A Sermon for the Time Present (S1990)

By October of 1887 the Downgrade Controversy—the battle against doctrinal decay in the professing church of Christ—was in full swing. Letters had appeared in The Sword and the Trowel over the previous months, and Spurgeon himself had entered the fray through August and into September. The sermon which we consider today is clearly the fruit of that conflict, with Spurgeon feeling “as if the text had been newly written for the present occasion, for it is in every syllable most suitable to the immediate crisis.” That text is Zephaniah 3:16–18, where the Lord calls his people to faithful labour and promises his saving and succouring mercies to them. Spurgeon handles the text by looking at the present trials of God’s people, the glorious consolation which they have in the midst of those trials, and the brave conduct which ought to characterise them in the face of those trials. Many of us see the unhappy inheritance of the theological liberalism which took root at the end of the nineteenth century. While we may not be of the generation which saw the downgrade, we can—if we continue to heed Spurgeon’s call to arms—be a generation which seeks to recover some of the lost ground.

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