Maidenbower Baptist Church

This world does not satisfy our bodies. It certainly cannot satisfy our souls. In Psalm 81 the Lord offers to satisfy the souls of those who are seeking some needful thing, revealing his goodness, his grief, and his grace. Taking his offered mercies as gospel emblems, here is God offering out of himself both substance and sweetness, and so delighting the hungry soul forever.

Adoption may be one of the overlooked blessings of salvation taken as a whole, but the apostles do not neglect it. Paul speaks of this heavenly blessing in Ephesians 1:5, telling us that God has "predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of his will." This teaches us something about the nature, the source, the communication, and the purpose of th...

This is Spurgeon at his most heartfelt, delighting in grace and urging to holiness. Taking quite a substantial text, and holding fast to its substance and arrangement, he brings us face to face first of all with what we are by nature, what we once were in the evils of our minds, our pursuits, and our hearts. Here he urges us to tears of repentance as he ploughs up our souls. Then he considers what...

Jesus Christ has come. Do you care? Jesus Christ is calling? Are you coming to him? Consider for whom he came—not for the righteous, but for sinners, a doctor for the sick. Consider how he acts, calling sinners to himself in his gospel, urging them to come for healing and salvation. Consider what he calls us to—to leave sin and all its misery, and to come to God and all his blessing.

Surveying the mighty works of a gracious God, we pause to consider the blessing of redemption through Christ's blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of God's grace. This is a blessing purchased by Christ, and so possessed by the saints, and sweetly portrayed by the apostle, under the Spirit's influence.

Throughout this sermon, Spurgeon complains that he is falling short of the subject which he has taken. I think other preachers, reading and responding to what he says, might long for such a failure as this! The text itself is a casket of pearls, and Spurgeon, after giving us a survey of them, urges us to ponder them more carefully for ourselves: "Yes, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and...

Spurgeon turns us to the field of the lazy man, the vineyard of the sluggard, to learn lessons for our souls and for our lives. While I suppose the sermon could have descended into mere moralism, Spurgeon keeps it from doing so by connecting the life we live to the state of our souls, and by constantly drawing parallels between our attitude to our lives and our attitude to our spiritual well-being...

Exodus 34:6 is God's own revelation of himself, a declaration to which prophets and preachers return again and again, as here, in Psalm 85:15. As we again delight in the divine declaration, we should appreciate the contrast between God in his faithful mercy and mankind's typical aggressive cruelty. To do that properly, we must contemplate the Lord, "a God full of compassion, and gracious, longsuff...

Christian comforts do not make believers passive and placid, but rather stir them to lively hope and therefore a hopeful life. We need to know, then, the comforts we have after death. Some come immediately, both for those who fall asleep in Jesus, and for those who remain. Some come eventually and ultimately, when Christ returns, and all his people are glorified together with him. All come substan...

1 John 5:13 reveals the purpose for which the apostle wrote his first letter: "These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God." Again emphasising that the Scriptures are written by the Holy Ghost for our profit, and to be received as such, Spurgeon then ge...

This is God's world, and it is God's weather. We accept that man as a steward of God's world may have some influence on climate, but we acknowledge God as the Master. That means that mankind is not the original or terminal authority or responsbility for the weather. It is God's weather absolutely and rightly, and he has established the stable framework and sends the particular elements. It is God'...

Do Christian comforts last for life and evaporate at death? According to Asaph in Psalm 73:24, addressing the Lord, he says, "You will guide me with your counsel, and afterward receive me to glory." A Christian's life is not easy, but it is secure, and our death is full of hope, our confidence grounded in the Christ who has overcome death. So we here consider death without Christ, death in Christ,...

There are a number of sermons which touch on this topic, or deal with it directly, during this season of Spurgeon's ministry. It is not a change of emphasis so much as a change of tone. He often, throughout his ministry, celebrates the reliability and clarity of the Word of the Lord. In the background here, though, is the Downgrade Controversy, the increasing theological liberalisation of Christia...

Why does someone get baptised? What does church membership declare? How does someone become a Christian, and what does that mean? John gives the answer when he tells us that "as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (Jn 1:12–13). The...

A Christian is a joyful and peaceful person, with a life marked by certainty and security. Christians do not claim easy lives, but they do enjoy happy lives, marked by comforts in life, at death, and beyond death. What are our comforts in life? Though they are too many to catalogue, one way to summarise them is to say that our unchanging God is our unerring guide who gives us an unshaking hope: "F...

A thoroughly experimental sermon, in which Spurgeon takes Job as something of a template for all believers, suggesting that Job was favoured (as others may sometimes be) with particularly vivid impressions of God, some striking sense of his majesty and the glory of his perfections. Such views of the Lord truly make an impression upon us, bringing us low in ourselves. This is no generic sense of lo...

John wants his beloved spiritual children not to be deceived by those who claim righteousness in the heart but show none in the life. He emphasises the Lord Jesus as the standard of righteousness, the Man who showed love to God and to men in all his life. He underscores the fact of righteousness, that a Christian is righteous just as Christ himself is righteous. So what is the proof of that righte...

Everyone is sowing some kind of seed: "he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life" (Gal 6:7–8). Paul exhorts the disciples of Christ to follow their Lord in doing good. This is a holy labour, living as Christ in the power of his Spirit. He offers a needed warning, against weariness and faintness. He supplies a...

This sermon is numerically significant on several levels. It is the two thousandth sermon, the last sermon of Volume XXXIII in the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, and a sermon prepared to be read on the first day of the year of 1888. As so often with these 'major marker' sermons (ones that break through particular numerical boundaries), and all the more so when those markers are loaded up like thi...

What can cause an outburst of holy joy? God himself is the source, the theme, the object of such praise, especially in his gracious dealings with sinners. To get to the root of the matter, we must look first at the blessings bestowed, the great mercy poured out and the pardon of transgressions granted. Then we must look at the scope which is expressed—a mercy as great as the heavens are above the...

It is easy to shame people over prayer; it is harder to stir people to prayer. Daniel's example as an old man in Babylon, a prime minister and a prophet, should help us. Despite his position, pressures, and privileges, he pondered his Bible and was stimulated to pray. Even then, he did not rush into the divine presence, but prepared himself, setting his face toward the Lord God, both body and soul...

This briefer sermon is 'intended for reading', which usually indicates a sick man writing or editing a previous address for distribution. Brevity here does not undermine simplicity, clarity, or pungency! The text is short: "My son, give me your heart." The sermon is straightforward, looking at the love which lies behind the request for wisdom, then at the wisdom which guides the loving request, an...

Solomon, the son of David, stood before the temple as it was filled with the glory of the Lord, and led Israel in blessing the Lord their God. His heart was full with the fact that the Lord God of Israel had "fulfilled with his hands what he spoke with his mouth" to his father David. We can follow this Solomon as he contemplates the promises that God made and the performances which followed, leadi...