Happy Birthday CHS!

I describe London Baptist preacher C H Spurgeon as my ministry hero:

 

Perhaps, with due deference on his birthday, we should note how unheroically he would wish to be regarded.  Even if he is sometimes followed as an evangelical demi-god he certainly did not experience himself that way,

“It is of the utmost importance to us to be kept humble. Consciousness of self-importance is a hateful delusion, but one into which we fall as naturally as weeds grow on a dunghill. We cannot be used of the Lord but that we also dream of personal greatness, we think ourselves almost indispensible to the church, pillars of the cause, and foundations of the temple of God. We are nothings and nobodies, but that we do not think so is very evident, for as soon as we are put on the shelf we begin anxiously to enquire, ‘How will the work go on without me?’ As well might the fly on the coach wheel enquire, ‘How will the mails be carried without me?’ Far better men have been laid in the grave without having brought the Lord’s work to a standstill, and shall we fume and fret because for a little season we must lie upon the bed of languishing? God sometimes weakens our strength in a way at the precise juncture when our presence seems most needed to teach us that we are not necessary to God’s work, and that when we are most useful, He can easily do without us. If this be the practical lesson, the rough schooling may be easily endured for assuredly it is beyond all things desirable that self should be kept low and the Lord alone be magnified.”

Charles H. Spurgeon, “Laid Aside, Why?,” The Sword and Trowel, May, 1876, London

Good News in a Pandemic: 6. Ascension Day

Charles Haddon Spurgeon explains why, however sad we may feel, this day (perhaps more than any other) reminds us that we now have reason for great joy!!

Our Lord is risen from the dead; 

Our Jesus is gone up on high; 

The powers of hell are captive led— 

Dragged to the portals of the sky. 

I have known that one thought of our Lord’s exaltation lift me up from the borders of despair, in a dread hour, long since past, when reason almost reeled after great calamities had overtaken me. I recovered my balance and my peace of mind, in a single moment, by the recollection of that one text, “Wherefore God also has highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name.”

So long as He lives and reigns, all is well. Men may rave at me as they will, but what does it matter so long as He is exalted?  I want you, dear friends, to feel like that concerning your ascended Lord. Go home [During the pandemic we would amend to Stay Home!], and worship Him, and be filled with great joy.  

Psalm 91: A Psalm for a Pandemic in Lent

The text of a sermon preached at Muswell Hill Baptist Church on March 15, 2020.  This was the church's last meeting before the growing pandemic led the Government to instruct all religious groups to stop gathering in order to hold back the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

We are in unusual times – for us.  

But these are far from unusual times for the human race.  More locally, these are far from unusual times in London.

Every so often you may be checking out the increasingly grim coronavirus statistics.  But in the Diary of Samuel Pepys we find him reading the 17^th century Bills of Mortality:  

Thus this month ends, with great sadness upon the public through the greatness of the plague, everywhere through the Kingdom almost. Every day sadder and sadder news of its increase. In the City died this week 7496; and all of them, 6102 of the plague. But it is feared that the true number of the dead this week is near 10000 - partly from the poor that cannot be taken notice of through the greatness of the number, and partly from the Quakers and others that will not have any bell ring for them. As to myself, I am very well; only, in fear of the plague . .

So we are not at all the first London congregation to turn to Psalm 91 as a pestilence happens around us.

1. This Psalm is for You - personally

Psalm 90 begins this 4th book of Psalms. 

1 Lord, you have been our dwelling-place

throughout all generations.

. . .4 A thousand years in your sight

are like a day that has just gone by,

or like a watch in the night.

5 Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death –

they are like the new grass of the morning:

It makes uncomfortable human reading  (until you trust in God.)  The individual human being seems very small, part of a tide.  This is what a global epidemic feels like - numbers and statistics and curves and percentages.  And it always was:

The Bills of Mortality began to be published regularly in 1603, in which year 33,347 deaths were recorded from plague. 1625 saw 41,313 dead.  The 1625 outbreak was recorded at the time as the 'Great Plague', until deaths from the plague of 1665 surpassed it.  The official returns for 1665 record 68,596 cases of plague, but a reasonable estimate suggests this figure is 30,000 short of the true total.

Into all these fearful statistics comes Psalm 91.

1 He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High

will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.

2 I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress,

my God, in whom I trust.’

In every ‘you’ in this Psalm it is addressed to the singular.  

HE who dwells – that’s just him, you, me.

The numbers are here of course: 

7 A thousand may fall at your side,

ten thousand at your right hand,

but it will not come near you.

But the number that matters is just you. 

This is a pointed and opportune time to ask this question – how is your personal relationship with God?

ISAIAH 55:6 Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near.  7 Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.

If  you must self-isolate in this epidemic – take this Psalm with you – and remember it is for you, not for church.  Provided you too can say:

2 I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress,

my God, in whom I trust.’

2. This Psalm is for Salvation but not for Show

a. For Salvation

3 Surely he will save you

from the fowler’s snare

and from the deadly pestilence.

4 He will cover you with his feathers,

and under his wings you will find refuge;

his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.

14 ‘Because he loves me,’ says the Lord, ‘I will rescue him;

I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.

15 He will call on me, and I will answer him;

I will be with him in trouble,

I will deliver him and honour him.

16 With long life I will satisfy him

and show him my salvation.’

There are many troubles in this Psalm:

5 You will not fear the terror of night,

nor the arrow that flies by day,

6 nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,

nor the plague that destroys at midday.

But His feathers are enough.  They are as a shield, as a rampart.  Feathers so gentle, so powerful.

Lord Craven lived in London when the plague raged. On the plague growing epidemic, his Lordship, to avoid the danger, resolved to go to his seat in the country. His coach and six were accordingly at the door, his baggage put up, and all things in readiness for the journey. As he was walking through his hall he overheard his servant saying to another servant. "I suppose, by my Lord's quitting London to avoid the plague, that his God lives in the country, and not in town." The man said this really believing a plurality of gods.

Lord Craven paused. "My God lives everywhere, and can preserve me in town as well as in the country. I will stay where I am.”

He continued in London, helped his sick neighbours, and never caught the infection.

It is a Psalm to place our trust in because God is personally with us where we are.

b. Not for Show

A Psalm for a Pandemic  - in Lent.  What has it to do with Lent? 

Lent is framed around the forty days when Jesus, in the wilderness, confronted and overcame Satan, the tempter.

LUKE 4:9 The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. ‘If you are the Son of God,’ he said, ‘throw yourself down from here. 10 For it is written [Psalm 91]:

‘“He will command his angels concerning you

    to guard you carefully;

11 they will lift you up in their hands,

    so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.”’

12 Jesus answered, ‘It is said: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”’

Satan tempts Jesus with Psalm 91.  It is Jesus’ chance to display his invincibility.  Jesus, instead, shows his obedience to his calling.

Even the most wonderful promises are part of our discipleship, our discipline, our self-denial.  Like the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the promises of God are for Service and for Salvation, not for Show.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the great Baptist Preacher in Victorian London told this account of service and salvation in pestilential times:

In the year 1854, when I had scarcely been in London twelve months, the neighbourhood in which I laboured was visited by Asiatic cholera, and my congregation suffered from its inroads. Family after family summoned me to the bedside of the smitten, and almost every day I was called to visit the grave... I became weary in body and sick at heart. My friends seemed falling one by one, and I felt or fancied that I was sickening like those around me… As God would have it, I was returning mournfully home from a funeral, when my curiosity led me to read a paper in a shoemaker's window in the Dover Road. It bore in a good bold handwriting these words: "Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling." The effect upon my heart was immediate. Faith appropriated the passage as her own. I felt secure, refreshed, girt with immortality ... The providence which moved the tradesman to place those verses in his window I gratefully acknowledge, and in the remembrance of its marvellous power I adore the Lord my God.

Nobody can have two homes — two places of ultimate resort. And if the Lord be truly my dwelling place then even in these times, my home is enough and is secure - a home of divine feathers in a hard world.

Sowing and Reaping (Psalm 126)

Today at out Harvest Thanksgiving we considered one of the great Psalms - 126.

5  Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy.

6  He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him.

Here's what C H Spurgeon had to say about it 150 years ago:

Heralds of the cross have to do a deal of rough work and toil on. For the Gospel, which ought to be welcomed, is rejected. And as there was no room for Christ in the inn when He became incarnate, so there is no room for the Gospel in the hearts of mankind. Yes, and this makes us weep, since where there should be so much readiness to accept, there is so much obstinacy and rebellion. The Christian worker weeps because, when he does see some signs of success, he is often disappointed. Blossoms come not to be fruit, or fruit half-ripe drops from the tree. He has to weep before God oftentimes, because he is afraid that these failures may be the result of his own lack of tact, or want of grace. I marvel not that the minister weeps, or that any worker for Christ bedews the seed with his tears—the wonder is he does not lament far more than he does. Perhaps we should all weep more if we were more Christ-like, more what we should be.

Christ, the model of the Christian life, assures you of this. He went forth weeping, sowing drops of bloody sweat, sowing with pierced hands and feet that dropped with blood. He went forth sowing living seeds of love, and they are springing up today already in the glory and in the multitudes that are gathered into it. And soon, in the coming and the superior splendour that shall envelop it, the Christ who sowed in tears will reap in joy. Even thus it must be with you. And if this is not enough to comfort you, remember those who have gone before you in this service, who have proved this fact. Think of those you have known, who have not been unsuccessful. When, with hearts broken and bruised, they have spent their life-power in their Lord’s work. Remember Judson and the thousands that this day sing of the Saviour whom he first taught to them. Think of Moffat, in his old age still in the villages of the mission field, not without glorious seals to his ministry. Think of Jamaica, of the wonders and trophies of grace in the South Sea Islands, the multitudes that were turned to Christ during revival seasons in our own land, and in the United States, and you have proof that those that know how to weep and sow, and who go forth from God to the sowing, shall, beyond a doubt, come again rejoicing with their sheaves. 

The Love that leaves

Today we celebrate the birthday of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, London's greatest ever Baptist preacher by a mile and then some.  

Though his great appeal was to the soul of the ordinary man as well as to the social needs of a great but exploitative city, he was not willing to watch some other clever or compromising Baptists demolish the basis of the faith that has served the Gospel so well.  

However in this key passage at the start of the divisive Downgrade Controversy he demonstrates the reluctant pain with which believers who believe the Bible part company from those who state they believe the Bible (or that they believe the Bible but it doesn't mean what it plainly says).

It now becomes a serious question how far those who abide by the faith once delivered to the saints should fraternise with those who have turned aside to another gospel. Christian love has its claims, and divisions are to be shunned as grievous evils; but how far are we justified in being in confederacy with those who are departing from the truth? It is a difficult question to answer so as to keep the balance of the duties. For the present it behoves believers to be cautious, lest they lend their support and countenance to the betrayers of the Lord. It is one thing to overleap all boundaries of denominational restriction for the truth's sake: this we hope all godly men will do more and more. It is quite another policy which would urge us to subordinate the maintenance of truth to denominational prosperity and unity. Numbers of easy-minded people wink at error so long as it is committed by a clever man and a good-natured brother, who has so many fine points about him. Let each believer judge for himself; but, for our part, we have put on a few fresh bolts to our door, and we have given orders to keep the chain up; for, under colour of begging the friendship of the servant, there are those about who aim at robbing the Master.

Harvest

Of all the special days, even including Christmas an Easter, there are none that have more messages for the soul than harvest thanksgiving. This is what Victorian preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said of it - and he was in the middle of the world's largest city at the time;

'If you have an opportunity to journey into the country during the next three weeks, you will, if your heart is rightly attuned, find a marvellous mass of wisdom couched in a cornfield. Why I could not attempt for a moment to open the mighty mines of gabled treasure which are hidden there.

Think, beloved, of the joy of harvest. How does it tell us of the joy of the redeemed if we, being saved, shall at last be carried like shocks of corn fully ripe into the garner!

Look at the ear of corn when it is fully ripe, and see how it bends toward the earth! It held its head erect before, but in getting ripe how humble does it become! And how does God speak to the sinner and tell him, that if he would be fit for the great harvest he must drop his head and cry, "Lord, have mercy upon me a sinner."

And when we see the weeds spring up amongst wheat, do we not recall our Master's parable over again of the tares among the wheat; and are we not reminded of the great day of division, when he shall say to the reaper, "Gather first the tares and bind them in bundles, to burn them; but gather the wheat into my barn."

O yellow field of corn, you preach well to me, the minister, "Behold, the fields are ripe already to the harvest." Work yourself; and pray you the Lord of the harvest to send forth more labourers into the harvest."

And it preaches well to you, O man of years, for it tells you that the sickle of death is sharp, and that you must soon fall. But it cheers and comforts you, for it tells that the wheat shall be safely housed, and it bids thee hope that you will be carried to your Master's garner to be his joy and his delight for ever. Hark, then, to the rustling eloquence of the yellow harvest.'

Spurgeon's Birthday

On the great man's birthday it seems fitting to ponder a few of his uncounted numbers of quotations:

It is a wonderful thing, that even if you have been a prodigal, and have spent your living with harlots, yet if you are his child, you may call him “Father.” Did not the prodigal say, “Father, I have sinned?” There is good pleading in this fact, for you are not unchilded even by your sin.

There is only one church. Here and there, earth and heaven make a little division to our senses, but there is no division in the mind of God; he sees one general assembly of all his people, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues.

There are some who do little else but complain. They complain of the times, of the weather, of the government, of their families, of their trade; if, for once, they would complain of themselves, they might have a more deserving subject for fault-finding.

The Lord knows how, without violating the human will (which he never does), so to influence the heart that the man with full consent, against his former will, yields to the will of God, and is made willing in the day of God’s power.

My horse invariably comes home in less time than he makes the journey out. He pulls the carriage with a hearty good will when his face is towards home. Should not I also both suffer and labour the more joyously because my way lies towards heaven, and I am on pilgrimage to my Father’s house, my soul’s dear home and resting place?

Take life and death just as they come, bit by bit. You know how the Spartans endeavoured to keep back the Persians. They took possession of the pass of Thermopylæ, and there the brave two hundred stood and held the way against myriads. The enemy could only advance one by one. Now, do not think of all the armies of your troubles that are coming in the future, but meet them one by one. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

Lurv

His love to you has been MOST FREE.

It was unbought, and even unsought. In Hosea it is written, "I will love them freely". and surely, if ever there was a case in which that verse was transparently true, it is in my case. Was it not so in yours? What was there in you that could have won his love? If he could see any beauty in me, it must have been first in his own eyes. They say that love is blind; and certainly, though our heavenly bridegroom is not blind, yet he was somewhat kinder still; for he saw our deformities of sin and folly, and yet he loved us notwithstanding, all.  Let us love him because he first loved us. Beholding the generous upbringing of a love which we could not deserve and would not seek, let us freely love in return.

This love of our Lord's, so free, so full, so forceful, was and is MOST AMAZING.

We shall never bear better or more surprising news than this, that Jesus loves us. Nothing more surprising ever came to me than to learn "he loved me, and gave himself for me." Others may, perhaps, see what is wrought by the Lord's grace in us, and this may make them the less astonished at the Lord's love towards us; but we know ourselves, and see our blemishes as well as our beauties, and hence we know that there is nothing lovable in us by nature. We are amazed at our sin, and more amazed at his love. We shall go on reading in the golden Book of Christ's love throughout all eternity, and the longer we study it the more we shall be astonished that ever the Holy and the Glorious and the Ever-blessed should have espoused in love such insignificant, polluted, and fickle-hearted creatures as we are.

The love of Jesus is love MOST PRACTICAL.

Christ loves not in word only, but in deed and in truth. There is a greater force to my mind in Christ's deeds of love than in all the words which even he could have uttered. His deeds emphasize his words. Words cannot to the full express the mind of love: language filters from the lips, while feeling gushes from the heart. Jesus has written out his love in living characters. "O Master! never man spoke like you, and yet it was your most eloquent discourse when you said but little, but stretched your hands to the cross, that they might be nailed there. Then you poured out your heart, not in oratory, but in blood and water.  Said I not well that his is practical love? It is love full of tenderness, rich in bounty, lavish in thoughtfulness, firm in constancy, strong as death, mightier than the grave.

Think, again, that it was PERSONAL LOVE.

The Lord Jesus Christ loves each one of his people as much as if he had not one more. All the heart of Christ goes out to each one of us. The great sun shines today on this round earth, and while it pours its limitless flood of light on all, that one tiny daisy, as it bathes in the brightness, is able to say, "The sun is all mine." Though there be myriads of flowers in the meadows and the gardens, yet this one flower may freely possess all that the sun can give, or rather all that the little flower can receive, as much as if it were the only flower that blooms. So Jesus is to me, to you, to each one of us, all our own; neither lose we anything by the fact that he is all the own of so many millions.  The Lord Jesus, his own self, delighted in us, even in us who are not worthy to be named in the same day with him. Glory be to his holy name for ever!

C H Spurgeon September 1887

Shaking

God is our refuge and strength,

A very present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear,

Even though the earth be removed,

And though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;

Though its waters roar and be troubled,

Though the mountains shake with its swelling.

C H Spurgeon: 'What then? Then will the earth be removed, . . . our mountain will be carried into the midst of the sea! But since God is our refuge and strength we ought not to dread the day.'

Snow

Last night it was -9 degrees in Wycombe.  The snow is nearly a foot deep on our lawn.  Not a lot is happening around town just now.  But this was January 6th, and that reminds me . . .

If you have the time and incliniation to read this link you will find that, even though human beings in their inabilities no longer work when the winter strangles them in her icy grip, the Great Maker of Winter will still be at work.