What is so glorious about the gospel? What was it about the Good News that so enraptured men like Charles Spurgeon and the Apostle Paul?
In March of 1889, Spurgeon preached a sermon based on a single phrase from 2 Corinthians 4:4 – “The light of the glorious gospel of Christ.” In this message, the Prince of Preachers puts the gospel on display and lets it shine in all its brilliance.
First, the preacher considers that the glory of the gospel is Christ Himself. “Christ is the author of the gospel, the subject of the gospel, and the end of the gospel.” What is so glorious about the gospel? Christ. The good news is good because it is news about Him.
Next, Spurgeon describes the nature of the light of the gospel. The gospel needs no illumination from the outside; it is light itself, and people need only to open their eyes to see it. “I wish I could induce unbelievers here to read the story of the crucifixion every morning,” Spurgeon states, “and to keep on reading it and studying it; for I am persuaded that the light which streams from the cross would, by the blessing of God, open their eyes, and enter their souls savingly.”
Finally, he addresses what we ought to do with this light we’ve been given. What shall we do with this light? “Look towards it[!]” Spurgeon exclaims. “I beseech you,” he continues, “beloved in the Lord, to get alone, and give yourself to meditate upon the glory of the once-despised Jesus. Track him from the cradle to the cross, from the cross to the crown. I cannot suggest to you any subject more instructive, more comforting, more ennobling than this.”
Maybe you have heard the gospel many times, but don’t see its glory. Perhaps you don’t feel sorrow for sin, desire for forgiveness, or joy at the news of grace. You are missing something heavenly. Only God can open your eyes.
Is the gospel glorious to you? Have you beheld the glory of Christ? “Look unto Jesus, and the light within will grow like the glory of heaven.”
Excerpt:
Have you never heard how the Laplanders climb the hills when the sun is at last about to appear after the weary winter months? How they rejoice in the first beams of the rising sun! So let us rise to lofty meditation, and look to our Lord and Master, till we perceive his mediatorial glory, and are blessed thereby. Have you no time? Give up your newspaper for a week that you may sanctify the time to the noble end of considering the glory of your Lord; and I will warrant that you shall get a thousand times more out of such thought than from skimming the daily journal. Look unto Jesus, and the light within will grow like the glory of heaven.
Read the rest of the sermon here.