Nothing can so gloriously fit you to preach as descending fresh from the mount of communion with God to speak with men. None are so able to plead with men as those who have been wrestling with God on their behalf.
Lecturers to My Students, Lesson 3, The Preacher’s Private Prayer.
Texts will often refuse to reveal their treasures till you open them with the key of prayer.
Lecturers to My Students, Lesson 3, The Preacher’s Private Prayer.
The minister who does not earnestly pray over his work must surely be a vain and conceited man. He acts as if he thought himself sufficient of himself, and therefore needed not to appeal to God
Lecturers to My Students, Lesson 3, The Preacher’s Private Prayer.
How may a young man know whether he is called or not? That is a weighty inquiry, and I desire to treat it most solemnly. O for divine guidance in so doing! That hundreds have missed their way, and stumbled against a pulpit is sorrowfully evident from the fruitless ministries and decaying churches which surround us. It is a fearful calamity to a man to miss his calling, and to the church upon whom he imposes himself, his mistake involves an affliction of the most grievous kind.
Lectures to My Students, 1875.
Churches are not all wise, neither do they all judge in the power of the Holy Ghost, but many of them judge after the flesh; yet I had sooner accept the opinion of a company of the Lord’s people than my own upon so personal a subject as my own gifts and graces. At any rate, whether you value the verdict of the church or no, one thing is certain, that none of you can be pastors without the loving consent of the flock; and therefore this will be to you a practical indicator if not a correct one.
Lectures to My Students, 1875.
I should not complete this point if I did not add, that mere ability to edify, and aptness to teach is not enough; there must be other talents to complete the pastoral character. Sound judgment and solid experience must instruct you; gentle manners and loving affections must sway you; firmness and courage must be manifest and tenderness and sympathy must not be lacking. Gifts administrative in ruling well will be as requisite as gifts instructive in teaching well.
Lectures to My Students, 1875.
Mark well, that the desire I have spoken of must be thoroughly disinterested. If a man can detect, after the most earnest self-examination, any other motive than the glory of God and the good of souls in his seeking the [pastorate], he better turn aside from it at once; for the Lord will abhor the bringing of buyers and sellers into his temple: the introduction of anything mercenary, even in the smallest degree, will be like the fly in the pot of ointment, and will spoil it all.
Lectures to My Students, 1875.
Oh, you are not dealing with trifles when you are dealing with the love of God to you. It is not a spare corner of the heart of God that He gives to you, as you may give a little love to the criminals in the jails, but the great, inconceivably vast heart of God belongs as much to every Christian as if there were not another being in the world for God to love! Even as Jehovah loves His Only-begotten, so does He love each one of His children.
The Treasury of the Old Testament, III:568.
Jesus, the good shepherd, will not travel at such a rate as to overdrive the lambs. He has tender consideration for the poor and needy. Kings usually look to the interests of the great and the rich, but in the kingdom of our Great Shepherd He cares most for the poor… The weaklings and the sickly of the flock are the special objects of the Savior’s care… You think, dear heart, that you are forgotten, because of your nothingness and weakness and poverty. This is the very reason you are remembered.
Treasury of the Old Testament, III:575-576.
The iron bolt which so mysteriously fastens the door of hope and holds our spirits in gloomy prison, needs a heavenly hand to push it back.
See you here the foundational truth of Christianity, the rock on which our hopes are built. It is the only hope of a sinner, and the only true joy of the Christian – the great transaction, the great substitution, the great lifting of sin from the sinner to the sinner’s Surety; the punishment of the Surety instead of the sinner, the pouring out of the vials of wrath, which were due to the transgressor, upon the head of his Substitute; the grandest transaction which ever took place on earth; the most wonderful sight that even hell ever beheld, and the most stupendous marvel that heaven itself ever executed – Jesus Christ, made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him! You scarcely need that I should explain the words when the sense is so plain. A spotless Savior stands in the room of guilty sinners. God lays upon the spotless Savior the sin of the guilty, so that He becomes, in the expressive language of the text, sin. Then He takes off from the innocent Savior His righteousness, and puts that to the account of the once-guilty sinners, so that the sinners become righteousness – righteousness of the highest and divinest source, the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.
Sermon 3203, Christ Made Sin, 2 Corinthians 5:21.
If you are drawn into a controversy, use very hard arguments and very soft words.
The voices of childhood echo throughout life. The first learned is generally the last forgotten.
May your character be not a writing upon the sand, but an inscription upon the rock.
I will not believe that you have tasted of the honey of the gospel if you can eat it all by yourself.
Blood, always precious, is priceless when it streams from Immanuel’s side.
There is little virtue in the beauty which calls attention to itself; modest beauty is the last to extol its own charms.
We should begin to pray before we kneel down and we should not cease when we rise up.
God is a sure paymaster, though He does not always pay at the end of every week.
Christ is the cause of the greatest division, but He is also the medium of the greatest union.
Ah! if there be degrees in glory, they will not be distributed according to our talents, but according to our faithfulness in using them.
The shop, the barn, the scullery, and the smithy become temples when men and women do all to the glory of God!
A God who could pardon without justice might one of these days condemn without reason.
I believe nothing merely because Calvin taught it, but because I have found his teaching in the Word of God.
We often talk of unbelief as if it were an affliction to be pitied instead of a crime to be condemned.
He who tells little lies, will soon think nothing of great ones, for the principle is the same.
Let us aspire to saintliness of spirit and character. I am persuaded that the greatest power we can get over our fellow-men is the power which comes of consecration and holiness.
An All-Round Ministry, 1900.
Serve God with integrity, and if you achieve no success, at least no sin will lie upon your conscience.
The more you know about Christ, the less you will be satisfied with superficial views of Him.
It is a reading age, a preaching age, a working age, but it is not a praying age.
There are some of your graces which would never be discovered if it were not for your trials.
Believing is a matter of the will. A man does not believe without being willing to believe.
The fear of God is the death of every other fear; like a mighty lion, it chases all other fears before it.
Oh, if we could not die, it would be indeed horrible! Who wants to be chained to this poor life for a century or longer?
A sermon without Christ as its beginning, middle and end is a mistake in conception and a crime in execution.
Alas, if our children lose the crown of life, it will be but a small consolation that they have won the laurels of literature or art.
Anything which leads to self-esteem leads to the utmost jeopardy. If you have a lowly opinion of yourself, I congratulate you; for this is a main element of safety.
My Hourly Prayer.
Drunkenness is the devil’s back door to hell and everything that is hellish. For he that once gives away his brains to drink is ready to be caught by Satan for anything.
46.64.
"I would like to go into the enquiry-room." I dare say you would, but we are not willing to pander to popular superstition. We fear that in those rooms men are warmed into fictitious confidence. Very few of the supposed converts of enquiry-rooms turn out well. Go to your God at once, even where you are now. Cast yourself on Christ, now, at once, ere you stir an inch!
Sometimes shut up that enquiry-room. I have fears about that institution if it be used in permanence, and as an inevitable part of the services… If you should ever see that a notion is fashioning itself that there is something to be got in the private room which is not to be had at once in the assembly, or that God is more at the penitent from than elsewhere, aim a blow at that notion at once.
All Round Ministry.
It very often happens that the converts that are born in excitement die when the excitement is over… Some of the most glaring sinners known to me were once members of a church; and were, as I believe, led to make a profession by undue pressure, well meant but ill-judged.
The Soul Winner.
Do not say, “I cannot help having a bad temper." Friend, you must help it. Pray to God to help you overcome it at once, for either you must kill it, or it will kill you. You cannot carry a bad temper into heaven.
Remember that if you are a child of God, you will never be happy in sin. You are spoiled for the world, the flesh, and the devil. When you were regenerated there was put into you a vital principle, which can never be content to dwell in the dead world. You will have to come back, if indeed you belong to the family.
If you begin to slip on the side of a mountain of ice, the first slip may not hurt if you can stop and slide no further. But alas, you cannot so regulate sin! When your feet begin to slide, the rate of the descent increases, and the difficulty of arresting this motion is incessantly becoming greater. It is dangerous to backslide in any degree, for we know not to what it may lead. The Christian life is very much like climbing a hill of ice. You cannot slide up. You have to cut every step with an ice ax. Only with incessant labor in cutting and chipping can you make any progress. If you want to know how to backslide, leave off going forward. Cease going upward and you will go downward of necessity. You can never stand still.
Of course, you are not such wiseacres as to think or say that you can expound Scripture without assistance from the works of divines and learned men who have labored before you… It seems odd, that certain men who talk so much of what the Holy Spirit reveals to themselves, should think so little of what he has revealed to others… A respectable acquaintance with the opinions of the giants of the past, might have saved many an erratic thinker from the wild interpretations and outrageous inferences.
C.H. Spurgeon Commenting and Commentaries, p. 1.
The Word of God apart from the Spirit of God will be of no use to you. If you cannot understand a book, do you know the best way to reach its meaning? Write the author and ask him what he meant. If you have a book to read and you have the author always accessible, you need not complain that you do not understand it. The Holy Spirit has come to abide with us forever. Search the Scriptures, but cry for the Spirit’s light and live under His influence.
Spiritual Warfare in a Believer’s Life, Sermon Matthew 4:4.
We must depend upon the Spirit in our preparations. Is this the fact with us all? Are you in the habit of working your way into the meaning of texts by the guidance of the Holy Spirit? Every man that goes to the land of heavenly knowledge must work his passage thither; but he must work out his passage in the strength of the Holy Spirit, or he will arrive at some island in the sea of fancy, and never set his foot upon the sacred shores of the truth. You do not know the truth, my brother, because you have read "Hodge’s Outlines", or "Fuller’s Gospel worthy of all Acceptation"; or "Owen on the Spirit", or any other classic of our faith. You do not know the truth, my brother, merely because you accept the Westminster Assembly’s Confession, and have studied it perfectly. No, we know nothing till, we are taught, of the Holy Ghost, who speaks to the heart rather than to the ear.
Prick him anywhere; and you will find that his blood is Bibline, the very essence of the Bible flows from him. He cannot speak without quoting a text, for his soul is full of the Word of God.
Said in reference to John Bunyan
It is blessed to eat into the very soul of the Bible until, at last, you come to talk in Scriptural language, and your spirit is flavoured with the words of the Lord, so that your blood is Bibline and the very essence of the Bible flows from you.
Quoted in: The Preacher’s Portrait, Eerdmans, 1961, p. 30-31.
Saving faith is an immediate relation to Christ, accepting, receiving, resting upon Him alone, for justification, sanctification, and eternal life by virtue of God’s grace.
It is not faith in Christ that saves you (though faith is the instrument) – it is Christ’s blood and merits.
Genuine faith that saves the soul has for its main element – trust – absolute rest of the whole soul – on the Lord Jesus Christ to save me, whether He died in particular or in special to save me or not, and relying, as I am, wholly and alone on Him, I am saved.
Sermons, v. 58, p. 583-84.
I am never ashamed to avow myself a Calvinist; I do not hesitate to take the name of Baptist; but if I am asked what is my creed, I reply, "It is Jesus Christ."
Christian History, n. 29.
A Christian is a perpetual miracle.
Indwelling Sin. Sermon from Job 40:3-4.
It is true that a fisherman may fish and never catch any fish, but, if so, he is not much of a fisherman. And so, if there were no souls saved when I preached, perhaps I might find some way of satisfying my conscience, but I don’t know what it is yet. If my hearers are not converted, I feel like I have wasted my time; I have lost the exercise of brain and heart. I feel as if I lost my hope and lost my life, unless I find for my Lord some of His blood-bought ones.
How to Become Fishers of Men, Sermon # 1906.|How to Become Fishers of Men, Sermon # 1906.
I believe that every particle of dust that dances in the sunbeam does not move an atom more or less than God wishes – that every particle of spray that dashes against the steamboat has its orbit, as well as the sun in the heavens – that the chaff from the hand of the winnower is steered as the stars in their courses. The creeping of an aphid over the rosebud is as much fixed as the march of the devastating pestilence – the fall of leaves from a poplar is as fully ordained as the tumbling of an avalanche. He who believes in God must believe this truth. There is no standing point between this and Atheism. There is no halfway between an Almighty God, who works all things according to the good pleasure of His will, and no God at all!
While I regarded God as a tyrant I thought my sin a tyrant; but when I knew Him to be my Father, then I mourned that I could ever have kicked against Him. When I thought God was hard. I found it easy to sin; but when I found God so kind, so good, so overflowing with compassion, I smote upon by breast that I could ever have rebelled against One who loved me so, and sought my good.
Repentance After Conversion, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vol. 41, Sermon #2419.
The best morality in the world will not prove a man to be a Christian, but if a man has not morality, it proves that he is not a child of God.
Sermons 1125.441
Holiness excludes immorality, but morality does not amount to holiness; for morality may be but the cleaning of the outside of the cup and the platter, while the heart may be full of wickedness.
Sermons 2902.459
You are not acting as you ought to do when you are moved by any other motive than a single eye to your Lord’s glory.
Sermons, ME644.
Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.
Is there a voice in weeping? Does weeping speak? In what language doth it utter its meaning? Why, in that universal tongue which is known and understood in all the earth, and even in heaven above. When a man weeps, whether he be a Jew or Gentile, Barbarian, Scythian, bond or free, it has the same meaning in it. Weeping is the eloquence of sorrow. It is an unstammering orator, needing no interpreter, but understood of all. Is it not sweet to believe that our tears are understood even when words fail? Let us learn to think of tears as liquid prayers, and of weeping as a constant dropping of importunate intercession which will wear its way right surely into the very heart of mercy, despite the stony difficulties which obstruct the way. My God, I will “weep” when I cannot plead, for thou hearest the voice of my weeping.
Treasury of David, Commentary for Psalm 6:8.
It matters not that the bones shake if the soul be firm, but when the soul itself is also sore…this is agony indeed.
Treasury, Psalm 6:2-3.
To the graceless neck the yoke of Christ is intolerable, but to the saved sinner it is light and easy.
Treasury of David, Commentary for Psalm 2:3.
As there is a curse wrapped up in the wicked man’s mercies, so there is a blessing concealed in the righteousness man’s crosses, losses and sorrows. The trials of the saint are a divine husbandry, by which he grows and brings forth abundant fruit.
Treasury of David, Commentary for Psalm 1:3.
Of late, I have heard things that I never dreamed of before, alleged even by professedly Christian ministers against the fundamental doctrines of God’s Word; and some have even dared to say that the substitution of Christ, His suffering in our stead, was not just. Then they have added that God forgives sin without any atonement whatever; but, if the first be not just, what shall I say of the second? If God continually forgives sin without taking any care of His moral government, if there be nothing done for the vindication of His justice, how shall the Judge of all the earth do right? Then the very foundations of the universe would be removed, and what would the righteous do? Depend upon this, whatever modern philosophy may say, “Without shedding of blood there is no remission of sin,” that is to say, without an atonement and an atonement consisting of the giving up of a life of infinite value, there is no passing by of human transgression.
Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vol. 40, 1984, p. 187.
My Soul, you shall swim in happiness, you shall dive in seas of inconceivable delight by reason of your union with Christ and your delight in Him and His delight in you! I know no better idea of Heaven than to be eternally content with Christ and Christ to be eternally content with me! And all this will happen within a very little time. Therefore, lay aside your cares, dismiss your fears, murmur no more. Such a destiny awaits you that you may well be content.
The Marriage Supper of the Lamb, No. 2428. Delivered on September 1, 1895.
We give our hand to every man that loves the Lord Jesus Christ, be he what he may or who he may. The doctrine of election, like the great act of election itself, is intended to divide, not between Israel and Israel, but between Israel and the Egyptians, not between saint and saint, but between saints and children of the world. A man may be evidently of God’s chosen family, and yet though elected, may not believe in the doctrine of election. I hold that there are many savingly called, who do not believe in effectual calling, and that there are a great many who persevere to the end, who do not believe the doctrine of final perseverance. We do hope the hearts of many are a great deal better than their heads. We do not set their fallacies down to any willful opposition to the truth as it is in Jesus but simply to an error in their judgments, which we pray God to correct. We hope that if they think us mistaken too, they will reciprocate the same Christian courtesy; and when we meet around the cross, we hope that we shall ever feel that we are one in Christ Jesus.
In the morning – this is the fittest time for intercourse with God. An hour in the morning is worth two in the evening. While the dew is on the grass, let grace drop upon the soul. Let us give to God the mornings of our days and the morning of our lives. Prayer should be the key of the day and the lock of the night.
Treasury of David, Commentary for Psalm 5:3.
A pardoned sinner will hate the sins which cost the Savior’s blood.
Treasury of David, Commentary for Psalm 6:8.
Grace and sin are quarrelsome neighbors.
Treasury of David, Commentary for Psalm 6:8.
[God] will never cease to help us until we cease to need.
Treasury of David, Commentary for Psalm 4:1.
Search Scripture through, and you must, if you read it with a candid mind, be persuaded that the doctrine of salvation by grace alone is the great doctrine of the word of God.
Treasury of David, Commentary for Psalm 2:8.
Our opponents say, “Salvation belongs to the free will of man; if not to man’s merit, yet at least to man’s will;” but we hold and teach that salvation from first to last, in every iota of it, belongs to the Most High God. It is God that chooses His people. He calls them by His grace; He quickens them by His Spirit, and keeps them by His power.
Treasury of David, Commentary for Psalm 2:8.
How many of our sleepless hours might be traced to our untrusting and disordered minds. They slumber sweetly whom faith rocks to sleep. No pillow so soft as a promise; no coverlet so warm as an assured interest in Christ.
Treasury of David, Commentary for Psalm 4:8.
He who dares to face his Maker will not tremble before the sons of men.
Treasury of David, Commentary for Psalm 4:1.
When the wolf licks the lamb, he is preparing to wet his teeth in its blood.
Treasury of David, Commentary for Psalm 5:9
If deacons cannot be trusted they ought not to be deacons at all, but if they are worthy of their office they are worthy of our confidence.
The Blind Eye and the Deaf Ear.
Some are childishly anxious to know their friend’s opinion of them, and if it contain the smallest element of dissent or censure, they regard him as an enemy forthwith. Surely we are not popes, and do not wish our hearers to regard us as infallible! We have known men become quite enraged at a perfectly fair and reasonable remark, and regard an honest friend as an opponent who delighted to find fault; this misrepresentation on the one side has soon produced heat on the other, and strife ensued. How much better is gentle forbearance! You must be able to bear criticism, or you are not fit to be at the head of a congregation; and you must let the critic go without reckoning him among your deadly foes, or you will prove yourself a mere weakling.
The Blind Eye and the Deaf Ear.
Judge it to be a small matter what men think or say of you, and care only for their treatment of your Lord. If you are naturally sensitive do not indulge the weakness, nor allow others to play upon it.
The Blind Eye and the Deaf Ear.
