Maidenbower Baptist Church

Are you a gospel trumpet? That is the dominant image which Spurgeon employs for his sermon from 1 Thessalonians 1:8 about sounding forth the word of the Lord. The sermon builds to some applications which are very specific to the Metropolitan Tabernacle in Spurgeon's time, and we need to take that into account as we reach them. However, they can easily be turned to help us in our own situations, and the principles which lie behind them are broadly true. So, we are urged to consider the trumpeters themselves, the kind of men who make God's word to sound out, with Spurgeon ranging across Paul's description of the Thessalonian believers in his letters to them. This is really a brief study in Christian character. Then we turn to the trumpets, and see how it is that they give forth such a penetrating sound, and here we are in the realm of Christian experience and obedience. Thirdly, Spurgeon insists that there was a pressing present need for just such a trumpet-blast as sounded from the Thessalonian believers, and here the flavour of the hour begins to bleed through, but in a way that I think makes the modern reader add his, "Amen!" to the preacher's assessment. Finally comes the question of whether or not his immediate congregation had an obligation to sound forth that trumpet-note. While some of the qualities and opportunities Spurgeon identifies are very tightly tied to the Tabernacle gathering, they raise questions and challenges for every church and each believer as to how we respond to the need of the present hour.

The Bible has always revealed the same Saviour accomplishing the same salvation. The Old Testament prophets saw him, but not always clearly, and eagerly anticipated him. The apostles and prophets of the New Testament also delighted in Christ both promised and manifested. Peter speaks of this salvation long-explored and long-promised, and now revealed and realised in the sufferings of Christ, and the glories which follow. Do we seek out and search out Christ as eagerly as those who have gone before us? Do we dwell upon him in our thoughts and our words? Do we understand who and what we have in this Redeemer and his redemption?

What is a Christian? A follower of Jesus Christ. Luke's record of the calling of Levi boils that down to its basic essence. Christ's call to Levi, a look of love that gives rise to words of grace, is gracious, personal, simple, absolute, and powerful. Levi's response comes in three elements—a break with the past (he left all), a life in the present (he rose up), and a path for the future (he followed Christ). We still hear Christ in the gospel, and we may still turn to him in faith, and become Christians who follow their Saviour wherever he leads.

One of the enduring elements of Spurgeon's public ministry, reflective of his private life, is his delight in and dependence on the Holy Spirit. He mentions him often, prays to him regularly, delights in him personally, and depends on him resolutely. He is a good guide for us, then, concerning intimate knowledge of the Holy Spirit. As often, Spurgeon is not afraid of his own experience, but his starting point and guiding principle is the Word of God, as he considers what it is to have the Holy Spirit dwelling with us and in us. I think that the personality and operations of the Holy Spirit is a fairly significant weak point in modern Reformed evangelicalism, perhaps because of an over-reaction to Charismatic excess, but I also wonder if we have downplayed his presence and influence because we do not know him very well. Whatever the case, Spurgeon is corrective and instructive as he guides us through the truth of John 14:17, helping us to understand who we know, and how, and what it means to have this intimacy with the Third Person of the Godhead. As one who needs him, and wants him more than I have him, I hope it will be a blessing to you.

What is the greatest gift anyone has ever given you? What is the kindest and most generous thing anyone has ever done on your behalf? The Lord Jesus sanctified himself for the sake of his people, that they also might be sanctified by the truth. Here the Lord Jesus sets himself apart personally, demonstrating his absolute devotion and entire consecration to the work to which his Father had called him. He does it particularly, acting on behalf of his people, representing and serving them in his commitment to bringing them to glory. He does it purposefully, desiring that the gospel truth of his accomplished work might be employed to convert his people to him and conform his people to him, that they might be holy and without blame before him in love. What love he has shown! What a motive for holiness! What a terror to turn away from Christ!

This is a lovely sermon, grounded in the Lord's second appearance to Solomon, and our Sovereign's answer to his humble servant. Spurgeon takes Solomon's prayer as a model for our own, and looks to God's answer as a pattern for our faith to expect. He shows us our proper place in prayer, coming before the Lord, and what that means, and how to find him. He explains that the great desire of the praying man is to be heard of the Lord in our prayer and supplication, and what it really means to be heard. He stirs us up to an assurance of answer to prayer, and the ways in which the Lord gives that confidence to his people. Finally, how should we pray? Spurgeon's counsels to his own people may need a little massaging to fit us, but it is not hard work! He guides us through Solomon's petitions and their answers, demonstrating how these are the very things that we desire in the church of Jesus Christ. And so, we are taught to pray, being led to the throne of grace, and with our souls stirred to seek a blessing and to look for its coming from the heart and hand of our gracious God.

Isaiah contrasts the confidence of Babylon with the hope of God's people. God's people have a sure and certain hope. False confidences pass away—whether as evidently as the ruins of Babylon have declared, or in any other case. By contrast, our God abides always the same. Even to old age—and this is a particular emphasis of Spurgeon in the sermon, given its textual context—he will carry us. Whatever else may change in us or around us, God himself does not change in himself or in his disposition toward us. And so it remains true that he has made us, both as creatures and as his people. He carries us, and those mercies toward us never alter. He also will deliver us. The structure of the sermon toward the end gets a little ragged, but the point is clear. We have the same God and the same mercy all through life. Spurgeon's two primary applications go in two opposite directions. The first is to the young, with whom he pleads to begin life with God, in order that they may enjoy him to the end. The second is to the aged, urging them to trust a God who has never let them down.

Charles Spurgeon increasingly inhabited the paradox of which he preached in this sermon: "Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong" (2Cor 12:10). How can a man be weak and strong at the same time? How can he be made strong out of his weakness? To answer this question, Spurgeon first turns the words the other way up, and makes them into a warning of sorts, exposing the pretended strength of the strong, whether that is unbelievers who imagine that they can save themselves, or believers who are resting in their own imagined excellences. So the high-minded are humbled, before Spurgeon flips his text into the right orientation and asks about the 'when' and the 'then' of the verse, asking especially how the weakness of the saints brings us to Christ, and brings Christ to us, in such a way as to glorify the Lord, as empty self seeks the fulness of him who fills all in all. Are you feeling your weakness? Are you weary and washed out in the way? Then do not pretend to be anything else, and do not try and find strength in yourself, but cast yourself upon Christ and find in him the strength which he alone supplies.

Adoption may be one of the overlooked blessings of salvation taken as a whole, but the apostles do not neglect it. Paul speaks of this heavenly blessing in Ephesians 1:5, telling us that God has "predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of his will." This teaches us something about the nature, the source, the communication, and the purpose of this gospel privilege.

This world does not satisfy our bodies. It certainly cannot satisfy our souls. In Psalm 81 the Lord offers to satisfy the souls of those who are seeking some needful thing, revealing his goodness, his grief, and his grace. Taking his offered mercies as gospel emblems, here is God offering out of himself both substance and sweetness, and so delighting the hungry soul forever.

This is Spurgeon at his most heartfelt, delighting in grace and urging to holiness. Taking quite a substantial text, and holding fast to its substance and arrangement, he brings us face to face first of all with what we are by nature, what we once were in the evils of our minds, our pursuits, and our hearts. Here he urges us to tears of repentance as he ploughs up our souls. Then he considers what the Lord has done for us, ranging over the wonderful declarations of grace contained in the text, and stirring us up to grateful joy, considering not least the merciful works of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit toward us. Then he brings us to the practical punch, that we should be careful to maintain good works. Here he robustly dismisses any suggestion that this is mere legalistic preaching, making clear that to the unbeliever he calls not to good works, but to Christ only. The exhortation to live as a cheerful servant goes not to the slave but to the son, to those who have been redeemed by grace. Inaction here, careless or passive living, brings dishonour to the Lord who has saved us, and so we must embrace this "faithful saying," and show by our good fruit the sweetness of our new root.

Surveying the mighty works of a gracious God, we pause to consider the blessing of redemption through Christ's blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of God's grace. This is a blessing purchased by Christ, and so possessed by the saints, and sweetly portrayed by the apostle, under the Spirit's influence.

Jesus Christ has come. Do you care? Jesus Christ is calling? Are you coming to him? Consider for whom he came—not for the righteous, but for sinners, a doctor for the sick. Consider how he acts, calling sinners to himself in his gospel, urging them to come for healing and salvation. Consider what he calls us to—to leave sin and all its misery, and to come to God and all his blessing.

Throughout this sermon, Spurgeon complains that he is falling short of the subject which he has taken. I think other preachers, reading and responding to what he says, might long for such a failure as this! The text itself is a casket of pearls, and Spurgeon, after giving us a survey of them, urges us to ponder them more carefully for ourselves: "Yes, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will assuredly plant them in this land, with all my heart and with all my soul." Having considered some of what that means, perhaps the high point of the sermon then comes as Spurgeon considers the fact that this whole-hearted, whole-souled demonstration of practical love comes from the triune God, and is manifest in all the dealings of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Those paragraphs are worth soaking in! Finally, he offers consolation and exhortation to the people of God, as we consider God's heart toward us and examine our own hearts toward him. The whole closes with a heartfelt plea from the preacher for those who do not yet know God's love in this way to come to him and receive all that is held out. I would urge you to read the whole sermon. I am persuaded it will do much good to our souls.

Spurgeon turns us to the field of the lazy man, the vineyard of the sluggard, to learn lessons for our souls and for our lives. While I suppose the sermon could have descended into mere moralism, Spurgeon keeps it from doing so by connecting the life we live to the state of our souls, and by constantly drawing parallels between our attitude to our lives and our attitude to our spiritual well-being. Emphatic about not just the fruitlessness of the natural heart, but about its proper tendency to abound in things vile and pestilential, he urges us to use every proper means to root out what is ugly and to cultivate what is beautiful in God's eyes. He pleads with us to look to our own fields—our own hearts, the homes over which we are called to govern and in which we serve, the congregations for which we care and the classes which we teach, the towns and cities where we dwell, and the world in which we live. Good intentions produce nothing—the sluggard only wants a little more sleep, a few more minutes in bed, and he will make everything good…but he never quite gets up and gets round to anything. So Spurgeon calls us not to vague assertions of action to come, but of immediate practical engagement, for the sake of our own souls, and the souls of all those around us.

Christian comforts do not make believers passive and placid, but rather stir them to lively hope and therefore a hopeful life. We need to know, then, the comforts we have after death. Some come immediately, both for those who fall asleep in Jesus, and for those who remain. Some come eventually and ultimately, when Christ returns, and all his people are glorified together with him. All come substantially, being real, personal, and certain. The alternatives are dreadful to consider, and give us every reason to offer Christ to the lost, and for the lost to come to Christ for hope now and eternally.

Exodus 34:6 is God's own revelation of himself, a declaration to which prophets and preachers return again and again, as here, in Psalm 85:15. As we again delight in the divine declaration, we should appreciate the contrast between God in his faithful mercy and mankind's typical aggressive cruelty. To do that properly, we must contemplate the Lord, "a God full of compassion, and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in mercy and truth." Then we can accumulate the comforts, casting ourselves upon this God and Saviour as we know him in Christ Jesus to find his help and comfort.

1 John 5:13 reveals the purpose for which the apostle wrote his first letter: "These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God." Again emphasising that the Scriptures are written by the Holy Ghost for our profit, and to be received as such, Spurgeon then gets closer to his text. Under the influence of the Holy Spirit, John has written with a particular purpose, and this is a purpose which we ought to pursue. The bulk of the sermon is given over the first heading, as the same Spirit who gave the Word carries along its preacher, exploring the assurance of the believer in connection with the faith which is in the believer's heart. This being thoroughly established, Spurgeon also insists that we ought to follow up on John's purpose. If the apostle so wrote, we ought not to neglect what he has said, and the direction he has given, but rather to rejoice in the prospect and engage in the pursuit of this assurance. It is a rich sermon, doctrinally careful and experimentally full, with a practical edge.

Do Christian comforts last for life and evaporate at death? According to Asaph in Psalm 73:24, addressing the Lord, he says, "You will guide me with your counsel, and afterward receive me to glory." A Christian's life is not easy, but it is secure, and our death is full of hope, our confidence grounded in the Christ who has overcome death. So we here consider death without Christ, death in Christ, and death for a Christian, full of grace and hope, leading to glory.

This is God's world, and it is God's weather. We accept that man as a steward of God's world may have some influence on climate, but we acknowledge God as the Master. That means that mankind is not the original or terminal authority or responsbility for the weather. It is God's weather absolutely and rightly, and he has established the stable framework and sends the particular elements. It is God's weather generously and graciously, because he cares for the world which he made and the people who dwell in it. And, it is God's weather purposefully and sovereignly, as he sends it for blessing and mercy, or in cursing and judgment. We, then, must take care how we think about, speak of, and respond to God's weather, but most of all we must ask about the relationship we sustain to the God of the weather, the God who made this world.

There are a number of sermons which touch on this topic, or deal with it directly, during this season of Spurgeon's ministry. It is not a change of emphasis so much as a change of tone. He often, throughout his ministry, celebrates the reliability and clarity of the Word of the Lord. In the background here, though, is the Downgrade Controversy, the increasing theological liberalisation of Christianity, revealing where real faith and mere nominalism divide. That context means that some of Spurgeon's sermons, while remaining essentially pastoral, also become more polemical. Some take on an edge, as this one does, as the preacher considers what it means that "the mouth of the Lord has spoken it." This is our warrant for teaching scriptural truth; this is the claim of God's Word upon your attention; this gives to the Word of God its distinct character; this makes the truth of Scripture a ground of great alarm to many; and, this makes the Word of God the reason and the rest of our faith. While there is conviction to establish and comfort the child of God, so there is a persistent resistance to and assault upon the errors that were becoming current, and sadly remain so, undermining the confidence that we may and must have in the Scriptures as the breathed-out and written-down Word of God.

A Christian is a joyful and peaceful person, with a life marked by certainty and security. Christians do not claim easy lives, but they do enjoy happy lives, marked by comforts in life, at death, and beyond death. What are our comforts in life? Though they are too many to catalogue, one way to summarise them is to say that our unchanging God is our unerring guide who gives us an unshaking hope: "For this is God, our God forever and ever; he will be our guide even to death" (Ps 48:14). Through all the changing scenes of life, the believer in Christ is led in love, watched over and provided for at every step and stage, with not a moment apart from the covenant care of the eternal God of grace. This is a faithful love that brings us to and even through death itself.

Why does someone get baptised? What does church membership declare? How does someone become a Christian, and what does that mean? John gives the answer when he tells us that "as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (Jn 1:12–13). The end of this chain of three links is our identity as children of God, a privilege granted to those who receive Christ. So this receiving and believing come before this identification. Then, behind the faith that looks to and embraces Christ, lies the sovereign work of God in making the heart new. This is the spring of life, and this is the grace of God.

A thoroughly experimental sermon, in which Spurgeon takes Job as something of a template for all believers, suggesting that Job was favoured (as others may sometimes be) with particularly vivid impressions of God, some striking sense of his majesty and the glory of his perfections. Such views of the Lord truly make an impression upon us, bringing us low in ourselves. This is no generic sense of lowness, according to Spurgeon, but rather a profound consciousness of sin, which in turn leads to a heartfelt repentance, which our preacher unpacks in some detail. Here, particularly, Spurgeon brings the truth of God's Word close to home, pressing it into your hearts, and asking how we hope to deal with God if such a man as Job was so profoundly humbled by this glimpse of his glory. Of course, his answer lies in the righteousness of Christ alone, by whom only we can stand accepted before God, our sins put away and a righteousness established for us in which God himself delights. Incidentally, it might be worth a glance at the texts read before Scripture noted, as usual, at the end of this sermon. Usually, it would be a chapter, or a portion of one. On this occasion, it is the bulk of two chapters, with a selection from two others. If nothing else, this reminds us that Spurgeon is conscious of the broader context of the texts which he preaches, and seeks to situate each sermon within the broad sweep of Scripture, the book in question, and the immediate scope of the text itself.

Everyone is sowing some kind of seed: "he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life" (Gal 6:7–8). Paul exhorts the disciples of Christ to follow their Lord in doing good. This is a holy labour, living as Christ in the power of his Spirit. He offers a needed warning, against weariness and faintness. He supplies a needed encouragement, reminding us that sowing now brings an eventual reaping which will be the happy reward of the righteous. All this leads to a broad exhortation, that saints are to sow in season, doing good to all, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.

John wants his beloved spiritual children not to be deceived by those who claim righteousness in the heart but show none in the life. He emphasises the Lord Jesus as the standard of righteousness, the Man who showed love to God and to men in all his life. He underscores the fact of righteousness, that a Christian is righteous just as Christ himself is righteous. So what is the proof of that righteousness? It is doing righteousness, it is living out one's union by faith with the Lord Jesus.

This sermon is numerically significant on several levels. It is the two thousandth sermon, the last sermon of Volume XXXIII in the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, and a sermon prepared to be read on the first day of the year of 1888. As so often with these 'major marker' sermons (ones that break through particular numerical boundaries), and all the more so when those markers are loaded up like this, Spurgeon deliberately returns to the very core of his ministry and the delight of his own soul—the atoning sacrifice of the Lord Jesus. The sermon is itself is of the utmost simplicity, as Spurgeon seeks to come to the text, and to come at the congregation. He shows how, in the verse in question, God treats sin as a disease and provides a cure for that disease in the stripes of the Lord Christ, a disease which is immediately and completely effective wherever it is applied. In truth, Spurgeon never strays very far from this theme, but an occasion like this makes it all the more imperative for him to state once more the touchstone of his ministry.

It is easy to shame people over prayer; it is harder to stir people to prayer. Daniel's example as an old man in Babylon, a prime minister and a prophet, should help us. Despite his position, pressures, and privileges, he pondered his Bible and was stimulated to pray. Even then, he did not rush into the divine presence, but prepared himself, setting his face toward the Lord God, both body and soul primed for his approach to the throne of grace. Finally, he prayed, mingling adoration, supplication, and confession. Thus Daniel pondered, prepared, and prayed, and so might we.

What can cause an outburst of holy joy? God himself is the source, the theme, the object of such praise, especially in his gracious dealings with sinners. To get to the root of the matter, we must look first at the blessings bestowed, the great mercy poured out and the pardon of transgressions granted. Then we must look at the scope which is expressed—a mercy as great as the heavens are above the earth, a pardon that removes transgressions as far as the east is from the west. Then we must consider the people who are favoured with such mercy: those who fear the Lord, who have felt the weight of their sin and have found the sweetness of divine pardon.

This briefer sermon is 'intended for reading', which usually indicates a sick man writing or editing a previous address for distribution. Brevity here does not undermine simplicity, clarity, or pungency! The text is short: "My son, give me your heart." The sermon is straightforward, looking at the love which lies behind the request for wisdom, then at the wisdom which guides the loving request, and then a pressing application to be wise by attending to this wise admonition. Here the more practical elements of the sermon come to the fore, although—as we often see with Spurgeon—he usually sows fruitful seeds of thought along the way, quite apart from any more formal element of application. The last paragraph confirms our earlier expectations as well as informing our understanding: the sermon is an 'occasional address' (delivered on a specific occasion), in this case an appeal for funds for hospitals (when such were typically privately and charitably supported). Now we know not only when the address came, but we appreciate more fully why Spurgeon has been pressing for the heart—because once our heavenly Father has our heart, he has our hands, too, in cheerful dispensation of our good things. In addition, the final appeal is pleasingly quirky—before the plate is being passed round for the collection of money, Spurgeon passes around his own invisible plate, for the collection of hearts.

Solomon, the son of David, stood before the temple as it was filled with the glory of the Lord, and led Israel in blessing the Lord their God. His heart was full with the fact that the Lord God of Israel had "fulfilled with his hands what he spoke with his mouth" to his father David. We can follow this Solomon as he contemplates the promises that God made and the performances which followed, leading to the praises of the inheritor. At the same time, we must recognise that this is even more wonderfully true of the Son of David who has built a spiritual temple, and in whom God has wonderfully accomplished his covenant with David to a glorious degree.

By October of 1887 the Downgrade Controversy—the battle against doctrinal decay in the professing church of Christ—was in full swing. Letters had appeared in The Sword and the Trowel over the previous months, and Spurgeon himself had entered the fray through August and into September. The sermon which we consider today is clearly the fruit of that conflict, with Spurgeon feeling "as if the text had been newly written for the present occasion, for it is in every syllable most suitable to the immediate crisis." That text is Zephaniah 3:16–18, where the Lord calls his people to faithful labour and promises his saving and succouring mercies to them. Spurgeon handles the text by looking at the present trials of God's people, the glorious consolation which they have in the midst of those trials, and the brave conduct which ought to characterise them in the face of those trials. Many of us see the unhappy inheritance of the theological liberalism which took root at the end of the nineteenth century. While we may not be of the generation which saw the downgrade, we can—if we continue to heed Spurgeon's call to arms—be a generation which seeks to recover some of the lost ground.

In this fourth sermon on the means of grace, we have to consider that these things are not merely mechanical. We do not merely go through the motions and collect grace. God's grace is made known in Christ, and our approach must be relational, eager to know more of the Saviour by the means provided for us.

Psalm 13 begins low and ugly, but rises to beauty. The pain of the opening verses gives way to the prayer of the second short section, concluding with the praise of the last few lines, from which vantage point we can look back and see several things. First, the direction of praise, which is toward the Lord to whom he has looked and to whom he has cried. The expression of praise is strong and substantial and sweet, as the psalmist sings of God's salvation. That leads us to the foundation of praise, the bountiful dealings of a gracious God.

It is by no means deliberate that the last few sermons have not had the 'classic' Spurgeon three point structure, but I hope that it at least undermines the weary assertion that this preacher 'invariably' has three points. This sermon has an interesting balance, because it has two main divisions but is still divided into thirds. The sermon finds us on the Emmaus road, with two disciples who are thinking foolishly, "slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken." Spurgeon is blunt and forceful in dealing with this matter. Speaking first to the true believer, he asserts, first, that unbelief is folly, and, second, that unbelief arises from slowness of heart. The preacher simply explores those two assertions arising from the text, analysing and anatomising our dull hearts. He closes that portion of the sermon with an encouragement—that slowness of heart is not the same as hardness of heart, and that those who weary of their doubts should abandon them for the faith that not only saves but also secures. Then, with that element of the sermon concluded, Spurgeon asks his believing congregation to pray as he speaks directly to the unconverted. The last third of the sermon is a sustained plea to those who do not yet believe, seeking to expose and to correct the folly and dullness that grips such hearts, concluding with warnings and pleadings. The sermon is striking in its directness and in the arrangement which serves as a vehicle for that direct address, looking first the doubting believer and then the unbeliever in the eye with affection and concern, and speaking to the soul.

In this third sermon on the means of grace, we have to consider that these things are not merely mechanical. We do not merely go through the motions and collect grace. God's grace is made known in Christ, and our approach must be relational, eager to know more of the Saviour by the means provided for us.

Why are you not a Christian? We think first of the gracious invitation to the kingdom, the feast of fellowship with God in Christ Jesus, the readiness of our Lord to receive guests. Then we look at the tragic excuses that are so often and so easily made, by us as much as by others. Then we have to press the question home, as we consider the person who invites us, what is at stake, and the uncertainty of further opportunity to come.

"All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth, to such as keep his covenant and his testimonies." So writes the man of God in Psalm 25:10, and so preaches the servant of God in this sermon. In another simply structured sermon—remember, Spurgeon deliberately seeks to avoid complexity—he first paints the portrait of the covenanter, the man who keeps the covenant and testimonies of the Lord. As you might imagine, the preacher takes the opportunity to portray a truly Christian man, one thoroughly persuaded of his own sin and misery, but equally delighted with the provision God has made in Christ Jesus for sinners, and so committed to the Saviour and to the way of the righteous. But the man is no static saint: he walks that road, and find it to be paved with mercy and truth, not so much on his account, but on the Lord's. Spurgeon emphasises that this is the way by which the Lord draws near to the covenanting man, and these are the blessings which he showers upon him. Thus the experience described is less that of the covenanter seeking the Lord, and more the Lord favouring the covenanter. So the preacher both encourages the saint to keep God's covenant and testimonies, and challenges the sinner as to the misery and emptiness of life without God.

Having seen that our Lord Jesus is the fountain or reservoir of grace, full of grace and truth, next we ask how we come to enjoy the fullness of grace that is found in him. By what means does God show Christ to us? By what channels does God pour out, or communicate to us, the grace that is in Christ? How do we enjoy communion with him? The pattern of the early church is clear, and the pursuit of Christ in the various means of grace which they embraced from the beginning: the word, the sacraments, and prayer.

The simple structure of this two-pronged sermon by no means provides for any shallowness. The bulk of the address is given over to a careful consideration of God's thoughts toward us, thoughtfully mined from the text. In this respect, it is a masterpiece of exegetical clarity, simply considering the implications of the specific words of Scripture, allowing the phrases to have their full weight, and working out not only their obvious meanings but also their more subtle suggestions. The second element of the sermon considers our attitude toward God in the light of his thoughts toward us, and here the tone is more applicatory, wisely suggesting how divine truth calls forth an appropriate response. There are no real verbal fireworks, no sustained flights of soaring rhetoric. Rather, we have sweet and solid gospel logic that carries us smoothly and forcefully toward the ultimate purposes that God in his mercy has for his beloved people.