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The sermon centers on Peter’s prayer that God would perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle believers after suffering. Spurgeon presents suffering as an instrument of divine sanctification rather than evidence that God has abandoned his people. Because God is the God of all grace and salvation comes through Christ, believers may ask boldly for holiness, preservation, and final perfection. The sermon also gives a direct gospel appeal: sinners should come to Christ as they are and believe in him for forgiveness and eternal salvation.
Theological center: God sovereignly completes the salvation and sanctification of those called to eternal glory through Christ Jesus, sustaining them amid suffering by grace.
Applications: Pray boldly for abundant grace · Live nearer to Christ · Come to Christ and believe · Suffering serves spiritual formation
Primary texts: 1 Peter 5:10 · Philippians 1:6 · Romans 8:30
“But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, and settle you.” 1 Peter 5:10 THE apostle Peter turns from exhortation to prayer. He knew that if praying be the end of preaching in the hearer, preaching should always be accompanied by prayer in the minister. Having exhorted believers to walk steadfastly, he bends his knee and commends them to the guardian care of heaven, imploring upon them one of the largest blessings for which the most affectionate heart ever made supplication. The minister of Christ is intended to execute two offices for the people of his charge. He is to speak for God to them and for them to God. The pastor has not fulfilled the whole of his sacred commission when he has declared the whole counsel of God. He has then done but half. The other part is that which is to be performed in secret, when he carries upon his breast, like the priest of old, the wants, the sins, the trials of his people, and pleads with God for them. The daily duty of the Christian pastor is as much to pray for his people, as to exhort, instruct, and console. There are however, special seasons when the minister of Christ finds himself constrained to pronounce an unusual benediction over his people. When one year of trial has gone and another year of mercy has commenced, we may be allowed to express our sincere congratulations that God has spared us, and our earnest invocations for a thousand blessings upon the heads of those whom God has committed to our pastoral charge. I have this morning taken this text as a New Year’s blessing. You are aware that a minister of the Church of England always supplies me with the motto for the new year. He prays much before he selects the text, and I know that it is his prayer for you all today. He constantly favors me with this motto, and I always think it my duty to preach from it, and then desire my people to remember it through the year as a staff of support in their time of trouble, as some sweet morsel, a wafer made with honey, a portion of angel’s food, which they may roll under their tongue, and carry in their memory till the year ends, and then begin with another sweet text. What larger benediction could my aged friend have chosen, standing as he is today in his pulpit, and lifting up holy hands to preach to the people in a quiet village church—what larger blessing could he implore for the thousands of Israel than that which in His name I pronounce upon you this day—“But the God of all grace, who hath calle…