An All-Round Ministry

282 Pages·2015·0.88 MB·English

by  Andy Stockley

An All-Round
Ministry
By
Charles Spurgeon
LIGHTLY UPDATED BY JFAUDIOSTUFF 2015
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Contents
Chapter 1 – Faith 5
Chapter 2 – "Forward!" 27
Chapter 3 - Individuality, and Its Opposite 46
Chapter 4 - How To Meet the Evils of the Age 67
Chapter 5 - "A New Departure" 94
Chapter 6 - Light. Fire. Faith. Life. Love. 117
Chapter 7 - Strength in Weakness 143
Chapter 8 - What We Would Be 164
Chapter 9 – Stewards 182
Chapter 10 - The Evils of the Present Time, and Our Object,
Necessities, and Encouragements 203
Chapter 11 - The Preacher's Power,
and the Conditions of Obtaining It 226
Chapter 12 - The Minister in These Times 260
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Chapter 1; Faith
NOW that the time has come for me to address you, my beloved
brethren, may God Himself speak through me to you!
The subject which I have selected for this address is FAITH. As
believers in Jesus, we are all of us of the pedigree of faith. Two lines of
descent claim the covenant heritage. There is the line of nature,
human efforts, and works, headed by Ishmael, the son of Hagar. We
own no kindred there. We know that the highest position to which the
child of the flesh can attain will only end in the command, "Cast out
the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not
be heir with the son of the free woman." We, brethren, are children of
the promise, born not after the flesh, nor according to the energy of
nature, but by the power of God. We trace our new birth not to blood,
nor to the will of the flesh, nor to the will of man, but to God alone. We
owe our conversion neither to the reasoning of the logician nor to the
eloquence of the orator, neither to our natural betterness nor to our
personal efforts; we are, as Isaac was, the children of God's power
according to the promise.
Now, to us the covenant belongs, for it has been decided - and the
apostle has declared the decision in the name of God, - that "to
Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He says not, And to
seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to your seed, which is Christ. . . .
And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs
according to the promise." - Galatians 3:16, 29. We are altogether
saved by faith. The brightest day that ever dawned on us was the day
in which we first "looked to Him, and were lightened." It was all dark
till faith beheld the Sun of Righteousness. The dawn of faith was to us
the morning of life; by faith only we began to live. We have since then
walked by faith. Whenever we have been tempted to step aside from
the path of faith, we have been like the foolish Galatians, and we have
smarted for our folly. I trust we have not "suffered so many things in
vain." - Galatians 3:4. We began in the Spirit, and if we have sought to
be made perfect in the flesh, we have soon discovered ourselves to be
sailing on the wrong tack, and nearing sunken rocks. "The just shall
live by faith," is a truth which has worked itself out in our experience,
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for often and often have we felt that, in any other course, death stares
us in the face; and, therefore, "we through the Spirit wait for the hope
of righteousness by faith." - Galatians 5:5.
Now, brethren, as our pedigree is of faith, and our claim to the
privileges of the covenant is of faith, and our life in its beginning and
continuance is all of faith, so may I boldly say that our ministry is of
faith, too. We are heralds to the sons of men, not of the law of Sinai,
but of the love of Calvary. We come to them, not with the command,
"This do, and you shall live," but with the message, "Believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved." Ours is the ministry of
gracious faith, and is not after man, nor according to the law of a
carnal commandment. We preach not man's merit, but Christ
crucified.
The object of our preaching, as well as its doctrine, is faith; for we
reckon that we have done nothing for sinners until, by the power of
the Holy Spirit, we bring them to faith; and we only reckon that our
preaching is useful to saints as we see them increase in faith. As faith
is in our hand the power with which we sow, and as the seed we sow
is received by us by faith, and steeped in faith, so the harvest for which
we look is to see faith springing up in the furrows of men's hearts to
the praise and glory of God.
Interwoven, therefore, with our entire spiritual life, and with all our
ministerial work, is the doctrine and grace of faith; and, therefore, we
must be very clear on it, - that is a small business; we must be very
strong in it, - that is the great matter. On that topic I will speak to you,
praying earnestly that we may every one of us be, like Abraham,
"strong in faith, giving glory to God," and, like Stephen, "full of faith
and of the Holy Spirit."
Our work especially requires faith. If we fail in faith, we had better not
have undertaken it; and unless we obtain faith commensurate with
the service, we shall soon grow weary of it. It is proven by all
observation that success in the Lord's service is very generally in
proportion to faith. It certainly is not in proportion to ability, nor does
it always run parallel with a display of zeal; but it is invariably
according to the measure of faith, for this is a law of the Kingdom
without exception, "According to your faith be it to you." It is essential,
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then, that we should have faith if we are to be useful, and that we
should have great faith if we are to be greatly useful. For many other
reasons besides usefulness, - namely, even for our being able to hold
our own against the enemies of the truth, and for ability to stand
against the temptations which surround our office, - it is imperative
on us that we should have abundant confidence in the living God. We,
above all men, need the mountain-moving faith, by which, in the old
time, men of God "subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness,
obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the
violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were
made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the
aliens."
One of the brethren observed, at last night's meeting, that I confirmed
you in the habit of saying, firstly, secondly, and thirdly. I must plead
guilty to the charge, and follow the same method still; for I judge it to
be no fault, but a practice helpful to the speaker in the arrangement
and recollection of his thoughts, and profitable to the hearer in the
remembrance of the sermon. We may risk being formal when to be
formal is to be useful. Though not to be slavishly followed, the custom
of announcing divisions in a discourse may be generally maintained,
and we will maintain it, at any rate, today.
I. I mean first to speak, concerning faith, under the head of this
question, - WHEREIN AND on WHAT MATTERS HAVE WE, AS
MINISTERS, FAITH, OR GREAT NEED OF IT?
First, we have faith in God. We believe "that He is, and that He is a
rewarder of them that diligently seek Him." We do not believe in the
powers of nature operating of themselves apart from constant
emanations of power from the Great and Mighty One, who is the
Sustainer as well as the Creator of all things. Far be it from us to
banish God from His own universe. Neither do we believe in a merely
nominal deity, as those do who make all things to be God, for we
conceive pantheism to be only another form of atheism. We know the
Lord as a distinct personal existence, a real God, infinitely more real
than the things which are seen and handled, more real even than
ourselves, for we are but shadows, He alone is the I AM, abiding the
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same for ever and ever.
We believe in a God of purposes and plans, who has not left a blind
fate to tyrannise over the world, much less an aimless chance to rock
it to and fro. We are not fatalists, neither are we doubters of
providence and predestination. We are believers in a God "who works
all things after the counsel of His own will." We do not conceive of the
Lord as having gone away from the world, and left it and the
inhabitants thereof to themselves; we believe in Him as continually
presiding in all the affairs of life. We, by faith, perceive the hand of the
Lord giving to every blade of grass its own drop of dew, and to every
young raven its meat. We see the present power of God in the flight of
every sparrow, and hear His goodness in the song of every lark. We
believe that "the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof;" and we
go forth into it, not as into the domains of Satan where light comes
not, nor into a chaos where rule is unknown, nor into a boiling sea
where fate's resistless billows shipwreck mortals at their will; but we
walk boldly on, having God within us and around us, living and
moving and having our being in Him, and so, by faith, we dwell in a
temple of providence and grace wherein everything doth speak of His
glory. We believe in a present God wherever we may be, and a working
and operating God accomplishing His own purposes steadfastly and
surely in all matters, places, and times; working out His designs as
much in what seems evil as in what is manifestly good; in all things
driving on in His eternal chariot towards the goal which infinite
wisdom has chosen, never slackening His pace nor drawing the rein,
but for ever, according to the eternal strength that is in Him, speeding
forward without pause. We believe in this God as being faithful to
everything that He has spoken, a God who can neither lie nor change.
The God of Abraham is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
and He is our God this day. We do not believe in the ever-shifting
views of the Divine Being which differing philosophies are adopting;
the God of the Hebrews is our God, - Jehovah, Jah, the Mighty One, the
covenant-keeping God, - "this God is our God for ever and ever: He will
be our Guide even to death."
Whether we are fools or not thus to believe in God, the world shall
know one day; and whether it be more reasonable to believe in nature,
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or in powers that operate of themselves, or to believe in nothing, than
it is to believe in a self-existent Being, we shall leave eternity to
decide. Meanwhile, to us, faith in God is not only a necessity of reason,
but the fruit of a child-like instinct which tarries not to justify itself by
arguments, being born in us with our regenerate nature itself.
Next to this, our faith most earnestly and intensely fixes itself on the
Christ of God. We trust in Jesus; we believe all that inspired history
says concerning Him; not making a myth of Him, or His life, but taking
it as a matter of fact that God dwelt in very deed among men in human
flesh, and that an atonement was really and truly offered by the
Incarnate God on the cross of Calvary. Yet, to us, the Lord Jesus Christ
is not alone a Saviour of the past. We believe that "He ascended up on
high," and "led captivity captive," and that "He ever lives to make
intercession for them that come to God by Him." I saw, in the cathedral
at Turin, a very remarkable sight, namely, the pretended grave-clothes
of the Lord Jesus Christ, which are devoutly worshipped by crowds of
Romanists. I could not help observing, as I gazed on these relics, that
the ensigns of the death of Christ were all of Him that the Romish
Church possessed. They may well show the true cross, for they crucify
Him afresh; they may well pray in His sepulchre, for He is not there, or
in their Church; and they may well claim His grave-clothes, for they
know only a dead Christ. But, beloved brethren, our Christ is not dead,
neither has He fallen asleep; He still walks among the golden
candlesticks, and holds the stars in His right hand.
Our faith in Jesus is most real. We believe in those dear wounds of His
as we believe in nothing else; there is no fact so sure to us as that He
was slain, and He has redeemed us to God by His blood. We believe in
the brightness of His glory; for nothing seems to us so necessarily true
as that He who was obedient to death should, as His due reward, be
crowned with glory and honour For this reason, also, we believe in a
real Christ yet to come, a second time, in like manner as He went up
into Heaven; and, though we may not enquire minutely into times and
seasons, yet we are" looking for and hasting to the coming of the day
of God," at which time we expect the manifestation of the sons of God,
and the rising of their bodies from the tomb. Christ Jesus is no fiction
to us; and, with Dr. Watts, we sing, -
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"While Jews on their own law rely,
And Greeks of wisdom boast,
We love th' incarnate mystery,
And there we fix our trust."
We have an equal confidence, beloved brethren, in the Holy Spirit. We
unfeignedly believe in His Deity and personality. We speak of His
influences, because He has influences, but we do not forget that He is a
Person from whom those influences stream; we believe in His offices,
for He has offices, but we rejoice in the Person who fills them, and
makes them effectual for our good. Devoutly would each one of us say,
"I believe in the Holy Spirit." Yet, my brethren, do you believe in the
Holy Spirit? "Yes," you say unanimously, spontaneously, and
emphatically. "Yes," say I also; but be not grieved if I ask you yet again
if you truly and indeed believe in Him; for there is a believing and a
believing. There is a believing which I have concerning a man, for
which I may have but slender grounds, and on which I would not risk
a single penny of my substance; but it is another form of believing in a
man when I feel that I could trust my very life with him, being assured
that he would be true to me, and prove both an able and a willing
helper. Have we such a reliance on the Holy Spirit? Do we believe that,
at this moment, He can clothe us with power, even as He did the
apostles at Pentecost? Do we believe that, under our preaching, by His
energy a thousand might be born in a day? If we all so believe, we are
happy to be in such an assembly, for the majority of Christians, if
under one sermon even a dozen persons were to cry out, "What must
we do to be saved?" would exclaim exactly as the unbelieving Jews did,
"These men are full of new wine." They would condemn the whole
transaction as the result of dangerous excitement; they would never
imagine it to be of the Lord. For this reason, I mournfully conclude
that there is not, in the Church, such a belief in the Holy Spirit as there
ought to be; and yet, as certainly as we hear the voice which says,
"Power belongs to God;" as surely as we hear the Divine voice of the
Son, saying, "You believe in God, believe also in Me;" so truly does the
third Person of the blessed Trinity claim our loving confidence, and
woe be to us if we vex Him by our unbelief! When we have a full faith
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