Shepherding with Spurgeon

Weekly Newsletter for Pastors from SpurgeonBooks

Thanks to The Voice of the Martyrs for sponsoring Shepherding with Spurgeon. Join The VOM Church Leader Network to access discipleship resources (including books, prayer journals, kids’ books, discussion guides/studies for your church, and more). Sign up for free here.

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR PASTORS (BY SPURGEON)

There are scores whose conversion is distinctly and directly traceable, not to doctrine (though that is often useful), nor experience, nor practice, though these are fruitful, but to the preaching of Christ. The most fertile sermons have always been the most Christly sermons. This is a seed which seldom rots under the clod. One may fall upon the stony ground, but it more often happens that the seed breaks the stone when it falls, and as Christ is a root out of a dry ground, so this finds root for itself even in dry, hard, stony hearts.

We ought to preach the law, we ought to thunder out the threatenings of God, but they must never be the main topic. Christ, Christ, Christ, if we want to see people converted.

• Do you want to convince yonder careless one? Tell him the story of the cross. Under God it will arrest his attention and awaken his thoughts.

• Would you subdue the carnal affections of yonder profligate? Preach the love of Christ, and that new love shall uproot the old.

• Would you bind up yonder broken heart? Bring forth Christ, for in him there is a cordial for every fear.

Christ is preached and we do rejoice, yes, and we will rejoice, for he is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16).

SERMON ILLUSTRATION FROM SPURGEON

Spurgeon was a master illustrator. You can use this illustration in your own preaching to describe the law revealing our sins, even though it cannot save us.

The law can do nothing for us except condemn us. The utmost it can do is to whip us out of our boasted self-righteousness and drive us to Christ. It puts a burden on our backs and makes us ask Christ to take it off. It is like a lancet; it probes the wound.

It is, to use a parable, like when some dark cellar has not been opened for years and is full of all kinds of loathsome creatures. We may walk through it not knowing they are there. But the law comes, takes the shutters down, lets light in, and then we discover what a vile heart we have, and how unholy our lives have been. And then, instead of boasting, we are made to fall on our faces and cry, “Lord, save or I perish. Oh, save me for your mercy’s sake, or else I will be cast away.”

RESOURCE FOR PASTORS

The book Spurgeon said every house should have (Yours, free!)*

“I wish that every house had in it a large-typed copy of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Well do I recollect, as a child, how many hours, how many days, I spent looking at the pictures in an old-fashioned Book of Martyrs, and wondering how the men of God suffered, as they did, so bravely.” — Spurgeon

If you haven’t read the Book of Martyrs, which tells the stories of Christians who gave everything for Christ from the early church to the Reformation, you need to put it on the top of your list.

My friends at The Voice of the Martyrs have put together a great updated adaptation of it with dozens of images, modernized English and testimonies of more recent martyrs. Their testimonies will inspire you to boldness and serve as a reminder that the same Spirit of Christ that strengthened Stephen, Peter and Paul is at work in you today.

If you join the VOM Church Leader Network (a free network for pastors), you can request a FREE copy of Foxe: The Voice of the Martyrs, 33 AD–Today. VOM will send you a beautiful hardback book.

The Church Leader Network is 100% free to join — sign up today.

ONE MORE REMINDER: PREACH JESUS THIS WEEKEND

“Let the dogs bark, it is their nature to. Go on preaching Christ crucified.” — Charles Spurgeon