In early life, I painted wildlife and often looked at the work of Robert Bateman or other artists, not to imitate them but to realize that I was not a hotshot in the world of art. Now I do the same with quilts by looking at websites with show winners so I will not get swell-headed with pride about my own work. There is always someone who excels in any endeavor to keep others from thinking they are at the top rung.
This morning, John Piper points to Charles Haddon Spurgeon who preached as a Baptist pastor in London from 1854 until 1891. This is thirty-eight years of ministry in one place. His collected sermons fill sixty-three volumes equivalent to the twenty-seven-volume ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica and stand as the largest set of books by a single author in the history of Christianity. He read six serious books a week and could remember what was in them and where. He read Pilgrim’s Progress more than one hundred times.
Spurgeon added 14,460 people to his church membership and did almost all the membership interviews himself. He could look out on a congregation of 5,000 and name the members. He founded a pastors’ college and trained almost 900 men.
This man once said he had counted as many as eight sets of thoughts that passed through his mind at the same time while he was preaching and even prayed for his people during the very sermon he was offering to them. He used a small sheet of notes that he had written the night before and more than twenty-five thousand copies of his sermons were sold each week in twenty languages. Someone was converted every week through these written sermons.
His two sons became pastors. He founded an orphanage, edited a magazine, produced more than 140 books, responded to 500 letters a week, and often preached ten times a week in various churches as well as his own.
But he also suffered from gout, rheumatism, and Bright’s disease. For the last twenty years of his ministry he was so sick that he missed a third of the Sundays at the Metropolitan Tabernacle. He could have written this verse:
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. (1 Corinthians 15:10)He was a politically liberal, conservative Calvinistic Baptist who smoked cigars, spoke his mind, believed in hell, and wept over the perishing. Tens of thousands were saved through his soul-winning passion. He relied on God with great faith and said,“One thing is past all question; we shall bring our Lord most glory if we get from Him much grace.”
As with artists and those skilled in astonishing ways, I’m not to worship him or envy him or anyone else — because all achievers are too small for worship and too big to be envied or imitated. If I worship such achievers, I am an idolater. If I envy them, I am foolish. Such responses are sinful because all skill is given so I will marvel at the wonder of God who created all of us and can use us as He pleases.
Not that we dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who are commending themselves. But when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding. (2 Corinthians 10:12)PRAY: Lord, how delightful to spend a few days with people who exalt others without envy and who build up those who struggle to ‘do better’ and who need encouragement. I wonder if Spurgeon had prayer warriors in his shadow that will never be known by name yet someday will face the God who is greater, yet very likely will say, “Well done thou good and faithful servant.”