It's not a word that we use or hear often today....Precious. We might hear of precious metals....but most of the time the word is used to describe a newborn baby. I do recall a 70s song that began...."Precious and few are the moments we two can share....aire aire aire aire." It was in 1972....in my alcohol abuse days. I find that interesting and odd...the words....'precious and few'....that bring back memories that were anything but precious and few.
Roughly three or four feet to my left as I type....hanging in a glass covered wooden frame....is a wall hanging....certainly not a decoration.....that is almost precious to me. It was a gift from our son on Christmas a few years ago. This will take a little explanation.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon preached in England....and primarily in London....in Elephant and Castle.....at what still stands today as the Metropolitan Tabernacle....for roughly forty years. There are many preachers who have stepped into a pulpit and preached a wonderful and powerful sermon....but none anywhere near the consistency of Spurgeon....not even John MacArthur or John Piper. Only London's preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones....at Westminster Chapel....comes close to Spurgeon. These two men were great gifts to a people once blessed but today lost. Both of these preachers warned....and warned....and warned. There are wonderful preachers today in England....one is in Spurgeon's Metropolitan Tabernacle....but they are only a remnant.
I've written a lot in these posts on the Titanic and even November 22, 1963....and the Civil War....but all of them combined do not match the time writing about Charles Haddon Spurgeon.
So in that glass covered wooden frame is a piece of paper....with a couple hundred words written in primarily black but also purple ink....with a purple ink splotch the size of a Canadian dime in the middle of the paper. On the Lord's Day....March 30....1890....134 years....6 months....and 29 days ago....(thank you Google)....a scribe wrote down the words in black ink that Charles Spurgeon preached from his pulpit. After the sermon.....Spurgeon would make....in purple ink....any corrections that were needed,
The title of the sermon that Spurgeon preached in that worship service was....CHRIST PRECIOUS TO BELIEVERS....and the piece of paper in the frame is the original.
Brothers and sisters....is Christ precious to you? Do you ever use or even think the word in your minds....precious? Or is that just a little too syrupy a word to use? I've been trying to use it lately in my conversations with believers. I want them to hear it used in the context of our blessed Lord and Savior....(another word....blessed.) For what in life could there possibly be as precious as Jesus?
You can....if you so desire....Google....Spurgeon sermon YouTube....Christ Precious To Believers.
Note: A young Spurgeon preached a sermon under the same title in 1959....and other sermons over his ministry of over forty years were similar....such apparently was the importance that he placed upon the word precious.
