Metropolitan Tabernacle

Social reformers go to Moses or St. Paul for their doctrines and have no notion there's anywhere else to go to.

Earnest young men at schools and universities instead of conceiving salvation as a harmonious perfection only to be won by unreservedly cultivating many sides in us conceive of it in the old Puritan fashion and fling themselves ardently upon it in the old false ways of this fashion which we know so well and such as Mr. Hammond the American revivalist has lately at Mr. Spurgeon's Tabernacle been refreshing our memory with.

Now if America thus Hebraizes more than either England or Germany will anyone deny that the absence of religious establishments has much to do with it? We have seen how establishments tend to give us a sense of historical life of the human spirit outside and beyond our own fancies and feelings how they thus tend to suggest new sides and sympathies in us to cultivate how further by saving us from having to invent and fight for our own forms of religion they give us leisure and calm to steady our view of religion itself the most overpowering of objects as it is the grandest and to enlarge our first crude notions of the one thing needful.

But in a serious people where everyone has to choose and strive for his own order and discipline of religion the contention about these non-essentials occupies his mind.

So that we need not to speak anything.

The sermon is entitled Sounding Out the Word of the Lord and it was delivered on the Lord's Day morning of the 24th of March 1889 by Spurgeon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in Newington.

It's this week's featured sermon.

It's number 2076.

Wade Read by Betty B.

Sermon number 1043 by Charles Spurgeon Glorious Predestination Delivered on Lord's Day morning, March 24, 1872, at Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.

This recording is narrated by Leighton Garner in May, 2018, Panama City, Panama.

for whom he did foreknow he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son that he might be the first-born among many brethren romans eight twenty nine you will have noticed that in this chapter paul has been expounding a very deep inward spiritual experience he has written concerning the spirit of bondage and the spirit of adoption the infirmities of the flesh and the helpings of the spirit the waiting for the redemption of the body and the groanings which cannot be uttered it was most natural therefore that a deep spiritual experience should bring him into a clear perception of the doctrines of grace for such an experience is a school in which alone those great truths are effectually learned a lack of depth in the inner life accounts for most of the doctrinal error in the church sound conviction of sin deep humiliation on account of it and a sense of utter weakness and unworthiness naturally conduct the mind to the belief of the doctrines of grace while shallowness in these matters leaves a man content with a superficial those teachings which are commonly called calvinistic doctrines are usually most beloved and best received by those who have had much conflict of soul and so have learned the strength of corruption and the necessity of grace note also that paul in this chapter has been treating of the sufferings of this present time and though by faith he speaks of them as very inconsiderable compared with the glory to be revealed yet we know that they were not inconsiderable in his case he was a man of many trials he went from one tribulation to another for christ's sake he swam through many seas of affliction to serve the church i do not wonder therefore that in his epistles he often discourses upon the doctrines of foreknowledge and predestination and eternal love because these are a rich cordial for a fainting spirit to be cheered among many things which otherwise would depress him the believer may betake himself to the matchless mysteries of the grace of god which are wines on the lees well refined sustained by distinguishing grace a man learns to glory in tribulations also and strengthened by electing love he defies the hatred of the world and the trials of life suffering is the college of orthodoxy many a jonah who now rejects the doctrines of the grace of god only needs to be put into the whale's belly and he will cry out with the soundest free-grace man salvation is of the lord prosperous professors who do no business amid david's billows and water spouts may set small store by the blessed anchorage of eternal purpose and everlasting love but those who are tossed with tempest and not comforted are of another mind let these few sentences suffice for a preface i utter them not in the spirit of controversy but the reverse our text begins by the expression whom he did foreknow he also did predestinate and many senses have been given to this word foreknow though in this case one commends itself beyond every other some have thought that it simply means that god predestined men whose future history he foreknew the text before us cannot be so understood because the lord foreknows the history of every man and angel and devil so far as mere prescience goes every man is foreknown and yet no one will assert that all men are predestined to be conformed to the image of the lord jesus but it is further asserted that the lord foreknew who would exercise repentance who would believe in jesus and who would persevere in a consistent life to the end this is readily granted but a reader must wear very powerful magnifying spectacles before he will be able to discover that sense in the text upon looking carefully at my bible again i do not perceive such a statement where are those words which you have added whom he did foreknow to repent to believe and to persevere in grace i do not find them either in the english version or in the greek original if i could so read them the passage would certainly be very easy and would very greatly alter my doctrinal views but as i do not find those words there begging your pardon i do not believe in them however wise and advisable a human interpolation may be it has no authority with us we bow to holy scripture but not to glosses which theologians may choose to put upon it no hint is given in the text of foreseen virtue any more than of foreseen sin and therefore we are driven to find another meaning for the word we find that the word know is frequently used in scripture not only for foreknowledge, but also for favor, love, and complacency.

A Simple Remedy.

A Sermon Delivered on Lord's-Day Morning, September 1st, 1872, by C.H. Spurgeon, At The Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington "With His stripes we are healed." Isaiah chapter fifty-three, verse five.

Ever since the fall, healing has been the chief necessity of manhood.

There was no physician in Paradise, but outside that blissful enclosure professors of the healing art have been precious as the gold of Ophir.

Eminency almost requires that you have a sense of expectancy about his return.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who was the great English pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, believed the Lord could come at any time, and he repeatedly urged his people to cultivate an attitude of continual expectancy.

Here's a sermon.

I can't preach like him, but I'm going to try.