In this brief address, Spurgeon acknowledges that his text—“Now set your heart and your soul to seek the Lord your God”—fits best those who are already saved. However, appreciating that it involves a little straining, he still wants to apply it also to those who are not yet converted. The exhortation as a whole gives us a lively sense of Spurgeon’s appetite for the Lord God, and his appetite for others to have such an appetite. There is a concentration and consecration of all the faculties on the glorious person and personal glory of the God of heaven, a present desire to draw near to him and to enjoy him. Spurgeon more or less runs through the same trajectory for each of the two basic classes of people in his sights as he preaches, pressing upon us all the immediate necessity and blessed prospect of drawing near to God.

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This is another simple sermon in two parts. Whereas the previous sermon offered a stark contrast between the wages of sin and the gift of life, this provides a sequence. After an introduction in which Spurgeon suggests a difference between happiness and blessedness (the former being a good thing, but essentially being of this world, while the latter has a heavenly quality about it), he exposes the world’s suggestions of where blessedness—true and lasting happiness—can be found. Then he turns us to the somewhat surprising text of James 1:12 to look at blessedness in this life and in the life to come. Yes, there are heavenly joys even now for the man who endures temptation—the man who, out of love to God, holds fast in the storm, and whose faith and hope and love are demonstrated to be real and true. And then there are joys to come, the crown of life which the Lord bestows upon those who do not turn away or fall away. Sustained and strengthened by his grace in Christ Jesus for every good work, their heavenly reward shall only make their appreciation of God’s favour all the richer and riper. Spurgeon gets happily expansive, almost carried away, as he considers the blessedness of the blessed in the glory to come, urging all to make sure that they enjoy this crown, awaking in the likeness of Jesus Christ, our resurrected Lord and King.

Podcast 273: A Discourse upon True Blessedness Here and Hereafter (S1874) Jas 1:12

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Spurgeon is not a mindless preacher, stuck in a rut of structure, though he is always recognisably himself in style. Here he begins with a brief introduction, before launching into a study in contrast between the wages of sin, which is death, and the gift of God which is everlasting life in Jesus Christ our Lord. In each case (particularly the first) he goes beyond a scant understanding of the words, and begins to dig out their sense, and press home their substance, and plead in the light of what he has to say. The first part of the sermon is a pressing development of the misery of sin and its consequences, manifestly weighing down the very heart of the preacher as he speaks. In the second half he moves into light and joy, setting forth the wonders of redeeming grace in Christ, and the free favour of God. He closes with applications for the believer, pressing home what it means to receive this life and to live as those who live indeed, but also encouraging every child of God to believe in the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit, the same power by which Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. By the grace of God, the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ will yet secure life for those who are dead in ins, to the praise of his glory. It is a simple structure, and a striking sermon, and it should leave us feeling the horrible weight of sin and its awful wages, the wonder of God’s grace in Christ, bestowing life on the hell-deserving.

Read the sermon here: https://www.mediagratiae.org/resources/death-and-life-the-wage-and-the-gift

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