A Summary of Experience and A Body of Divinity (S1806)

Welcome to another podcast from The Heart of Spurgeon. If you're a regular, you'll know that our intention in these podcasts is to work through sermons that were preached by the Victorian pastor preacher Evangelist Charles Haddon Spurgeon. His sermons are still published today and the reputation that he had in his own day and since amongst those who know and love the Lord really bears out the value of studying this man's output. This sermon is called a Summary of Experience and a Body of Divinity. It's sermon 1,806 as this week we work through 1,802 to 1,808. Now you can get some daily quotes from those usually on X at Reading Spurgeon but each week we have this featured sermon which you can find out about from mediagratii.org/podcasts so it encourages you to go there, find out a little bit more and perhaps even track back through some previous sermons. We're well into volume 30 at the moment and this particular sermon is one of which I have particular fond memory of these. I preached on 1st Thessalonians 1,9 and 10, I think fairly early on in my own pulpit ministry and I remember as part of my preparation reading through this sermon and being struck with it and delighted by it. The preachers joy in the scriptures, the happy depth of insight that the experiential substance of the whole address which you'd imagine from a sermon that begins with the title with a Summary of Experience but also a Body of Divinity. It's theological depth and it's doctrinal precision and all of it delivered with practical vigor. So Spurgeon is preaching from 1st Thessalonians 1,9 and 10, the sermon itself was delivered on the Lord's Day morning of the 26th of October, 1884 at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in Newington, in London. Spurgeon begins by talking about this Thessalonian ministry and the impact that it had in Thessalonica and then in the region around. For every ship that sailed from Thessalonica carried the news of the strange ferment which was moving the city. Men were caring for religion and were quitting, they were leaving their old beliefs for a new and better faith. Thessalonica situated on one of the great Roman roads, the center of a large trade, thus became a center for the gospel. Wherever there are true conversions there will be more or less this kind of sounding fourth of the gospel, so Spurgeon. There sure to be a talk when Grace triumphs. This talk is a great aid to the gospel. It's no small thing that men should have their attention attracted to it by its effects. For it is both natural and just that thoughtful men should judge of doctrines by their results. And if the most beneficial results follow from the preaching of the word, prejudice is disarmed and the most violent objectors are silenced. So the reverse of that is also true. Those who profess to have been converted under any ministry have it in their power to damage that ministry far more than any adversaries can do. There says the world when it detects a false professor. This is what comes of such preaching. They judge unfairly I know, but most men are in a great hurry and will not examine the logic of their opponents, while many others are so eager to judge unfavorably that a very little truth or only a bare report suffices to condemn both the minister and his doctrine. Every man that lives under guard with purity of life brings honor to the gospel which converted him, to the community to which he belongs, and to the preaching by which he was brought to the knowledge of the truth, but the reverse is equally true in the case of unworthy adherents. Members of churches, will you kindly think of this? Your ministers share the blame of your ill conduct if ever you disgrace yourselves. Oh, then that we could be freed from those of whom Paul says, only a walk of whom I have told you often and now tell you even weeping that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose guard is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things. When these are in a church, they are its curse. The Thessalonians weren't such professors, weren't such outward believers. No, Spurgeon says, let's turn now to these two verses. Oceans of teaching are to be found in them. A father of the church in the first ages was a custom to cry. I adore the infinity of Holy Scripture. That remark constantly rises from my lips when I'm studying the sacred word. This book is more than a book. It's the mother of books, a mine of truth, a mountain of meaning. So, Spurgeon, it's true with regard to the inspired word of God that it contains everything which appertains, everything which has to do with eternal life. It is a revelation of which no man can take the measure. It compasses heaven and earth, time and eternity. The best evidence of its being written by an infinite mind is its own infinity. Within a few of its words, they lie hidden immeasurable meanings, even as perfume enough to sweeten leagues of space, may be condensed into a few drops of Otto of roses. So, Spurgeon, this summary of experience, this body of divinity, you've got in it, this essence of truth has enough perfume in it to spread and to fill our lungs. So, the first part of my text contains a summary of Christian experience, point one. Second part, a body of divinity, point two, you cannot exhaust such a theme, but will have a pretty good go, this Spurgeon, more or less. So, the first part of the text contains a summary of experience. What kind of entering in we had to you and how you turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for his son from heaven? This is, in miniature, the biography of a Christian man. First of all, the entering in of the word. All is fruitless until Christ enters into the heart. The truth goes in. The gospel goes in. Christ goes in. Whatever there is in him, we are willing to receive. Whatever he demands, we are willing to give. Whatever he offers us, we're glad to accept. So, Carmen, welcome, is the hearty cry. The guest chamber is prepared, Carmen, to abide in our house forever. This entrance of truth, in general, first affects the understanding. You discover in the gospel of our Lord Jesus, the very thing which a hungry soul has been seeking for years, and so it enters by the understanding. It commences to work upon the conscience after the understanding, so Spurgeon. A man sees himself to have lived without thinking of God, without loving God, without serving God. After the understanding, the word begins to work upon the conscience. A man sees that to have lived without thinking of God, without loving God, without serving God, was a great and grievous crime. He feels the offensiveness of this neglect. He trembles. He consents unto the Lord that it is good and he allows that if the law condemns him, he's worthy to be condemned. Then the emotions, fear is awakened, and hope is excited. The love of God in providing a Saviour, the unsurchable riches of divine grace in passing by transgression. The iniquity and sin, these things amaze and overwhelm the penitent, and by and by the entrance is complete. So it is with the gospel. The man finds it by the understanding. He embraces it with his heart, and if it gets into his heart, the arch-enemy himself will never get it out again. Here then is the entering in of the word, and then from that the second stage is conversion. The turning of a man completely round to hate what he loved and to love what he hated. Conversion is to turn to God decidedly and distinctly by an act indeed of the mind and will. So it is not conversion to think that you will turn, or to promise that you will turn, or to resolve that you will turn, but actually and in very deed to turn, because the word has had a true entrance into your heart. You must not be content with a reformation. There must be a revolution. Old thrones must fall, and a new king must reign. Is it so with you? So these Thessalonians are turned from their idols. Spurgeon says, "You've got idols, the streets of London are full of fetish worship, and almost every dwelling is a just house crammed with idols. People bowing down these fetishes, these little guards. Small circular idols of gold and silver are much sought after Sir Spurgeon, the worship of gold. They are very devoutly worshiped by some, and great things are said concerning their power. I have heard the epithet of all mighty ascribed to an American form of these idols. He's talking about referring to the almighty dollar. Those who do not worship gold may yet worship rank, name, pleasure, or honour. Most worship self, and I do not know that there's a more degrading form of worship than for a man to put himself on a pedestal and bow down to it and worship it. You might just as well adore cats and crocodiles with the ancient Egyptians as pay your lives homage to yourselves. No wooden image sent up by the most savage tribe can be more ugly or degrading than our idol when we adore ourselves. What about the gods of unchastity and vice, there yet among us? It will be a shame even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret. The lusts of the flesh are served even by many who would not like to have it known. We have gods many and lords many in this land. God grant that we may see through the preaching of the gospel many turning from such idols. If you love anything better than God you are idolaters. If there's anything you would not give up for God, it is your idol. If there's anything that you seek with greater fervor than you seek the glory of God, that's your idol, and conversion means a turning from every idol. So then, you must turn to God. A change of false gods is not the change that will save. We must turn unto God to trust, love and honor him and him alone. Then after conversion, service, serving the living and true God. The true convert turns to the living God who is everywhere and whose presence affects him at every point of his being. This God he is to worship, obey and serve. Then it is added to serve the true God. That also needs to be taken into account. There's no serving a true God with falsehood. A life is false when it's not the true outcome of the soul, when it's fashioned by custom, ruled by observation, restrained by selfish motives and governed by the love of human approbation or approval. So he that serves the true God acceptably does it with delight. To him sin is misery and holiness is happiness. This is the sort of service which we desire our converts to render. We long to see rebels become sons. Oh, the sacred alchemy of the Holy Spirit who can turn men from being the slaves of sin to become servants of righteousness. So carefully notice the order of life's progress. The entering of the inner of the word produces conversion. Conversion produces service. You have to get the order right. If you're converts without the word entering you, you're unconverted. If professing to receive the word you're not turned by it, you haven't received it. You claim to be converted but you don't serve God, you're not converted. If you boast of serving God without being converted, you're not serving God. It all has to follow. There must be first the entering of the word from the entering of the word, the Holy Spirit works conversion. Conversion produces service and the completion of the Christian biography is waiting. We wait dear brothers in the holy perseverance of faith, having begun with Christ Jesus our Lord. We abide in Him. We trust and then we wait. We do not look upon salvation as a thing which requires a few minutes of faith and then all is over. Salvation is the business of our lives. We receive salvation in an instant but we work it out with fear and trembling all our days. He that is saved continues to be saved and goes on to be saved from day to day from every sin and from every form of evil. We must wait upon the Lord and renew the strength of the life which He has imparted. This waiting then also means that it shapes living in the future. The coming of the Lord is His expected reward. He does not expect to be rewarded by men, this waiting man or even to be rewarded of God with temporal things in this life. For He has set His affection upon things yet to be revealed, things eternal and infinite. So the convert is assured now of His salvation. He's been rising from the time when He first held the door ajar. He's looking for the coming of Jesus Christ because He has been delivered from the wrath to come and is being delivered in union with Him. This then says Spurgeon is the brief summing up of the story of the Christian man and you'll not find a passage of merely human writing which packs so much into such a small package, and speakable wealth packed away into a narrow casket. Is this the outline of your life He asks? Do you understand this? If it's not, the Lord grant that His Word may have an entrance into you this morning that you may now believe in Jesus Christ and then wait for His glorious appearing. Now so Spurgeon, that's me halfway done. I've got the second half of this great role, this scroll to read, and even here you've got more molten in parvo, much in little, a body of divinity packed away in a nutshell. You're waiting for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come. What do you have here? And Spurgeon's going to take you on a high speed troll now through this text. Well, you've got the deity of Christ. His Son. God has but one Son in the highest sense. The Lord Jesus Christ has given to all believers power to become the sons of God, but not in the sense in which He and He alone is the Son of God. This eternal filiation, this eternal sonship, is a mystery into which it's better for us never to pry. Believe it, but how it is or how it could be, certainly it's not for you or for me to attempt to explain. There is one Son of the highest who is God of the substance of the Father, begotten before all worlds, whom we with all our souls adore and own to be most truly God, doing so especially every time in the benediction we associate Him with the Father and with the Holy Spirit as the one God of blessing. But you've also got side by side with the deity of Christ, His humanity, His Son whom He raised from the dead. And so this Son of God is the Son of Mary. He's taken our humanity. He's suffered for our salvation. He died upon the cross. He was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, being verily and truly man. But you also have here the unity of the divine person of our Lord. Although He is God and man, yet He's not two but one Christ. There is but one person of our blessed and adorable Lord, one altogether, not by confusion of substance but by unity of person. He is God. He is man. Perfect God and perfect man. And as such, Jesus Christ, the one mediator between God and man. But then the text tells us something about ourselves that we are by nature guilty. Otherwise, we'd not have needed a propitiation by the Savior's death. We were lost. Otherwise, we'd not needed one who should seek and save that which is lost. And we were hopelessly lost. Otherwise, God himself would not have shared our nature to work the mighty work of our redemption. But then you've got another gospel fundamental here. The Lord Jesus Christ died for these fallen men. Without shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin. Not even the tears of Christ, nor the labors of Christ could have redeemed us if he'd not given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice. It is finished. Could not have been uttered except by a bleeding, dying Christ. His death is our life. Let us always dwell upon that central truth. And when we are preaching Christ, risen, Christ, reigning or Christ coming, let us never so preach any of them as to overshadow Christ crucified. Then you've got the acceptance of the death of Christ by the Father. Where's that, you say? Look, whom he raised from the dead. The surety would have been held in prison to this day if he'd not discharge his surety ship engagements and wiped out all the liabilities of his people. The representative would be still in the grave had he not succeeded. And so it's written, he was delivered for our offences and was raised again for our justification. So in his glorious uprising from the dead lies the assurance that we are accepted, accepted in the Beloved. The Beloved being himself certainly accepted because God brought him again from the dead. And so here's another doctrine among many more, the doctrine of our Lord's resurrection. The rising of Jesus from the dead is that fact of facts which establishes Christianity upon an historical basis. And at the same time guarantees to all believers their own resurrection from the dead. He is the first fruits and we are the harvest. Then you've got the doctrine of his ascension. We're waiting for his son from heaven. Jesus is in heaven or he could not come from it. That's clear. He's gone before us as his forerunner. The ascension of his brought us the holy spirit says Spurgeon reminding us that we have the gift of his joyous entry to his father's courts that men on earth might share in the joy of the conqueror returning from the battle. We know that he's gone to heaven says Spurgeon, but we know that he remains there for the Thessalonians are expecting him to come from heaven. So he's there. And what is he doing there? He's gone to prepare a place for us. He's interceding with authority. He's sending heavenly suckers, heavenly strengthening to his weary ones. He's ruling all things for the salvation of his elect and the accomplishment of his purposes. Glory be to his blessed name. Then Jesus is in heaven with saving power too. That's in the text because this Jesus is delivering us from the wrath which is to come. He is now delivering us, like some great commander who in the day of battle commands of you of the field and continues watching, directing and so winning the fight. So is Jesus in the best place for helping us. Jesus is the master of legions, bidding his angels fly here and there where their spiritual help is needed. My faith sees him securing victory in the midst of the earth. My God, my King, you are working all things gloriously from your vantage ground. Number four, long the groans and strife of battles who end in hallelujahs unto the Lord God omnipotent. You can hear Spurgeon thrilling to the truths of these texts. So here's conspicuously set forth the second coming. He may come tomorrow, says Spurgeon. We know not the times and the seasons. These things are in the farthest keeping, but that he comes is certain and that he will come as a thief in the night to the ungodly as certain to lay no flattering action to your souls as though when he was crucified there was an end of him. It is but the beginning of his dealings with you, though you reject him. Then Christ is a deliverer. What a blessed name is this? Deliverer, press the cheering title to your breast. He delivers by himself, bearing the punishment of sin. He has delivered. He is delivering. He always will deliver them that put their trust in him. Then you have the coming Roth that's mentioned here. Oh, so someone that's a long way off that Roth become. If it's a long way off, says Spurgeon, you're wise to prepare for it now. It's the joy of believers that they're delivered from this Roth, which is daily coming upon unbelievers and would come upon themselves if they'd not been delivered from it by the atoning sacrifice. Then you've got the doctrine of a great division between men and men. He's delivered us. All men have not faith, and therefore all men are not delivered from Roth. Today there is such a division that condemned already and that justified a living side by side, but before long the separation shall be more apparent. While some will go away into everlasting punishment, the people of God will be found pardoned and absolved, and so will be glorified forever. And finally there's the doctrine of assurance. Some say, how are you to know that you're saved? It can be known. It ought to be known. Surely, says one, it's presumption to say that you're sure. It's presumption to live without knowing that you're delivered from Roth, response Spurgeon. Here the Apostle speaks of it as a thing well known that Jesus delivers us from the Roth coming. He does not say if, or perhaps, but he writes that it is so, and therefore he knew it, and we may know it, my brother, you may know that you are saved. That would make me an expressably happy Christ one, just so, and that is one of the reasons why we would have you know it this day. God says, he that believes in him has everlasting life, and therefore the believer may be sure that he has it. Our message is, he that believes in his baptised shall be saved, but he that believes not shall be damned. God make you to escape that dreadful doom. May you be delivered from the Roth which is coming for Jesus' sake. Amen. Here then is this wonderful sermon. One sense Spurgeon's doing what he so often does. He's walking us through the text, but it's not just a running commentary, is it? It's not just to see this and to see this and to see that. Here's the experience. Here's the truth. Here's the practicality of the scriptures. Spurgeon takes delight in the Word of God. He loves to scoop up the good things that lie on the surface. He loves to plumb the depths that are hidden in an apparently simple and straightforward sermon. When I read this sermon again, I found myself wishing that I could almost feel it the way I did the first time I read it, that I could come to it the same freshness. And yes, you might look and say, I wish I could almost learn these things over again, that I might delight in them all the more. But why are we saying that? I hope it's because we already have a deeper and a warmer appreciation for the truths that we find in these sermons. And that sense of strange regret is because I think we wish that we could feel it again because we feel it now. And our increasing love for God should mean that sermons like this always, always should stimulate our souls. Always, always should fill us with the light in the Word of God. Always, always should impress upon us the truth as it is in Jesus Christ. Always, always should make us understand this marvel of grace that has been dispensed toward us by God through His Son. Is this then our testimony? Have we turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus, who is delivering us from the wrath to come? I hope that you can answer that question in Spurgeon's happy affirmative of His last few lines. And if you cannot, then it is only Christ who can grant you that confident hope. So I trust that this has been a blessing to you and I do hope that you'll join us again next week when we come to sermon 1,814. We'll be reading from 1809 to 1815. So please do follow along if you can at reading Spurgeon on X. But if you're just reading the one, it's commendation for the steadfast. And if you need a copy, then sign up at mediagratioid.org/podcasts, get on the mailing list and we'll send you a link so that you can follow along. But I trust that you'll be happy to keep up with us at this podcast that you'll look at some of the other products that media Gratioia bringing out and that you'll be blessed as you enjoy these things in these days. Thank you so much for participating and may God bless you indeed.