Was Charles Spurgeon Truly an Expository Preacher?

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]I wanted to consider the question of whether Spurgeon was a biblical expositor or not. And uh my title kind of gives away the punchline. Spurgeon was not an expository preacher. That's not a secret I think to most of you. In fact, people point this out to me all the time because I'm a outspoken advocate of expository preaching. And my pastor and mentor for the decade before I came to Grace Church with John MacArthur was Warren Wearsby. And Wearsby was an expositor and a champion of biblical exposition from the pulpit.

[00:00:37]And of course, John MacArthur is the best known expositor in the last quarter of the 20th century and the first quarter of the this century. And I've also worked closely with the Martin Lloyd Jones Recordings Trust both in England and in America because I loved Lloyd Jones's expository style of preaching. So people ask me all the time, how can you be such a Spurgeon afficionado? Because he wasn't an expository preacher. And it's true Spurgeon didn't do verse byvere exposition when he preached. He wasn't a model of the expository meth method that anyone who has been affiliated with John MacArthur would advocate. But so what would I call Spurgeon's method of preaching? When people ask me that question, I generally say he was a topical and textual preacher whose content was always biblical, but without the sort of cultural contextualization that's, you know, favored by topical preachers today. He wasn't a storyteller or an cultural analyst. He didn't exeute the newspaper headlines. He didn't think his role as a preacher was to try to adapt the content of scripture so that it would be more in line with Victorian principles or Darwinism or Marxism or even the novels of Charles Dickens or Anthony Trrollop all or the operetas of Gilbert and Sullivan. All of that stuff was shaping English culture and fashion during Spurgeon's ministry. And in the pulpit he ignored all of those things.

[00:02:21]He didn't care about what was stylish or popular. And he certainly didn't preach about things that were stylish and popular. He just wanted to declare undiluted biblical truth with the voice of a prophet. And that's why his sermons are still timeless and still edifying.

[00:02:40]Spurgeon preached devotional and doctrinal and pmical sermons. And there was biblical com content in all of them.

[00:02:48]But he didn't preach usually systematically through texts. He told young preachers they should stick close to the text. He said, and I'm quoting him here, don't be afraid to stick to your texts. That is the best way to get variety in your discourses. Saturate your sermons with biblene. He said the essence of Bible truth and you'll always have something new to say. And so that was his philosophy of preaching. He was able to be thoroughly biblical without being strictly expository because his mind was so full of scripture, topical and textual, but always biblical in content. Spurgeon would start with a biblical text. Usually, it was a single verse or or a short phrase from a verse.

[00:03:37]Sometimes as many as three or four verses, but he would use that text to introduce a biblical or doctrinal theme.

[00:03:45]And then he would preach what was basically a topical message loaded with biblical references on whatever theme he was preaching on. And also from week to week he would skip around in the Bible.

[00:03:58]Uh you can look at his sermons from week to week and you'll find he really didn't follow any discernable pattern.

[00:04:05]But here's what's interesting to me.

[00:04:07]Spurgeon said he actually preferred the expository method and he fully understood that the style of preaching that he himself practiced was actually a departure from the superior method uh that was used by Calvin and the Puritans and even the early church fathers. And in fact he says this in his book commenting and commentaries. He writes, "Preaching in the olden time consisted very much more of exposition than it does now. I suppose that the sermons of the primitive Christians were for the most part expositions of lengthy passages of the Old Testament. And when copies of the gospels and the epistles of Paul had become accessible to the churches, the chief work of the preacher would be to press home the apostolic teachings by delivering an address the backbone of which would be a complete passage of scripture. There would probably be but faint traces of divisions and heads and points such as we employ in modern discoursing. But the teacher would follow the run of the passage which was opened before him, commenting as he read. Interesting, isn't it? That's what he said would be the best style of preaching. He further said, quote, I could almost wish that the custom were reestablished for the present plan of preaching from short texts together with the great neglect of commenting publicly on the word of God is very unsatisfactory.

[00:05:37]We cannot expect to deliver much of the teaching of the holy scriptures by picking out verse by verse and holding up these verses at random. The process resembles that of showing a house by exhibiting separate bricks. Nowadays, expository preaching is not so common as it ought to be. There is he said the more the more necessity for commenting during the time of our reading the scriptures since topical preaching, hordatory preaching, experimental preaching and so on all exceedingly useful in their way have almost pushed proper expository preaching out of place. There is the more need that we should when we read passages of holy rit habitually give running commentaries on them. And so that's exactly what he did.

[00:06:26]Every week in the morning service, at some point before the sermon, he would give a formal verse byvere exposition of an extended passage of scripture. This was a a different feature in the order of worship distinct from the sermon. It was basically a Bible reading with Spurgeon's comments interspersed. And those comments on the text as he read typically were very short, usually just a sentence or two. Uh I would guess that you've used those ex expositional uh comments to make that series of of commentaries that you've put together.

[00:07:04]That's where he actually commented on the passages. And many of these expositions were published alongside his sermons in the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Books. And they're interesting to read. and he often includes some really rich insights and sayings, but I have to say that his expositions aren't as substantive as you might wish. Very short comments. Anyway, when I say Spurgeon was not an expository preacher, don't go and tell anyone that I said he didn't do exposition because he was indeed an expositor, but he didn't do biblical exposition when he was preaching. You understand that? distinction. As far as I know, there's not a single sermon anywhere in the vast collection of Spurgeon's published works where he did verse byvere exposition and and made that the substance of the sermon itself. But here's what his expositions were like.

[00:08:04]On most Sundays, he would choose a passage of a dozen or two dozen verses, and he would read it aloud, phrase by phrase, interspersing these expository and explanatory comments as he read.

[00:08:20]Usually the passage that he chose for the exposition would set the stage for the sermon later because the text he used as a jumping off point for his sermon would typically be a verse that came from the passage he read during the exposition. And so he used the exposition to explain the context of the verse he intended to start his sermon with. But the sermon itself was not necessarily tied very closely to the larger passage or its context. And in fact, sometimes he departed very quickly from the context of his original text.

[00:08:59]Again, his sermons were topical and sometimes there might seem to be only a very tenuous connection to his original text. Sometimes it was just that the verse he used to start with you had a word in it that he wanted to preach as his topic. My favorite example of this is his sermon on God's providence. Now there's no date to tell us when he preached this sermon and it wasn't published until 1908. That was more than 16 years after Spurgeon died. His text there was Ezekiel chapter 1. And that's where the prophet describes his vision of the heavenly throne and with a wheel in the middle of a wheel. And and Spurgeon says, quote, "These wheels signify divine providence." And then he explains it like this. He says, "Providence is like a wheel because sometimes one part of the wheel is at the top and then it's at the bottom."

[00:10:00]Now, I've read that sermon maybe a dozen times, and I still don't see how Spurgeon got divine providence out of a wheel within a wheel.

[00:10:10]I mean, it's true that what goes around comes around, but that doesn't mean the point of Ezekiel chapter 1 is about divine providence. It really isn't. It's a description of the prophet's vision of heaven. It's about heaven. But nevertheless, not to be too critical of of my hero, Spurgeon manages in that sermon to give a really good and instructive sermon on the principle of divine providence. And so, whatever else you might say that's critical about his approach to preaching, we ought to acknowledge that no preacher has ever made the gospel more clear or proclaimed it more faithfully than Spurgeon did. He was truly a great preacher. His content was doctrally sound. It was thoroughly biblical in the sense that what he said was true and he always supported it with quotations from scripture. And even though I I can't personally recommend his way of dealing with texts because I don't know anybody else who could do it that well. And and I hope you don't aspire to model your sermons on the pattern he followed. It would still be totally wrong to characterize his style of preaching as unbiblical. It wasn't unbiblical. It was thoroughly biblical.

[00:11:30]And Spurgeon had unique abilities that overshadowed whatever deficiencies you might find in that approach to homalytics and exugesus. For one thing, he had a photographic memory or nearly so. And it's clear that his mind was saturated with scripture.

[00:11:48]He Spurgeon said of John Bunan, you can prick him anywhere and his blood is bibling. He loved that word biblene.

[00:11:57]He he described it. In fact, he's I'll read the rest of the quote about John Bunan. Prick him anywhere. His blood is biblene. The very essence of the Bible flows from him. That's what he meant by biblene. It's the essence of biblical truth. He said uh Bunan cannot speak without quoting a text because his very soul is so full of the word of God. And Spurgeon said he aspired to be like that. And the truth is he was like that.

[00:12:27]And that's how he managed to have an immensely fruitful ministry even though he was preaching topical sermons from outof context verses. His sermons were full of biblene.

[00:12:41]And by the way, that approach in sermonizing was pretty common in Victorian times. Again, nobody did it as well as Spurgeon. Nobody even came close. But Spurgeon, like all of us, was a product of his times. And yet, he was extraordinary, even by the standard of his time. On top of his photographic memory, he had a keen, logical mind, and he could organize his sermons in in a very persuasive way. Uh he had a powerful voice. He had an amazing capacity for hard work even when he wasn't feeling well which was frankly most of the time and his method of preparation is instructive to read. It's something you should never try to emulate. It won't work well for you. I promise. But his method of preparing his sermons reflects the high level of natural giftedness and and thoroughly saturated. his mind thoroughly saturated with scripture. Here's how he said he prepared his sermons. He told his students, "Brethren, it's not easy for me to tell you how precisely I make my sermons. Although, uh, all through the week, I'm on the lookout for material that I can use on Sunday, but the actual work of arranging it is necessarily left until Saturday evening, for every other moment is fully occupied in the Lord's service." Again, I don't recommend this.

[00:14:09]Mrs. Spurgeon also described it this way. She said, "Up to six o'clock every Saturday evening, visitors were welcome.

[00:14:17]But at 6:00, every visitor left." And m Mr. Spurgeon would often playfully say, "Now, dear friends, I must bid you goodbye and turn you out of this study.

[00:14:28]You know what a number of chickens I have to scratch for, and I want to give them a good meal tomorrow." So, you're you're hearing this, right? He didn't even begin preparing his Sunday sermon until six o'clock on Saturday evening.

[00:14:41]Again, don't do that.

[00:14:45]But in his preparation time, Spurgeon would use a piece of scrap paper. Often, it was just the back of an old envelope or or something, and he would write down a sparse outline. He rarely took more notes than that into the pulpit, just a simple outline. But if he had that basic road map of where he wanted to go, he was able to compose the rest of the sermon extemporaneously while he was speaking from the p pulpit.

[00:15:13]Now, don't get the wrong idea. A lot of prior thought and soularching went into the development of that outline. And as he said, he was on the lookout for material for his sermons all week. And he said this about those Sunday night sessions in the study. He said, "I confess that I frequently sit hour after hour praying and waiting for a subject and that this is the main part of my study. Much hard labor I have spent manipulating topics, ruminating on points of doctrine, making skeletons out of verses, and then burying every bone of them in the catacombs of oblivion. I believe that almost any Saturday in my life, I make enough outlines of sermons, if I felt at liberty to preach them, they'd last me a month.

[00:16:01]That's amazing, isn't it? And hour after hour, and if he didn't start till 6 p.m., uh how much how many hours did he have to noodle through all of those sermons?

[00:16:11]But he said this, "As soon as any passage of scripture really grips my heart and soul, I concentrate my whole attention upon it. Look at the precise meaning of the original. Closely examine the context so as to see the special aspect of the text in its surroundings and roughly jot down all the thoughts that occur to me concerning the subject, leaving to a later period the orderly marshalling of them for presentation to my hearers. And the truth is the the opportunity to marshall all those thoughts for presentation to his hearers took place while he was actually standing in the pulpit. This came to him as he preached. You can sample almost any random Spurgeon sermon and you will probably be amazed at the richness and the depth of his preaching. And the key to this was his voracious reading habit.

[00:17:03]He filled his mind with the truth of God's word from the beginning to the end of the week. And he did this every week of his life. And he therefore could preach just from the overflow of his heart. and his unique mind and abilities enabled him to give a sermon almost extemporaneously that most of us would be hardpressed to write even if we spent two weeks on it.

[00:17:28]I mentioned the power of his voice after his London congregation outgrew the original building where they were when he came to London. He preached for a few years in Exer Hall. There's a picture of it over there. massive auditorium that could accommodate 4,500 people and it was jammed with people who came to hear Spurgeon and it was notoriously bad acoustically. Almost nobody could be heard there. But they said when Spurgeon preached there, you could hear him in every corner of the room. He had just a magnificent voice. He preached at the Suriri Garden Music Hall and in that's a that's a it was a concert and entertainment venue that held 10,000 people at once with galleries three floors up. And he also once spoke to a crowd of 20,000 people in the Crystal Palace. And in all of those situations, there was no amplification at all. There was just a soundboard that hung over the speaker to reflect his voice back into the audience. And people testified even in that room with 20,000 people at the Crystal Palace, which of course was like a glass greenhouse wasn't built for acoustics, but people testified that they could hear even in the most remote corners, they could hear every syllable clearly.

[00:18:53]It's sad that there's no recording of his voice. We don't know what he sounds like.

[00:18:58]Although the technology existed to record sound, it was pretty rudimentary in those days and evidently nobody ever thought to get a recording of Spurgeon.

[00:19:08]We have people's descriptions of his voice and some of them are contradictory. We know he had a a a loud voice that could be heard.

[00:19:18]Perhaps the best known feature of Spurgeon's preaching was his laser focus on the gospel because no matter what text he began with, he would always find a route to the gospel. Even that Ezekiel sermon on providence ends with a gospel appeal. He did this because as a young teenager, he was deeply under conviction and he was going for months from church to church hoping to hear a sermon that would tell him the way of salvation because he knew he needed to be saved.

[00:19:53]And he said he heard preacher after preacher preach on the law and nobody gave him the gospel until this illiterate non-reacher uh fumbled his way through a short sermon uh and gave enough of the gospel that Spurgeon was saved. That's a famous story. I know you've many most of you have probably heard it so I won't go into it. But Spurgeon's policy after that was never to leave the gospel out of any of his sermons. And even if he was preaching from one of the narrative texts in the Old Testament, he would find a way from there to Christ and preach Christ, he he embodied what the Apostle Paul said about preaching. And 1 Corinthians 2:2, I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I don't know of a single instance where Spurgeon preached without uplifting Christ and explaining the way of salvation. He always did that. One other distinctive feature of Spurgeon's preaching and and I want to spend a bit of time on this because it's not talked about often and yet I think it's vitally important. A distinctive feature of his preaching is the extraordinary amount of pmical content in his sermons. Spurgeon the preacher was always making an argument. He didn't he didn't just tell stories, even Bible stories, just for the sake of the story.

[00:21:19]He was always making a doctrinal or biblical argument. And I don't mean that he was argumentative, but that he he commonly addressed and corrected wrong beliefs and bad doctrine and popular falsehoods. He didn't avoid difficult doctrines like predestination and the sovereignty of God just because those doctrines were controversial. He wasn't afraid of that. He believed the teacher's duty, the preachers's duty is to teach and to carefully explain and to defend those doctrines regardless of their unpopularity. And in an era when biblical truth was constantly under attack from Darwinism and skepticism and modernism and even Marxism and even within the church, the authority and truthfulness of scripture were frequently under attack from scholars, supposed scholars who were questioning the accuracy of the biblical record.

[00:22:17]Spurgeon not only proclaimed boldly that the word of God is truth, he singled out the falsehoods and he refuted them. He was a fierce defender of the faith and a high percentage of his sermons contain pmical material. Many of his sermons are completely pmical because he just had this duty that he felt that weighed heavily on his conscience to defend the truth of scripture. Now, frankly, Spurgeon did not enjoy controversy.

[00:22:51]But because he was willing to contend for the faith, controversy pursued him.

[00:22:57]He always answered it with grace and maturity. In fact, he mastered the the art of being staunch and unwavering without being costic or predatory towards his opponents. His whole life is an illustration of 1 Corinthians 15:58.

[00:23:15]be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. That could have been his life verse. And from the very start of his ministry, Spurgeon was a man of strong convictions.

[00:23:31]Throughout the course of his entire life, as far as I know, he never reversed his position on any major point of doctrine. And that's not because he was arrogant or stubborn. His beliefs were were never mere bigotry. But prior to forming any doctrinal conviction, he would study an issue carefully. I I'll say more about this in a few minutes, but he was a meticulous student of both scripture and church history and historical theology. So that before he ever taught on any issue, he had a thorough understanding of it and he had a settled opinion. In fact, if you look at his early sermons, you'll see he's dealing with some fundamental Christian truths. His very first published sermon is on theology proper. And he goes from there through some very basic doctrines.

[00:24:22]And only later in his ministry does is he deal with maybe some more arcane things. And his convictions become more settled and more sure. But he never had to go back and retract anything because he didn't preach on anything that he only half understood before he taught on any issue. He had a thorough understanding of it and a settled opinion. And in my judgment in the major controversies that he is remembered for, he was in every case on the right side of the issue. Now to be clear, I'm not saying that I agree with everything he ever taught. He was a sabotarian, for example, and I'm not. He was more sympathetic to predism than I would be.

[00:25:05]He wasn't a predtoist, but he thought it was an interesting position. He I don't think he saw how much danger lurks in that idea. But Spurgeon never went to war over any of those sort of peripheral issues, the things that I might disagree with him on. What I'm saying is that in all the major controversies that he is remembered for, the issues that he fought hard to defend, in my opinion, he was always 100% right. And I love the fact that once he arrived at a well-formed opinion, he never softened his personal convictions. He never sacrificed the truth on the altar of public opinion. And he never wavered just because he knew that the majority of Victorian thought was against his view. And you can see his strength of conviction from the very start of his ministry. Spurgeon was only 19 when he was called to London to pastor the oldest, most famous congregation of Baptists in the world. He was a mere teenager stepping into a pulpit that had been previously occupied by Benjamin Keech, John Ripen, and John Gil, the three magisterial Baptists. And within a couple of years, he was regularly preaching to congregations of 10,000.

[00:26:25]And I think his reputation and memory, if the Lord's waits another thousand years to come back, Spurgeon's memory and influence will outlast all of his predecessors. So, how is it that someone so popular with so many natural gifts?

[00:26:45]How did he become embroiled in controversy as frequently as he did?

[00:26:50]because you can look at almost any period of his career and he was always dealing with one controversy or another.

[00:26:56]And that I think is to me one of the most interesting features of Spurgeon's legacy. Given his youthfulness and his theological stance and his meteoric rise to fame out of nowhere, I think it was predictable that he was going to face critics. But you look at it, you look at the history of it and it's well documented. The force and antagonism of his critics from the beginning caught Spurgeon by surprise beginning the year he started his ministry in London. I I mentioned that most of the controversies we remember Spurgeon for were doctrinal conflicts, important doctrines, but that wasn't true at first. The early critics of Spurgeon were just petty and mean-spirited in a very personal way. He was lampuned by car cartoonists.

[00:27:49]He was attacked in print by secular newspaper columnists. He was criticized by other ministers who were jealous of his success or hostile to his doctrine.

[00:28:01]And he was relentlessly mocked by the enemies of everything holy. I think it was not Marx but Engles who who said that the person he hated absolutely more than anybody else in the world was Spurgeon.

[00:28:19]Now let's face it, Spurgeon was kind of a country bumpkin when he first came to London. He had no sense of style or sophistication and that made it hard to get by in London in those days. is London like like it is today the most cosmopolitan city in the world.

[00:28:39]Spurgeon's wife was a teenage girl when Spurgeon first preached as a guest preacher at New Park Street. And she recalled that the thing that caught her attention on that first Sunday was a polkadotted handkerchief that he that he wore in his pocket and he would pull it out and wave it as if to add flourish to his gestures. and she was amused by it.

[00:29:01]In fact, listen to what she said about it. Quote, she's writing this years later. She said, "If the whole truth be told, I was not at all fascinated by the young orator's eloquence. While his countryfrified manner and speech excited more regret than reverence, she says, "Alas, for my vain and foolish heart, I was not spiritually minded enough to understand his earnest presentation of the gospel and his powerful pleading with sinners, but the huge black satin stock." That was the thing he wore around his neck and the long badly trimmed hair. You've seen pictures of him at at a young age and you know what she means. and the blue pocket handkerchief with white spots.

[00:29:45]These attracted most of my attention and awakened some feelings of amusement, she says. Now, that's from the girl that married Spurgeon. His critics, his critics were unmerciful.

[00:30:01]In fact, let me read you one example from an article published in April 1855 in the Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, a secular newspaper. The critic writes this quote, "Just now the great lion, star, meteor, or whatever else he may be called of the Baptists, is the Reverend M. Spurgeon." Didn't he get his name right? Minister of Park Street Chapel, Southern. He has created a perfect furer in the religious world.

[00:30:28]Every Sunday, crowds throng to Exit Hall, where for some weeks past he's been preaching during the enlargement of his own chapel as to some great dramatic entertainment. The huge hall is crowded to overflowing morning and evening for a parallel to such popularity. You must go back to Dr. Chalmer's or Edward Irving or the earlier days of James Parsons.

[00:30:52]But I will not dishonor such men by comparison with this young religious demagogue. They preach the gospel with all the fervor of earnest natures. Mr. Spurgeon preaches himself. He's nothing unless he is an actor, indulging in coarse familiarity with holy things, declaiming in a ranting and colloquial style, strutting up and down the platform as though he were at Suriri theater, and boasting of his own intimacy with heaven with nauseiating frequency. His fluency, self-possession, oratorial tricks, and daring utterances seem to fascinate his less thoughtful hearers who love excitement more than devotion. I've glanced at one or two of Mr. Spurgeon's published sermons and turned away in disgust from the coarse sentiments, the scholastical expressions, and clap trap sky style that I have observed. He said, "It would seem that the poor young man's brain is turned by the notoriety he's acquired and the incense offered at his shrine.

[00:31:54]From the very pulpit, he boasts of the crowds that flock to listen to his roamad." That's a fancy word for boasting.

[00:32:04]By the end of this year, not less than 200,000 of his publicly trashy sermons will be scattered over the length and breadth of the land. I don't think he's been invited to take part in any denominational meetings, nor indeed does he seek such fellowship. He glories in his position of lofty isolation and is intoxicated by the drafts of popularity that have fired his feverish brain. He's a nine days wonder, a comet that has suddenly shot across the religious atmosphere. He has gone up like a rocket and before long he will come down like a stick.

[00:32:40]The most melancholy consideration in the case is the diseased craving for excitement which this running after Mr. Spurgeon by the religious world indicates. I would charitably conclude that the greater part of the multitude that weekly crowd to his theatrical exhibitions consists of people who are not in the habit of frequenting a place of worship.

[00:33:03]That's pretty nasty, isn't it? And if you read Spurgeon sermons, you know this guy is not being fair with him at all.

[00:33:09]Spurgeon didn't boast and his sermons were not, you know, cheesy uh, you know, weak discourses. They were thoroughly biblical sermons. And in fact, on the very same day that that article was published, another London periodical called the Bucks Chronicle published an equally vitriolic attack on Spurgeon, written by an anonymous critic who, among other mean-spirited things, referred to Spurgeon's preaching as ginger pop sermonizing.

[00:33:44]That's the last thing any objective person would say about Spurgeon's preaching. ginger pop sermonizing. But London was populated with angry critics and academic elitists who were determined to do or say anything that might discredit Spurgeon. And the writer of this critique of the Bucks Chronicle was a an Armenian who was provoked by Spurgeon's Calvinism. You can tell that in his his article. In fact, let me read you a part of the article. Yeah, this is how he caricatured Spurgeon's message.

[00:34:18]He said, "Spurgeon teaches, quote, that if Jack Scrogggins was put down in the black book before the great curtain of events was unfolded, that the said Jack Scrogggins, in spite of all he might say or do, will and must tumble into the limbo of a brimstone hell to be punished and roasted without any prospect of cessation or shrinking into dried cinder because Jack Scrogggins had merely done what Jack Scrogggins could not help doing. It is not pleasant to be frightened into the portal of bliss by the hissing bubbles of the sething cauldron. It is not Christian-like to say God must wash brains in the hypercalvinism a Spurgeon teaches before man can enter heaven. It does not harmonize with the quiet majesty of the Nazarene. It does not fall like mana for hungry souls. But it's like the gush of the pouring rain in a thunderstorm which makes the flowers hang their heads and looking up afterwards as if nothing had happened. When the exit hall stripling talks of deity, let him remember that he is superior to profanity and that blasphemy from a person is as great a crime as when the lowest grade of humanity utters the brutal oath at which the virtuous stand. So he's saying basically that Spurgeon's sermons were blas blasphemy and that might hearing a hearing a like that might actually comfort some of you who who thought vitrial and verbal abuse were invented on Twitter.

[00:35:55]It existed in Spurgeon's time. That same flavor of controversy was popular in those days as well. Spurgeon, for his part, never sought controversy.

[00:36:06]or conflict. And he didn't take delight in debates and controversies, but he wasn't intimidated by critics either. He was gifted with words, and he was quick-witted, and he was certainly adept at using humor with a sharp edge.

[00:36:24]He was capable of leveling stinging reproaches against his doctrinal adversaries without actually being mean to them. In fact, Spurgeon staunchly defended the use the sanctified use of of humor and sarcasm and even ridicule against evil. But he didn't think it was appropriate to default to that kind of argument. And he was never mean-spirited towards the adversaries themselves. Even when he was making fun and heaping scorn and derision on their false doctrines, it was never personal with him. He believed the the level of spleen venting that we do should be commensurate with the gravity and the immediacy of the error itself. In fact, here's an incident that illustrates Spurgeon's patience and his good humor with his adversaries adversaries. When he first came to to London, one of the best known preachers in the city was a hypercalvinist named James Wells. He was the pastor of Suriri Tabernacle in South London. It was not far actually from where the Metropolitan Tabernacle was eventually built. And James Wells was a gifted orator, a good preacher who at the height of his fame drew 1500 people each Sunday. But he was also cranky and often canankerous. And he was cruel with his criticism, which frankly that seems to be the besetting sin of hypercalvinists.

[00:37:55]But in in January of 1855, which is right at the start of Spurgeon's first full year at New Park Street, James Wells sent a long letter to the editor of the Earth & Vessel.

[00:38:13]This was a high Calvinist periodical. He wrote anonymously under the pseudonym Job, but it was well known by pretty much everybody who the actual author was. And in that letter, James Wells criticized Spurgeon's testimony of conversion at age 15. Wells said this quote, "Heaven grant it may prove to be so for the young man's sake and for that of others also, but I have I most solemnly have my doubts as to the divine reality of his conversion. I do not say, it's not for me to say that he is not a regenerated man, but this I do know that there are conversions which are not of God. So he's implying Spurgeon isn't even a genuine believer. Spurgeon didn't pay any attention to that. He didn't respond to it in any way. But of course, the newspaper that published it was besieged with more letters from their readers, and they were both pro and consp. So the next month, James Wells wrote again and he doubled down and he stubbornly refused to soften or withdraw his suggestion that Spurgeon was probably an unconverted man. He said this quote, "I am at present, instead of being shaken more than ever, confirmed in what I have written. I beg, therefore, to say that anything said upon the subject by Mr. Spurgeon's friends will be to me as straws thrown against a stone wall of which I shall take no notice.

[00:39:47]Now, as far as I know, James Wells never did relax his bitter contempt for Spurgeon. He hated him, as far as I know, for the rest of his life. At one point, a few years later, several years later, they encountered one another on the street. uh the tabernacle had been built and it wasn't that far from where Wells pastored and so they ran into each other on the street and Wells asked Spurgeon whether he had ever seen the inside of Suriri Tabernacle where he preached and trying to be polite Spurgeon said no but he would very much like to see it and Wells told Spurgeon that if he'd come around on a Monday morning he'd show him the auditorium he said because that would give him enough time to ventilate the place before Sunday.

[00:40:34]And so Spurgeon asked Wells if he had ever seen the inside of the Metropolitan Tabernacle. And Wells said yes. He had come by there on a recent Saturday and just looked around. Ah, Spurgeon said, "So that accounts for the delightful fragrance in our Sunday services that week."

[00:40:55]Kind statement, but it's an immediate putdown.

[00:40:59]Uh Spurgeon was immensely a patient man and a careful critic and he preferred to dismantle errors meticulously with scripture rather than blasting every target with large cannons.

[00:41:14]Rec. In fact, regarding the that sort of mean-spirited style of discourse, Spurgeon told his students, "That's a style to which anyone can easily be educated. I don't think anybody ought to pay very heavy fees to be a nasty critic. You can grow into that with very little watering quickly.

[00:41:35]He was never the kind of character who would purposely provoke a controversy because he thinks it's fun to fight. He didn't think it was fun to fight. And those earliest controversies came to him and were mainly sparked by other people's petty resentments against this very young man who was enjoying so much success and who was even at a very young age already so firm in his doctrinal opinions. And I already touched on this but it's worth revisiting. One of the remarkable things about Spurgeon is that from the beginning to the end of his ministry, his theology remained substantially the same.

[00:42:15]As I said, I I don't know of any major issue on which he ever changed his position. He he was no read shaken by the wind. It was the furthest thing from his personality to be carried about by every wind of doctrine. I'm again not aware of a single instance in which he had to retract something he had preached or published ever. There may be some incidental details on that that he changed or red or refined a bit, but Spurgeon didn't budge on any major doctrine from the start of his ministry until the day he died. I wrote about that once on my blog and an army of young post-modern readers were absolutely outraged. Uh I surprised me caught me completely by surprise because I thought I'm telling you a good thing about Spurgeon and they were like that's a bad thing because the conventional wisdom today suggests that it is the very essence of true humility to write retractions and to undergo regular paradigm shifts from time to time. And if you acknowledge that you've been absolutely wrong about some fundamental aspect of Christian doctrine or even if you deconstruct your entire belief system completely, which many have done in recent years, uh, and and they've been hailed as heroes, but if you are steadfast and immovable, that's really all the proof a post-modernist needs to write you off as arrogant and egotistical.

[00:43:49]But for the record, the reason Spurgeon was so steady in his beliefs is again he did not speak on any issue until he had stutled studied it and settled the issue in his heart. In the early years after he came to the New Park Street Chapel, he preached through the basics of biblical truth and Christian doctrine and he avoided anything and everything that would be speculative or doubtful.

[00:44:14]He never reached beyond his own understanding. And like a lot of young preachers do, you know, trying to deal with advanced issues before they've had a reasonable opportunity to study the matter firmly and really come to a firm, unshakable conviction.

[00:44:31]And Spurgeon just didn't do that. He refused to preach on any matter if he was undecided or ambivalent. He didn't want to sound an uncertain trumpet. He loved thoroughess and soundness and clarity and firm convictions. And he cultivated all of those things in his approach to theology and in his approach to preaching. And that's the very thing that made controversy inevitable for Spurgeon. He he was a voice of clarity and firm conviction during an era when practically everyone else every other Christian leader even who had massive influence they were all seemed to be willing to put the core doctrines of Christianity back on the table for negotiation.

[00:45:18]This is what modernist modernism did to the to the mainstream denominations.

[00:45:23]That eagerness to reinvent and reimagine Christianity to make it more suitable for the modern mind. That was again a central error of the modernists and it's also the most dangerous aspect of people in the church today who are steeped in postmodernism.

[00:45:43]how everything is perpetually up for debate and re-evaluation. And Spurgeon was of the opposite mind. He was convinced that faithful Christians need to hold fast and contend for the faith once delivered to the saints. So because he was so out of step with the spirit of his age, conflict was inevitable. Ian Murray wrote, of course, the best book on Spurgeon, the Controversialist. And I I'm certain probably most of you have read it. It's one of the classics of 20th century Christian publishing, the forgotten Spurgeon. And Ian Murray traces there three of the controversies that spanned Spurgeon's career. There was a conflict over Spurgeon's Calvinism. There was a massive debate that Spurgeon did spark himself over with the Anglican church over baptismal regeneration. And then finally, the downgrade controversy, the great the great yearslong battle that really brought an abrupt end, an early end to Spurgeon's life. Now, there were, of course, a lot more controversial issues than those, but those are the major representative ones. And Ian Murray's book is the single best resource to read if you want proof that Spurgeon was not always the the safe, broadly tolerant, congenial type of person that 20th century evangelicals always seem to want to make him out to be. The fact is Spurgeon's own autobiography made the very same point that Ian Murray was making that Spurgeon was never a stranger to controversy.

[00:47:25]autobiography we call it that it was actually assembled postumously by Spurgeon's wife and his secretary after he died but in its original edition it's four volumes some of you may own the two volume edition that was published by the banner of truth it's just slightly reorganized and maybe a little bit re-edited but substantially the same and it contains all the same material biography autobiography was a four volume work with very large-sized pages that was again compiled postumously by Mrs. Spurgeon and Spurgeon's personal secretary, a man named Joseph Harold.

[00:48:03]And the most notable notable difference between the two editions, the banner of truth two volume edition and the four volume original. The most notice notable difference is that the original edition has a whole lot more pictures. It's really like a very large scrapbook.

[00:48:19]The Banner of Truth edition is frankly probably organized a little more logically and I recommend them both.

[00:48:27]They're they're both good. It's the one biography of Spurgeon that you just cannot skip reading. Having stood shoulderto-shoulder with Spurgeon through those grueling years of the downgrade controversy, Joseph Harold, the secretary, was eager to make clear for posterity the truth that Spurgeon was always a warrior.

[00:48:52]Harold wanted to show readers Spurgeon's courage, his steadfastness, his willingness to suffer for Christ's sake.

[00:49:00]And so chapter 53 in the original version of the autobiography bears all the earmarks of having been written by Joseph Herald. It doesn't sound like Mrs. Spurgeon. I'm sure Joseph Herald wrote it. It's titled the downgrade controversy foreshadowed. That's the title of the chapter. And in it, Harold chronicles the early controversies that Spurgeon was involved in. It's fascinating chapter. You really ought to read it. The chapter opens with some quotations from Spurgeon about the necessity of controversy. Spurgeon points out, for example, that the majority of Christians seem more concerned about taste and decorum and respectability than they genuinely care about the truth.

[00:49:46]That that's a that's a complaint that would certainly apply today. Victorian evangelicals for the most part considered it crude and vile to refute false doctrine or to point out the faults of the church and and the problems of the current age. Spurgeon's answer was because they used the word vile. It's vile to do that. Spurgeon said, quote, "If this be vile, we propose to be vileer still."

[00:50:14]He said that in 1856.

[00:50:18]That was less than two years after he took the pulpit in London, very early in his ministry. Here's another quote that Joseph Harold cites from 11 years later than that. This is fully 20 years before the downgrade controversy. Spurgeon says, quote, "As good stewards, we must maintain the cause of truth against all comers. Never get into religious controversies, says one, that is to say, being interpreted, be a Christian soldier, but let your sword rust in its scabbard and sneak into heaven like a coward. Such advice I cannot endorse. If God has called you by the truth, maintain the truth, which has been the means of your salvation. We're not to be pugnacious, always contending for every crotchet of our own. But wherein we have learned the truth of the Holy Spirit, we are not tamely to see that standard torn down, which our fathers upheld at peril of their blood. This is an age in which truth must be maintained zealously, vehemently, continually, playing fast and loose, as many do, believing this today and that tomorrow. That's the sure mark of children of wrath. But having received the truth to hold va fast the very form of it as Paul bids Timothy to do. This is one of the duties of the heirs of heaven. Stand fast for truth and may God give the victory to the faithful.

[00:51:43]Spurgeon's stature in the public perception obviously rose steadily over the years from the guy who said he's like a rocket and he'll come down like a stick. uh people forgot that and uh Spurgeon became the most influential and respected pastor in all of England for a couple of decades. The passage of time always vindicated his positions and it got to the point where then when he spoke people listened and the critics couldn't just write off reflexively his strong opinions as if these are just the dreams of an idealistic youth. And as a result, Spurgeon's ministry went through a relatively peaceful time from the early 1870s until about 1886.

[00:52:31]So yeah, maybe 14 or 15 years during which Spurgeon was not constantly embroiled in public controversies. There were there were controversies even then, but they weren't publicized on the front pages of the city newspapers. They weren't talked about on such a public scale. And so when the downgrade controversy broke out in 1887, Spurgeon's critics tried to write off his stance in the downgrade as saying this is this is his his opposition to the modernist juggernaut was what it was. They they said this is just the halfdemented ravings of a once kindly preacher who was now suddenly showing signs of losing his minds and mind and losing his inhibitions.

[00:53:18]Joseph Herald answers that claim definitively in chapter 53 of the autobiography. Here's how he begins that chapter immediately after he he gives those three quotations from a younger Spurgeon about the importance of fighting for the truth. Herald says this quote, "When in 1887 there arose the great downgrade controversy in which Mr. Spurgeon was to prove himself Christ's faithful witness and martyr. Many people were foolish enough to suppose that he had adopted a new role. And some said that he would have done more good by simply preaching the gospel and leaving the so-called heretics to go their own way. Such critics must have been strangely unfamiliar with his whole history. For from the very beginning of his ministry, he had earnestly contended for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Long before the sword and the trial appeared with its monthly record of combat with sin and labor for the Lord, its editor had been busily occupied both in battling and building, vigorously combating error in all its forms, and at the same time edifying and establishing in the faith those who had been brought to a knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus. And then Harold goes on to give the details of Spurgeon's earliest controversies. And I don't have time to maybe I'll just introduce you to to one of them and give you the gist of it. And then you need to read that chapter and the the rest of Spurgeon's autobiography if you want to get a better picture of Spurgeon the controversialist in an age of compromise and collegiality. A parade of sinister trends were moving mainstream Christianity in England and in America toward humanism and liberalism. And you you see the fruit of those trends most clearly today in the drift of Anglicanism, the the Church of England.

[00:55:10]You also see it in the mainstream denominations here. And Spurgeon's attacks on liberalism and high church compromise in the Church of England that began with that famous sermon he preached on baptismal regeneration.

[00:55:25]Again, we don't have time to survey all of his controversies, but let me summarize the point I want to leave you with. Spurgeon's ministry was controversial in its day, not because he was pugnacious. He wasn't. He was a tender-hearted, patient, good-heed man with a large heart, but he was devoted to the truth, and that made him a devoted enemy of error.

[00:55:51]The Lord blessed him with a voice and a brain and with the influence to be the kind of warrior that he was. And then providence often placed him in circumstances that demanded that he fight. And thankfully for the church, he was willing to fight. And in many ways his influence as a pmacist has a more valuable legacy for the church in our generation certainly than his style of topical preaching. We need to follow his example. Taking a steadfast stance on matters of doctrine is more politically incorrect today than it was even in Spurgeon's time. But for that very reason, the church is desperately in need of men who will fight the good fight, much as Spurgeon did, even though we know that's not going to win us any accolades from the world, much less even from the main bastions of uh evangelical opinion. If you want popularity, this is not the way to go. But if you want influence and if you want the Lord's approval, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. Thank you.