Let’s Talk about Spurgeon’s Early Years with Steven Lawson

Dr. Stephen Nichols: Welcome back to another episode of 5 Minutes in Church History. On this episode, it’s my pleasure to welcome back our good friend, Dr. Steve Lawson. Dr. Lawson, it’s good to have you.

Dr. Steven Lawson: Stephen, always a joy and a pleasure for me to be with you.

Dr. Stephen Nichols: Well, we managed to get a little bit of time with you here at Ligonier’s National Conference, and I want to talk to you about a great figure, and it’s going to be hard to do this in one episode, Dr. Lawson.

Dr. Steven Lawson: Yeah, I know.

Dr. Stephen Nichols: So, let’s make it two.

Dr. Steven Lawson: Okay, let’s go for it. Double-header.

Dr. Stephen Nichols: We’ll do this on Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

Dr. Steven Lawson: Wow.

Dr. Stephen Nichols: Let’s talk about Spurgeon before he stepped into the pulpit of Metropolitan Tabernacle.

Dr. Steven Lawson: Meaning the years before?

Dr. Stephen Nichols: The early Spurgeon, and some of the factors that went into his life.

Dr. Steven Lawson: Well, the early Spurgeon was fiery and passionate. The first six volumes, it’s called The New Park Street Pulpit, are really just doused with gas and set on fire. The rest, which is the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, there’s some mellowing and pastoral discretion, but young Spurgeon was just set on fire from heaven. He began preaching at age 15 and began pastoring at age 16, and was called to London at age 19, and his reputation had already spread all the way to London. It was the largest Reformed Baptist church in all of England. It was very famous, but it had become empty, and so they called young Spurgeon at age 19, and he was given a six-month trial basis to see if they would vote him in as pastor.

Dr. Stephen Nichols: Oh, wow. How interesting.

Dr. Steven Lawson: Yeah, it is interesting. So, he began preaching and the building began to be filled, not just Sunday morning and Sunday night, but you had to have a ticket to get into the building, even for prayer meeting in midweek.

Dr. Stephen Nichols: So, this goes from an empty building to there’s a line out the door?

Dr. Steven Lawson: Yes, yes. It held about 1,200 people and they were less than 200, so they were like BBs in a barrel in there, and they eventually had to expand it to more like 1,900. And people would stand around the perimeter of the wall. They would sit in windowsills, just to come hear Spurgeon preach, and he was prolific. The first sermon in this 63-volume set of his sermons is Malachi 3:6, “I am the Lord thy God. I change not.” And what he said in the introduction, he’s either 19 or 20 at this point by the time they begin publishing this, is so profound that it becomes the introduction that J. I. Packer uses for Knowing God. That book, he could not think of a more profound way to begin Knowing God than quoting Spurgeon at age 20, and it’s just drawn from Spurgeon’s introduction off-the-cuff to Malachi 3:6.

Dr. Stephen Nichols: I’m not sure any church growth manual would say that if you have six months to grow your church, your first sermon should be on Malachi.

Dr. Steven Lawson: Yeah, and the elders of the church suddenly realize what they have, that God has dropped into their lap the most gifted preacher of their day as a young man, and that there would not be a building that could hold the people that would come to hear Spurgeon.

Dr. Stephen Nichols: Just as I’m thinking about this and hearing about this, this tremendous pressure, but tremendous temptation, and you think about Spurgeon over a faithfulness of a lifetime and how easy it would’ve been for him to have been enticed away with such popularity at such a young age. And yet, we have one of the most faithful, bold preachers, really, in the history of preaching.

Dr. Steven Lawson: Yes. Well, God used trials in his life to keep him humble, and he was shot at from every side. He was Calvinistic, he was Reformed, and so the Arminians came after him. He was Calvinistic, but the hyper-Calvinists came after him. The London press came after him, caricatures of him in the newspaper and articles and editorials, and he really was harpooned from every side. And I think it can be said that God used that to really suppress an ego that might otherwise have been inflated.

Dr. Stephen Nichols: That’s very insightful. Dr. Lawson. We’ve come to the end of our first episode. We will pick this up next time to see how God continued to work in and through the life of Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Well, I’m Steve Nichols, and thanks for listening to 5 Minutes in Church History.