Spurgeon kept the baptismal pool filled — even when no baptisms were scheduled (81). His people would always have the mission set before them. May our pools be figuratively filled with importunate prayers, compassionate tears, and joyful proclamations of the excellencies of our glorious Christ. May we be fully awake, fully alive, sowing much. And let us look to the God of our ancestors to answer us from heaven.

Over 38 years of pastoral ministry at New Park Street Chapel (later to become The Metropolitan Tabernacle), Charles Spurgeon and the church added nearly 14,000 people into membership. Of that number, how many would you guess were brought into the church through baptism — as new souls won to the Savior?
I would have guessed up to 3,500. Most, I would have reasoned, transferred from other churches to hear the generation’s greatest preacher. Further, 3,500 people baptized — on average 92 a year, nearly 2 per week for 38 years — seems like a downpour of blessing compared to the trickle of conversions I am accustomed to.
In his wonderful book Spurgeon the Pastor, Geoffrey Chang gives us the answer. “Spurgeon took in 13,797 people into membership. Of that number 10,063 (73%) were taken into membership through baptism,” the rest through transfer (20%) and by profession (7%) (110). Meaning, “most of the membership of the Tabernacle was made up of those who were converted through the ministry of the church” (112).
In one generation, over 10,000 brought into one local church through baptism. Can you imagine?
“Burning Disgrace”
The astonishment deepens when Chang documents how Spurgeon detested lax standards of baptism and membership. Meaning, the church did not baptize on a whim. Those ten thousand did not raise a hand in one moment of passion and wade into the pool a few minutes later. Spurgeon refused to boast of “unhatched chickens” (112). Rather, the church remained serious about regenerate membership, with a process on the front end that towers over many churches today.
Above all, Chang writes of Spurgeon, “he wanted to see people brought into the church from the world” (111). His hunger to see God save souls was contagious. He could not conceive of the church of Jesus Christ not winning her Master’s spoils.
I should reckon it to be a burning disgrace if it could be said, “The large church under that man’s pastoral care is composed of members whom he has stolen away from other Christian churches.” No, but I value beyond all price the godless, the careless, who are brought out from the world into communion with Christ. (111)
How many pastors and churches today think this way? Or, most convicting to me, how many believe this way? How many really believe God can build our churches primarily through baptism? I struggle to. How many really believe we can see a revival of a neighborhood, town, city, or nation with that old rugged gospel? I struggle to. How many really plead for God to move mightily among us as of old? I struggle to.
Great Awakenings
Stories like these stir a restlessness in me.
I read of God’s work in other lands and times, and wonder at such little resemblance to my own experience. They lived in an epic, it seems. I turn the pages of Scripture to read of my forebears “who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight” (Hebrews 11:33–35). What would they read flipping through the pages of my life?
Continuing on, I read of a mighty gospel “turning the world upside down” (Acts 17:6). In special epochs — distant epochs — I read of major cities casting their idols into the fire (Acts 19:18–19), and of conviction for sin shattering hearts by the hundreds and thousands (Acts 2:37–41). I read of Great Awakenings on our own shores, as many looked up from their snake-bitten condition to Christ and were healed.
Read More
Related Posts:

The Sabbath is a day that God has “made . . . holy”—it is set apart to him and to his worship. And it is precisely because the day is directed toward God that it carries blessing for human beings. It is a day that God has “blessed.” In light of the testimony of Genesis 1:1–2:3, that blessing carries potential for fruitfulness and fullness. Thus, as God meets with people who truly worship him on that day, they experience all of these gifts—spiritual blessing, fruitfulness, and fullness.

The Bible introduces the Sabbath at its beginning. We first meet the Sabbath in the account of God making heaven and earth (Gen. 1:1–2:3). Strikingly, it is God who, in a sense, observes the first Sabbath (Gen. 2:3).
In the creation account, God makes the world and everything in it in six days. A seventh day follows that is set apart from the previous six in some important ways. Genesis 2:1–3 reads,
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
The Sabbath: God’s Ordinance for Human Beings
This observation raises the question, “What kind of worship is in view, and by whom?” The answer of Genesis is, “Humanity’s worship of the God who made them.” Human beings are unique within Genesis 1:1–2:3 as those said to be made after the “image” and “likeness” of God (Gen. 1:26), after God’s “own image, in the image of God” (Gen. 1:27). As such, people are uniquely capable among all the creatures mentioned in Genesis 1:1–2:3 of fellowship and communion with God.2 Thus, the worship for which God provides in Genesis 2:1–3 is given so that his image bearers may have fellowship with him. Strikingly then, “humanity . . . is not the culmination of creation, but rather humanity in Sabbath day communion with God.”3
Genesis 1:1–2:3, in fact, presents a twofold imitation of God on the part of his image bearers. First, God creates human beings to work (Gen. 1:28–30). In part, people express the image of God as they labor in their various callings. The God who exercises dominion over the works of his hands calls humanity to “have dominion” over the earth and all the animals in it (Gen. 1:26). The God who fills the world that he has made calls human beings to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28). Thus, humans will exercise dominion as they are faithful to marry and produce offspring (see Gen. 2:23–25). But it would be a mistake to say that Genesis 1:1–2:3 conceives no higher human imitation of God than labor. As human beings imitate God at work, so also are they to imitate God at rest. As God made the world and everything in it within the space of six days and rested on the seventh day, so are human beings to engage in six days of labor and one day of holy resting.
In sum, God intends for human beings to imitate his rest by taking the weekly Sabbath to rest from their labors and devote the whole day to his worship. The word translated “bless” (barak) in Genesis 2:3 “is normally restricted to living beings in the [Old Testament] and typically does not apply to something being blessed or sanctified only for God’s sake.”4 Thus, God does not bless the seventh day for his own sake but for humanity’s sake. He is setting apart this one day in seven to be a regular day of rest in the weekly cycle of human existence. He is, in effect, commanding human beings to observe the Sabbath.
Read More
Related Posts:

As Christians, we need to learn to identify cultural idols when we see them, and unequivocally refuse to bend the knee. We must refuse the temptation to use them as occasions to polish our reputations or to appear respectable in the eyes of our families and peers. Instead, we should remember that Babylon is a place brimming with idols — some of them sixty cubits tall (Dan. 3:1) — and that though they are exalted among men, in the eyes of God they are worthless abominations.

The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him. And he said to them, ‘You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.’ (Luke 16:14–15)
A very real danger faced by sinners in every age is that of seeking to be man-righteous rather than God-righteous — that is, of being tempted to curate a persona that will gain the approval of men, but not the approval of God. For the Pharisees, this looked like tithing mint and cumin while at the same time craving money like a pack of half-starved coyotes. It looked like straining gnats and swallowing camels, carefully washing the outside of the cup and leaving the inside untouched.
The Pharisees, in other words, were masters at putting their fingers in the air to determine which way the winds of cultural approval were blowing, and then tailoring their words and deeds in such a way as to win the admiration of all who might be watching.
Read More
Related Posts: