Category: Shepherding with Spurgeon

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ENCOURAGEMENT FOR PASTORS (BY SPURGEON)

It is infamous to ascend your pulpit and pour over your people rivers of language, cataracts of words, in which mere platitudes are held in solution like infinitesimal grains of medicine in an Atlantic of utterance. Better far give the people masses of unprepared truth in the rough, like pieces of meat from a butcher’s block, chopped off anyhow, bone and all, and even dropped down in the sawdust, than ostentatiously and delicately hand them out upon a china dish a delicious slice of nothing at all, decorated with the parsley of poetry, and flavored with the sauce of affectation.

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Special thanks to the Christian Standard Bible for sponsoring this newsletter.

The CSB was created using optimal equivalence, a translation philosophy that pursues both linguistic precision to the original languages and readability in contemporary English. It’s a faithful translation that you (and your church) won’t be able to put down!

Click here to learn more about the CSB (and request a free CSB Bible).

SERMON ILLUSTRATION (BY SPURGEON)

Spurgeon was a master illustrator. You can use this illustration in your own preaching to describe the believer’s desire to be with Christ.

We are necessarily abroad through the day, looking after this or that work which needs attention, but the moment we are at liberty, we know where our nest is. It is with the hearts of many of us as it is with the needle in the mariner’s compass. Do you see it? It is pointing to the pole. If you will, you may put your finger on that needle, and turn it round. It points east now; yes, you turn it round till it points south; but take your finger off, it is back at once to its true pole; so is it with our hearts. Our hearts are with Christ on his throne, always magnetized and polarized for Christ, and we shall never rest until we get back to him. He is in our first thoughts in the morning, and our last meditations at night.

THANKS FOR READING

Brothers,

Thanks for reading the newsletter this week.

If this newsletter is encouraging, please share it with another pastor. You can forward this email to a pastor you know.

If someone forwarded this email to you, sign up to get another one every week. Click here to subscribe.

Blessings to your ministry,

Doug H.
Creator of SpurgeonBooks
Preaching Pastor of Pillar Church of Washington DC

Get wisdom encouragement for Spurgeon in your inbox every week. Subscribe to the The Pastor’s Note newsletter for free.

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR PASTORS (BY SPURGEON)

The Lord loves his church and he loves to see her full of courage and confidence; but, sometimes, her ministers appear to labor in vain, and to spend their strength for nothing. The services in connection with the various ministries of the church appear to be like plowing upon a rock. The bread is cast upon the waters, according to the Lord’s command; but it is not found again even after many days have passed away. At such times, the church begins to tremble; she is full of fear. She cannot give up her mission, which is, the enlightenment of the world; but she is very apt to continue in it with a faint and feeble heart; and, consequently, to do what she is doing as a matter of mere routine, with very little zeal, or love, or hope, or joy.

Now, beloved, the Lord would not have it so. He intends that his cause and kingdom shall prosper in the world. It is written concerning the Messiah, “He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth: and the isles shall wait for his law;” and he would not have his people to be discouraged.

Cheer up, workers for Christ. Be encouraged. those who are seeking to serve the Lord. Have full assurance that the Lord has a people whom he means to save, they will be saved, and are being saved now, and that it becomes us to see to it that we help, each one of us according to his or her own measure, in this glorious work.

SERMON ILLUSTRATION (BY SPURGEON)

Spurgeon was a master illustrator. You can use this illustration in your own preaching to describe serving God through sickness.

How many daughters of pain do I know, and sons of affliction—perhaps even from their birth the subjects of some grievous infirmity that has cast a shadow over their whole lives! There lies, at Dundee, at this present moment, a man who has been confined to his bed, I think it is now fifty-six years. I have his photograph at home, and the friend who sent it to me wrote, “I send you the likeness of the happiest man in Dundee, and one of the most useful, too, for he is a great soul-winner though he cannot raise himself from a constantly prostrate position.” He talks so sweetly of Christ and of the upholding power of divine grace that he leads many to put their trust in Jesus Christ.

THANKS FOR READING

Brothers,

Thanks for reading the newsletter this week.

If this newsletter is encouraging, please share it with another pastor. You can forward this email to a pastor you know.

If someone forwarded this email to you, sign up to get another one every week. Click here to subscribe.

Blessings to your ministry,

Doug H.
Creator of SpurgeonBooks
Preaching Pastor of Pillar Church of Washington DC

Get wisdom encouragement for Spurgeon in your inbox every week. Subscribe to the The Pastor’s Note newsletter for free.

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR PASTORS (BY SPURGEON)

For the herald of the gospel to be spiritually out of order in his own proper person is, both to himself and to his work, a most serious calamity; and yet, my brethren, how easily is such an evil produced, and with what watchfulness must it be guarded against!

Traveling one day by express from Perth to Edinburgh, we suddenly came to a dead stop, because a very small screw in one of the engines—every railway locomotive consisting virtually of two engines—had been broken, and when we started again we were obliged to crawl along with one piston-rod at work instead of two. Only a small screw was gone, if that had been right the train would have rushed along its iron road, but the absence of that insignificant piece of iron disarranged the whole. A train is said to have been stopped on one of the United States’ railways by flies in the grease-boxes of the carriage wheels.

The analogy is perfect; a man in all other respects fitted to be useful, may by some small defect be exceedingly hindered, or even rendered utterly useless. Such a result is all the more grievous, because it is associated with the gospel, which in the highest sense is adapted to effect the grandest results.

RESOURCE FOR PASTORS

Special thanks to the Christian Standard Bible for sponsoring the Pastor’s Note newsletter. The CSB is both accurate and readable. So that you (and your flock) can read God’s Word with confidence, clarity, and precision.

Click here to learn more about the CSB (and request a free CSB Bible).

SERMON ILLUSTRATION (BY SPURGEON)

Spurgeon was a master illustrator. You can use this illustration in your own preaching to describe prayers that glorify God.

A person cannot always speak in the name of another; cannot do it at all unless he has received an authorization so to do. Then he stands as that person’s deputy; stands in his place; speaks in his name. I am sure that nine out of ten of the prayers of Christians are not offered in the name of Christ, and could not be. It would be a sin against Christ for such prayers to be supposed to be the prayers of Christ. But when we talk of the Spirit of God, and we dare ask in the name and use the seal of Christ, to set his signature at the bottom of our petition, then, brethren, depend upon it. Christ will do it.

THANKS FOR READING

Brothers,

Thanks for reading the newsletter this week.

If this newsletter is encouraging, please share it with another pastor. You can forward this email to a pastor you know.

If someone forwarded this email to you, sign up to get another one every week. Click here to subscribe.

Blessings to your ministry,

Doug H.
Creator of SpurgeonBooks
Preaching Pastor of Pillar Church of Washington DC

Get wisdom encouragement for Spurgeon in your inbox every week. Subscribe to the The Pastor’s Note newsletter for free.

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR PASTORS (BY SPURGEON)

Sound information upon scriptural subjects your hearers crave for, and must have. Accurate explanations of Holy Scripture they are entitled to, and if you are “an interpreter, one of a thousand,” a real messenger of heaven, you will yield them plenteously. Whatever else may be present, the absence of edifying, instructive truth, like the absence of flour from bread, will be fatal. Estimated by their solid contents rather than their superficial area, many sermons are very poor specimens of godly discourse.

I believe the remark is too well grounded that if you attend to a lecturer on astronomy or geology, during a short course you will obtain a tolerably clear view of his system; but if you listen, not only for twelve months, but for twelve years, to the common run of preachers, you will not arrive at anything like an idea of their system of theology. If it be so, it is a grievous fault, which cannot be too much deplored. Alas! the indistinct utterances of many concerning the grandest of eternal realities, and the dimness of thought in others with regard to fundamental truths, have given too much occasion for the criticism!

SERMON ILLUSTRATION (BY SPURGEON)

Spurgeon was a master illustrator. You can use this illustration in your own preaching to describe the wonderful diversity and unity of the church.

Diamonds are not all of one shape; in a natural state the crystals are of various forms, and are further altered in the process of cutting: their colors, too, vary greatly. Each stone has its own peculiar character and consequent value: some are more precious, others less so. So is it with the people of God: they are not all alike; but each has his or her particular character, as diamonds have their color, form, and value.

THANKS FOR READING

Brothers,

Thanks for reading the newsletter this week.

If this newsletter is encouraging, please share it with another pastor. You can forward this email to a pastor you know.

If someone forwarded this email to you, sign up to get another one every week. Click here to subscribe.

Blessings to your ministry,

Doug H.
Creator of SpurgeonBooks
Preaching Pastor of Pillar Church of Washington DC

Get wisdom encouragement for Spurgeon in your inbox every week. Subscribe to the The Pastor’s Note newsletter for free.

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR PASTORS (BY SPURGEON)

The surest way to maintain variety 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 (BY SPURGEON)

Spurgeon was a master illustrator. You can use this illustration in your own preaching to describe grace.

Suppose I was in a burning building, and a man brought to the house a fire escape of a very unusual shape, but one that he assured me had been the means of saving thousands of lives. Do you think that I should object to trust myself to it because it was such a peculiar shape? Of course, I should not be so foolish.

Then why are sinners so foolish as to object to the shape of the fire escape that God has designed to rescue them from everlasting burnings? What could be better than the divine plan of substitution?

THANKS FOR READING

Brothers,

Thanks for reading the newsletter this week.

If this newsletter is encouraging, please share it with another pastor. You can forward this email to a pastor you know.

If someone forwarded this email to you, sign up to get another one every week. Click here to subscribe.

Blessings to your ministry,

Doug H.
Creator of SpurgeonBooks
Preaching Pastor of Pillar Church of Washington DC

Get wisdom encouragement for Spurgeon in your inbox every week. Subscribe to the The Pastor’s Note newsletter for free.

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR PASTORS (BY SPURGEON)

Some brothers are done with their text as soon as they have read it. Having paid all due honor to that particular passage by announcing it, they feel no necessity further to refer to it. They touch their hats, as it were, to that part of Scripture, and pass on to fresh fields and pastures new. Why do such men take a text at all? Why limit their own glorious liberty? Why make Scripture a horsing-block by which to mount upon their unbridled pegasus? Surely the words of inspiration were never meant to be boot-hooks to help a Talkative to draw on his seven-leagued boots in which to leap from pole to pole.

RESOURCE FOR PASTORS

Special thanks to the Christian Standard Bible for sponsoring the Pastor’s Note newsletter. The CSB is both accurate and readable. So that you (and your flock) can read God’s Word with confidence, clarity, and precision.

Click here to learn more about the CSB (and request a free CSB Bible).

SERMON ILLUSTRATION (BY SPURGEON)

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

There are some people, who seem as if they would not be converted unless they can see some eminent minister. Even that will not suit some of them; they want a special revelation from heaven. They will not take a text from the Bible,—though I cannot conceive of anything better than that;—but they think that, if they could dream something, or if they could hear words spoken, in the cool of the evening, by some strange voice in the sky, then they might be converted.

Well, brothers and sisters, if you will not eat the apples that grow on trees, you must not expect angels to come and bring them to you. We have a more sure word of testimony in the Bible than we can have anywhere else. If you will not be converted by that Word, it is a great pity; and it is much more than a pity, it is a great sin. If your Lord and Master condescended to receive consolation from an angel whom he had himself created, you ought to be willing to gather comfort from the feeblest speech of the poorest person, from the least of the people of God when they try to cheer you.

THANKS FOR READING

Brothers,

Thanks for reading the newsletter this week.

If this newsletter is encouraging, please share it with another pastor. You can forward this email to a pastor you know.

If someone forwarded this email to you, sign up to get another one every week. Click here to subscribe.

Blessings to your ministry,

Doug H.
Creator of SpurgeonBooks
Preaching Pastor of Pillar Church of Washington DC

Get wisdom encouragement for Spurgeon in your inbox every week. Subscribe to the The Pastor’s Note newsletter for free.

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR PASTORS (BY SPURGEON)

I prefer a sermon in which there may be no vast talent, and no great depth of thought, but what there is has come fresh from the crucible, and like molten metal burns its way. I once knew a lad who, when he used to go home from the smithy where he worked, was roughly handled by the boys of the village until his master suggested to him a plan of defense that was wonderfully efficacious. He took a rod of iron, and just before he went home he blew up the fire and made the iron hot. When the boys came around him he warned them not to touch his stick. After one trial of it they obeyed the admonition and reverently kept their distance.

I do not quote the example with any commendation of the actual fact, but with this moral in view—heat your sermon red hot, and it will be likely to be remembered by all who come into contact with it. Everything gives way before fire.

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Click here to learn more about the CSB (and request a free CSB Bible).

SERMON ILLUSTRATION (BY SPURGEON)

Spurgeon was a master illustrator. You can use this illustration in your own preaching to describe the importance of growing as a Christian.

If you go into a forest at a certain time of the year, you may see a great number of trees that have no leaves on them. How are you to know which are alive and which are not? Well, you would soon know if you could look at their roots. If a tree has been growing, if its roots have taken hold on the soil, you may pull it, but you will not stir it. There it stands.

Similarly, growth in grace brings stability in grace. You who have faith, ask God that you may have growing faith. A living faith is a growing faith, and a growing faith is a living faith. Pray, therefore, that you may “grow in grace” (2 Peter 3:18).

THANKS FOR READING

Brothers,

Thanks for reading the newsletter this week.

If this newsletter is encouraging, please share it with another pastor. You can forward this email to a pastor you know.

If someone forwarded this email to you, sign up to get another one every week. Click here to subscribe.

Blessings to your ministry,

Doug H.
Creator of SpurgeonBooks
Preaching Pastor of Pillar Church of Washington DC

Get wisdom encouragement for Spurgeon in your inbox every week. Subscribe to the The Pastor’s Note newsletter for free.

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR PASTORS (BY SPURGEON)

Public prayer would be a far better means of grace to the people if those who utter petitions in public would seek preparation of heart from the Lord and enter upon the exercise with careful thought. Surely it is not sufficient to repeat a round of godly expressions which have become current in the church, but we ought to speak with the Spirit and with the understanding in our approaches to God, so that the thoughts of our fellow Christians may be excited, and their hearts united with us in our public devotions. He who prays in public a dull prayer, devoid of all thought and meditation, damps the flame of devotion, whereas it was his duty to have added fuel thereto. I invite those who take part in our prayer-meetings to lay this matter to heart.

RESOURCE FOR PASTORS

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SERMON ILLUSTRATION (BY SPURGEON)

Spurgeon was a master illustrator. You can use this illustration in your own preaching to describe the importance of being bold about Christ.

What would Her Majesty think of her soldiers if they should swear they were loyal and true, and were to say, “Your Majesty, we prefer not to wear these uniforms. Let us wear the dress of civilians! We are honest men and upright, but we do not care to stand in your ranks, acknowledged as your soldiers. We would rather slink into the enemy’s camp, and into your camps too, and not wear anything that would mark us as being your soldiers!”

Some of you do the same with Christ. You are going to be secret Christians, are you, and slink into the devil’s camp, and into Christ’s camp, but acknowledged by none? Well, you must take the chance of it, if you will be so. But I would not like to risk it.

THANKS FOR READING

Brothers,

Thanks for reading the newsletter this week.

Question for you: How do you prepare for public prayers on Sunday morning? Do you have any great resources or habits that help you make this time meaningful? (Reply to this email with your answers — I’ll share the best answers next week)

If this newsletter is encouraging, please share it with another pastor. You can forward this email to a pastor you know.

If someone forwarded this email to you, sign up to get another one every week. Click here to subscribe.

Blessings to your ministry,

Doug H.
Creator of SpurgeonBooks
Preaching Pastor of Pillar Church of Washington DC

Get wisdom encouragement for Spurgeon in your inbox every week. Subscribe to the The Pastor’s Note newsletter for free.

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR PASTORS (BY SPURGEON)

Horses are not to be judged by their bells or their trappings, but by limb and bone and blood; and sermons, when criticised by judicious hearers, are largely measured by the amount of gospel truth and force of gospel spirit which they contain. Brethren, weigh your sermons. Do not retail them by the yard, but deal them out by the pound. Set no store by the quantity of words which you utter, but strive to be esteemed for the quality of your matter. It is foolish to be lavish in words and begrudging in truth. He must be very destitute of wit who would be pleased to hear himself described after the manner of the world’s great poet, who says, “Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice: his reasons are as two graius of wheat hidden in two bushels of chaff; you shall seek all day ere you find them; and when you have them they are not worth the search.”

Rousing appeals to the affections are excellent, but if they are not backed up by instruction they are a mere flash in the pan, powder consumed and no shot sent home. Rest assured that the most fervid revivalism will wear itself out in mere smoke, if it be not maintained by the fuel of teaching.

RESOURCE FOR PASTORS

Get a free Bible

Special thanks to the Christian Standard Bible for sponsoring this newsletter.

The CSB was created using optimal equivalence, a translation philosophy that pursues both linguistic precision to the original languages and readability in contemporary English. It’s a faithful translation that you (and your church) won’t be able to put down!

Click here to learn more about the CSB (and request a free CSB Bible).

SERMON ILLUSTRATION (BY SPURGEON)

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

The next blessing is, “And I will write my law in their hearts.” This is more than knowing the law—infinitely more. “I will write the law, not merely on their understandings, where it may guide them, but in their hearts where it shall lead them.” Brethren, the Holy Spirit makes men love the will of God, makes them delight in all in which God delights, and abhor that which God abhorreth. It is well said in the text that God will do this, for certainly it is not what a man can do for himself. The Ethiopian might sooner change his skin or the leopard his spots. It is not what the minister can do, for though he may preach to the ear he cannot write God’s law on the affections. I have marvelled at the expression used in the text, “I will write my law in their hearts.” To write on a heart must be difficult work, but to write in a heart, in the very centre of the heart, who can do this but God? A man cuts his name upon a tree in the bark, and there it stands, and the letters grow with the tree; but to cut his name in the heart of the tree—how shall he accomplish this? And yet God doth divinely engrave his will and his law in the very heart and nature of man!

THANKS FOR READING

Brothers,

Thanks for reading the newsletter this week. I hope it encourages you to be careful in the pulpit this weekend.

If this newsletter is encouraging, please share it with another pastor. You can forward this email to a pastor you know.

If someone forwarded this email to you, sign up to get another one every week. Click here to subscribe.

Blessings to your ministry,

Doug H.
Creator of SpurgeonBooks
Preaching Pastor of Pillar Church of Washington DC

Get wisdom encouragement for Spurgeon in your inbox every week. Subscribe to the The Pastor’s Note newsletter for free.

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR PASTORS (BY SPURGEON)

Brothers, if you are not theologians you are in your pastorates just nothing at all. You may be fine rhetoricians, and be rich in polished sentences; but without knowledge of the gospel, and aptness to teach it, you are but a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. Verbiage is too often the fig-leaf which does duty as a covering for theological ignorance. Sounding periods are offered instead of sound doctrine, and rhetorical flourishes in the place of robust thought. Such things ought not to be.

The abounding of empty speeches and the absence of food for the soul will turn a pulpit into a box of bombast, and inspire contempt instead of reverence. Unless we are instructive preachers, and really feed the people, we may be great quoters of elegant poetry, and mighty retailers of second-hand windbags, but we shall be like Nero of old, fiddling while Rome was burning, and sending vessels to Alexandria to fetch sand for the arena while the populace starved for want of corn.

SERMON ILLUSTRATION (BY SPURGEON)

Spurgeon was a master illustrator. You can use this illustration in your own preaching to describe the power of prayer.

What can we do without your prayers? They link us with the omnipotence of God. Like the lightning-rod, they pierce the clouds and bring down the mighty and mysterious power from on high.

THANKS FOR READING

Brothers,

Thanks for reading the newsletter this week. I hope it encourages you to be mighty in the Word and steadfast in prayer.

If this newsletter is encouraging, please share it with another pastor. You can forward this email to a pastor you know.

If someone forwarded this email to you, sign up to get another one every week. Click here to subscribe.

Blessings to your ministry,

Doug H.
Creator of SpurgeonBooks
Preaching Pastor of Pillar Church of Washington DC