ENCOURAGEMENT FOR PASTORS (BY SPURGEON)
We believe in the gospel as God’s power to save. We know that, for every case of spiritual sickness, we have an infallible cure; we need not say to any man, “We have no good news from God for you.” We believe that there is a way of getting at all hearts. There is a joint in every sinner’s harness, though he be an Ahab, and we may draw the bow hopefully, praying the Lord to direct the arrow through it.
If we believe in God, nothing can be too hard or too heavy for us. If I believe only in myself, I feel that a hardened sinner may refuse to listen to my reasoning, and may not be moved by my affectionate address; but if I believe in the Holy Ghost, I feel that he can win a hearing, and carry conviction to the conscience. We believe, brethren, in the power of truth. We do not expect truth to be loved by all mankind; we do not expect the gospel to become popular among the great and the learned, for we remember that word of the apostle, “Brothers and sisters, consider your calling: Not many were wise from a human perspective, not many powerful, not many of noble birth” (1 Corinthians 1:26) but we do not believe that the gospel has become decrepit through old age.
SERMON ILLUSTRATION (BY SPURGEON)
Spurgeon was a master illustrator. You can use this illustration in your own preaching to describe the relationship between faith and reason.
Christians do not triumph over the world by reason. Not at all. Reason is a very good thing, and nobody should find fault with it. Reason is a candle: but faith is a sun. Well, I prefer the sun, though I do not put out the Candle. I use my reason as a Christian man; I exercise it constantly: but when I come to real warfare, reason is a wooden sword; it breaks, it snaps; while faith, that sword of true Jerusalem metal, cuts to the dividing of soul and body.