Good Cause for Great Zeal (sermon 1097)

There is a danger in appreciating sermons of robust exhortation, a potential spiritual sado-masochism of sorts, in which we pride ourselves on having received a good whipping, without being any the better for having undergone the experience. One antidote to this is to make sure that the exhortation rides on the back of appreciation, and it is this which Spurgeon does here. He wants us to understand how blessed we are as God's people, how richly favoured and fed from the royal table, and what that means in terms of our regard for the King's honour, and how that works out in various spheres of life. That emphasis on blessing is not intended to send us on a 'guilt trip' either—it is not mere manipulation to say that if we have fallen short, and our love has cooled, then we ought to repent and do our first works, given how greatly we have been loved and blessed. So, then, let us not indulge ourselves in a bit of self-satisfied self-recrimination, but consider the mercies which God has bestowed, and the honour to which he is entitled from those whom he has so privileged.