One of my all-time favorite books on the work of evangelism is The Soul Winner by the highly-quoted reformed Reverend Charles Spurgeon. This collection of sermons and teachings to seminary students, church leaders, and Sunday School teachers presents a master class on the compelling call of Colossians 1:28 to proclaim the gospel of Christ to everyone. You will find it hard to put down, and even harder to suppress the surge in your own heart to win souls for Christ.
I found the chapter “How to Raise the Dead: An Address to Sunday School Teachers” to be an extremely insightful tool, not only for those who teach children in a formal sense, but also for the everyday labor of parents who seek to point their children to the cross. Enjoy this modernized summary of the chapter as a gateway to what I hope will be your next read!
Spurgeon roots this chapter in the account of Elisha raising the Shunnamite boy to life in 2 Kings 4, connecting immediately with the teachers who, like Elisha, have been tasked by God with the work of raising a dead child. He states,
It is true that, in his instance, it was natural death; but the death with which you have to come in contact is not the less real death because it is spiritual. The boys and girls in your classes are, as surely as grown-up people, “dead in trespasses and sins.” May none of you fail fully to [realize] the state in which all human beings are naturally found! Unless you have a very clear sense of the utter ruin and spiritual death of your children, you will be incapable of being made a blessing to them. Go to them, I pray you, not as to sleepers whom you can by your own power awaken from their slumber, but as to spiritual corpses who can only be quickened by a power divine. Elisha’s great object was not to cleanse the dead body, or embalm it with spices, or wrap it in fine linen, or place it in an appropriate posture, and then leave it still a corpse: he aimed at nothing less than the restoration of the child to life.
This way of seeing the children we teach and parent is vital in order for us to play a part in their rescue. Spurgeon adds,
Beloved teachers, may you never be content with aiming at secondary benefits, or even with [realizing] them; may you strive for the grandest of all ends, the salvation of immortal souls! Your business is not merely to teach the children in your classes to read the Bible, not barely to inculcate the duties of morality, nor even to instruct them in the mere letter of the gospel, but your high calling is to be the means, in the hands of God, of bringing life from heaven to dead souls.
Failure to properly diagnose their condition—Spurgeon posits—leads to us having the same kind of results that Gehazi had in the 2 Kings account. If you remember the story, Elisha gives his staff to Gehazi and sends him with it to deliver the boy. It doesn’t work. The text says, “Gehazi went on ahead and laid the staff on the face of the child, but there was no sound or sign of life” (2 Kings 4.31). Spurgeon insists that Gehazi used an “indifferent hand” to place the staff upon the face of the dead child, missing the urgent desperation to resurrect him and the faith to believe that it could, in fact, be done. We must believe deeply in the desperate state of our children and in the willingness of our God to save them. As Spurgeon explains it,
If you think the child is not really depraved, if you indulge foolish notions about the innocence of childhood and the dignity of human nature, it should not surprise you if you remain barren and unfruitful. How can God bless you to work a resurrection when, if He did work it by you, you are incapable of perceiving its glorious nature? If the lad had awaked, it would not have surprised Gehazi; he would have thought that he was only startled from an unusually sound sleep.
If fruitlessness or frustration characterize your efforts to reach the children in your classrooms or your homes, don’t be discouraged. You must recognize that they need more than you have to offer.
We must take the cases of our children to our silent couch with us: we must think of them in the watches of the night, and when we cannot sleep because of care, they must share in those midnight anxieties. Our beds must witness to our cries… ‘Oh, that the dear boys and girls in my class might become the children of the living God!’
There it is: prayer. Prayer must be involved in our attempts to awaken the dead. We must realize with Spurgeon that “every real teacher’s power must come from on high. If you never enter your closet, and shut to the door, if you never plead at the mercy-seat for your child, how can you expect that God will [honor] you in its conversion?”
Elisha’s healing work continues as he “stretched himself upon the child,” causing Spurgeon to point out the irony: “He was a full-grown man, and the other a mere lad. Should it not be ‘he contracted himself.’” The word choice is significant because of the healer’s desire to overwhelmingly cover the child with his presence, and it’s no surprise that the beloved pastor draws from this point even more counsel to the teacher of children: it will require a great stretching of yourself—be it your vocabulary, your demeanor, and your sympathy—to reach the child. He states:
You must, dear teacher, impart to the young your own soul; you must feel as if the ruin of that child would be your own ruin. You must feel that, if the child remains under the wrath of God, it is to you as true a grief as if you were under that wrath yourself. You must confess the child’s sins before God as if they were your own, and stand as a priest before the Lord pleading on its behalf. The child was covered by Elisha’s body, and you must cover your class with your compassion, with the [agonizing] stretching forth of yourself before the Lord on its behalf.
And what comes of this compassionate effort of Elisha to be stretched for the sake of this young boy? Awakened life! First his body became warm, and so with perseverance, Elisha stretched himself upon the boy a second time, which prompted the sleeper to sneeze seven times. And then, finally, this boy who was dead moments before opened his eyes!
As a parent, this moment of victory is something I crave to experience with my children, to see their eyes opened to the truth of the Gospel and to hear evidence of their hearts’ receptivity to the Holy Spirit’s invitation. I long to watch their resurrection, and if you’ve made it this far into my ramblings about an old dead preacher talking about a story of an old dead prophet, I’m guessing you feel that way to, either for your own children or for the precious ones you’ve been entrusted to teach.
Be encouraged by the passionate, persistence of Elisha. Remember the true state of your children as spiritually dead. Entrust your prayers and efforts to witness to them to the quickening power of the Holy Spirit who is the only force able to awaken them. And finally, be content with the smallness of a sneeze in response. As Spurgeon says,
Any form of action would indicate life, and content the prophet… The fresh air entering afresh into the lungs might well compel a sneeze. The sound was nothing very articulate or musical, but it betokened life. This is all we should expect from young children when God gives them spiritual life. Some church members expect a great deal more, but for my part I am satisfied if the children sneeze—if they give any true sign of grace, however feeble or indistinct. If the dear child does but feel its lost estate, and rest upon the finished work of Jesus, though we only find out the fact by a very indistinct statement, not such as we should accept from a doctor of divinity, or expect from a grown-up person, should we not thank God, and receive the child, and nurse it for the Lord?
And to that I say, “Amen.”
If you liked what “The Soul Winner” said on this subject, check out the whole book here or here.