The sermon presents spiritual despondency as a real experience that may afflict genuine believers, especially when they lose former assurance, joy, tenderness, or appetite for the Gospel. Spurgeon directs hearers toward Christ as the only Savior and toward regular participation in the church’s means of grace. At the same time, he confronts nominal Christianity, insisting that true religion must penetrate the heart and transform the life. The message therefore joins pastoral comfort with a call to self-examination, renewed communion with God, and earnest growth in holiness.
Theological center: Salvation and spiritual restoration are found in Christ and His grace, not in outward profession or fluctuating emotional assurance.
Applications: Regularly Hear the Gospel · Pursue Wholehearted Religion · Examine Inner Spiritual Reality · Consider Spiritual Decline
Primary texts: Job 29:2 · Psalms 107:5 · John 6:37
“Oh that I were as in months past!” Job 29:2 FOR the most part the gracious Shepherd leads His people beside the still waters and makes them to lie down in green pastures. But at times they wander through a wilderness, where there is no water and they find no city to dwell in. Hungry and thirsty, their soul faints within them and they cry unto the Lord in their trouble. Though many of His people live in almost constant joy and find that religion’s ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace, yet there are many who pass through fire and through water. Men do ride over their heads—they endure all manner of trouble and sorrow. The duty of the minister is to preach to different characters. Sometimes we admonish the confident, lest they should become presumptuous. Oftentimes we…