Paul—His Cloak and His Books

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 temptation (who, having the power to work miracles, refused to use any of it for his own comfort), and his example that saints across every era share the same ordinary human trials — and then turns to the books with equal force, arguing that even an Apostle who had been to the third Heaven and written most of the New Testament still studied, which demolishes every excuse for lazy, unread ministry or unread Christianity, before pressing "especially the parchments" as the supreme lesson: all human books are wells, but Scripture is the Fountain, and to leave it unread while consuming religious literature is to choose puddles over the crystal stream. He then takes the congregation inside the dungeon to meet Paul himself — not crushed, but radiant with four qualities: unshaken confidence in Christ ("I know Whom I have believed," spoken from rags, not velvet), sweet present communion with a companion invisible to the guards, complete resignation to martyrdom as a freewill offering already on the altar, and triumphant backward glance at a faith-shield kept bright through every battle. He closes by holding Paul's consuming, focused love for Christ against the scattered, divided hearts of his hearers — most people give Christ a little love along with many other objects, as the sun scatters its rays, but Paul was a magnifying glass that gathered every thought, word, passion, and act onto Christ and burned through the world with a fire no emperor in his palace could match — and urges every hearer to trust Christ fully now, since the same Lord who did not forsake a shivering prisoner in Nero's dungeon will not forsake any soul that casts itself on him.Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on November 29, 1863.