Compel Them To Come In

This week, Teddy James talks with Jeremy Walker, pastor of Maidenbower Baptist Church, author of A Word in Season, and blogger at The Wanderer.

In this episode, Jeremy Walker walks through Charles Spurgeon’s sermon on evangelism. Spurgeon was a well-known and phenomenally gifted preacher. He preached at New Park Street Church and then went on to pastor at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London.

The text of the sermon is from Luke 14:23: “Compel them to come in.” Spurgeon pleads with listeners to be converted.

His two main points are to: 1) Find you out and 2) Compel you to come into the kingdom, to come to Christ.

Spurgeon is a model in this sermon of what it means to respond to God and to point others to Him. He has an affection and is burdened for his “brothers.” He loves his fellow man, and so he is compelled to compel them onto Christ. We have a double obligation—to God as Savior and man as sinner.

Spurgeon felt the weight and urgency of his message.

Only Christ can save us. We may go to church and know the truth, but not be alive to Christ. Spurgeon spoke to a fairly religiously educated, biblically literate crowd, yet he did not shy away from preaching the truth.

Whether in Mississippi or in Crawley, England, the temptation is the same: to put our hopes in something other than Christ—in our baptism, our theological knowledge, or our parents’ faith, etc. In reality, nothing but Christ can save us.

Come near, our Father, come very near to Your children.
Some of us are very weak in body and faint in heart.
Soon, O God, lay Your right hand upon us and say, “Fear not.”
Come near to kill the influence of the world with Your superior power.
Our Father, come and rest Your children now.
Take the helmet from our brow, remove from us the weight of our heavy armor for awhile, and may we just have peace, perfect peace, and be at rest. Amen.

—Charles Spurgeon, A Guide to Family Worship