Shepherding with Spurgeon

Weekly Newsletter for Pastors from SpurgeonBooks

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR PASTORS (BY SPURGEON)

Nothing can compensate for the absence of teaching; all the rhetoric in the world is nothing more than chaff to the wheat in contrast to the gospel of our salvation. However beautiful the sower’s basket it is a miserable mockery if it be without seed.

The grandest discourse ever delivered is an ostentatious failure if the doctrine of the grace of God is absent from it; it sweeps over men’s heads like a cloud, but it distributes no rain upon the thirsty earth; and therefore the remembrance of it to souls taught wisdom by an experience of pressing need is one of disappointment, or worse.

A man’s style may be as fascinating as that of the authoress of whom one said, “that she should write with a crystal pen dipped in dew upon silver paper, and use for pounce the dust of a butterfly’s wing;” but to an audience whose souls are in instant jeopardy, what will mere elegance be but “altogether lighter than vanity?”

SERMON ILLUSTRATION FROM SPURGEON

Spurgeon was a master illustrator. You can use this illustration in your own preaching to describe the surprising nature of God’s Kingdom.

Perhaps accidentally Napoleon was a grand advancer of human liberty, since he first taught the old kings that the pretense of divine right could not keep crowns on unpopular heads, and that young men from the ranks might still mount a throne. He produced a code of laws, which, for simplicity of justice, has never been surpassed.

Still, he relied too much on coercion and the sword—his enormous armies were his bulwark and security. Strong battalions were the cornerstone of his empire, and though for a while he stood firm, and armies advancing against him were only like so many waves dashing against the rocks of his tremendous power, still after all his many wars he was overthrown. He was said to have uttered in St. Helena that memorable speech, “My empire has passed away. I founded it upon the sword, and it is gone. Jesus Christ established an empire upon love, and it will last forever.”

So will it last. When all that kings and princes can do with statecraft, and with power, shall have dissolved like frost in the sun, Christ’s kingdom must stand because it is based upon the law of love. His person is the incarnation of love, his teachings are the doctrines of love, his precepts are the rule of love, his Spirit is the creator of love, his whole religion is saturated with love, and because of this his kingdom cannot be moved.

ONE MORE REMINDER: PREACH JESUS THIS WEEKEND

“Christless sermons make merriment for hell.” — Charles Spurgeon