posted by Phil Johnson
The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "God’s Cure for Man’s Weakness," a sermon preached on Sunday Morning, June 24th, 1866, at the Met Tab in London.
oth ministers and private members of the church are very generally weakly in one way or other. They are living, but they are sickly. They are working for God, but they are working in a feeble, inefficient manner.If I look upon the camps of the Lord's enemies . . . I see intelligence and vigor so apparent that I am apt to think that never was error more earnest, more active, more intense than just now; there is a reality about the efforts of our opponents which may well alarm us: but when I look to the camp of the Lord Jesus Christ I lament a predominant luke-warmness, a want of enthusiasm, and deficiency in force, which, if it does not betoken a departure from God in heart, certainly indicates very great feebleness in the vital parts, producing comparative weakness in all the parts.
I desire this morning to speak to those who are weak—weak where they ought not to be—and who feel a growing tendency to rest content in that weakness; I would stir up those who are beginning to imagine that weakness is the normal and proper state of a Christian; that to be unbelieving, desponding, nervous, timid, cowardly, inactive, heartless, is at worst a very excusable thing. I want, if God wills, to show to the sinfully weak ones that their condition is not proper at all, and that it is the work of faith to lift us right out of it; not to help us in our evil weakness, but to deliver us out of it and to make us strong, reversing our present condition by enabling us to be mighty in the work of God.
11 comments:
A cogent word! And you must've gotten your iMac working or you wouldn't have been able to post this!
Yes, but it's working sporadically. When it gets hot again, it'll start ejecting whatever peripherals I have plugged into the USB port.
may God grant us his strength, and may we be forever vigilant! 1 Corinthians 16:13, psalm 86:16, 1 peter 5:8
I know of a minister who was once taken to task by his friend about his ministry.
His friend's point was that Jesus gave the church the ministry of teaching, and preaching and healing, but in this church there was only teaching and preaching.
The friend wanted to know why there was no healing ministry.
Being brutally honest, the minister said, "To tell you the truth, when I try it not much happens."
His friend's answer was "Well, when you preach and teach not much happens, but that doesn't stop you..."
Perhaps the reason that preachers deliver lukewarm messages is that they have forgotten that, as in healing, results depend on God.
They don't get because they didn't ask. They assumed that they could do it on their own, and didn't realise they were wrong.
Spurgeon is once again so "relevant" in his indictment against OUR times!
Where more does this truth present itself than in the vast majority of the utterly apostate "Christian" colleges and universities of our day! Sadly, the droves of self-absorbed heretics that fill the halls of institutions that were once known for proclaiming and defending the Truth...know and defend their heresies better than those who have the truth (i.e. the unfortunate students who think their professors are actually Christians).
Phil: Sounds awful. When you get fed up, maybe consider converting to a PC. They are just as easy to use, these days. Good luck.
Caught not taught: An instructive and entertaining parable, brother. Thanks!
Chris: Hey those profs may be heretics, but look how easy it makes life for themselves, and how many friends they have... until Jesus comes. After that I expect things will get rough for them! lol
Phil, thank you for the video link to the TMS graduation! Wonderful service that we thought we were only going to hear via audio feed!
Stratagem: Amen to that! I need to keep this perspective in focus, especially at those times when the thought of self-indulgent pagans gleefully blaspheming the Lord in once-Christian institutions get the better of me (and I fall into sin myself in my thoughts!)
PS: The Master's College and seminary, among only a handful of others, are exempt from any of my criticisms of Christian institutions...simply because they prove themselves to be Christian institutions by their being characterized by a love for the truth and not rebellion against it.
And I can think of several places in Southern California that are characterized by the latter!!
No token words of Spurgeon-y appreciation for Mothers??
*sniff*
((one small, solitary tear rolls gently down a cheek wrinkled and careworn from endless long days and sleepless nights caring for the next generation of pastor's wives))
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