# Spurgeon's Sunday Service - Question



## FenderPriest (Jun 11, 2009)

In discussions about Spurgeon's sermon style, I have often heard the critique that while they are obviously excellent, they tend to lack expositional material within them. However, I had a friend point out to me a while back that this should be understood in light of a separate expositional time within the Sunday service that typically hasn't been recorded or talked about. In light of this time, one then can understand the style of his sermons and why he would have left the expositional weight that a text demanded out of the sermon itself. However, since I haven't done a whole lot of Spurgeon study, I'm not sure whether this is actually true or not, and where this historical fact (if it is true) can be sourced to. Does anybody know if this is true or not?


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## KMK (Jun 11, 2009)

I own a 19th century edition of "The Expository Encyclopedia" and it contains many expositions sandwiched between his sermons. I am not sure how it worked on Sunday mornings, but there was a time when his expositions were published.


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## reformedminister (Jun 11, 2009)

I have Spurgeon's New Park Street Pulpit and Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit. They are a great investment. Many of Spurgeon's sermons are very expositional. He was definately an expository preacher. However, he usually read the whole chapter of what he preached and gave an exposition of the text before, kind of a brief running commentary. His expositions are in some of the later volumes of the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit. There are sixty three volumes in all. The expositions are found after the sermons.


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## Prufrock (Jun 11, 2009)

You might enjoy reading this: Spurgeon on commenting.

It seems, if his practice matches his advice, that he would teach two different ways in each service: 1.) The sermon itself on a short piece of scripture; and 2.) He would "comment," giving exegetical and expository explanation of a larger passage of scripture.


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## bookslover (Jun 12, 2009)

His expositions occurred before the sermon, I believe. And, as others have said, in the printed volumes, they occur after the sermons, when they do appear. Personally, I think the sermons are better than the expositions, which seem a little "surfacy" to me.

Also, Spurgeon had two services on Sunday, a Monday night prayer meeting (with no Bible study; it was exclusively devoted to prayer), and a full worship service on Thursday night. The church was usually packed for ALL these services.

In the published volumes of sermons, the morning sermons are almost always 12 pages long. The evening sermons are almost always 9 pages long (since he, evidently, preached a little shorter in the evening); sometimes the expositions are attached to the end of these shorter evening sermons so they fill out the rest of the 12 pages alloted per sermon.

Also, keep in mind that Spurgeon preached in the days before microphones (when he died in 1892, the microphone was still 33 years in the future [1925]), yet he could be heard throughout the Metropolitan Tabernacle, even in the upper balconies.

My favorite Spurgeon quote, spoken when he was contending with the liberals of his day, who seemed to be winning: _I'm content to be eaten of dogs for the next fifty years, but the more distant future shall vindicate me._

He was right.

An amazing ministry...


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