Shepherding with Spurgeon

Weekly Newsletter for Pastors from SpurgeonBooks

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR PASTORS (BY SPURGEON)

“Salvation belongs to the LORD.” (Jonah 2:9)

Jonah learned this sentence of good theology in a strange college. He learned it in the fish’s belly, at the bottom of the mountains, with the weeds wrapped about his head. Most of the grand truths of God have to be learned by trouble. They must be burned into us with the hot iron of affliction; otherwise we will not truly receive them. No man is competent to judge in matters of the kingdom of God until he first has been tried—since there are many things to be learned in the depths that we can never know in the heights. We discover many secrets in the caverns of the ocean, which, though we had soared to heaven, we could never have known.

He will best meet the needs of God’s people as a preacher who has had those needs himself. He will best comfort God’s Israel who has needed comfort. And he will best preach salvation who has felt his own need of it. When Jonah was delivered from his great danger, he was then capable of judging. And this was the result of his experience under his trouble: “Salvation belongs to the LORD.”

SERMON ILLUSTRATION FROM SPURGEON

Spurgeon was a master illustrator. You can use this illustration in your own preaching to describe God’s work in our trials.

Tribulations are treasures; and if we were wise, we should reckon our afflictions among our rarest jewels. The caverns of sorrow are mines of diamonds. Our earthly possessions may be silver, but temporal trials are, to the saints, invariably gold. We may grow in grace through what we enjoy, but we probably make the greatest progress through what we suffer. Soft gales may be pleasant for heaven-bound vessels, but rough winds are better. The calm is our way, but God hath his way in the whirlwind, and he rides on the wings of the wind. Saints gain more by their losses than by their profits. Health cometh out of their sicknesses, and wealth floweth out of their poverties.

ONE MORE REMINDER: PREACH JESUS THIS WEEKEND

“The preaching of Christ is the thunderbolt, the sound of which makes all hell shake.” — Charles Spurgeon