Session 6: Q&A

Kootenai Church

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00:00

All right, we're gonna start our question and answer over the lunchtime here, so I've received some very good questions from the audience.

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All right, here's the first one. Would you ever name your child

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Spurgeon? Because my dad, who will remain nameless, wanted to name one of his, my sibling Spurgeon, but my mom vetoed him.

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I think we all wish that she would have stayed out of it, because Spurgeon would be a sick name. Signed, Aiden.

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Yeah, no, in fact, I know kids named

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Spurgeon, and I agree, it's a sick name. In the sense, they mean sick.

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Did Spurgeon ever write a commentary on his favorite book, Pilgrim's Progress? And did he ever detail if Christian's conversion was at the fleeing of the city of destruction, the passing of the under -wicked gate, or losing his burden?

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He never wrote a commentary on it. He talked about it for a long time, frequently, so I'd have to actually do a search to find if he talked about those specific episodes in Pilgrim's Progress.

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If so, he probably didn't say much about it. He usually mentioned it in passing, because he assumed that so many

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Victorian listeners were so familiar with the book, he didn't have to explain it much.

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My former pastor, I've been privileged to be close to and mentored by two really good expositors.

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Before John MacArthur was my pastor, Warren Wiersbe was my pastor. And he and I were good friends.

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I learned a lot from him. But Pilgrim's Progress was one of his favorite books, as well, and he wrote an annotated edition of Pilgrim's Progress that I value highly.

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I used to read Pilgrim's Progress and think, a lot of this doesn't make sense to me, I'm not sure it's doctrinally sound and all that, but Wiersbe's sort of edited, annotated edition really helped me understand the allegory, and it's worth getting if you can find it.

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I'm long out of print, I think, but I got it not long ago, about sometime within the past year,

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I realized my copy had gone missing. Somebody borrowed it and didn't return it. So I found a used copy on Amazon and ordered it.

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So it's possible to get that. If you're really interested in Pilgrim's Progress, I do recommend

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Warren Wiersbe's annotated edition. What interests did Spurgeon outside his preaching and writing?

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What was the question? What interests did Spurgeon outside of preaching and writing? Oh, you know, he had lots of interests, because, and you can see this as you listen, he read everything, talked about everything, he could speak intelligently on practically any subject.

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He was, I think, keenly interested in politics, so he read the morning news and knew all about current events in England, and often preached sermons on special occasions, usually not happy occasions, but if there was a disaster, like one of my favorite

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Spurgeon sermons is a sermon he preached about God's providence and God's goodness, even in the midst of disaster, after two trains had collided in a tunnel in England, in a tunnel, so not only was this devastating death, it was almost impossible for rescuers to get in there and help people.

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It was a tragic thing. And then there was the uprising in India that happened while Spurgeon was pastoring in London.

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That was the event where he spoke at the, what is it, the glass?

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Yeah, the Crystal Palace. That was a huge event that was organized by the

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British government to, as a day of fasting and repentance for the cruelties of the

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British army that had led to the Indian uprising. It's a very interesting thing, and Spurgeon preached on repentance, and it was an interesting story about that, too.

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He knew he was going to preach in the largest crowd he'd ever gathered inside a building, 23 ,000 people.

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And he went there the day before as workmen were building the soundboard and the platform on which he would speak, and he wanted to test the sound, and so he got on this platform under the soundboard, and he said, behold the

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Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And there was a workman up in the ceiling fixing some lights or doing something who was so convicted by this voice out of nowhere that said, behold the

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Lamb of God, he went home and began to read scripture and was converted, you know, and years later sought

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Spurgeon out and said, do you remember that day? And of course, Spurgeon remembers everything, so he remembered the verse he quoted, even, and told the story, so that was pretty interesting.

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But go back to the original question. He was what I would call a polymath. He was good at everything, he knew about everything, and I think any subject would have interested him.

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He was a sedentary man, he spent all his time sitting, reading, preparing sermons, and he even talked about this, that his lack of exercise probably made his health problems lots worse.

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But it wasn't that he was lazy, or I say sedentary, it makes him sound lazy, but he was a very hard worker.

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It's just that all the work he did involved intellectual effort, and sitting and reading, and I can't think of a subject he wasn't interested in.

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Okay, so rapid fire, what did Spurgeon do to rest? He smoked a cigar, and yeah.

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That's okay, we can leave it there, people would be happy with that answer. What was one of Spurgeon's favorite hymns?

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I don't know, that's a question I don't know the answer to. If he had a favorite hymn, he quoted so many, and he knew so many,

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I wouldn't know. Do you have three favorite quotes from Spurgeon? No, it would be impossible to boil it down to three.

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For all the years I was blogging, on Sundays, instead of writing a blog,

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I tried to write a blog or publish something every day, and I worked with two or three other guys, so I didn't have to do it myself every day.

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But Sunday, my assignment was, put up a selection from Spurgeon. So if you do a

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Google search for your weekly dose of Spurgeon, I have posted,

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I don't know, probably seven or eight years worth of every single Sunday, a quote from a Spurgeon sermon.

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Some of them are short, some of them are long, but those are my favorite Spurgeon quotes, and there are dozens of them.

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What were some of Spurgeon's weaknesses and struggles aside from depression? Weaknesses.

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Well, I honestly don't know of any character flaws in the man, and that may simply be because, like I said,

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Victorian biographies really didn't focus on negative things, so I don't know of any.

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I know he had a great marriage. His kids grew up, both of them, to be pastors. He had two sons, twins.

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They were both pastors, and in fact, I was privileged to correspond with his great -grandson who died a few years ago, so now

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I don't know any more heirs of Spurgeon, but right down through his great -grandson, his family were believers.

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So I think he was kind of a model in every way, a model preacher, a model pastor, probably a very good father, a loving husband whose wife absolutely doted on him, so I don't know of any character flaws.

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Are there any areas of doctrine or theology where Spurgeon was off or unbiblical? That was the last question on this card, but I'll also tag in with that a question that I had prepared for you and ask it this way.

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Obviously, Phil Johnson and Charles Spurgeon would not agree on every point of doctrine and theology, so if Spurgeon were alive today and you could sit down and persuade him to change his mind on the biggest issue where you would disagree, what would that issue be and how would you present your argument to him?

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Well, A, I wouldn't be able to persuade him to change his mind. I don't know of anybody who ever did. B, I wouldn't volunteer for a debate with him either because he had that photographic memory and he could quote scripture like obscure passages of scripture as easily as I can quote movie quotes.

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John 3 .16? Yeah, whatever. So I wouldn't want to tangle with him in a debate, but the one issue that I would love to discuss with him and I just probably most strongly would disagree with him on, this is

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Sabbatarianism. I understand it because to this day, most of my

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British evangelical friends are still pretty strong Sabbatarianism, Sabbatarians.

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They believe that Sunday is the Christian Sabbath. He called it the Sabbath. I just don't see any grounds for that in scripture and so I hesitate to use that kind of language or make the sort of rules that Jesus scolded the

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Pharisees for being legalistic about and apply those things to the Lord's day. So that would be the issue

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I suppose that he and I, the other one would be his views on church history and Baptist successionism, the idea that all these heretical groups were actually

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Baptists in disguise. It's interesting that he would have that perspective since that's the argument that Rome makes and he was so virulent against the

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Popery of Rome and yet Rome tries to trace its lineage all the way back to Peter. It's interesting that he would fall into the same sort of logical error with Baptists.

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That's exactly the point I would make with him. Why do you think it's important to trace a line of succession when in fact scripture says, for example, that the

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Holy Spirit is like the wind. You can't tell where it blows, where it comes from. What makes you think that a clear line of succession is going to be traceable like that?

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You can't even do that with Old Testament faithful people. They pop up here and there and the

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Davidic throne was derailed within two generations and hasn't been restored yet.

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So why do you think a line of succession is important? I would ask him those questions. I think he held that view loosely.

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I don't think it was a dogma that he would've preached but he wrote enough things to say that I think he was convinced that John the

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Baptist was a Baptist Baptist and that Baptistic theology was.

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Let's get Baptists in his name. Of course. Yeah. There are a couple of unusual instances in Spurgeon's ministry in which he appeared to have some knowledge of details in someone's life in his congregation that he did not know beforehand.

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One man he called out publicly regarding a particular sin and charismatics at times often point to this to support their theology.

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Can you elaborate on these reports? Yeah. Yeah, there was only one incident that I knew like that but then there's another one that sort of plays into that.

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And I would've, if I had chance to maybe do twice as many sessions, I would've talked about this but when

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Spurgeon was a child living with his grandfather. We were open in 2023 if you wanna come back and do another seven.

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Nah, it's okay. You'll be tired of me. No, would you guys favor that? Yeah, there we go. Go ahead.

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Anyway, when he was a child living with his grandfather, his grandfather hosted a guest speaker named

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Richard Nill, K -N -I -L -L, K -Nill. And Richard Nill was a famous preacher at the time and he was really taken with Spurgeon as a little boy as you would be when you hear these stories of how he confronted the guy in a pub and all that.

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He was really impressed with Spurgeon and he told his grandfather, this boy is gonna grow up to be a great preacher and someday he'll preach in,

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I forget, he named a famous historic preacher and said he'll preach in his pulpit and when he does, here's the hymn

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I want him to sing. It was that specific and Spurgeon, of course, did grow up to be a famous preacher and he did preach in that guy's chapel and he sang the hymn that Richard Nill had told him and he often spoke of that as a remarkable,

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I don't know if he used the word prophecy but he sort of viewed it that way as if the

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Holy Spirit had given this man some secret insight. He would always hasten to add that that's rare and almost unheard of in Christianity and he would caution people, don't live your life by impressions.

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Don't think that every intuition you get is the Holy Spirit speaking to you.

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He even said, and these were his exact words, to do that is to live the life of a fool. So he wasn't in favor of the charismatic approach to listening for the voice of God in your head but he had had a couple of these experiences.

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The other one was famously he was talking about the sin of stealing or something like that in a sermon and he pointed in the gallery and he said, there's a man who stole a pair of gloves this week or it was something like, it had to do with gloves as I recall and it was very specific and in the area where he pointed, there was a man who had committed that sin and confessed to him later.

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It was as if you saw into my heart and called me out. I think Spurgeon regarded that as a remarkable providence, not a prophecy.

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He didn't have any, he didn't hear any voice of God or have any knowledge that this was true.

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It was something he said that actually the Lord used to convict this one particular person.

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He came up with an illustration kind of in the moment and it happened to be coincidentally exactly what that ended up.

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Yeah, it was a, what do you call it, a hypothetical thing and he just happened to wave his hand that way.

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I don't think he was pointing out a certain person. He had no knowledge that the man was up there but he found out later that that was exactly accurate.

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He regarded that as a remarkable providence as I would. I would say, was that the Lord at work in that?

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I would say, absolutely but I think there's a significant difference when the Lord uses our intuitions or inadvertent thoughts and he uses them in a way that accomplishes his will in a remarkable way.

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That's a remarkable act of providence. It's not a prophecy. It's different from prophecy and it's not, those feelings are not infallible and that's why

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Spurgeon said if you live that way, you're living the life of a fool. I have intuitions too but they're wrong far more than they are right and when they're right,

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I thank the Lord for the providence that led me in a way that worked out.

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I give God the credit for that but I wouldn't regard that as a prophecy or a special revelation from God and I think

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Spurgeon had the same view although he wasn't contending with charismatics so he didn't maybe watch his language as carefully as we would so when he talked about the

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Richard Nill episode, he might have called it a prophecy. I think he may have in one or two places but I mean.

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The Azusa streets nonsense that cropped up later is after his lifetime and not something that he would have been contending with in his age.

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He would not have been a charismatic, I promise you and in fact, when he talked about the miraculous gifts, the apostolic gifts, he was clearly a cessationist.

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He often said that those gifts are not operating anymore. Yeah, charismatics often quote him, cessationists will quote him,

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Calvinists obviously will quote him but Arminians also quote him quite prolifically which is a very odd.

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Like I said yesterday, he has published more words than any other single author in history,

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Christian history so if you're willing to ignore the context of his actual theology and take selected quotes, you can use

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Spurgeon to prove almost any claim you wanna make but you have to read him in the context of his theology and understand what he clearly taught and that's one of the issues

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I've dealt with, by the way, if you do a search for Spurgeon and prophecy and put my name in there, several times on my blog, people would bring up this idea, well,

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Spurgeon believed in prophecy and so I posted quotes from Spurgeon himself warning against this notion that God talks to you in your head and those quotes are still online so if you do a search for that, you'll find them.

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If you had to pick a name for the denomination of churches such as Grace Church, Kootenai Church or even

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Spurgeon's beliefs, what would you call it? Reformed Baptist, perhaps? I've noticed that many churches like the aforementioned tend to call themselves non -denominational but that term paints with a very wide brush.

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I've also heard the phrase Reformed Baptistic. Yeah, I'm not fond of Reformed Baptist because Reformed has a lot of baggage with it and there are people,

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I have good friends who are Reformed Presbyterians and they would say, that's a contradiction in terms.

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Reformed means you believe in a kind of covenantalism that embraces infant baptism so it's incompatible with being a

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Baptist. Historically, Calvinistic Baptists, we call them Calvinistic meaning they hold to the doctrines of grace, the five points of Calvinism.

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Historically, they've called themselves Particular Baptists and I like that although it's an odd name.

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I'm a Particular Baptist. What are you particular about? And in fact, there's another stricter sect who not only believe in the doctrines of grace and they're

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Baptists so they're Particular Baptists but they also believe in closed communion. You can't take communion in those churches unless you are a member or you have a ticket so they are

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Strict and Particular Baptists. So I love that name, Strict and Particular.

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It just describes me. Yeah, it doesn't roll off the tongue really easily.

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No, but it's me. I am both Strict and Particular. Did Charles Spurgeon have any hobbies outside the church?

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That's similar to your previous question. Just reading, reading. I mean, he read full time. Did he read any fiction books?

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I don't think so. I was curious about whether, because he was a contemporary of Dickens and I discovered that he did own a complete set of first edition works of Dickens but they didn't show any signs of having been read.

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He did occasionally make literary references to fictional people. So it wasn't that, he couldn't have been ignorant of fictional books.

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It's just, I don't think he would ever talk about it. He didn't, he wasn't a promoter of Dickens and in fact, this was something

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I was curious about because Dickens was the most famous writer in England during the same time that Spurgeon was the most famous preacher and I wondered, did they ever meet?

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Did they ever encounter each other? They knew some of the same people. They lived in the same basic neighborhood.

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They dealt with a lot of the same issues but I couldn't find any reference to Dickens in Spurgeon but I found references to Spurgeon in Dickens.

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Dickens made caricature, he didn't like Spurgeon very much apparently because he made, some of his characters are caricatures of Spurgeon.

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I'm not familiar enough with Dickens to tell you where to go to look for that but when I researched it, I found, oh, okay, so Dickens didn't have a high opinion of Spurgeon.

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If you could ask Spurgeon any one question, what would it be? If he had ever met Dickens? No, I might ask him that.

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If I only had one question to ask him, that would be a hard one.

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I don't know. I'd have to ponder that for a while because it would have to be a really good question.

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Yeah. What happened to his children and what kind of father was he? They grew up to be pastors. One of them pastored in New Zealand, founded a

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Baptist church in Auckland that's still there. It's a white wooden structure that is sort of modeled after the

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Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. It has the same Greek style of architecture and it's called the Metropolitan Tabernacle of Auckland.

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And one of them pastored the Metropolitan Tabernacle after Spurgeon died and during,

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I can't remember which is which. He had two sons, Thomas and who? No, I can't remember.

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But anyway, one of them pastored the Met Tab after Spurgeon and during his pastoral time there, it burned down, the building burned down.

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So you go there today, you see a facade that looks like, it is the facade of the building that Spurgeon preached in, but that's not the same building and it's not the same building that was rebuilt after it burnt down the first time.

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It was bombed in World War II and reduced to ruins. The whole building, except for the facade, fell into the basement and had to be rebuilt in the 1950s.

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So the building that's there today is a modern building that only its seating capacity is much smaller than it was in Spurgeon's time.

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So, but it looks like the same facade, but it isn't the same building. Was he a good father? I believe he was a good father.

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His sons were, looked to their dad as a model and followed in his footsteps. Never said a negative thing about him.

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Grew up well. His wife became an invalid shortly after the kids were born and all the biographies are silent about what the issue is.

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That lecture I mentioned by John Piper, he had done some research and found out it was a gynecological issue that left her homebound for the rest of her life.

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And she spent all her spare time sending out

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Spurgeon's books to pastors in America and England. And it's pretty common even now, if you look on eBay, you'll find a used book that was sent by Mrs.

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Spurgeon to some pastor in America. It's signed by her. There were thousands of them.

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That was her ministry. But yeah, he was a good father. As far as I know,

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I've never heard any criticism of his parenting skills, his attentiveness, or any of that.

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Besides John Knox, who were his heroes? Well, I would say George Whitefield was probably his number one hero, even over John Knox.

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And he liked John Calvin, obviously. Zwingli.

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Just trying to think who else. John Bunyan, big time. Can you explain the stand of Spurgeon's Church on instruments and music, and the reasoning why they don't allow instruments?

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Yeah, it's a pretty common view that stems from the

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Reformation in Scotland. A lot of Scottish Presbyterian churches not only believe no instruments, but they believe you shouldn't even sing hymns.

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All you should sing is metrical psalms. So they follow what's called the regulative principle, that if it's not commanded in Scripture, then it's not appropriate to do in worship.

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And they take that to the extreme of saying, the psalms, because they're inspired songs of worship, those are the only things we're permitted to sing.

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Now, they sing metrical psalms, which means they've been rewritten so that they have themes and follow patterns of thought that are similar to the psalms.

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But if you listen to the metrical psalms, they sometimes mention the name of Christ, so a lot of psalms are

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Christological and all. But they're also, Scottish metrical psalms use a kind of reverse syntax that sounds like Yoda wrote them, you know?

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The king of love, my shepherd is, you know? So they turn the syntax around.

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I like a lot of them, but they are hard to follow and understand. But Scottish Presbyterians tend to be very strict about that and know instruments, which kind of mystifies me, because Psalm 150 lists a whole orchestra full of instruments.

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It would seem to me to be authorization to use instruments in worship, but the old -fashioned strict view is you don't do that.

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And for whatever reason, that's been the policy at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, really was during Spurgeon's time.

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And I think they went through an era where they had more instruments and all that.

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But the current pastor is averse to that, let's say. I asked him once,

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I pointed out that in every church I've ever been in in Britain, the hymn book that people use has only the words, not the tunes.

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And I've never seen that in America. You get the tune and you get the music and the words together.

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And I said, that seems to me a disadvantage with the British, because if you don't know the tune, you don't know what to sing, you can't read the music.

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And you can't sing harmony. And when I said, you can't sing harmony, he kind of gasped. And he said, we wouldn't encourage people to sing harmony.

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And I said, really, why? And he said, because the whole point is to be in unison.

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And so that's his rationale. And they do have an organ there, but he is constantly reminding the organist that what you want to bring out is the melody, none of the ornate stuff.

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And I think, honestly, that if he had his way, he would get rid of the organ. Spurgeon ever meet or know

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D .L. Moody? Yes, they were friends, actually. Which was unusual, because Moody was huge in England.

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I mean, he made his fame over there. He was nobody when he left Chicago after the

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Chicago fire and went to England and began to preach there and people were so taken with his accent and the free way in which he spoke that he began to draw huge crowds and a lot of fame, but also a lot of controversy followed

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Moody. And in Scotland, particularly with these

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Scottish Presbyterians who didn't believe in musical instruments, they didn't like, he traveled with Sankey, a singer who, and the music was part of the appeal with Moody.

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And so the Scots reformed guys were outraged and Spurgeon was controversial.

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And I mean, Moody was controversial. So Spurgeon's embrace of Moody was a very important thing to Moody.

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Spurgeon was the first Calvinist who actually affirmed him and Spurgeon loved

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Moody. He realized he's not a good theologian, but he didn't teach any heresy.

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He just preached the simple gospel and Spurgeon loved that. And so he hosted him at this

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Metropolitan Tabernacle. Like I think I said yesterday, when Sankey sang, he had to go in the basement because he used this portable case of whistles.

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I love that, but yeah, they got along famously. Spurgeon never said a negative word about Moody.

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And I know he had his concerns about Moody's shallowness and all of that, but he loved the fact that he was reaching people with the gospel.

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It would have never characterized Moody as a decisionalist or decisional regenerationist, anything like that.

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He wouldn't use those words because I don't think that was such a controversy at the time. And I don't think

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Moody gave, you know, Billy Graham style invitations for people to come forward.

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He just preached the gospel and people were converted in large numbers under Moody's preaching.

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So Spurgeon just wanted to affirm that. And he acknowledged that, yeah, maybe

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Mr. Moody and I wouldn't share the same views on every point of theology, but we share the same gospel.

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And for that, I wanna affirm him. Did Spurgeon ever visit the US? No, he wanted to and planned to, but it was the conflict over slavery and the civil war that kept him from coming.

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He was strongly anti -slavery as were most British people because they'd had that conflict, you know, prior to that.

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And slavery had been outlawed in England and was regarded, you know, rightly as a huge violation of basic human rights.

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And because of his outspoken opposition to slavery, a lot of the

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British publishers who distributed his sermons edited his comments about slavery out, but he was controversial enough in the

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South and in places in the North that I think he felt like it would put him and his family in danger if he came to America.

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So he never came. Why do you think Spurgeon quoted this or said this, quote, growing a beard is a habit most natural, scriptural, manly and beneficial, close quote.

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Well, he had a beard and frankly, it wasn't an impressive one, I think.

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If you look at his beard, it's a bit scraggly. And I say that as someone who has trouble growing hair right here in the center of my chin myself.

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So, you know, I guess he was proud of whatever beard he could grow.

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And it was the style in those times. It began, the style began to diminish towards the end of his ministry.

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And you see in the late 1800s, more and more men becoming more clean shaven.

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They did mustaches only or smaller beards and all that. He was a full beard type guy.

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Can you share your perspective on this? Last night, you shared how a young Spurgeon called out a wayward church member, Thomas Rhodes, who was smoking and drinking in the pub.

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Later on, Spurgeon developed a love for cigars. Do you think a young Charles was a little legalistic and was

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Spurgeon a teetotaler? No, no, and be clear about this. It wasn't because the guy was smoking that Spurgeon accused him of, you know, hurting his pastor's feelings.

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It was because he was just squandering his life sitting in the pub all day. If the guy had been out, you know, working his farm and smoking a pipe,

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I don't think Spurgeon would have thought anything about it because nobody in those days, especially in the early days of Spurgeon's life, nobody considered smoking a sin.

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Lots of people did it. And I don't know whether Spurgeon's grandfather smoked or not, but yeah, it wasn't smoking that he had an objection to.

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Now, he did become a teetotaler. He gave up alcoholic beverages, which was good for his gout, frankly, but it was also a moral conviction.

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He was persuaded by the Prohibitionists that drinking was not a good thing and Christians should abstain.

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He made exceptions to that. I don't think he would have balked or been offended if he attended a dinner party and somebody served him a glass of wine.

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And they used real wine at the Lord's table in his church. So he didn't have the kind of objection to alcoholic beverages that some people, it wasn't a legalistic thing.

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It's just that I think he had had so much experience with people who were, you know, drunks and alcoholics that he just felt it was better to abstain.

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He took the same view as John MacArthur, basically, that, look, in scripture, you took a little wine for your stomach's sake because wine was necessary because water was filled with diseases and stuff.

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But Spurgeon was saying, no, there's other things you can drink safely, so why risk, you know, becoming addicted to something that's gonna destroy your life?

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So he just abstained. He never made a sermon about it, as far as I know. He didn't preach it as an absolute necessity for Christians, and I'm sure a lot of the people in his church and friends that he was close to didn't have any objection to drinking alcohol.

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As far as I know, he never made it an issue, but for his own personal practice, he didn't drink. So many prominent

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Christian leaders end their lives in scandal, moral scandal, or doctrinal compromise, and you have worked alongside of a man who has, for 50 years, held the line and has been free from any kind of moral compromise in that way, thinking most notably recently of Ravi Zacharias and that debacle.

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Was Spurgeon ever, in his ministry, ever accused of sexual or financial impropriety, and what kinds of accusations, if ever, were raised against Spurgeon?

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Yeah, certainly not sexual. There were people who criticized him for the fact that he was, let's say he had at his disposal lots of wealth.

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I wouldn't call him a wealthy man. He did live in a sizable house. It was a, we might call it a mansion.

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It would have been a small mansion, but you see pictures of his library that I showed. That's his house where he lives, bigger than the house

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I live in. So it was, and it was in a nice part of London. He made lots of money as royalties off the sale of his sermons and books, but what people didn't know, and Spurgeon couldn't say publicly, was that he used the vast majority of his wealth to support widows and orphans and found orphanages, and he was the largest donor to the pastor's college that he started.

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So people who criticized his money were criticizing what they assumed his income was.

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Nobody, nobody could ever criticize his lifestyle. He didn't live in opulence.

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He didn't squander large amounts on luxuries.

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In fact, the only thing he ever really bought for himself that was expensive were his books. He had this massive library that I'm sure was worth thousands of pounds, but other than that, he didn't, he traveled to the

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French Riviera every year late in his life because of his health, and to us, that sounds like, okay, there's a life of luxury on the

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French Riviera, but sometime, look up pictures of the hotel where he died, the place where he would go when he went there to get away from London cold.

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This was not a fancy hotel or an expensive place, and in fact, it's a dungeon you and I probably would not be pleased to stay in.

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It doesn't even exist anymore. It's been torn down, but he didn't flash the badges of luxury or wealth, though he had a great deal of wealth at his disposal.

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People did complain about it. I have a excerpt somewhere that he wrote in answer to that about he wasn't gonna tell people how much money he gave to causes, but if someone wants to criticize him for being a lover of money, point out where he's lived an opulent lifestyle rather than speculating on how much money he made off the sale of his sermons.

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Spurgeon's productivity is legendary, so can you quickly describe a week, and I say quickly because we're past time, describe a week in Spurgeon's life.

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Yeah, Monday, he edited Sunday's sermon and read and answered mail.

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Tuesday, he began reading and studying material, not only for his sermons, but for many years, he was writing a series of books on the

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Psalms called The Treasury of David. It's, I think, a six -volume set where he goes exhaustively through the

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Psalms and gives quotations from all the Psalms commentaries that he owned.

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It's a fantastic book and took years for him to do. He would spend a full day every week doing that, and then he did a lot of church work as well, but he stayed in his study virtually all week, and people knew where he lived, so people with requests for monetary help or charity from the church or whatever would often show up at his house, and he wasn't equipped to deal with things there, so his practice was to write a note to the deacons at the tabernacle and give it to the person asking for help and send them to the tabernacle and say, the deacons there will help you, and so he would write in this note what he wanted to be done, give this person enough money for a week's groceries or whatever, and then the deacon would fulfill it, and to this day, they have files of Spurgeon's handwritten notes to the deacons stashed away in the

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Metropolitan Tabernacle where nobody's allowed to look at them. I haven't seen them myself, but I had a couple of them read to me, and my favorite one was, and I'm maybe not supposed to say this publicly because the people who control this stuff now would like to keep

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Spurgeon's private stuff private, but this is funny, so I'm gonna tell it anyway.

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He writes this note and sends it to the deacon with the lady, it's in a sealed envelope, so the deacon reads it, but the person carrying the note doesn't, and the note says something like this.

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This woman talks like a parrot with its tail on fire, but her needs are real, so help her as much as you can.

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Very good. This came in the form of a question, but I'm gonna make it as a statement, and I'm not gonna ask you to respond to this, but the ministry of Grace to You has been similarly productive to Spurgeon's ministry, very comparable.

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In fact, this is one of our elders who wrote this to me and made this observation that I don't think that there has been a single force in the history of Christianity that has done more for the propagation and defense of the gospel and sound theology and doctrine and expository preaching than the ministry of John MacArthur, Grace Community Church, and Grace to You.

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I cannot think of a close second. I can think of a lot of other worldwide ministries, but I can't think of another one. You can go into the

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Ugandan jungles and see people without running water who have a MacArthur Study Bible and a little

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MP3 player and they listen to John MacArthur sermons. Just a stunning amount of productivity that has come from you guys and your ministry, so my appreciation to you.

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Thank you. You know, Spurgeon would love that too. Like I said, he wasn't averse to technology, but there was a similar phenomenon with him because of the printed sermons, and in fact, when

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David Livingston died in Africa, one of the few things he had keeping with him as possessions in Africa was a

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Spurgeon sermon, a printout of a Spurgeon sermon. So anyway. If you could live, and this quickly, if you could live in the 1800s and serve alongside

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Spurgeon, as you have for John MacArthur, what counsel would you give him that would improve his preaching, improve his effectiveness, prolong his life, and protect him?

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Get some exercise. You know, get out and do some...

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You know, I don't know what the treatment for gout is, but his pain from gout made his life almost unbearable.

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It's why he didn't get a lot of exercise. It's nothing, nothing felt good. And so yeah,

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I think I'd encourage him to maybe take up some healthier habits, perhaps even stop the smoking or smoke less.

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To improve his preaching? Ah. Could Phil Johnson improve Charles Spurgeon's preaching?

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I wouldn't try. I honestly wouldn't try. I do think that there are things about his preaching that I would critique, like the fact that he's jumping off a text and sometimes not really even paying any attention to the context of it and doing a topical message.

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I would say, why don't you try a expository sermon? He did do a few of those.

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It just wasn't his style. We see the blessing and the fruitfulness of Spurgeon's ministry in spite of the fact that he was not an expositor.

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And we would never encourage anybody to give messages like Spurgeon delivered. And yet the blessing of God rested upon that.

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How do we explain the fact that he was so fruitful and so blessed and his ministry was so blessed in spite of the fact that it was not expository ministry?

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Yeah, I prefer expository ministry, but I wouldn't say that's the only way you can preach because you look at the

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New Testament and what the apostles preached. Sometimes it's just a broad overview of a biblical story told in their words with a few minor quotes.

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Now, what we've got is, I'm sure, an abbreviated edition of that sermon, but it's not classic expository preaching.

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So I don't think that's the only way you could ever preach. And I think Spurgeon's ministry was, the answer to why was it fruitful is because it was so biblical, so full of biblical contents and biblical truth and quotes directly from scripture.

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So that's why I wouldn't try to change him. What he did was his own style. It was an expression of his heart and his voice.

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And although there might be things I'd critique about it, I honestly don't think I could help him improve in any way.

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I'd probably learn something from him. I mentioned that I had two pastors, Wiersbe and MacArthur, both of them known as gifted expositors, but their style is totally different, like totally different.

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John goes through a text phrase by phrase, word by word, he comments on everything.

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It's amazing what he can do. And mostly without any discernible outline, he's just going through the text.

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Wiersbe's genius was his ability to take a passage and outline it in a way that, by reading his outline, you saw the logical flow and meaning of this passage.

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But he wasn't as meticulous in getting into the text and the words as John. I've learned from both of them, and I've applied things

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I learned from both of them. So my style isn't like either one of them, but I wouldn't say that somebody else needs to follow my style either.

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All right, that's it for this Q &A. So we have two more sessions, and then a bonus session after that. I have a couple more questions that I wanted to ask in connection with the bonus session.

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So we'll take a five -minute break, and then Phil will go into his next lecture. ♪

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Then I seized my soul, my