Dry Bones

“…the Spirit’s work of soul-humbling is just this,–to get man to feel so diseased that he will accept the physician; to get him to feel so poor that he will accept the charity of heaven; to get him to know that he is so stripped, that he will no longer be proud of his fig leaves, but will be willing to take the robe of righteousness which Christ has wrought out.  Conviction is sent to kill the man, to break him in pieces, to bury him, to let him know his own corruption; and all this as a preliminary to his quickening and restoration. We must see the bones in the valley to be dead and dry, or we shall not hear the voice out of the excellent glory, saying, ‘Thus saith the Lord, Ye dry bones live!’ May God in his mercy teach us what all this means; and may we all experience an old-fashioned conversion.”  –C.H. Spurgeon “Sermons, Vol. 10” p. 161-162 

Stress of Weather

“I acknowledge I was brought to God by agony of soul. I have often said from this pulpit that no man ever steers his barque towards the port of peace till he is driven there by stress of weather. We never come to Christ till we feel we cannot do without him.  We must feel our poverty before we shall ever come and beg at the door of his mercy for help.”  –C.H. Spurgeon “Sermons, Vol. 10” p. 163

All Other Hopes Are Delusions

“All our hope lies in him, and all other hopes are delusions. The great work in conversion is not to make people better, so that they may come to God on a good footing, it is to strip them completely and lay them low, so that God may come to them when they are on a bad footing, or rather on no footing at all, but down in the dust at his feet.”  C.H. Spurgeon “Spurgeon’s Sermons, Vol. 10” p. 167

The Stone of Self-Esteem

“The next object of the divine work was to hide pride from man, for man will stick to self-righteousness as long as he can. Never does limpet adhere it its rock more firmly than a sinner to his own merits, although indeed he has none. Like the old Greek hero in the mythology, the natural man sits down on the stone of self-esteem, and Hercules himself cannot tear him from it. When he is even in outward character vile, he still fancies that there is some good thing in him, and to that fancy he will tenaciously cling; so that it is a work of divine power, an effort of the august omnipotence of heaven, to get a man away from his innate and desperate pride.”  –C.H. Spurgeon “Spurgeon’s Sermons, Vol. 10” p. 161

Two Most Impressive Evangelists

“I do not desire for any unconverted person here that he should be ill, but if that should be the way to make him think, repent, and belive, I could earnestly pray for it. I believe the Lord has often preached to men in hospitals who never heard him in churches and chapels; fever and cholera have been heard by those whom ministers could not reach. If we could banish pain and sickness from the world, it may be we should be robbing righteousness of two of her most impressive evangelists.  What Jonah was to Nineveh, sickness has been to many a man.  Like Elijah also, it has cried in the soul, ‘Choose ye this day whom ye will serve.’  Disease has been a grim orator for God, and with an eloquence not to be resisted, it has made the hearts of men to bow before its message.”  –C.H. Spurgeon “Sermons, Vol. 10” p. 159 

Salvation Is Of The Lord

“Salvation is of the Lord, it is not of man, neither by man; neither is it of the will of man, nor of the flesh, nor of the blood, nor of birth, but of the will of God.  The purpose of God and the power of God work salvation from first to last. What a blessing this is for us, for, if salvation were of ourselves, who among us would be saved?” –C.H. Spurgeon “Sermons” — “An Old-Fashioned Sermon” from Vol. 10, p. 151

Like Martin Luther

“We must be like Martin Luther when he stood alone against the authority of the Roman Church, which had arrogated to itself such dictatorial power for so many long centuries. We must be like the Puritans, who were prepared to forsake their emoluments rather than to compromise on such principles. We must be humbly aggressive in propagating the true faith, and patiently adamant in the true gospel’s defence, if need be, to the utmost degrees of sacrifice.

…if words mean anything at all in the New Testament, then we must stake everything on the gospel and be content with nothing less than the greatest possible fidelity to the great essentials of the apostolic teaching. We cannot give our full support to anything else. We accept the gospel because we believe it to be the gift of God to us and eternal truth. Because it is the truth, we must take our stand upon it and, with Luther, we can do no other.”  –D.M. Lloyd-Jones “Knowing the Times” pp. 43, 47