Shepherding with Spurgeon

Weekly Newsletter for Pastors from SpurgeonBooks

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR PASTORS (BY SPURGEON)

Today, there is the temptation of love for intellectual novelty. Instead of the old, old gospel, and the old, old Book, for which God be thanked forever, we are to place science, which is generally conjecture, in the place of revelation; and the thoughts of men are to cover and bury the sublime thoughts of God. I see ministers and churches deluded and led astray by these temptations. As for me, if no one else will say it, I purpose in my heart not to defile myself with this portion of the king’s meat, nor with the wine which he drank. We need still to have old-fashioned believers who will sing the verse—

“Should all the forms that men devise
Assault my faith with treacherous art,
I’d call them vanity and lies,
And bind the gospel to my heart.”

God send us many Daniels of that sort!

SERMON ILLUSTRATION FROM SPURGEON

Spurgeon was a master illustrator. You can use this illustration in your own preaching to describe the foolishness of listening to false teaching.

When you go to market, if you are a sensible person, you do not turn aside from all the good wares and fair merchandise to waste your time and your money over the quack vendor of useless medicine, which he advertises with large pictures and loud talk. Your common sense directs you to seek wholesome food and useful articles, but there are credulous people ready to be caught with any bait.

So, too, there is no lack of simpletons in all our congregations: good, thoughtless people, lame and limping in all their walk, troubled with skepticism and plagued with curiosity. Unstable as water, they shall not excel.

ONE MORE REMINDER: PREACH JESUS THIS WEEKEND

“Leave Christ out of your preaching, and you have taken the milk from the children, you have taken the strong meat from the men; but if your object as a teacher or preacher is to glorify Christ, and to lead men to love him and trust him, why, that is the very work upon which the heart of God himself is set. The Lord and you are pulling together, and God the Holy Spirit can set his seal to a work like that.” — Charles Spurgeon