Spurgeon, Twain, and Why Pastors Shouldn't Pander on Easter

This is an account of Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) visiting the congregation pastored by that old curmudgeon Charles Spurgeon in 1879:

Sunday, August 17, ’79. Raw and Cold, and a drenching rain. Went to hear Mr. Spurgeon. House three-quarters full—say three thousand people. First hour, lacking one minute, taken up with two prayers, two ugly hymns, and Scripture-reading. Sermon three-quarters of an hour long. A fluent talker, good, sonorous voice. Topic treated in the unpleasant, old fashion: Man a rightly bad child, God working at him in forty ways and having a world of trouble with him. 

  A wooden-faced congregation; just the sort to see no incongruity in the majesty of Heaven stopping to plead and sentimentalize over such, and see in their salvation an important matter.

Notice that to Clemens the message preached is foolish. The American literary giant thinks the message is “old” about God “having a world of trouble” with man (which is a colossal theological misunderstanding), saying of the congregation that they are “wooden-faced” and confused. 

Then compare when a Christian visits. Justin Fulton, a pastor from Boston, says this: 

The first prayer was short and general in character, but very devout. No fooling here, we are met to worship God. The first hymn was sung with a will. No chanting or piping organ, no choir to attract attention, but one grand purpose to glorify our Christ. We sang out of “Our Own Hymn Book.” Everything has Spurgeon’s imprint. If you don’t like it you can leave it; here is a concern big enough to run without your help. Fall into the current or be swept away. I fell in with my whole heart, as happy as a seraph. 

  Then came the reading of the Scripture. Time enough. No hurry. How those old English people did enjoy the Word of God! The second prayer follows. That was my prayer, because it was everybody’s cry. His prayer was greater to me than his sermon. In his sermon he talked with men. In his prayer he communed with God. When he described the coming of Christ to the soul, it seemed to me I saw for the first time the King in his beauty. The suppliant was forgiven. With his face streaming with tears, and with tones so full and rich that they swept through every heart, as a breath of perfumed air floats through the halls of a palace, this divine atmosphere possessed our hearts when he cried: “We love thee. Thou knowest it. We love not because thou art great, but because of the inestimable gift of the only begotten Son. Lift us up O God. Take us out of the dust. Let us by faith come to the fountain and be washed. We come. We feel that thou has washed us. We are clean. Yes, we are clean. Blessed be the Lord our God. Make us young again. Wake us up. Let us not sleep. We thank thee for our troubles, for all that makes us conscious of our alienation from thee… 

Fulton continues on, eventually describing the sermon from Ps. 42:1, “As the hart panteth..”: 

The entire audience drank with the hart, and were refreshed. After this in love he portrayed the Christian’s thirst. How dry we became. Then he uncovered the fountain in Christ. It seemed to me that I had never seen my Christ before. There he was in his beauty. That morning all saw him and were refreshed. It was good to be there.**

Christ on display by a praying and preaching man who communes with him—some will understand and some won’t. We labor that all will understand (cf. 1 Cor. 14:25). But the important thing is Christ’s very presence. I imagine that Spurgeon would be disappointed to know that a visitor (Clemens) felt that the gospel wasn’t good news and that fellowship with God wasn’t all-satisfying. Let’s labor that visitors don’t sense this from us! 

But pastors, if you’re reading this, let’s commit to not using Easter to pander to peoples’ fleshly needs. Let’s show Jesus as the fountain of life who alone can quench our thirst. Pray it, sing it, and then show from the Scriptures how it’s true. Our folks will drink deeply because we do.

—

**Quoted from Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain, a Biography, and from Justin Fulton, Spurgeon, Our Ally, in Geoffrey Chang, Spurgeon the Pastor, 53-57.

Happiness

The men in church recently had a stirring discussion about the nature of happiness. At our men’s breakfast we heard a really good talk on the “Blessed” man of Psalm 1. Talking about “blessed” led to talking about joy which, per usual, led to talking about the difference between joy and happiness. I’ve come to think a little differently about the difference over the last several years, or, more accurately, whether there is a difference. Usually Christians put the difference (as they see it) like this: 

“Happiness is fleeting, but joy is eternal.” (Which can be true to some degree.) Or…

“Happiness is circumstantial, but joy is heavenly.” (Which is even closer to the target.)

Our guest speaker also made the close-to-target point (I think quoting someone, maybe Lewis from Mere Christianity) that if we seek happiness we won’t find it. But if we seek the Lord, we will find him and happiness, too. That’ll preach! 

Here’s my question (and I’m just going to lay my cards on the table): Aren’t happiness and joy the same thing, with the primary difference being where we seek it from? Consider: 

1. The word for “blessed” in Psalm 1:1 is asher, an interjection used also in 2:12 and 41:1. It’s something people experience. Similarly, and dissimilarly, the word baruk is used in 41:13 in reference to God:  “Blessed be the Lord.” His blessedness is obviously different from man’s, seen in the fact that it uses a different word. 

2. BUT. Another word for “joy” is used of God in 1 Chronicles 16:27, the word chadda (“Strength and joy are in his place.”) This is the same word used in Nehemiah 8:10 in which God’s people are told “The joy (chadda) of the Lord is your strength.” That is, God’s joy becomes the substantial source of man’s joy. 

-So, God’s blessedness is different from man’s, but his joy can be appropriated to 

man’s capacities (hence Joy as a “fruit of the Spirit” in Gal. 5:22: God the Holy Spirit 

has Joy, and gives it.)

3. Further, we might also observe that the Septuagint (that is, greek) version of the Old Testament uses the same word for “blessed” in Ps.1:1 (“Blessed is the man…”) as what is used in Jesus’ New Testament beatitudes (Matt. 5:3-12 “Blessed are you…”): makarios. Critical commentaries often note that makarios could appropriately be translated as “Happy,” i.e. “Happy are those who…” Thus Psalm 1:1 could appropriately say “Happy is the man who walks…” And Ps. 2:12 could say “Happy are all who take refuge in (the Son.)”

This is weedy, I know. My point is that happiness and joy are so close in the Bible, both existing in God and promised to come to believers from God as they follow him. Believers get joy from the Holy Spirit, and experience happiness from him as they walk with him, even if it is only in partiality (presupposed in Matt. 5:3 where “Blessed/Happy are the poor in spirit, for their’s is the kingdom of heaven.” Obviously poverty of spirit isn’t a happy experience, usually. But it’s blessed in God’s eyes and thus it eventually leads to eternity with him.)

But the real reason I’m writing is because Peter Kreeft’s comments on Aquinas’ treatment of happiness were so settling for me this morning, I just had to share. Kreeft’s Summa on the Summa* is an annotated translation of Aquinas’ Summa Theologica that I’ve been reading in small chunks at a time for roughly 6 months (very small chunks!)  In the “first part of the second part” of Summa Thomas proves that all people make choices based on seeking an end (that is, pursuing a goal, going in a direction, having an orientation.) Animals are instinctive, so they just try to survive; but image-bearers (people) have a will that pursues ends. They want to survive but they also want to thrive while they do it. Thomas thus employs Augustine’s On The Trinity to prove that man’s last end—that is, the ultimate goal which determines all of humanity’s lives, and as such, is actually not just last but is first—is happiness. All live their lives seeking happiness. They might seek it wrongly (which we’ll see), but they seek it nevertheless. Even if we come to Christ for Christ’s own sake, we’re doing so because he makes us happy. 

This is where Kreeft comes in, and I’ll quote him at length: 

“Happiness means not merely subjective contentment, or rest of desire, but also real 

blessedness, the state of possessing the objective good for man. It is contentment, but 

contentment in the true good. Like bodily health, it has both a subjective and an 

objective aspect. The word ‘happiness’ in English connotes only subjective satisfaction. 

Moreover, it connotes something dependent on fortune, or chance (‘hap’), something 

that just happens, like falling in love, rather than something we work at, like charity. 

“(Thomas says that) the last end of human life is stated as happiness because all seek 

it, and seek it as an end, not as a means to any further end, while they seek all other 

things as means to this end. No one seeks happiness in order to be rich, powerful, or 

wise, but people seek riches, or power, or wisdom because they think these will make 

them happy, in either the subjective sense or in the objective sense.” (349-50, fn3)

Hopefully you follow Kreeft’s line of thought: We can be subjectively happy, where we’re satisfied in a real sense. But it might not be a happiness in the true good. As such, it, as a passing happiness, won’t last. But true happiness is satisfaction in the true good, that is, in Christ, who is himself joy and happiness. That’s why he spoke of “…the glory (he) shared with (the Father) before the foundation of the world,” where the Father, “loved (him) before the foundation of the world” (Jn.17:24, 5). He, as God’s wisdom (1 Cor. 1:24), was to the Father, “daily his delight, rejoicing before him always” (Prov. 8:30).**

What I’m trying to say is this: We don’t have to choose between man’s happiness and Christ’s joy. Rather, since Christ is himself the God-man in whose image we’re all created (Jn. 1:3-4) and who came to earth to redeem us to himself (1:12-14), mans true happiness only exists in Christ’s joy. It, therefore, is not a sin to seek it in him. It’s only a sin to define it ourselves and then demand that he give it to us our way. We won’t find it then. 

But if we confess that he is both happiness itself and the source of all experienced happiness, he will share with us all what is his. In this way, he, as the joy of the Lord, becomes our strength. This is what it means to “Rejoice in the Lord” (Phil. 3:1): To know that he’s your life, that he’s happy, and that as you live a cross-bearing life following him, you’ll share richly in resurrection happiness too. 

What joy!

--

*See Kreeft, Summa on the Summa, 349-50, footnote3

**For an utterly joy-producing sermon on this topic, see Hans Boersma, "Happiness in Christ" in Sacramental Preaching: Sermons on the Hidden Presence of Christ, 111-123.

Once It Was the Blessing, Now It is the Lord: Ash Wednesday 2024

I’m writing this on Ash Wednesday 2024. Ash Wednesday is an extremely old Christian day commemorating the beginning of Lent. Lent is a 40 days’ length of time of intense discipline leading up to Holy Week and Easter. Christians use the time to mimic Christ’s 40 days in the wilderness, usually abstaining from certain conveniences like favorite foods, alcohol, delicacies, television, etc. The goal is that that for a time they will do without, and draw closer to Christ instead. Ash Wednesday, where ashes are often spread in a cross-shape on the forehead, commences Lent, commemorating that we as humans are simply made from the ground’s dust, and to dust shall we return. But even that is not the end of the story, for Christ is our very life (1 Jn. 5:20).

In the spirit of commitment to Christ—ever the theme of the believing life, not just during Lent—I thought I’d share a couple of lines from this old A.B. Simpson hymn “Himself.” The hymn articulates well what my sermon from this past Sunday took 40+ minutes to say: Discipleship is the constant endeavor to grow in love for the right things with the right proportions. Citing Bernard of Clairvaux’s “4 Loves” (12th c.), the sermon saw that a primary effect of this maturation in love is that one grows out of using God to get things into thanking God for all things, and using things to serve him. Believers over time learn this as they learn that he is himself the treasure. As they grow they “count all things as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:8), willing to lose all things, because he is the source, and they know him directly.

If you observe Lent, let these words give you vocabulary for what you’re pursuing during this season: A life where Christ is treasure, and all things come from and go back to him for whom they exist. 

“Once it was the blessing, now it is the Lord;

Once it was the feeling, now it is His Word; 

Once His gift I wanted, now the Giver own; 

Once I sought for healing, now Himself alone. 

“Once ’twas painful trying, now ’tis perfect trust;

Once a half salvation, now the uttermost!

Once ’twas ceaseless holding, now He holds me fast; 

Once ’twas constant drifting, now my anchor’s cast.” 

“All in all forever, only Christ I’ll sing

Everything is in Christ, 

And Christ is everything.”

                       A.B. Simpson—“Himself,” ad.1891

Alistair Begg, and the Perils of Legalism

“If I’ve got to go down on the side of one or the other, I’ll go down on this side, the side of compassion, with people accusing me of weakness, rather than go down on the side of condemnation, which closes any doors or opportunities for future engagement with those who know exactly what we believe about the Bible and about Jesus and so on.”

So said Scottish pastor Alistair Begg this past Sunday (scroll to 33:10) before his congregation of 40+ years, Parkside Church (outside of Cleveland, OH). For those unfamiliar, it came public that Alistair said in an interview a few months ago that, in response to a Christian woman asking his advice about whether she should attend her grandson's marriage to a transgender person, Alistair said that she should attend. The grandmother, having in the past made both the gospel and her love clear to her grandson, was shocked at Alistair's response. And so were multitudes of believers, who have been blessed by Alistair's 40+ years of faithful Bible-exposition, never capitulating on cultural compromises, always handling them with grace and clarity. 

Backstory 

But conservative Christians, especially in America, took it as yet another example of a well-known pastor bowing to the cultural zeitgeist, going back on what he once knew was true, now rejecting it so that he can  be respected. (See Alistair's wikipedia page for links to such criticisms, under "theological views.") 

Alistair finally responded to the dust-up this past Sunday, in a sermon entitled "Compassion vs. Condemnation," on the older son of the Prodigal Son parable (Luke 15). Alistair's point of contact between the text and the recent events was that the older brother had pharisaism/legalism in his heart (a clear point in Jesus' parable). Legalism in a Christian context could be thought of as commitment to a set of rules that are, at best, the effect of reflection on God's revealed truth, but not God's revealed truth itself. A biblical example would be the many leaders in Isaiah's time who "honored God with their lips, but their hearts were far from (him)...teaching as doctrines the commandments of men" (Is. 29:13 LXX, Jesus quoting it in Matt. 15:8-9; emphasis added). They had built a culture on inferences, reflecting on God's commands, and were holding peoples' feet to the fire to keep the inferences, instead of feeding on the commands. Jesus' point is that one cannot be a legalist about God's commands. They can only be a legalist about man's. 

Legalism 

So, as an example, I disagree that the Old Covenant Sabbath continues under the New, because I think it reached its purpose in Jesus, our sabbath rest (Heb.3-4, cf. Matt.11:28-30). I think that this is why Paul at many points (Rom.14:5-6, Gal.4:10-11, Col.2:16-17) minimizes the necessity of esteeming any particular day as more special than another. 

BUT. Do I think Christians who hold that Sunday is the "Lord's Day" of Rev.1:10, and thus the Sabbath, are legalists/Pharisees? Not necessarily; many of these Christians are driven by a desire to keep God's commands. A legalist would go further, adding rules for sabbath observance that the Bible doesn't, and then being condemnatory toward those who don't abide. The rules become the standard, not the revealed command itself. This might be a poor example, but you get the point: Legalism/Pharisaism is a commitment to a set of rules or a desired culture as though it is inspired by God, when it is not. (This is why liberal Christians who don't hold to the Bible's inspiration call everyone legalists: They're not sure God has actually said anything.) 

So, conservative Christians have seen what has happened with sexual ethics in the current day, and how America, with its once rock-solid commitment to Christian ethics (or so it is assumed), has drifted into "all manner of sin" (Matt. 12:31, cf. Rom.1:28). Homosexuality is normal (or as Michael Scott would say, "Gay: Good,") as is transgenderism, abortion, etc. So, we figure, since we cannot have anything to do with those things, then to interact at all is to support them. 

A Question 

Here's my question: Is that true, or just implied? In other words, does having gay friends, liking a post from a gay co-worker, or even attending a gay wedding "taking part in the unfruitful works of darkness" (Eph.5:11)? Or can those things be done in a way that affirms the human nature of the people without affirming the sin? Consider this: We know that the same Paul (read: God through Paul) who said "take no part" also said to not even associate with a brother (read: Christian in your church) given to "sexual immorality or greed, or who is an idolator, reviler, drunkard, or swindler." Interestingly, Paul immediately follows this by saying this rule does not apply to our relationship to "outsiders," (non-Christians), only insiders (1 Cor. 5:11-12), because God will judge those outside (5:13). Apparently holiness is more important in the church than outside the church! "Judgment begins at the house of God" (1 Pet. 4:17). If people in the church are stuck in sin, that's more serious for us than those in the world who are! 

My point is not to imply contradiction in the Bible (there is none), but that understanding comes from humbling our hearts and asking God for clarity (ie, as in Ps.119). In this case, I'm unsure if attendance at a gay wedding is participation in it any more than your enjoyment of Starbucks drinks is participation in their LGBTQ agenda, or that of Panera (which seems to be the Christian meeting placeTM), or your use of iPhone is participation in Apple's, or if John Macarthur's public endorsement of Donald Trump as the best available candidate in 2020 means that Macarthur endorses everything Trump stands for. I could go on with examples, but my point is this: Obviously, we're all drawing the line somewhere between "loving neighbor and enjoying/stewarding creation" and "participating with sin." 

And because of that, I just don't think we should write off a man with 40+ years of gospel faithfulness--including utter clarity about his stance on the sinfulness of homosexuality (and having lost ministry opportunities because of it)--because he told a grandmother in a particular situation to draw the line somewhere that we wouldn't. 

To be clear, I disagree with Alistair. I wouldn't attend, nor would I counsel someone to. But I know what he was saying. And as I watched the video of him sharing this past Sunday how it's affected him, I was sad for him; I love him, am so grateful for him, and don't want his good name to be soiled. 

The Current Day

But such is the time we're in. I fear that Christians are experts at criticizing the world, but not at looking at ourselves (and our churches). The amount of political and patriotic idolatry present in the American churches is alarming (gone is our citizenship being in heaven first), as is the prevalence of porn and masturbation among believing men (gone is holiness as our priority), and the self-centeredness of women dressing and acting like the women of the world (gone is modesty and humility as benchmarks of true femininity). As a people who have as central to our identity the presentation of our whole selves to God as living sacrifices (which is the true worship that Jesus said he came to bring, Rom.12:1, cf. Jn.4:24), conservative churches just want to time-travel on Sundays back to the 50s, while liberal churches want to genre-travel into a Celebrity Roast-like church dynamic (the roast-ee being conservative Christians, of course; "We're not perfect, no one is...but at least we're not like them.")

And how both sides engage with the gay community, Alistair said well in his sermon: "We either affirm (liberal) or condemn (conservative.) But the reality is that, because of the Bible, we should do neither." That is to say, God will not let me affirm people living in sin, nor will he let me condemn them. Instead, I have to take it on a case-by-case basis, draw the line somewhere that doesn't put me into contradiction with the Word...forget the cultural status quo, and judge it by its consistency...and trust the Holy Spirit to check me if I'm in danger of either being licentious or pharisaical. And he will! Is that not exactly what it means to "walk by the Spirit" (see Rom.8, Gal.5)?: To believe that he'll lead me in how to rightly apply his word? Alternatively, to set up extra rules, even if well-meaning, might lead us into the very legalism that Jesus so clearly came to save us from. And that tendency can (and does) wax both right and left. 

I'm pretty sure that that's all Alistair was saying. I can't tell you what to think; all I can tell you is what I would say in Alistair's situation (which I did, above). And in this situation, I'll just conclude by borrowing from Simon and Garfunkel: Fellow Jesus-following Christians, "Slow down, you move too fast."