Being judged without having done anything

Cover of The Garden (Definitions)

The doctrine of original sin is a bit mean, isn’t it? If you’re not familiar with it, it’s the doctrine that says that Adam’s sin in the Garden meant that the entire human race has been tainted with sin.

Seems a bit unfair really, as many non-Christians have pointed out (and some Christians have attempted to deny). It just doesn’t seem fair that I’d be judged as guilty before I’ve done anything!

Well, perhaps our good friend Charles Spurgeon can help us out:

We fell, by no act of our own, in the first Adam; and we rise, without any merit of our own, in the second Adam.

Ah yes, that’s why. If our fall was entirely our own fault, then it would sort of make sense that we might be able to work our way out of it, but that’s not how Christianity works!

Thank God!

The Christian’s meaning of life on earth and eternal destiny is secure because of the completed work of Jesus, and only because of the completed work of Jesus; anything that I do to add to it actually takes away from it!

So original sin is an important doctrine because it points to the true problem: there is nothing that you or I can do on our own to get security in this life or the next.

The Gospel Focus of Charles Spurgeon by Dr. Steven Lawson

I think it’s fair to say that this book is different to any I’ve read before. It’s partly a biography of Spurgeon, partly a provocation to the Church to get back her passion for the gospel, and partly an educational book about Calvinism and preaching styles.

It’s also true that, on the whole, I really enjoyed this book, for three main reasons. Firstly, Charles Haddon Spurgeon is a legend. His life and ministry story is extraordinary, and although it only takes up 18 pages, I’d love the book even if it ended there! Secondly, Spurgeon is extremely quotable, meaning that this book is full to the brim of inspiring and challenging extracts from his sermons and books. I think it would be tough to read this book and come away unchanged. Thirdly, the book is very clear in its breakdown of Spurgeon’s theology – the five aspects could easily be memorised and applied to every area of life.

I do feel obliged to point out my minor gripe with this book, and that’s the fact that although it’s presented as a book on Spurgeon’s gospel focus, it’s actually far more an apologetic for Calvinism. Now, I’m a Calvinist, so I didn’t necessarily disagree with anything that was written, but there’s a difference between saying ‘Spurgeon said…’ and ‘Spurgeon was right when he said…’ Because of this, the tone at times felt a bit arrogant, as if the author were saying, ‘Come on, Arminians! Think you’re right? Well, I’ve got Spurgeon on my side!’ So, if you’re an Arminian and are unwilling to have your mind changed by Spurgeon, I think you’d be more upset than inspired by this book.

Overall, I’d thoroughly recommend this book to any Christian leader, particularly in the UK where the secular atmosphere really needs slapping up by someone like Spurgeon again. Indeed, ‘We Want Again Spurgeons’!

I got this book for free from Reformation Trust Publishers. I’m not required to give a positive review.

Matthew Henry

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A quick advert, if I may.

I was asked a couple of years ago what the most influential books in my life had been (not the Bible!), and one immediately leapt to the top of my list: Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible. It completely changed the way I looked at Scripture, God, and Christianity itself.

It was with great joy, therefore, that I read how another Christian had enjoyed Matthew Henry’s Commentary. Charles Spurgeon:

First among the mighty for general usefulness we are bound to mention the man whose name is a household word, MATTHEW HENRY. He is most pious and pithy, sound and sensible, suggestive and sober, terse and trustworthy. You will find him to be glittering with metaphors, rich in analogies, overflowing with illustrations, superabundant in reflections. He delights in apposition and alliteration; he is usually plain, quaint, and full of pith; he sees right through a text directly; apparently he is not critical, but he quietly gives the result of an accurate critical knowledge of the original fully up to the best critics of his time.

As with many other Puritan works you can view this for free online over here and elsewhere, but if you’re like me and prefer paper you can get a copy on Amazon for about £15 and that’s a very good investment.

Thank God for Matthew Henry!

A bit o’ Spurgeon for preachers

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Here’s some food for thought…

It seems to me a curious piece of absurdity, if not a specimen of blasphemy, for a preacher to ask the help of the Holy Spirit in his preaching, and then to pull his manuscript out of his pocket! Where is the room for the Holy Spirit to work? Have they not bolted and barred the door against Him? What thoughts can He suggest? What emotions can He excite? The paper is the guide of the hour. Why, then, should they mock the Holy Spirit by asking for His assistance—an assistance which they will not follow? Or, if I shall have committed every word to memory and prepared every sentence, and then shall come into the pulpit and ask to have an anointing from the Holy One to help me to speak, what do I but ask Him to do what I do not want Him to do, since I can do quite as well without Him as with Him, and should be thrown out of my course if He did assist me? It seems to me that after due study of the Word, if the preacher—if you, dear Friend, the teacher—will cast yourself upon the teaching of the Spirit of God, though distractions may occur, though in the congregation or in the Sunday school class there may be much to throw you off track and to make you lose the thread of your discourse. If you can rest upon the Spirit of God, He will enable you to speak with power, point, propriety, and personality.

Well, I’m not sure I agree with Spurgeon that the Holy Spirit can only act in a spontaneous way (i.e. a preacher’s hand can be guided in the preparation of the ‘manuscript’ they pull out of their pocket), but I’d have loved to have heard these words being shouted from the pulpit of the Metropolitan Tabernacle on 17 March, 1867!

Reflection on John MacArthur

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John MacArthur, after 43 years, making notes on pen and paper he has now preached on every single verse of the New Testament.

There’s a really good summary of his achievement over here, but I think we should all be challenged by this.

A quick aside: I don’t think there’s any difference between John MacArthur’s faithfulness in preaching to the entire world and a single Mum’s faithfulness bringing up her children well – the servant with one talent is required to be just as faithful as the servant with five. So God looks at faithfulness, not fruitfulness…

But that’s not where I’m going today.

When MacArthur was still a relatively young man he decided that he wanted to start preaching through the New Testament verse-by-verse, and he has achieved that goal. That requires patience and perseverance, but he has now done it.

Do you need to set a challenge for yourself that you will not achieve for another 40 years? Let’s do it to the glory of God.

And, of course, the entire sermon back catalogue is available for free over here.

The biggest concern when preaching

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I had the privilege of preaching at my local church last Sunday on Hosea and Gomer – the recording is here if you’re interested.

But in preparation for preaching I encountered the biggest challenge that I face every time I preach; I’ve spent hours and hours digging around, researching the passage and history and everything, then have to choose what to leave out.

So, I thought I’d just throw down here some of the bits I originally included, but then missed out from the preach itself.

Old Testament use of the word ‘whore’

The Hebrew word for whore is zanuwn – it’s used four times in the opening phrase of Hosea and over 100 times throughout the Old Testament…this word is important for our understanding of the Christian faith!

Jesus’ heritage

Rahab was a prostitute mentioned in Jesus’ family tree.

Reformed porn star

There’s a lady out there called Kim, but most people would recognise her as Houston – she once won an award for the best selling video of all time as she broke the record for having sex with more people in one day than anyone in recorded history, but is now a Christian.

Unfaithful wife

A Christian lady had cheated on her husband during their engagement, she eventually confessed and the husband bought her a new, clean, white nightgown. He dressed her in it and said, ‘I choose to see you as Jesus does’.

Grace a second time (3:1)

‘If you have had grace once the Lord has more for you. Did you have happy times when old Dr. So-and-so was your pastor? Well, the doctor is dead, but God is not. Were you very much delighted when you used to sit in such-and-such a church, in years gone by, and have you moved into the country now? Yes, but God has not moved. He is in the country as well as in the town. You tell me you had such happy times when you were young. Yes, but God is neither younger nor older. Go to him, for he is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.’ - Charles Spurgeon

God’s forgiveness, and forgetting

‘Suppose that someone had grievously offended any one of you, and that he asked your forgiveness, do you not think that you would probably say to him, ‘Well, yes, I forgive you; but I – I – I – cannot forget it’? Ah! dear friends, that is a sort of forgiveness with one leg chopped off, it is a lame forgiveness, and is not worth much.’ - Charles Spurgeon

Final chapter

‘This is a wonderful chapter to be at the end of such a book. I had never expected from such a prickly shrub to gather so fair a flower, so sweet a fruit; but so it is: where sin abounded, grace doth much more abound. No chapter in the Bible can be more rich in mercy than this last of Hosea; and yet no chapter in the Bible might, in the natural order of things, have been more terrible in judgment. Where we looked for the blackness of darkness, behold a noontide of light!’ - Charles Spurgeon

Why does God only save some?

‘God is a lover and a husband. He is not a rapist, he will not force his love. He will woo, draw by attraction, but not force.’ - Monsignor Charles Pope

You are sicker than you think

Isaiah 64:6 tells us that our finest efforts are a polluted garment – what is it like when we make no effort?

Shocking statistic

80% of married women admit to having frequent sexual fantasies about men who they are not married to. 98% of men do.

The nature of sin

‘It is not the importance of the thing, but the majesty of the Lawgiver, that is to be the standard of obedience…[The question] is really this: Is the Lord to be obeyed in all things whatsoever he commands?’ – Andrew Bonar

Spurgeon is a legend

I think that Charles Spurgeon is perhaps the most quotable preacher in church history. This is phenomenal:

If this be the Word of God, what will become of some of you who have not read it for the last month? Most people treat the Bible very politely . . . When they get home, they lay it up in a drawer till next Sunday morning; then it comes out again for a little bit of a treat and goes to chapel; that is all the poor Bible gets in the way of an airing. That is your style of entertaining this heavenly messenger. There is dust enough on some of your Bibles to write “damnation” with your fingers.”

Foolish Dick – a quote from Spurgeon

I stumbled across a wonderful quote this week. Apologies for the spelling, but this is Foolish Dick we’re talking about:

We would…rather believe that our brethren will welcome all who, with true hearts, desire to testify to the truth as it is in Jesus, will cheerfully appoint them such service as they are capable of, and assist them in qualifying themselves for greater usefulness. This will be easy work for the pastors if the brethren are all of the same spirit as Richard Hampton. One of the last records of his experience runs thus:—

“My expearyance at thes time es, that I have laately found a grawin’ in graace, an’ have injoyed braave, cumfert ov laate. I have no end in view in going round as I do, from plaace to plaace but the gloary of God, an’ the good of sawls. In times past, I cud’n help shaakin’ an’ trem’lin’ when I used to see anybody cum that I thoft was come to shaw a bad sperrit, or to loff an’ grizzle, but the Lord have took away the feear of man from me—I doan’t knaw nothin’ ’bout et now, I’ve ben a straanger to et ever sence; thank the Lord! I do love every Methody ‘pon the faace ov the eaarth weth a partikler love, but saame time I do railly long an’ desire that aall mankind shud be saaved. I shud like to be consedered a member ov society in Porthowan class so long as I do live. I doan’t waant to laabour in no circuit no further foath than is plaisin’ to the praichers in that circuit: an I do wish all’ays to be in subjecshun to they that are ovver the flock, as ‘they must account.’ God es my wetness, I never look to praich in laarge chaapels nuther: owld baarns, staables, or any plaace like that; an’ I b’lieve the Lord will shaw, in the day of account, how hes poor sarvent have tried to maake the best of the taalent that he gove me.”

Foolish Dick went across the Jordan not very long ago, leaving behind him many who remember his name and work with devout thankfulness. He was never married, but he rejoiced greatly in his spiritual sons and daughters, who were on earth his comfort, and will be in heaven his crown.

I want to be like Foolish Dick.