Latest / Reformed Thinking / What is it to Win a Soul? | Charles Spurgeon

Transcript

What is it to Win a Soul? | Charles Spurgeon · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Welcome back to Reformed Thinking.
• 0:01
  I'm really glad you're here with us.
• 0:03
  We're doing something today that I think is just so necessary for
• 0:07
  anyone trying to, you know, keep their head above water in the
• 0:12
  modern church world. That's a good way to put it.
• 0:14
  We're taking a stack of some older, heavier material, the
• 0:17
  kind of stuff that usually just gathers dust on a seminary
• 0:20
  shelf, and we're we're breaking it open to see if it still
• 0:23
  works. And it usually works better than
• 0:26
  the new stuff to be honest. Well, that's sort of the working
• 0:28
  theory of this show, isn't it? That the dead guys might just
• 0:31
  know more than we do. They often do.
• 0:33
  Today we are looking at Charles Haddon Spurgeon.
• 0:37
  But, and this is a big but, not the Spurgeon everyone quotes on
• 0:41
  Instagram. Yeah, we aren't doing the
• 0:43
  morning and evening devotionals. We are looking at a set of
• 0:46
  lectures he gave to his own students.
• 0:48
  These are future pastors. And the book is called The Soul
• 0:51
  Winner. And specifically, we're zeroing
• 0:54
  in on one lecture called What Is It to Win a Soul?
• 0:56
  And this is Spurgeon with his sleeves rolled up.
• 0:59
  I mean, he isn't preaching to the masses here.
• 1:01
  He's in the backroom talking shop with the men who are about
• 1:04
  to go out and lead churches, and he is brutally honest.
• 1:08
  He really is. And for you listening just to
• 1:10
  set the table, we're looking at all of this through our usual
• 1:13
  lens, which is the Westminster Confession of Faith.
• 1:17
  We're coming at this as people who believe God is sovereign,
• 1:20
  that the Bible is our final rule, and that salvation is a
• 1:24
  work of grace from start to finish.
• 1:26
  Which is absolutely crucial for this specific topic.
• 1:30
  It really is, because when you talk about winning souls, it
• 1:33
  just, it sounds like a sales job.
• 1:35
  It does. It sounds like we're the ones
• 1:36
  doing the winning, like we're trying to sell a used car or
• 1:39
  close a deal. But Spurgeon being a good
• 1:42
  Calvinist, he just flips that right on its head.
• 1:45
  He wants to know what is actually happening when a person
• 1:49
  becomes a Christian. Is it a sales transaction or is
• 1:54
  it a resurrection? And that one distinction, it
• 1:56
  changes everything about how you do ministry.
• 1:58
  Everything. If it's a sales job, you just
• 2:00
  need better lighting and cooler music.
• 2:02
  If it's a resurrection, you need a miracle.
• 2:04
  Spot on. And Spurgeon is worried that a
• 2:07
  lot of what passed from ministry in the 19th century, and I would
• 2:10
  argue even or so today in the 21st, is just noise.
• 2:14
  It's just dust, yeah. So the mission for this deep
• 2:18
  dive for our time together is to really figure out what true
• 2:21
  conversion looks like, according to Spurgeon.
• 2:24
  We want to strip away all the fake metrics of success and
• 2:26
  maybe most of all, get comfortable with the idea that
• 2:29
  we can't actually fix people. Which is a huge relief, isn't?
• 2:33
  It it's a massive relief. But before he tells us how to do
• 2:35
  it, Spurgeon starts with the Via Negativa.
• 2:38
  Negative path. Exactly, he spends pretty
• 2:41
  significant amount of time ranting, and I think ranting is
• 2:43
  the fair word here about what soul winning is not.
• 2:46
  He does. He just clears the deck.
• 2:47
  Yeah, and the very first thing he throws overboard is sheep
• 2:50
  stealing. OK.
• 2:51
  Let's talk about this. Because in the business world,
• 2:53
  right, stealing market share is just a it's called competition.
• 2:56
  It's how you win. Coke wants Pepsi drinkers to
• 3:00
  switch. Apple wants Android users.
• 3:03
  But Spurgeon says if you run your church that way, you are
• 3:06
  despicable. He calls it utter meanness and
• 3:10
  he is right. He says, look, if you go to a
• 3:12
  town where there is already a gospel preaching church and your
• 3:16
  whole strategy is to be cooler or louder or maybe purer than
• 3:20
  the guy down the street just to get his people to sit in your
• 3:23
  pews, you haven't won a single soul.
• 3:26
  You've just shuffled the deck. That's it.
• 3:28
  You've just moved Christians from one building to another.
• 3:31
  And he says the Kingdom of God has not increased by a single
• 3:35
  person. He uses this great term
• 3:36
  shibboleth. He talks about training people
• 3:40
  to utter our peculiar shibleth. I feel like a lot of people know
• 3:44
  that word, maybe don't know where it comes from.
• 3:46
  Right, it's from the Book of Judges.
• 3:47
  It was literally a password used by one tribe, the Gileadites, to
• 3:51
  identify an enemy tribe, the Ephraimites, who were trying to
• 3:54
  escape across the river. And they couldn't pronounce
• 3:56
  this. Sound.
• 3:57
  They couldn't. They'd say sibileth.
• 3:59
  And, well, if you said it wrong, things did not end well for you.
• 4:02
  So Spurgeon is using it as a metaphor for theological slang.
• 4:07
  Or, you know, denominational buzzwords.
• 4:09
  So like getting someone to say ordinance instead of sacrament?
• 4:13
  Exactly. Or knowing all the insider
• 4:16
  acronyms of your particular theological tribe, if you
• 4:19
  managed to convince a Methodist to become a Baptist and now he
• 4:22
  knows all the right Baptist Y things to say, you haven't
• 4:25
  actually added a citizen to the Kingdom of heaven.
• 4:27
  You've just added a member to your.
• 4:29
  That's it, he calls it, making a proselyte to your own synagogue.
• 4:32
  It's just pure tribalism. It is.
• 4:34
  And he says, quote, we do not regard it as soul winning to
• 4:37
  steal members out of churches already established.
• 4:40
  He says it's like building your house using the debris from your
• 4:43
  neighbor's ruin. Wow, that's a strong image.
• 4:46
  And he tells the story here about a Doctor Chalmers that I
• 4:49
  thought was just fantastic. It really illustrates the mind.
• 4:55
  He was a like, I mean, a massive figure in 19th century Scotland,
• 4:59
  a real polymath, A mathematician, an economist, a
• 5:02
  political theorist and a theologian, a total heavyweight.
• 5:06
  And he was a leader in the formation of the Free Church of
• 5:08
  Scotland. The story goes that someone came
• 5:11
  to him with a big plan for an evangelistic campaign, a
• 5:15
  citywide effort, but they gave him a warning.
• 5:18
  They said, now Doctor Chalmers, this effort, it might not
• 5:22
  actually help the Free Church specifically.
• 5:25
  It might help the other denominations just as much,
• 5:27
  maybe even more. They're basically saying this
• 5:30
  won't help our brand. Precisely.
• 5:32
  Our market share might not increase.
• 5:34
  And Chalmers gets indignant. He just stands up and says, what
• 5:38
  is the Free Church compared with the Christian good of the people
• 5:41
  of Scotland? Wow.
• 5:43
  That's a mic drop moment. What is our denomination
• 5:46
  compared with the good of the people?
• 5:48
  It puts the institution in its proper place.
• 5:51
  You know the church exists for the glory of God and the good of
• 5:54
  souls. The institution is a servant,
• 5:57
  not the master. If we're obsessed with our own
• 5:59
  numbers, our own branding, Spurgeon and Chalmers would say
• 6:02
  we've completely lost the plot. But let's be the devil's
• 6:04
  advocate for a second Pastors have bills to pay.
• 6:07
  Churches have mortgages. If the church down the street is
• 6:10
  growing and you're shrinking, that's a real practical problem.
• 6:14
  Is Spurgeon just saying we shouldn't care about growth at
• 6:16
  all? No, not at all.
• 6:17
  He wants growth. I mean, this is the pastor of
• 6:19
  the Metropolitan Tabernacle. Mega Church of his day.
• 6:22
  It was thousands and thousands of people.
• 6:24
  He's not against size, but he's saying that transfer growth,
• 6:28
  just moving Christians around doesn't count on the heavenly
• 6:31
  scoreboard. He admits.
• 6:33
  Look, if you're a Baptist, you think being a Baptist is the
• 6:36
  most biblical way to be. Of course you do.
• 6:38
  We would prefer a paedo Baptist, someone who baptizes infants, to
• 6:42
  come to our side because we think we're right on that issue
• 6:44
  of. Course, we all think our
• 6:45
  theology is the correct 1, otherwise why would we hold it
• 6:47
  right? But he says our grand object
• 6:51
  isn't the revision of opinions, it is the regeneration of
• 6:54
  natures. Changing a man's mind about the
• 6:57
  mode of baptism is not the same thing as saving his soul from
• 7:00
  hell. And if you confuse those two
• 7:02
  things, you're in very deep trouble as a minister.
• 7:05
  And this leads right into his second negative point, which I
• 7:08
  think stings even more today than it probably did back then.
• 7:12
  And that's the trap of statistics.
• 7:15
  Oh, the unhatched chicken. Yes.
• 7:17
  His line about not counting your chickens before they're hatched
• 7:20
  or even before the eggs are laid?
• 7:23
  We live in a world of metrics every church conference I've
• 7:26
  ever even heard of starts with. So how big is your church?
• 7:30
  How many were there on Sunday? Spurgeon seems to think that's a
• 7:34
  really dangerous question. He.
• 7:35
  Thinks it's deadly, Absolutely deadly.
• 7:37
  He warns ministers against hurriedly inscribing names on a
• 7:40
  church roll just to show an increase in the annual report.
• 7:44
  Right. He says if you pressure people
• 7:46
  into making a profession of faith before they are actually
• 7:48
  converted, you're doing 2 terrible things.
• 7:51
  First, you're hurting that person.
• 7:53
  You are letting them think they're safe when they aren't.
• 7:56
  You're making them a hypocrite. You're giving them a completely
• 7:58
  false sense of security. I walk the aisle, I sign the
• 8:01
  card. I'm good to go.
• 8:02
  Exactly. And second, you're hurting the
• 8:04
  church. He has this line and apparent
• 8:07
  gain may be a real loss. Well, if you bring a dozen
• 8:11
  unconverted, unregenerate people into the membership of the
• 8:14
  church, you weaken the spiritual temperature of the whole body,
• 8:17
  you dilute the church's witness. You add dead weight.
• 8:20
  And he has this, this really dark, funny joke about the
• 8:23
  minister and his report. The minister reports to the
• 8:26
  association that his church is looking up.
• 8:29
  And all his friends are congratulating him.
• 8:30
  That's wonderful. But when they press him for
• 8:33
  details, he finally admits. Well, you see, the church is on
• 8:36
  its back. It's flat on the ground.
• 8:38
  It can't do anything else but look up.
• 8:40
  It's funny, but it's also tragic.
• 8:42
  It speaks to that immense pressure ministers feel to spin
• 8:46
  the numbers to make failure look like success.
• 8:49
  And Spurgeon just despises that kind of spin.
• 8:52
  He talks about these revival reports that get published.
• 8:55
  Last night in our special meeting, 14 souls were under
• 8:58
  deep conviction, 15 were justified and eight were
• 9:01
  sanctified. It sounds like a factory
• 9:02
  production report. We produce 14 widgets today.
• 9:06
  That's exactly it. And Spiritual just throws up his
• 9:08
  hands and asks, how do you know that?
• 9:10
  How can you possibly know that? Eight people achieved a new
• 9:14
  level of sanctification last night?
• 9:16
  That is a process of a lifetime. He calls it idle pretense.
• 9:20
  He says legitimate statistics are fine.
• 9:22
  In fact, they can be good for humility.
• 9:25
  If your numbers are down, let it drive you to your knees in
• 9:28
  prayer. But don't cook the books just to
• 9:30
  make yourself look like a super apostle, he says.
• 9:33
  That kind of public bragging about unhatched chickens just
• 9:36
  grieves the Holy Spirit. It really all comes back to
• 9:38
  humility, doesn't it? If we really believe that
• 9:41
  salvation is of the Lord, then we can't manufacture the
• 9:43
  numbers. We can't.
• 9:44
  Which brings us to the third negative point.
• 9:47
  Excitement versus movement. He uses this analogy of a
• 9:50
  carriage on a dry Rd. I thought this was brilliant.
• 9:53
  It's one of his absolute best illustrations, he says.
• 9:56
  Imagine a carriage, you know, a horse drawn coach flying down a
• 10:00
  dry dirt Rd. It's moving fast, So what
• 10:02
  happens? That kicks up a huge cloud of
• 10:04
  dust. Right, a huge cloud of dust.
• 10:06
  Now that dust is a sign of the movement.
• 10:09
  It's an effect of the cause. OK, so in this analogy, the
• 10:12
  movement is the Holy Spirit and the dust is the excitement, the
• 10:16
  noise, the emotional reaction of the crowd.
• 10:18
  Got it in one. But then he says.
• 10:20
  Now imagine you just get a broom and you go out to that same
• 10:24
  empty road and you just start sweeping like a maniac.
• 10:27
  You can create a huge cloud of dust.
• 10:30
  But there's no movement. There's no movement.
• 10:33
  You haven't gone anywhere, you've just created a nuisance.
• 10:36
  Wow, that is a scathing critique of a certain kind of
• 10:39
  emotionalism. Just because people are crying
• 10:42
  or shouting or falling down doesn't mean the Holy Spirit is
• 10:44
  moving. It might just be dust.
• 10:47
  And he warns against what he calls salamander converts.
• 10:51
  I had to look this up. This is a reference to folklore
• 10:53
  about salamanders. Yeah, in ancient myths, people
• 10:56
  believe that salamanders could literally live in fire.
• 10:59
  They were supposedly born in the fire and could only survive in
• 11:02
  the fire, Spurgeon says. Some converts are like that.
• 11:05
  They were born in the white hot heat of a revival meeting.
• 11:08
  They can only survive when the emotional temperature is cranked
• 11:10
  up to 100°. So on Monday morning when the
• 11:13
  music stops and the lights come up and real life hits.
• 11:16
  They die, they freeze to death spiritually because their faith
• 11:19
  wasn't actually in Christ. It was in the atmosphere.
• 11:22
  It was in the feeling. He he has this incredible line.
• 11:25
  We would prepare men for the Chamber of Communion and not for
• 11:28
  the padded room at Bedlam. Bedlam was the famous or
• 11:32
  infamous insane asylum in London.
• 11:34
  He's saying. I want to make stable sober
• 11:37
  minded disciples, not religious maniacs.
• 11:40
  He wants a faith that flourishes on Calvary, at the foot of the
• 11:43
  cross, not on Vesuvius, the exploding volcano.
• 11:47
  Exactly. So to recap, the Via Negativa
• 11:51
  True Soul winning is not stealing members from other
• 11:54
  churches, it is not padding your stats with people who aren't
• 11:56
  ready, and it is not whipping people into an emotional frenzy.
• 12:00
  Which leaves us with a really big question.
• 12:01
  What is it then, if we're not supposed to be doing all those
• 12:04
  things? What are we supposed to be
• 12:05
  doing? And here's Spurgeon pivots to
• 12:07
  the positive. He starts with the mind.
• 12:09
  This is Section 2, the role of instruction.
• 12:12
  And this is very, very reformed. You cannot bypass the brain to
• 12:15
  get to the heart. Spurgeon defines the gospel
• 12:17
  first and foremost as news. Information.
• 12:20
  Facts. Information, facts.
• 12:22
  He says the gospel is not a magical incantation.
• 12:25
  It's not a spell you cast. You don't just say Jesus saves 3
• 12:28
  times and poofs someone is a Christian.
• 12:31
  It is a message that conveys actual facts about God, man, sin
• 12:35
  and Christ. He says men must be taught what
• 12:37
  to believe. I just love this part where he
• 12:39
  mimics the empty preacher. He says you shout believe at the
• 12:42
  top of your lungs. And the poor man asks believe
• 12:44
  what? You shout escape and he asks
• 12:46
  escape from what? You scream repent, and he asks,
• 12:49
  repent of what? It's empty exhortation.
• 12:52
  It's like shouting at a drowning man to swim without throwing him
• 12:56
  a rope or telling you which way the shore is.
• 12:59
  Spurgeon insists that you have to teach the doctrines, and this
• 13:01
  is where he attacks what he calls evangelistic Jesuitism.
• 13:05
  That sounds like a conspiracy theory.
• 13:07
  What on earth does he mean by that?
• 13:08
  He's using it as a pejorative for sure.
• 13:11
  He's criticizing the strategy of hiding the hard truths of the
• 13:15
  faith, the idea that you shouldn't talk about the darker
• 13:18
  parts of theology like the wrath of God or the total depravity of
• 13:21
  man or the sovereignty of God in election, because those things
• 13:24
  are off putting to a modern audience.
• 13:26
  So the strategy is to lure people in with the sweet stuff.
• 13:30
  Right. You lure them in with God, has a
• 13:32
  wonderful plan for your life, get them to sign on the dotted
• 13:35
  line, and then maybe years later, you tell them the rest of
• 13:38
  the story. It's a classic bait and switch.
• 13:40
  Come for the community and the coffee bar.
• 13:42
  Stay for the eternal damnation. That's the idea, Spurgeon says.
• 13:47
  That is just dishonest. It's cowardly, he argues.
• 13:50
  You cannot heal a man who does not know that he is sick.
• 13:54
  This brings up his crucial concept of stripping.
• 13:56
  Stripping OK, unpack that for us.
• 13:59
  Before you can clothe the Sinner and the righteousness of Christ,
• 14:02
  you have to strip him of his own self righteousness.
• 14:05
  You have to tear down his confidence in himself.
• 14:08
  He has to be shown that he is morally and spiritually bankrupt
• 14:11
  before a holy God. He has to know he is naked and
• 14:14
  wretched. That sounds incredibly harsh to
• 14:17
  modern ears. We live in a therapeutic
• 14:19
  culture. We like to affirm people.
• 14:21
  We want to tell them they're worthy, they're valuable,
• 14:22
  they're good enough. Spurgeon wants to tell them they
• 14:24
  are utterly helpless. Because if they think they are
• 14:27
  worthy, they don't need grace. They just need a little boost, a
• 14:30
  little self help. If they're helpless, if they are
• 14:33
  dead in trespasses and sins as the Bible says, then they
• 14:36
  desperately need a savior. So you have to show them the
• 14:39
  disease before you offer the cure.
• 14:41
  You have to, Spurgeon says. You have to throw them down in
• 14:44
  utter helplessness. You have to use the law to back
• 14:47
  them into a corner where their only possible escape is the free
• 14:51
  mercy of God in Christ. And he's adamant that God does
• 14:55
  not bless falsehood. If we hide the hard truths to
• 14:58
  get bigger numbers. The Holy Spirit is not going to
• 15:00
  sign off on that project. The truth is, the only weapon we
• 15:03
  have, the word of God, is the sword of the Spirit.
• 15:07
  If we intentionally blunt the edge of that sword, it won't
• 15:10
  cut, it won't work. So we have to start with the
• 15:12
  mind, with solid doctrinal instruction.
• 15:16
  But of course, we aren't just robots, we aren't Vulcans.
• 15:18
  We have hearts, so Spurgeon moves to Section 3.
• 15:22
  The role of impression. The emotions.
• 15:24
  And he uses a proverb from Solomon here.
• 15:27
  The legs of the lame are not equal.
• 15:29
  Meaning if one leg is much longer than the other, you're
• 15:32
  going to walk with a serious limp.
• 15:33
  You'll be off balance. Exactly.
• 15:35
  He applies this directly to ministry.
• 15:38
  He says some men have a long doctrinal leg.
• 15:40
  They are all brain. They have perfect systematic
• 15:43
  theology. They know they're Greek and
• 15:45
  they're Hebrew. They can recite the confession
• 15:47
  backwards, but they have a short emotional leg.
• 15:50
  They're a cold. He calls this doctrinal
• 15:52
  desiccation, and desiccation means drying out like a mummy or
• 15:56
  a piece of beef jerky. It's such a visit image.
• 16:00
  He describes these preachers who can speak of hell without a
• 16:02
  single ounce of anguish in their voice.
• 16:05
  They talk about eternal torment like they're reading a grocery
• 16:08
  list, he says. The milk of human kindness has
• 16:11
  dried out of them. That's a deeply convicting
• 16:13
  thought. It is entirely possible to be
• 16:15
  theologically correct, legally speaking, but to be spiritually
• 16:18
  dead, he says. They create hearers who are
• 16:20
  sound in the faith but also sound asleep.
• 16:23
  He says these guys spend all their time sniffing out heresy,
• 16:26
  making men offenders for a word, but they have no compassion, no
• 16:30
  love, no tenderness. They are orthodox, but they are
• 16:32
  frozen. And Spurgeon says soul winning
• 16:36
  requires heat, requires passion. But.
• 16:39
  And here's the crucial balance he distinguishes between proper
• 16:42
  spiritual emotion and just being a tear jerker.
• 16:45
  We talked about the dust versus the movement earlier.
• 16:47
  How do we tell the difference between a legitimate impression
• 16:50
  and just plain old manipulation? He tells a great story about a
• 16:53
  girl he saw on a Steamboat. She's sitting there reading a
• 16:57
  yellow covered novel which was like the cheap paperback romance
• 17:00
  or thriller of the day. And this girl is weeping.
• 17:04
  Tears are just streaming down her face.
• 17:05
  She's completely overcome with emotion.
• 17:07
  She's heartbroken over the story.
• 17:08
  She is, but she is crying over a fiction.
• 17:12
  She's crying over characters who do not exist and a plot that
• 17:14
  never happened, Spurgeon says. Those natural tears are a waste
• 17:18
  of moisture. They don't mean anything
• 17:20
  spiritually. So if a preacher tells a really
• 17:23
  sad story about a dog dying or a funeral or a sick child, and the
• 17:27
  whole congregation starts to cry, that isn't necessarily the
• 17:31
  Holy Spirit. Not necessarily at all.
• 17:33
  That's just human empathy. It's a natural biological
• 17:36
  reaction to a sad stimulus. Any good novelist or filmmaker
• 17:39
  can do that, Spurgeon says. Proper spiritual emotion comes
• 17:42
  from the truth soaking into the soul.
• 17:44
  So it's not just any feeling. No, it is sorrow for sin.
• 17:49
  It is joy in the gospel. It's a deep emotional response
• 17:52
  to the reality of who God is and who we are, not just a response
• 17:56
  to a sentimental story. The Word of God must be like a
• 17:58
  strong wind sweeping through the heart.
• 18:00
  So it isn't about just making people cry, it's about making
• 18:03
  people feel the actual weight of God's glory and their own sin.
• 18:07
  So we have instruction for the mind and impression for the
• 18:10
  emotions. But right here is where Spurgeon
• 18:12
  drops the hammer. Section 4.
• 18:14
  Neither of these things, nor both of them combined, can
• 18:17
  actually save a person. This is the big pivot.
• 18:20
  You can teach a man until he knows the Bible better than the
• 18:23
  devil himself, and you can make him cry until he's completely
• 18:26
  dehydrated, but you cannot make him a Christian.
• 18:28
  Instruction and impression are just the instruments.
• 18:31
  They are the tools. But a hammer cannot build a
• 18:33
  house by itself. A scalpel can't perform surgery
• 18:37
  on its own. The end goal, he says, is a
• 18:40
  wonder of divine grace. It is a miracle.
• 18:43
  He goes right back to the basics John chapter 3.
• 18:46
  Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.
• 18:50
  And he emphasizes the agency who was doing the work.
• 18:53
  He says no minister can save a soul.
• 18:56
  It requires the very same divine energy that raised Jesus Christ
• 19:00
  from the dead. It is an act of omnipotence.
• 19:03
  Now we need to get into the weeds for a second, because
• 19:05
  Spurgeon drops a theological concept here that I think most
• 19:08
  modern Christians either don't know or just gloss over.
• 19:11
  He talks about the tripartite nature of man.
• 19:14
  Yes, the body, the soul and the spirit as 3 distinct things.
• 19:17
  OK be honest with me, when you hear the words soul and spirit
• 19:21
  do you automatically treat them as different things?
• 19:23
  Because if I'm just casually reading my Bible, I have to
• 19:25
  admit I usually swap those words out interchangeably.
• 19:27
  Most people do, and that's called the dichotomous view that
• 19:31
  a human is made of two parts, a material part, the body, and an
• 19:36
  immaterial part, the soul or spirit.
• 19:38
  But Spurgeon is pulling from passages like First
• 19:40
  Thessalonians 5.23. May your whole spirit, soul and
• 19:45
  body be kept blameless to argue for a trichotomous view.
• 19:49
  And this isn't just him splitting hairs for fun, this is
• 19:52
  actually the foundation of his whole theory on conversion.
• 19:55
  OK, so walk me through the spiritual anatomy here.
• 19:57
  I've got a body that's the meat and bones, the physical part.
• 19:59
  Right then, you have the soul and Greek, the psyche.
• 20:02
  For Spurgeon, the soul includes your intellect, your emotions,
• 20:05
  your will, your personality. It's the seat of your natural
• 20:09
  life. Even animals have a nephesh, a
• 20:11
  living soul or breath in the Hebrew sense.
• 20:14
  A non believer has a fully functioning soul.
• 20:16
  They can write poetry, they can feel love, they can do advanced
• 20:18
  calculus. They could even be very
• 20:20
  religious. So the soul is kind of like the
• 20:22
  natural software that's running the hardware of the body.
• 20:25
  That's a great way to put it. But then there's the third part,
• 20:28
  the spirit, the pneuma. Spurgeon argues that in the
• 20:33
  fall, when Adam sinned, the human spirit died.
• 20:36
  It was extinguished, it was lost.
• 20:38
  So the natural man, as he is born, is only 2/3 of a complete
• 20:42
  human being. He has a body and a soul.
• 20:45
  But the spiritual faculty, the organ that can actually perceive
• 20:49
  and communicate with God, is dead.
• 20:51
  It's not just sick, it's missing.
• 20:53
  Which explains why he's so adamant that you can't just
• 20:55
  argue someone into salvation. You can't.
• 20:58
  You can argue with their soul, you can win a debate with their
• 21:01
  intellect, you can stir their emotions, but you are basically
• 21:04
  shouting into a room where no one lives.
• 21:07
  The light is on, but nobody's home in the spiritual sense.
• 21:10
  The spirit needs to be recreated.
• 21:11
  So this makes that born again language strictly and literally
• 21:14
  true then? Absolutely literal.
• 21:16
  It is not a metaphor for turning over a new leaf or making a
• 21:19
  decision. It is the supernatural
• 21:21
  implantation of a new organ of perception, he says.
• 21:24
  A spark from the everlasting fire is dropped into the soul by
• 21:27
  the Holy Spirit. And without that spark, without
• 21:29
  that new spirit, the Kingdom of heaven is invisible.
• 21:31
  You can't see it. Invisible and inaccessible, Paul
• 21:35
  says the carnal mind is enmity against God.
• 21:38
  It cannot be subject to God's law.
• 21:40
  So a new element, a new nature must be added from outside.
• 21:44
  This is why Spurgeon is so reliant on the Holy Spirit.
• 21:47
  We are, in effect, trying to talk to the dead.
• 21:50
  Only the Spirit can make them here.
• 21:52
  But, and this is the classic paradox of reformed theology, he
• 21:55
  doesn't then say we should just shut up and go home and wait for
• 21:58
  lightning to stray. No, not at all.
• 22:00
  Paradoxically, he says God is pleased to honor human
• 22:03
  instrumentality. The apostle Paul talks about
• 22:05
  beginning converse through the gospel.
• 22:07
  We're called laborers. Together with God.
• 22:10
  We are the tools in the master's hand.
• 22:12
  So we preach, we teach, we plead, we persuade.
• 22:14
  But we know all along that the real power isn't in our
• 22:17
  eloquence or our arguments. It's in the Spirit, using our
• 22:21
  fallible words to perform a miracle.
• 22:23
  It's the difference between being a doctor and being a
• 22:25
  miracle worker. We're like the boy with the
• 22:27
  loaves and fishes. We just bring our little lunch.
• 22:30
  But Jesus is the one who does the multiplying.
• 22:32
  OK, that makes sense. So let's move to the practical
• 22:34
  side of this. If this new birth is a hidden
• 22:37
  internal miracle, and if we can't see the Spirit appearing
• 22:41
  inside someone like on an X-ray, how do we have any idea if it
• 22:44
  actually worked? Section 5 is all about the
• 22:47
  evidences of true conversion. This is where the rubber really
• 22:49
  meets the road because if we reject the easy you raise your
• 22:53
  hand or sign the card metric, we need something to replace it.
• 22:57
  Spurgeon gives us four key signs to look for.
• 22:59
  All right sign #1 conviction of sin.
• 23:03
  He says the new life, when it enters a person, causes intense
• 23:06
  inward pain initially. Pain.
• 23:08
  That's not a very marketable part of the gospel come to
• 23:11
  Jesus. It'll hurt a lot at first, but.
• 23:13
  Think about it, if your arm has been numb, completely dead, and
• 23:16
  suddenly the blood rushes back into it, what's the first thing
• 23:19
  you feel? Pins and needles pain.
• 23:21
  Exactly. Your nerves wake up when the
• 23:24
  Spirit makes a person spiritually alive.
• 23:26
  They suddenly realize their true condition before God.
• 23:29
  Spurgeon is extremely skeptical of those who claim to be healed
• 23:32
  before they are wounded. So he doubts the person who
• 23:35
  seems to skip the I'm a wretched Sinner part and go straight to
• 23:39
  that I'm saved and everything is great part.
• 23:40
  He does, because if the Holy Spirit's primary work is to
• 23:45
  reprove the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment,
• 23:50
  then a person who has never felt the weight of their sin has
• 23:53
  probably not had an encounter with the Holy Spirit.
• 23:55
  It's like trying to put a cast on a leg that isn't broken.
• 23:58
  It's a solution to a problem they don't believe they have.
• 24:01
  That's a good point. OK, the second sign is simple
• 24:03
  faith in Jesus. But he qualifies this very
• 24:07
  carefully. He says it must be for eternal
• 24:10
  salvation, not just for a pardon for past sins.
• 24:14
  This is a really subtle but critical theological point.
• 24:18
  A lot of people treat Jesus like a sort of credit card debt
• 24:21
  consolidator. Explain that.
• 24:23
  Well, they think, OK, I ran up a bunch of sin debt in College in
• 24:25
  my 20s. Jesus with his cross graciously
• 24:28
  paid all that off for me. Thank you.
• 24:30
  And now, from this point forward, I'll try to live a good
• 24:32
  life and pay for the rest of my expenses on my own.
• 24:35
  He calls that a semi legal. Right.
• 24:38
  Trusting Christ for the past, but trusting in yourself for the
• 24:41
  future, Spurgeon says. This is a fatal error.
• 24:45
  Jesus saves once and for all. Believers are justified from all
• 24:48
  things. True faith trusts the whole
• 24:51
  price for a whole salvation, past, present and future.
• 24:54
  It's a total ongoing reliance. That distinction is huge, and it
• 24:58
  leads to the third sign, unfeigned repentance.
• 25:01
  And he actually quotes a little children's hymn here to define
• 25:03
  it, which I love. Repentance is to leave the sins
• 25:07
  we loved before. And show that we, in earnest
• 25:09
  grieve by doing so no more. It's simple, but it's profound.
• 25:14
  He rejects this modern, trivial idea that repentance is just a
• 25:17
  change of mind, as if it's like, oh, I used to like chocolate ice
• 25:20
  cream, now I've changed my mind and I like vanilla.
• 25:22
  No, it's a deep, fundamental change of the mind itself.
• 25:25
  It involves sorrow for sin, a growing hatred of sin, and a
• 25:29
  practical turning away from it in everyday life.
• 25:31
  And that practical turning away leads directly to the 4th sign,
• 25:34
  a real change of life. He uses this great horticultural
• 25:37
  metaphor. He talks about grace grafted on
• 25:39
  a crab stock. A crab apple tree, you know,
• 25:41
  produces this wild, sour, inedible fruit.
• 25:44
  Right. So if you take a branch from a
• 25:46
  good apple tree, a Golden Delicious or something, when you
• 25:48
  graft it on to that wild trunk, what's supposed to happen?
• 25:52
  The fruit that grows on that new branch must be sweet.
• 25:55
  It has to be golden Delicious apples.
• 25:57
  If the fruit on that grafted branch is still sauerkraut
• 26:00
  apples, the graft didn't take. The life of the good tree isn't
• 26:04
  flowing through it. He's incredibly blunt here.
• 26:07
  He quotes first John. He that committed sin is of the
• 26:10
  devil. If a man says he's converted but
• 26:13
  he remains habitually angry or drunk or dishonest or greedy,
• 26:17
  the conversion is a fiction. It is, and he tells his famous
• 26:21
  story about the great preacher Roland Hill.
• 26:24
  A drunken man stumbles up to him on the street, swaying back and
• 26:26
  forth, and he slurs Mr. Hill. Mr. Hill, I am one of your
• 26:29
  converts. And Hill just looks at this man.
• 26:32
  And Hill says, I dare say you are, but you are none of the
• 26:34
  Lords, or you would not be drunk.
• 26:37
  That burns, but it is the exact distinction we need to make.
• 26:40
  We as humans can make converts. We can get people to sign up for
• 26:43
  Roland Hills Club, but only the Lord makes Saints.
• 26:46
  Precisely. And this flows right into
• 26:48
  Section 6 where he touches briefly on spiritual
• 26:51
  disciplines. As further evidence, he
• 26:53
  highlights prayer and obedience. Prayer, he says, is the vital
• 26:57
  breath of the Christian. If you're physically alive, you
• 26:59
  breathe. You don't have to think about
• 27:01
  it. If you're spiritually alive, you
• 27:02
  pray. And he points to the conversion
• 27:05
  of Saul of Tarsus, the man who became the apostle Paul.
• 27:08
  When God told the disciple Ananias to go and find this
• 27:11
  former persecutor, what was the proof God gave that Saul was now
• 27:14
  safe, that he was truly converted?
• 27:17
  God simply said behold, he prayeth, not behold he is
• 27:20
  rethinking his theology, or behold, he feels really bad now,
• 27:23
  but behold, he prayeth. It was the first sign of new
• 27:27
  life. And then obedience.
• 27:29
  He quotes him a pardoning God is jealous still for his own
• 27:32
  holiness. Yeah, if someone says they're
• 27:34
  converted but they willfully refuse to obey God's commands,
• 27:37
  if they say I'm saved by grace and I can do whatever I want,
• 27:40
  that's not discipleship, Spurgeon says.
• 27:43
  That is treason against the King.
• 27:44
  Wow. OK, so now we get to what might
• 27:48
  be the most entertaining and also the most sobering part of
• 27:51
  the whole lecture, Spurgeon's Hall of Shame.
• 27:54
  The gallery of false converts. This is my favorite part because
• 27:58
  it's so incredibly well. It's petty, but it's also so
• 28:03
  painfully accurate. It really feels like he's
• 28:05
  subtweeting real people from his own congregation.
• 28:08
  He changes the names, but you just know the people in London
• 28:10
  were reading this and going, oh, that's totally Bob from down the
• 28:13
  street. 100% OK, let's start with the first character, Tom
• 28:16
  Careless. Tom Careless, The description of
• 28:20
  this guy is just wild. He's the terror of the village,
• 28:23
  a Red Indian sort of man. He's the town drunk, the
• 28:26
  brawler, the guy everyone crosses the street to avoid, and
• 28:30
  one day he wanders into the church.
• 28:31
  He hears the gospel and he goes all in immediately.
• 28:35
  He's the guy who gets saved and the very next day he's wearing
• 28:37
  the biggest cross necklace he can find and has a Jesus bumper
• 28:41
  sticker on his horse, Spurgeon says.
• 28:43
  He was seen tugging a barge up the river and singing hymns at
• 28:46
  the top of his lungs. And even knocking people down in
• 28:48
  the street who dared to insult the name of Jesus.
• 28:51
  Which, look, I know we're not supposed to punch heretics, but
• 28:53
  you almost have to admire the zeal, right?
• 28:56
  You do, and that is the trap, Spurgeon says.
• 28:59
  We look at a guy like Tom Careless and we say look at that
• 29:01
  pack and look at that fire. This is a true trophy of grace.
• 29:05
  We rushed to put him on the membership roll.
• 29:07
  We might even put him on stage to give his testimony 2 weeks
• 29:09
  later. I used to be a drunk, now I just
• 29:11
  punch people for Jesus. Right, But Spurgeon's warning is
• 29:15
  wait, just wait, because Tom Careless has no real roots.
• 29:20
  And sure enough, in the story, as soon as the emotional high
• 29:23
  wears off, or maybe the exciting pastor leaves town, Tom drifts
• 29:27
  back to his old life. And is he just a normal citizen?
• 29:30
  No, he's worse. He's 7 times worse.
• 29:32
  He becomes the biggest mocker of religion in the entire town.
• 29:35
  And Spurgeon's point is, if the pastor had just waited, if he
• 29:39
  had just let the fruit ripen on the vine before picking it, he
• 29:42
  would have seen that the roots of true repentance were never
• 29:44
  there. It was all just surface level
• 29:46
  enthusiasm. It's a great illustration that
• 29:48
  you can clean up your act for a person, a pastor, a spouse, a
• 29:52
  parent, but if the heart isn't truly changed by God, it will
• 29:57
  not last. OK, then there is Mary Shallow.
• 30:01
  Poor Mary Spurgeon says she was never blessed with many brains.
• 30:05
  Ouch, that's a bit harsh. It is, but he means she wasn't a
• 30:09
  deep thinker, she was a follower.
• 30:11
  She was impressionable. She professed conversion because
• 30:14
  everyone else in her social circle was doing it.
• 30:17
  She was in a supportive Christian environment at home,
• 30:19
  so she acted like a Christian. She was a social chameleon.
• 30:22
  Exactly. But when she grows up and moves
• 30:25
  away to a different town for work, she fills the empty space
• 30:28
  of her life with dress and gay society.
• 30:31
  And gay society, in Victorian terms, just means parties,
• 30:35
  fashion, the high life. Right.
• 30:37
  She had no real mental furniture, as Bergeon puts it,
• 30:40
  no deep convictions of her own. She just reflected her
• 30:42
  surroundings. And this is a warning about the
• 30:45
  person who just goes with the flow.
• 30:46
  If the flow is Christian, they're Christian.
• 30:48
  If the flow is worldly, they're worldly.
• 30:50
  There's no anchor. Then we get to Charlie Clever.
• 30:52
  I think every, every single one of us has met a Charlie Clever.
• 30:55
  Oh, absolutely. Charlie Clever is the
• 30:57
  counterfeit. He's talented, he's sharp, he
• 31:00
  can pray these beautiful, fluent prayers off the cuff, Spurgeon
• 31:04
  says. For him, religion was as easy as
• 31:06
  kissing his hand. He knows all the lingo, he knows
• 31:09
  the right answers, he knows the whole drill.
• 31:11
  He does. He's a performer.
• 31:13
  But he had no humiliation for his sin, no sense of brokenness.
• 31:17
  He just cries, all serene, and rushes into the church.
• 31:20
  Spurgeon says. These guys are dangerous because
• 31:22
  they are too clever. They will never repay the labor
• 31:25
  you spend on them because they're playing a game.
• 31:27
  Their religion is all in their head and on their tongue, but it
• 31:30
  is never touched their heart. And finally, the darkest one of
• 31:33
  them all, John Fair speech. The Judas figure, he soft
• 31:38
  spoken, a perfect gentleman, loves to have spiritual
• 31:40
  conversation. He would come over to the
• 31:42
  pastor's house and talk deep theology for hours over tea, but
• 31:45
  secretly he was living an open, unrepentant sin.
• 31:49
  And Spurgeon warns pastors to keep their weather eye open for
• 31:52
  these guys. He says they often come with
• 31:54
  money or influence, so it's tempting to overlook the warning
• 31:57
  signs. It is, but they are wolves in
• 31:59
  sheep's clothing, and Spurgeon gives this really practical
• 32:03
  piece of advice. It is much harder to clear a
• 32:06
  Church of bad members that it is to keep them out in the first
• 32:08
  place. His advice throughout this whole
• 32:10
  section is so tough. Do not number your fishes before
• 32:13
  they are broiled and eaten. And do not build with wood, hay
• 32:16
  and stubble. He says he would rather build a
• 32:19
  tiny structure with a few blocks of gold and silver, which is
• 32:22
  slow, hard, painstaking work, then quickly stack up a huge
• 32:26
  building of cheap materials just to make it look big from the
• 32:29
  outside. Because one day buyer is going
• 32:32
  to test the work. That's right.
• 32:33
  So bringing all of this together now, what's the big picture
• 32:37
  here? If we look at the via negativa,
• 32:39
  the need for instruction, the need for impression, the
• 32:42
  absolute necessity of the miracle of regeneration, and
• 32:44
  then these evidences, what are we left with?
• 32:47
  I think we're left with a calling that is both incredibly
• 32:49
  high and deeply humbling. It's impossible for us, but
• 32:54
  possible for God. Soul winning is a divine
• 32:57
  miracle. As human instruments, it
• 32:59
  requires the clear communication of truth.
• 33:02
  You absolutely have to speak to the mind.
• 33:04
  It requires the genuine stirring of the heart.
• 33:06
  With holy passion you have to reach the emotions, but in the
• 33:10
  end it relies entirely 100% on the sovereign work of the Holy
• 33:14
  Spirit to create new life where there was only death.
• 33:17
  It really challenges us to stop looking for shortcuts, doesn't
• 33:20
  it? We live in an age of efficiency,
• 33:22
  of life hacks. We want 3 easy steps to revival.
• 33:25
  Spurgeon is calling us back to the slow, patient, difficult
• 33:29
  work of agriculture, planting seeds, watering, wedding, and
• 33:32
  then waiting on God to bring the harvest in his own time.
• 33:35
  It reminds you of that powerful quote he uses near the end,
• 33:38
  referencing the Book of Job and the creature Leviathan.
• 33:40
  The. Great sea monster.
• 33:42
  Right, God asked Job. Canst thou dry out Leviathan
• 33:44
  with a hook? And Leviathan in this context,
• 33:47
  represents the untamable, unconquerable strength of the
• 33:50
  fallen human heart. Exactly.
• 33:52
  And we think we can tame it. We think we can draw out that
• 33:54
  monster with our clever arguments, our seeker sensitive
• 33:57
  programs, our mood lighting, our emotionally manipulative music
• 34:02
  and Spurgeon, speaking. For God says no.
• 34:05
  You cannot catch Leviathan with a fish hook.
• 34:08
  You cannot tame the sinful nature with a program.
• 34:11
  Only God Almighty can conquer the human heart.
• 34:14
  That is a deeply humbling thought, but you know, it's also
• 34:17
  incredibly freeing. It takes the pressure off of us
• 34:19
  to be the closers. We don't have to close the deal.
• 34:22
  We just have to be faithful witnesses.
• 34:24
  It demands that we be faithful, not just successful by the
• 34:27
  world's metrics. And if we build with gold and
• 34:30
  silver, if we build with truth and patience and prayer, the
• 34:33
  fire of judgement won't consume our work.
• 34:35
  Well, that is a lot to chew on and a real challenge for you to
• 34:39
  think about in an age of metrics and rapid growth.
• 34:41
  Are we building with gold and silver or are we just stacking
• 34:44
  up wood that's eventually going to burn?
• 34:46
  It's a question we all need to ask.
• 34:48
  Let's build with gold and silver friends.
• 34:50
  It's harder, but it lasts. Thanks for listening.
• 34:53
  We will catch you next time on Reformed Thinking.