Shepherding with Spurgeon

Weekly Newsletter for Pastors from SpurgeonBooks

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR PASTORS (BY SPURGEON)

Sin is like the shipment of goods which came from the east to this city in the olden time, which brought a pest infected with a disease in it. Probably it was but a small shipment, but yet it contained in it the deaths of hundreds of the inhabitants of London. In those days one piece of rag carried the infection into a whole town. So, if you permit one sin or false doctrine in a church knowingly and wittingly, none can tell the extent to which that evil may ultimately go. The church, therefore, is to be purged of practical and doctrinal evil as diligently as possible. That sour and corrupting thing which God abhors must be purged out, and it is to be the business of the Christian minister, and of all his fellow helpers, to keep the church free from it.

SERMON ILLUSTRATION FROM SPURGEON

Spurgeon was a master illustrator. You can use this illustration in your own preaching to describe the dangers of secret sin.

One danger of secret sin is that a man cannot commit it without being by-and-by betrayed into a public sin. If a man commit one sin, it is like the melting of the lower glacier upon the Alps, the others must follow in time. As certainly as you heap one stone upon the mound today, the next day you will cast another, until the heap reared stone by stone shall become a very pyramid. See the coral insect at work, you cannot decree where it shall stop its pile. It will not build its rock as high as you please; it will not stay until an island shall be created. Sin cannot be held in with bit and bridle, it must be killed.

ONE MORE REMINDER: PREACH JESUS THIS WEEKEND

“To preach Christ without his cross is to betray him with a kiss.” — Charles Spurgeon