Maidenbower Baptist Church

The joy of Jesus

Who can plumb the depths of our Lord's sorrows, or scale the heights of his joys? It was for the joy that was set before him that he endured the cross and despised the shame. So we will ask what was it that Jesus did when he so endured and so despised. We must consider how he did this, and what was that joy which sustained him. Finally, we will assess whether or not Jesus has entered that joy, or in what sense he already enjoys or still anticipates that joy that was set before him. This is the Christ whom we are called to consider as we run the race that is set before us.

Demonstration of life

The disciples were not inclined to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead. They were intelligent men, they were convinced Jews, and they were learning disciples, and were resistant to the idea of a risen Jesus. In the face of their suspicion, the Lord gave them a great deal of instruction. They heard his voice and words, they saw his hands and feet, they touched his flesh and bones, they gave him fish and honeycomb, and they thought about the truth which they had been taught. All of this provides a great deal of instruction: a rebuke to unbelief, an offer or life, a gift of peace, a prompt to fellowship, and a glimpse of hope.

The Great Sin of Doing Nothing (sermon 1916)

I doubt that anyone who reads Spurgeon with any consistency and seriousness thinks of him as a soft preacher. Some may have a notion of him as some genial Victorian pulpiteer, but a few sermons will quickly dispel the image, and reveal a man whose compassion is matched with his conviction, whose kindness is rivalled only by his courage. The result is sermons which bite and sting, and sometimes constitute a sustained assault upon the Christian conscience. This sermon is one such, a penetrating study of Numbers 32:23 and the suggestion that Gad and Reuben might have held back when the time came to conquer the Promised Land. Spurgeon transfers the principle to those professing believers who do not go up to spiritual war with their brothers, who sinned against their brothers and their Lord by the great sin of doing nothing. Spurgeon holds nothing back in pressing this principle into the conscience of his hearers, and our own, by extension. This, he makes clear, is a sin that will find us out. There is, of course, a danger that sermons like this will trouble the feeble and stir up a false guilt, but there is an equal need for sermons which fearlessly probe both our motives and our intentions, and call us to consider whether or not we are serving God and his people as we could and as we should.

Permission to feel pain

Adam Riley

A Seasonable Exhortation (sermon 1909)

"These are days of great looseness; everywhere I see great laxity of doctrinal belief, and gross carelessness in religious practice. Christian people are doing to-day what their forefathers would have loathed. Multitudes of professors are but very little different from worldlings. Men's religion seems to hang loosely about them, as if it did not fit them: the wonder is that it does not drop off from them. Men are so little braced up as to conscientious conviction and vigorous resolve, that they easily go to pieces if assailed by error or temptation. The teaching necessary for to-day is this: 'Gird up the loins of your mind,' brace yourselves up; pull yourselves together; be firm, compact, consistent, determined. Do not be like quicksilver, which keeps on dissolving and running into fractions; do not fritter away life upon trifles, but live to purpose, with undivided heart, and decided resolution." So Spurgeon describes the reason for preaching this sermon, and what more can we say by way of introduction? It expresses the preacher's profound concern and earnest plea. The sermon develops as the sustained exhortation of a pastor confident that the motives which the gospel supplies will be sufficient to establish and encourage the people of God in a lukewarm and watery age.