Daily Sermon Station

The Believer's Challenge

Spurgeon proclaims that a Christian can stand before heaven, earth, and hell without fear of condemnation because of four unshakable pillars of assurance: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ sits at the right hand of God, and Christ makes intercession for us. He explains that Christ’s death fully satisfied divine justice—“the black cloud of vengeance emptied out itself upon the cross”—and that His resurrection is the Father’s public receipt showing the debt is paid, the bond torn in two. Christ’s enthronement at God’s right hand proves the work is finished, for unlike the standing priests of the Old Testament, Jesus sits because the atonement is complete and believers are accepted in Him. Finally, Spurgeon exalts Christ’s ongoing intercession as the strongest argument of all, noting that the Savior pleads with “my Father and your Father,” presenting His own blood on the mercy seat as the believer’s unanswerable defense. With these four foundations intertwined, Spurgeon says the Christian may echo Paul’s bold cry—“Who is he that condemns?”—for no accusation from conscience, man, or Satan can stand against those secured by the death, resurrection, exaltation, and intercession of Christ. Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on June 5th, 1859.

Justice Satisfied

Spurgeon takes up the convicted sinner's deepest fear — that God's own justice stands as an impassable barrier to forgiveness — and demolishes it by showing how the cross of Christ has not merely set justice aside but has fully satisfied it, so that God can be simultaneously just and the justifier of the believer: the dignity of the divine Son who suffered, the Father's willingness to smite his own Son in our place, and the infinite depth of Christ's agony in Gethsemane and at Calvary together constitute a payment so complete that justice itself now stands with the penitent sinner and pleads for his pardon. He then draws out the second text — that God is "faithful and just to forgive us our sins" — to show that justice has actually become the sinner's advocate, because God is bound by his own promises, by the faith those promises aroused in the sinner who acted on them, and by his obligation to give his Son what Christ purchased with his blood, so that it would be an injustice for God not to forgive a sinner who confesses and believes. He closes with two practical applications: confession must be personal, sincere, particular, and accompanied by making right any wrongs done to others; and faith must be a simple, complete casting of oneself on Christ alone — and he assures every such sinner that there is neither possibility nor probability of being lost, for God cannot demand payment twice for a debt already paid in full. Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on May 29th, 1859.

The Wounds of Jesus

Spurgeon meditates on the remarkable fact that Jesus chose to retain the marks of his crucifixion after his resurrection and into his glorified state in heaven, offering a rich series of reasons: they proved his identity to the disciples, they serve as the ornaments and trophies of his victory over death, they are his perpetual intercession before the Father requiring no words, they demonstrate that his priesthood continues unchanged, and they will stand as accusers against all who rejected him at the final judgment. He then draws three practical lessons from the wounds for believers: that suffering is necessary for every member of Christ's body since the head himself was not spared, that Christ's wounds are the ground of his perfect sympathy with every suffering saint, and that suffering is actually an honorable thing — the royal regalia of the kingdom, a blood-red crown of martyrdom — because Christ has made his own wounds into eternal glory rather than shame. He closes with warm encouragement first to the weak and wounded believer — that Christ took even his wounds to heaven and will not discard the broken parts of his body — and then to the trembling sinner who fears their sins are too great, pointing to Christ's outstretched hands and open side as proof that there is easy access to his heart, and the dying monk's final cry as the fullest possible gospel: Tu vulnera Jesu — "Your wounds, O Jesus!" Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on January 30th, 1859.

A Psalm of Remembrance

Spurgeon presents the apostle John's declaration — "We have known and believed the love that God has to us" — as the truest summary of Christian experience, distinguishing between the sweeter but less heroic state of knowing God's love through visible blessings, answered prayer, restored health, and the direct inner witness of the Holy Spirit, and the grander state of believing that love in the dark when every circumstance contradicts it and the inner witness is silent. He then takes this same declaration as the believer's testimony to the world, witnessing that God's love is entirely undeserved, unconquerable in the face of repeated resistance and ingratitude, undiminished by ongoing sin and failure, perfectly immutable through all the changes of a lifetime, and an unfailing support in the deepest trials — with Spurgeon drawing freely on his own experience of suffering and public attack to confirm that not one good thing has ever failed of all that God promised. He closes with two practical applications: first, an encouragement to the sorely tried believer to honor God in the furnace by trusting him when outward evidence seems to argue against his love; and second, an invitation to despairing sinners from the lips of the whole congregation of forgiven people — drunkards, swearers, adulterers — that no sin exceeds the love of God, and to believe it now is itself evidence that God has set his heart upon them. Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on May 22nd, 1859.

Holy Violence

Spurgeon argues that Christ's words about the violent taking the kingdom of heaven by force describe the intense earnestness that God's Spirit produces in those he is saving — an all-consuming anxiety about their souls that shows itself in wide-awake attention to preaching, agonized prayer, sleepless nights, and a desperate refusal to rest until they find Christ — and he contrasts this with the dead routine of churches where ministers, deacons, and congregations all go through the motions of religion with no more life than sleepwalkers. He defends this holy violence as entirely reasonable: the genuinely awakened sinner knows they have no right to heaven by birth, knows the infinite value of what they are asking for, feels the terror of hell behind them like a manslayer, and faces enemies within and without that make anything less than desperate effort a sure path to failure. He closes with two contrasting exhortations — to the complacent respectable churchgoer whose easy religion will carry them nine-tenths of the way to heaven and leave them at the gate, and to the despairing sinner who thinks themselves too vile to try — urging both to abandon lukewarmness and cast themselves on Christ with all their strength, since every truly violent seeker in the history of the world has been answered, and God's faithfulness cannot fail the soul that will not give up. Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on May 15th, 1859.