When the Spirit of God is Absent
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (19 June 1834 – 31 January 1892) - Spurgeon regularly preached to a congregation of more than 10,000 people in Victorian London while still in his twenties. His sermons were transcribed and published, selling up to 25,000 copies every week. As many as 2,500 of his sermons are still on sale today and he continues to be highly influential among Christians of different denominations. While he is often recognized for his strong reformed theology, Spurgeon also emphasized the need for the Holy Spirit's power. These blogs will reflect the second emphasis.
The Holy Spirit is absolutely necessary to make everything that we do to be alive. We are sowers, Brothers and Sisters, but if we take dead seed in our seed baskets there will never be a harvest! The preacher must preach living Truths of God in a living manner if he expects to obtain a hundred-fold harvest. Too much of Church work is nothing better than the movement of a galvanized corpse! Too much of religion is done as if it were performed by a robot, or ground off by machinery. Nowadays men care little about heart and soul—they only look at outward performances....
Machines, not men
We can preach as machines, we can pray as machines and we can teach Sunday school as machines. Men can give mechanically and come to the Lord’s Table mechanically—yes, and we, ourselves, shall do so unless the Spirit of God is with us! Most hearers know what it is to hear a live sermon which quivers all over with fullness of energy. You also know what it is to sing a hymn in a lively manner and you know what it is to unite in a live Prayer Meeting! But, ah, if the Spirit of God is absent, all that the Church does will be lifeless! It will be as the rustle of leaves above a tomb, the gliding of specters, the congregation of the dead turning over in their graves!
As the Spirit of God is the Quickener to make us alive and our work alive, so must He specially be with us to make those alive with whom we have to deal for Jesus. Imagine a dead preacher preaching a dead sermon to dead sinners— what can possibly come of it? Here is a beautiful essay which has been admirably elaborated and it is coldly read to the cold-hearted sinner. It smells of the midnight oil but it has no heavenly unction, no Divine power resting upon it, nor, perhaps, is that power even looked for! What good can come of such a production?
Living seed
It is only as the Spirit of God shall come upon God’s servant and shall make the Word which He preaches to drop as a living seed into the heart, that any result can follow his ministry! And it is only as the Spirit of God shall then follow that seed and keep it alive in the soul of the listener that we can expect those who profess to be converted to take root and grow to maturity of Grace and become our sheaves at the last! We are utterly dependent here and, for my part, I rejoice in this absolute dependence!
C.H. Spurgeon. January 7, 1877 at The Metropolitan Tabernacle, London.
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