The First Christmas Carol

While Spurgeon is probably typecast as a classic three-pointer, his sermons actually show quite a variety in structure. This is a simple two-headed sermon, reflected in the title itself. How can peace be gained? How can peace be broken? Under the first heading, Spurgeon insists that true peace, the only peace worth having, is God's own gift, spoken to his people who are holy. He celebrates the certainty of it and explores something of the beauty of it. Then he comes down from the heights and considers the loss of our peace. Here the preacher shows himself the pastor. The text emphasises that we can lose our peace by turning back to folly, and while that is a proper consideration, Spurgeon takes a few moments to consider some of the other ways in which peace can be lost, not all of them through the sins and failings of true believers. His intention is not to offer us excuses, but not to lay the wrong burden on the wrong heart. The ground cleared, he asks very bluntly about the kinds of sins which lurk in our souls, and which can be the reason why we lose the peace which the Lord speaks. The probing is painful, the speech being plain, and a sensitive heart will find good reason to lament its own folly. Spurgeon concludes with exhortation, giving us a brief barrage of reasons to turn our backs upon folly once and for all, and not to go back to the paths which, because of grace, we have left.

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The stores are already preparing for Christmas. Here is a way for your family to start making plans and preparations.

This sermon is comfort with a little kick—rich in its consolations but not feeble in its applications. It begins with God's everlasting covenant, rooted in his own unchanging being, and the promises which cannot be broken, with all the assurance of unending good to those upon whom he sets his love. Spurgeon explores the certainty and security of the covenant, never straying far from Christ's finished work, whether he is speaking of the covenant itself, or the God who makes the covenant with his people. Then he turns to the promise, "I will put my fear in their hearts so that they will not depart from me" (Jer 32:40). Here he considers how God fulfils that promise, not by a twisting or emptying of certain spiritual realities, but by God's gracious and sovereign work in the soul, granting his people a holy awe, a filial fear, and a sense of grateful obligation. He considers the work of the Holy Spirit in this connection, giving us a trinitarian perspective on the whole, and uses the guarantee of a people united to God in holy fear to draw sinners to Christ to find certain peace and life everlasting.

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