ENCOURAGEMENT FOR PASTORS (BY SPURGEON)
If our gospel is true, it will yet come to the front, and God will work for us; therefore are we “be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the Lord’s work” (1 Corinthians 15:58). If we do not see souls saved today or tomorrow, we will still work on.
Ours is not the unrequited toil of Sisyphus rolling uphill a stone which will rebound upon us, nor that of the daughters of Danaus who sought to fill a bottomless vessel. We are laboring for eternity, and we count not our work by each day’s advance, as men measure theirs; it is God’s work, and must be measured by his standard. Be well assured that, when time, and things created, and all that oppose themselves to the Lord’s truth shall be gone, every earnest sermon preached, and every importunate prayer offered, and every form of Christian service honestly rendered, shall remain embedded in the mighty structure which God from all eternity has resolved to raise to his own honor.
SERMON ILLUSTRATION (BY SPURGEON)
Spurgeon was a master illustrator. You can use this illustration in your own preaching to describe God’s preservation of his people.
Some talk of our being in grace and out of it, as if we were like rabbits that run in and out of their burrows: but, indeed, it is not so. The Lord’s love is a far more serious and abiding matter than this. He chose us from eternity, and he will love us throughout eternity. He loved us so as to die for us, and we may therefore be sure that his love will never die.