CHarles Spurgeon, a Baptist minister in the 1800s, is one of the commentators that I quote often to my Sunday School class. I just love the way he phrases things, like these examples:
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“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
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“The Word of God is like a lion. You don’t have to defend a lion. All you have to do is let the lion loose, and the lion will defend itself.”
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“God is too good to be unkind and He is too wise to be mistaken. And when we cannot trace His hand, we must trust His heart.”
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“Discernment is not a matter of telling the difference between right and wrong; rather it is telling the difference between right and almost right.”
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“There must be a divorce between you and sin, or there can be no marriage between you and Christ.”
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“Morality may keep you out of jail, but it takes the blood of Jesus Christ to keep you out of hell.”
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He preached his first sermon in 1851 at age sixteen. In 1852 he was called to pastor a small Baptist church, and in 1854, just four years after his conversion, Spurgeon was called to the pastorate of London’s famed New Park Street Chapel at the age of 20.
In 1861 the congregation moved permanently to the newly constructed Metropolitan Tabernacle, seating five thousand people with standing room for another thousand.
Spurgeon was pastor of the first megachurch, and the Billy Graham of his day. On top of his preaching and pastoral ministry (he preached up to thirteen times a week), he established and oversaw a host of ministries.
He was involved in the planting of 187 churches. In print he published some eighteen million words, selling over fifty-six million copies of his sermons in forty languages.
He suffered ill health towards the end of his life, and he died in 1892 at the age of 57.
It’s not about how many weeks he would have been on the NY Times bestseller list, but Spurgeon was rewarded monitarily for his efforts, to the tune of millions of dollars. What I love about his ministry is what he did with that fortune.
In the bible, James chapter 1 verse 27 sums up the way we all should live:
“Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.”
So what did Spurgeon do for widows? He oversaw seventeen almshouses for poor and elderly women. What did he do for orphans? He created the Stockwell Orphanage, and a day school for children.
That, folks, is how it’s done. He put his money where his mouth is, and in doing so championed the poor and underprivileged. And man, could he turn a phrase.
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This content is sponsored by Lyle Celebration Center, www.lylecelebrationcenter.org.
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