Daily Sermon Station

Spurgeon opens with Paul's preaching at Lystra — arguing from the fact that Paul brought the same unaltered Gospel of facts (Christ's incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension), doctrines (atonement, pardon, justification), and commands (believe and be baptized) to backward Lycaonian idol-worshippers as to polished Athenians and sophisticated Corinthians — that the Gospel needs no adjustment for any audience, sinc...

Spurgeon takes "From Me is your fruit found" in its second sense — that all spiritual fruit produced by the believer proceeds from God alone — and establishes this doctrinally through four channels: from God's eternal purpose (holiness was written into the predestinating decree before the world began), from calling (the dead sinner had nothing good in him and never would have except that God called him into the garden),...

Spurgeon opens by noting that the cursing of the fig tree is Christ's only miracle of pure judgment, and argues from this that its rarity makes its lesson all the more weighty — the curse does not fall on the openly godless who make no profession, nor on those who are simply not yet called, but falls precisely and only on the tree covered with conspicuous leaves that promise fruit and deliver nothing, which is the portrait of...

Spurgeon opens by contrasting Moses and Christ descending from their respective mountaintops — Moses repelling the people with the Law's dazzling terror, Christ drawing them with the attraction of grace — before introducing the desperate case at the mountain's foot: a boy possessed from childhood by the most violent kind of evil spirit, deaf, dumb, suicidal, given to frantic convulsions, utterly baffling the disciples, ...

Spurgeon takes God's word to Moses at the Red Sea — "Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward" — as a single trumpet-blast aimed at five different groups in his congregation: to trembling sinners pursued by the law, he insists "Forward!" means stop praying for readiness and go to the cross now, since Hell behind them and God's wrath before them leave only one safe direction and that is toward the wounds o...

Spurgeon opens by placing his text within the four "faithful sayings" of Paul — tracing how the first gives the root of salvation in free grace, the second gives its double blessings in time and eternity, the third (his text) gives the duty of suffering with Christ, and the fourth gives the duty of active service — before working carefully to show what genuine "suffering with Christ" is not: it is not the common sufferi...

Spurgeon opens by tracing Christ as Alpha and Omega through four areas not strictly stated in the text but closely connected to it — in rank (infinitely above angels in every title and role), in his sweeping descent from the highest throne in glory down to the lowest shame of the cross and tomb, in Scripture (where he appears on the first page of Genesis as Creator and Co-Author of the Fall's remedy and on the last line of Re...

Spurgeon takes Paul's simple request for his cloak and books as an occasion to draw six lessons from the cloak alone — the completeness of Paul's self-sacrifice (once a rising star among the Jewish rulers, now shivering in a dungeon six hundred miles from his only garment, with no church generous enough to lend him one), his independence of spirit (preferring to wait for his own cloak rather than beg), his resistance of tempt...

Spurgeon opens with an extended portrait of the "lambs" of Christ's flock — not all young in age, but all young in grace — cataloging their common weaknesses: shallow doctrinal knowledge easily upset by opponents, limited experience that has not yet proved the promises under fire, emotional tenderness that loses sleep over slanders mature saints would smile at, timidity about open confession, and a recurring fog of doub...

Spurgeon opens with a brief exposition of why Moses could never lead Israel into Canaan — because the Law can convict but never save, and only Joshua (whose name is the Hebrew form of Jesus) could give the people their inheritance — before settling on the surface lesson: that God is genuinely and tenderly considerate of his servants' courage, charging Moses to encourage Joshua because a discouraged leader cannot do the ...

Spurgeon opens by insisting that what appears to be the simplest thing in the world — simply trusting Christ — is actually the most astonishing display of divine power in the universe, requiring nothing less than the very same omnipotence that raised Christ from the dead, because bringing a proud, dead, opposing sinner to cheerful, childlike faith involves simultaneously a creation (implanting a new spiritual nature tha...

Spurgeon holds up the Queen of Sheba as a model of earnest spiritual inquiry, praising her for setting aside royal dignity, overcoming great distance, spending real treasure, coming without invitation, and leaving her own religion behind — all to pursue the wisdom of a mere man — and then shames his hearers by contrasting this costly effort with their own half-hearted response to the free, urgent, doorstep invitation of...

Spurgeon argues that the only legitimate warrant for a sinner to trust Christ is the plain Gospel command — "This is his commandment, that we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ" — and he wages a sustained battle against every other proposed warrant: requiring repentance first (which is legal, since it makes repentance the real ground of trust rather than Christ), requiring convictions or good desires fir...

Spurgeon uses the wild, uncultivated, man-independent cedars of Lebanon — planted by God alone, watered by clouds rather than canals, protected by no hedge or ranger, answering to no human inspection, expecting nothing from man — as a sustained portrait of the mature believer who has learned to live entirely upon God: asking nothing of creatures, expecting nothing of circumstances, leaning on no eloquent preacher or gen...

Spurgeon opens by carefully separating chastisement from atonement — affliction can never remove a single spot of guilt (only Christ's blood can do that) and never purges the pollution of sin by itself (only the blood and Spirit do that) — but argues that the Holy Spirit does use trials as his refining furnace to weaken and destroy the power of indwelling sin, making the Christian's worst experiences the very instrument...

Spurgeon opens by insisting that even fully justified believers are in daily danger of spiritual defilement from five sources — actual sins committed, the contaminating company of ungodly people, failure to keep the heart watchfully covered, the extreme sensitivity of holiness to even the smallest and most accidental contact with sin, and the hidden "graves" of sins buried beneath respectable customs and even outwardly beauti...

Spurgeon uses the image of Aaron's rod swallowing all the magicians' rods as a picture of the way genuine divine grace — wherever it truly enters a human life — swallows up every competing allegiance: the awakened sinner finds worldly pleasures turn to ashes and a single craving for pardon drowns out every other desire; the new believer finds that trust in Christ swallows every other confidence (self-righteousness, cere...

Spurgeon takes the second half of Romans 10:10 — "with the mouth confession is made unto salvation" — to argue that genuine saving faith is never content to remain hidden, but insists on expressing itself outwardly in a full range of public acts: uniting with God's people in public worship, submitting to believer's baptism as a decisive crossing of the Rubicon from the world's side to Christ's, communing regularly at th...

Spurgeon uses Job's confident cry — "the root of the matter is found in me" — to comfort trembling, fruit-poor believers by distinguishing what is essential from what is desirable, working through three areas: in doctrine, he names the Trinity, Christ's substitutionary atonement, and justification by faith as the genuine roots without which there is no Christianity, while treating election, final perseverance, and other...