Keeping the Flock from Poisonous Meadows

I’ve posted before from Spurgeon’s Lectures to My Students on the good labor of prayer as well as the demand for clarity in preaching. Here are a few additional appeals for the preacher to distinguish and deliver the truth from Spurgeon’s chapter on “The Necessity of Ministerial Progress.”

I have said that we must also learn to discriminate, and at this particular time that point needs insisting on. Many run after novelties, charmed with every invention: learn to judge between truth and its counterfeits, and you will not be led astray. Others adhere like limpets to old teachings, and yet these my only be ancient errors: prove all things, and hold fast that which is good. The use of the sieve, and the winnowing fan, is much to be commended. Dear brethren, a man who has asked of the Lord to give him clear eyes by which he shall see the truth and discern its bearings, and who, by reason of constant exercise of his faculties, has obtained an accurate judgment, is one fit to be a leader of the Lord’s host; but all are not such. It is painful to observe how many embrace anything if it be but earnestly brought before them. They swallow the medicine of every spiritual quack who has enough of brazen assurance to appear to be sincere. Be ye not such children in understanding, but test carefully before you accept. Ask the Holy Spirit to give you the faculty of discerning, so shall you conduct your flocks far from poisonous meadows, and lead them into safe pasturage. (p.207)

Be sure you have the truth, and then be sure you hold it. Be ready for fresh truth, if it be truth, but very chary how you subscribe to the belief that a better light has been found than than of the sun. Those who hawk new truth about the street, as boys do a second edition of the evening paper, are usually no better than they should be. (p.208)

Our “modern thought” gentry are doing incalculable mischief to the souls of men…. Souls are being damned, and yet these men are spinning theories. Hell gapes wide, and with her open mouth swallows up myriads, and those who should spread the glad tidings of salvation are “pursuing fresh lines of thought.” Highly cultured soul-murderers will find their boasted “culture” to be no excuse in the day of judgment. For God’s sake, let us know how men are to be saved, and get to the work: to be forever deliberating as to the proper mode of making bread while a nation dies of famine is detestable trifling. It is time we knew what to teach, or else renounced our office. (p.208)

Bold emphasis are mine in the quotes above; italicized are Spurgeon’s. These quotes would have fit well in The Truth War, sounding the call to safeguard the sheep from the flowery, yet poisonous, Emerging church meadow.

In case the subject of soul-murder is too heavy for your Friday afternoon, here’s a for-fun serving from the same chapter:

I heard one say the other day that a certain preacher had no more gifts for the ministry than an oyster, and in my own judgment this was a slander on the oyster, for that worthy bivalve shows great discretion in his openings, and knows when to close. (p.209)