Let's pray together. Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge. I say to the Lord, you are my Lord. I have no good apart from you. As for the saints in the land, those gathered here, they are my delight.

Those who choose another God, multiply their sorrows, their libations of blood I will not pour out or take their names upon my lips. The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places, including this place tonight.

Yes, I have a beautiful inheritance. I bless the Lord who gives me counsel in this night. Also, the Lord instructs me to keep the Lord always before me because he's at my right hand. I will not be moved.

You show me the path of life in your presence is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Would you bestow those pleasures on this people through the life and ministry of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, I pray.

Would you strengthen this seminary? Would you make this Nicole Institute of Baptist Studies a stunning success in raising up reformed Baptist lovers of Christ and of his church and of the world? So do these things and exceedingly more than I can think to ask.

I pray in Jesus name. Amen. So thank you, Don, for your kind introduction and for the invitation to be here and thank all of you for coming. It is a huge pleasure to talk about Spurgeon. That third point, at least, is true, that I have no problems delighting in the preparations of a message on Spurgeon.

Why Spurgeon Loved Christians Beyond His Own Denomination

Spurgeon was the kind of Calvinist who would have celebrated the founding of the Nicole Institute of Baptist Studies at a non-Baptist reformed theological seminary. And the reason I know he was. Is because he himself founded a college and appointed George Rogers as the first principal of his pastor's college, who was a Congregationalist pedobaptist.

So I know he would have been happy about me being here and would have approved of my approval of this institute at a school like this. Spurgeon was a Baptist. But like some of us and maybe like Roger Nicole, I don't know.

I never talked to him about this, though we met a few times. He spoke at our conference once upon a time. Like some of us. We have not all found our deepest soul brothers in our own denomination. He put it like this, Spurgeon.

If I disagree with a man on ninety nine points, but happen to be one with him in baptism, this can never furnish such a ground of unity as I have with another with whom I believe in ninety nine points and only happen to differ upon one ordinance.

I have found that to be true. That many of my deepest soul brothers have not been a part of my own denomination and therefore, relationally, spiritually, I find this kind of relationship life giving and approve of it.

I am glad I am not restricted to Baptist circles for finding brothers and sisters whose instincts are so like my own that we can pick up the conversation almost anywhere. In fact, in the late 1880s, during the downgrade controversy over liberalism in the Baptist Union in England, it was the evangelical Anglicans who befriended and supported the beleaguered Spurgeon who was being vilified by his more liberal Baptist brothers.

There was in Spurgeon's life, and I would like there to be in mine, a kind of robust, joyful, serious, Christ exalting, atonement, cherishing, God centeredness that made him feel a kinship with anyone with those same instincts.

Spurgeon’s Calvinism as a Full-Blooded Biblical Gospel

Here's how he described his Calvinism. To me, Calvinism means that the placing of the eternal God at the head of all things. I look at everything through its relationship to God's glory. I see God first and man far down the list.

Brethren, if we live in sympathy with God, we delight to hear him say, I am God and there is none else. So you either like people like that or you don't. I do. I hear somebody talk like that, I'm just moving their direction.

And there are others who move the opposite direction. They don't want anybody to talk like that. That's not their language. That's not their instincts. That's not their feeling. It's just not where they are.

And that's sad when the people that you feel like you should be close to seem to react like that to a statement like Spurgeon's. He was through and through a Calvinist, but not out of allegiance to a system.

Not out of allegiance to Calvin, not out of allegiance to institutes, not out of allegiance to a tradition, not out of allegiance to a denomination. But because he thought Calvinism, as he understood it, was a poor name for full-blooded biblical gospel.

Here's what he said. Puritanism, Protestantism, Calvinism are poor names, which the world has given to a great and glorious faith, the doctrine of Paul, the apostle, the gospel of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

And many great reformed theologians have talked that way, not embracing some marginal, eccentric system, but rather drawing out the fundamental implications of the gospel to their fullness and their depth makes one a Calvinist.

He believed and I believe. That's why he was open and unashamed to preach the whole counsel of God, even if he was called a Calvinist or it was called Calvinism. It was, he said, the gospel. He said, people come to hear me for one thing.

I preached to them a Calvinist creed and a Puritan morality. That's what they want. That's what they'll get. If they want something else, they go elsewhere. And a lot of them came. He was so riveted. And if you've read any of his sermons, you know, he was a bee buzzing around one light.

He was so riveted on the substitutionary atonement through the cross and the supremacy of Christ that he could smell the aroma of the new birth in many places outside Calvinist circles. Far be it from me, he said, to imagine that Zion contains none but Calvinistic Christians within her walls or that there are none saved who do not hold our views.

I rejoice to confess that I feel sure there are some of God's people even in the Romish church. On the first Sunday of the newly built Metropolitan Tabernacle, holding 5 ,600 people, on the first Sunday of his moving in to that, it was 1861, he was 27 years old.

He had been at that church since he was 19. It was called New Park Street Church. On the first Sunday in the new building with a new name for the church, he said this, I would propose that the subject of the ministry in this house, as long as this platform shall stand and as long as this house shall be frequented by worshipers, shall be the person of Jesus Christ.

I am never ashamed to avow myself a Calvinist. I do not hesitate to take the name Baptist, but if any man asks me my creed, I reply, it is Jesus Christ. So I think he would be pleased with what's going on here and the founding of the Nicole Institute of Baptist Studies in a seminary with those instincts.

And my prayer is that it would even serve symbiotically that the influence of God centeredness and Godward piety would go both directions and thus the school and the institute be preserved till Jesus comes.

That would be a great work of grace. Let me give you one biblical warrant for talking about Spurgeon because he would be uncomfortable with this. He just said, Jesus Christ is my creed. So why are you talking about me, Piper?

You should be talking about Jesus. Well, relax, Charles, because the Bible that you believe in gives me warrant for what I'm doing here. And you might think I would go to Hebrews 11, which is where I go by default to justify loving Christian biography and reading about saints and writing about them.

That's a great place to go, but I'm not going to go there. I'm going to go to Philippians 317. I'll read you this verse. Brothers, join in imitating me and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.

Now, that's an interesting verse. It doesn't say, keep your eyes on Christ, which, of course, is right, you should. It doesn't even say, keep your eyes on Paul who keeps his eyes on Christ. It says, keep your eyes on, quote, those who walk according to the example you have in us, in Paul.

So, follow it. There's Christ who should be watched, trusted, loved, hoped in, treasured, and imitated. And then there's Paul who imitates Christ. First Corinthians 11, 1. And then there's those who imitate Paul watching him.

And then there's the Philippians who are to watch them. Christ, Paul, them, Philippians. So, we got three generations, Paul telling that one out there not just to watch Christ, not just to watch him, but to watch those who watch him.

I have zero reason to think that's a bad idea after the third generation. You with me? That, I think, should just be extrapolated out so that wherever you see a life lived in the power of Christ, according to the word of Christ, for the glory of Christ, watch it.

Watch it. Don't ignore it. The Bible says, watch it. So, Mr. Spurgeon, if you're upset about me watching you here and helping others watch you, I'm going to tell you to read your Bible. That's all I want to do with you here.

I want to watch him for a few minutes with you. And whatever Paul expected to happen in Philippians 3 .17, by watching those who are watching Paul, who's watching Jesus, I want that to happen to you. Whatever Paul was after there, Spurgeon is one of those lives worth watching.

Spurgeon's Life, Conversion, and Ministry Timeline

Born, he was born June 19, 1834, in Kelvedon, Essex, England, the first of 17 children. Oh, one of you women should give a great lecture on his mother. Seriously, she was astonishing woman and is worthy of another talk.

So, leave that to you. Maybe. If you don't do it, I might. Converted at age 16, ironically, being driven by a snowstorm into a Methodist chapel and listening to a lay Methodist preacher. Isn't God great?

I love it. Don't you get your back up, Mr. Calvinist, you know. I'll convert people with Methodists. Yes, you will. Like John Wesley, there's a few thousand people converted and blessed. So, got his start at age 16 in Christ in a most wonderful way.

And a year later, he's a pastor. This is crazy. At Water Beach Church, just outside Cambridge, went to it with Noel back in 2006. Got a picture taken in front of the stone that he laid by coming back later.

He only pastored there a year. And then he moves, when he's 19, to London as the pastor of New Park Street Church. And he's there the rest of his life. Preaches, what, 38 years or so there. You'll notice in that little summary, zero formal theological education.

So, sorry, RTS, you're not needed. Spurgeon is one of a million. Nobody should imitate Spurgeon because he's... You'll hear why in a minute. No formal theological education. And probably the most well-read pastor in England.

In 1906, William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, bought his library of 5 ,103 volumes for $2 ,500. Some really stupid person in Britain let it go. I mean, in 2006, Midwestern Baptist Seminary bought it from William Jewell College for $400 ,000.

And it was sad. That's a sad story that a college would no longer be interested in having the library of Charles Spurgeon. So, if you want to go see it, that's where it is in Kansas City, Missouri. And they do have it on display.

I say that just to remind you that here's a man with no formal theological education who, in this room, would put every one of us into the shade with regard to theological awareness, both historically and for his day, probably contemporaneously.

Married Susanna in 1856, two years after he became the pastor there in London. Had two sons, Charles and Thomas. Thomas became the pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle. After him, an impossible job, right, to fill Charles Spurgeon's shoes, his wife became an invalid.

And in the last decades of their life together, she scarcely ever heard him preach, though there was hardly a more devoted wife in serving his efforts in so many ways. Another story that should be told of another great woman in his life.

He died after 38 years of preaching at the age of 57 in 1892, four years before my grandmother was born. And I just say that to give you some sense of generational proximity. Mamone, my grandmother, born four years after Charles Spurgeon died.

He's considered by many, as you know, to be one of the greatest preachers since the days of the apostles. Preached over 600 times before he was 20 years old. I became a pastor when I was 34 and had preached 15 times.

Totally green and unprepared. And the church was very kind to me. In those pre-radio, pre-television, pre-internet days, his sermons sold 20 ,000 copies a week and were simultaneously translated or quickly translated into 20 foreign languages.

Sixty-three volumes now, you can buy them, contain his lifetime of preaching, which is equal to the ninth, 27 volume, ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica and is the largest set of books by a single author in the history of the world.

And he died at 57. That's 10 years ago for me. I'm 67. What am I doing? There was no microphone, electricity, and he spoke to be heard by 5 ,600 people week in and week out. I remember one time we had a picnic with 200 people and a generator running in the background to make a microphone for me and the generator died.

And I had to do Whitfield or Spurgeon. It was hard, 200 people. It was hard to be heard by 200 people. So that's why he died at 57, probably, one of the reasons anyway. He preached at the Surrey Gardens to 20 ,000 people and slept for 24 hours straight.

He was so exhausted. That's the kind of musculature that's going in to throw your voice out to 20 ,000 people. It's two or three days work in an hour to do that. I couldn't do it. I couldn't scream my lungs out for a minute and be heard by 20 ,000 people.

So you just get an impression what these men who labored before this microphone went through to be heard. Charles, his son, you might think is a biased witness to his dad's excellence, but also remember that there are many preacher's kids who are as critical of their dads as they are biased toward them.

And therefore, I do not discount this son's testimony. There was no one who could preach like my father. In inexhaustible variety, witty wisdom, vigorous proclamation, loving entreaty, lucid teaching with a multitude of other qualities, he must, at least in my opinion, ever be regarded as the prince of preachers.

That's not a bad title for Charles Spurgeon. He was extraordinary. None of us will ever come close to being like Charles Spurgeon. We should not be paralyzed by that. I use one of his texts in my preaching class, and I tell these guys, please, please do not measure yourself by Charles Spurgeon.

It'll put you out of the ministry so fast. So we just kind of stand back and admire, you know, like you admire a star or something, I mean, in the sky, and don't try to be a supernova. His abilities, his gifts were so remarkable and his accomplishments so many that we can scarcely list them.

Spurgeon's Love of Truth and the Need for Doctrine in Preaching

So what I want to do in the remaining time is to talk about two of his qualities. This is very frustrating, right, to take somebody with a life like this and put it into 45 minutes and do two of 70 or 80 qualities that could be talked about.

And my prayer now as I give you these two qualities and unpack them from his own experience is that they will be instilled in the pastors trained at the RTS and Nicole Institute of Baptist Studies. So that's my prayer as I'm thinking, you know, these two things I'm going to talk about for the remaining time.

I want that to happen for young pastors or older pastors. Number one, Spurgeon loved God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated truth and exalted over it in the pulpit. He loved truth, and in the pulpit you could tell.

He defined the work of a preacher like this, to know truth as it should be known, to love it as it should be loved, and then to proclaim it in the right spirit and in proper proportions. Close quote. That's a great statement about what preaching is.

He said to his students, to be an effective preacher, you must be sound theologians. And he warned, those who do away with Christian doctrine are, whether they are aware of it or not, the worst enemies of Christian living.

And that's why many people put Christian doctrine aside. Because they want to emphasize life, living, practicality. In Spurgeon's opinion, that's behavioral suicide. The doctrine feeds life. And over time, when doctrine goes away, life goes away, holiness goes away, mission goes away.

Two years before he died, he gave an illustration of how crucial truth is in the ministry, and he revealed some of his humor that marked his ministry in a very serious way. Hear the tension? I intend it.

He was a very funny man. And when he was accused of being too funny one time, he said, Ma 'am, if you knew how much I held back. And I know exactly what he's talking about. You know, you're preaching along, and something really funny comes into your head.

But you know, it doesn't belong here. And a lot of pastors don't know how to control themselves. And so they think if they can get the people laughing like you're laughing, that they're doing good. They're having successful communication.

Well, maybe. You might not be communicating anything. So here's what he says. To illustrate the importance of truth. Some excellent brethren seem to think more of the life than the truth. Life over truth.

For when I warn them that the enemy has poisoned the children's bread, they answer, Dear brother, we are sorry to hear it. And to counteract the evil, we will open the window and give the children fresh air.

Yes, open the window and give them fresh air by all means. But at the same time, this ought you to have done and not left the other undone. Arrest the poisoners. And open the windows, too. While men go on preaching false doctrine, you may talk as much as you will about deepening their spiritual life.

But you will fail in it. So one of the things I love about RTS is that I hear them getting this life doctrine interplay and how crucial they both are. I will testify, I just finished my ministry at Bethlehem on Easter.

So 33 years, pastor in the same church, preached my last sermon on Easter Sunday evening. And I can testify now after, say, just take the last two months of this transition process. My successor is now in place.

I went online to listen to him preach last Saturday night. I'm loving what God is doing at Bethlehem. My experience in the last just two months is to testify that the most common expression of gratitude coming my way from my people who have come up to me.

We have this big service coming this Sunday night to say bye-bye, John. But up until now, the most common expression of thankfulness has been from people who say that the storms of suffering in their lives have not overturned the boat of their faith because of the ballast of God-centered truth in their boat owing to God-centered preaching.