Shepherding with Spurgeon

Weekly Newsletter for Pastors from SpurgeonBooks

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR PASTORS (BY SPURGEON)

The surest way to maintain variety in your preaching is to keep to the mind of the Holy Spirit in the particular passage under consideration. No two texts are exactly similar; something in the connection or drift of the passage gives to each apparently identical text a shade of difference. Keep to the Spirit’s track and you will never repeat yourself or be short of matter: his paths drop fatness.

A sermon, moreover, comes with far greater power to the consciences of the hearers when it is plainly the very word of God—not a lecture about the Scripture, but Scripture itself opened up and enforced. It is due to the majesty of inspiration that when you profess to be preaching from a verse you do not thrust it out of sight to make room for your own thinkings.

SERMON ILLUSTRATION FROM SPURGEON

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

One springtime I discovered a bird’s nest in which there were a number of little birds. They were not fledged enough to fly, and their judgments were not well developed. Therefore, they mistook me for their mother or father. I would not touch them, but I held my fingers over them, and they opened their mouths wide—even more, the little creatures seemed to me as if they were all mouth. I could not see any other part of their bodies; all seemed lost in one great vacuum.

If you have ever seen the mother bird come to the nest with a worm in its mouth, you have noticed that, in an instant, all her little ones are up and eager to swallow that worm. She can only fill the mouth of one, and she can scarcely do that, for no sooner has it swallowed what she gives it than it begins to gape again. So the parent birds have to keep flying very fast, all day long, collecting food for their family.

The little birds in their nests are far more sensible than we are. When God hovers over us with his wide-spread wings and covers us with his warm feathers, he needs to say to each one of us, “Open wide your mouth and I will fill it” (Psalm 81:10). But the little birds take good care, without any teaching, to open their mouths wide that their mothers may fill them.

RESOURCE FOR PASTORS

Celebrate Christmas with Spurgeon's best sermons.

If you’re looking for refreshment as you prepare to celebrate Christmas (and preach the glorious of the Incarnation, yet again!), I highly recommend reading Spurgeon’s class Christmas and Christmas Eve sermons. These sermons are so rich and help us all remember the wonderful gift of God's Son that came down at Christmas.

If you want to read Spurgeon's Christmas sermons, check out Spurgeon on Christmas. This book is a compilation of 14 classic Spurgeon sermons on Christmas, the incarnation, and the birth of our Lord. There's still time to order and read this book before Christmas!

Buy Spurgeon on Christmas today on Amazon.

ONE MORE REMINDER: PREACH JESUS THIS WEEKEND

“Preach Christ, and Christ, and Christ, and Christ, and nothing else but Christ.” — Charles Spurgeon