I count seven days since I last posted. And though multiple things are bouncing around in my mind, none of them have bounded out just yet. So while the internal marination continues, I decided for the sake of the void to share again some fitly spoken words from Spurgeon’s Lectures. This week’s apples are from Chapter 17 with a call for “The Need of Decision for the Truth.” Spurgeon reminds us of the the standard of teaching to which we were committed:
We have a fixed faith to preach. …We are not let to fabricate the message as we go along. We are not sent forth by our Master with a general commission arranged on this fashion: “As you shall think in your heart and invent in your head, so preach. Keep abreast of the times. Whatever the people want to hear, tell them that, and they shall be saved.”
Instead, those grace-gifted to speak are to do so as those who speak the oracles of God. Ministers are stewards of the mysteries of God and must make the Word of God fully known to His people. So when preachers who edit or eclipse the truth come to give account to God,
neither will He give us a reward, and say, “Well done, good and faithful servant, thou hast mangled the gospel as judiciously as any man that ever lived before thee.”
Just the opposite. We preachers have
never been employed to originate the good news, but merely to repeat it…. If I have a servant in my house, and I send a message by her to the door, and she amends it on her own authority, she may take away the very soul of the message by so doing, and she will be responsible for what she has done. She will not remain long in my employ, for I need a servant who will repeat what I say, as nearly as possible, word for word; and if she does so, I am responsible for the message, she is not.
So,
When a prophet comes forward he must speak as from the Lord, and if he cannot do that, let him go back to his bed.
Perhaps there are too many preachers asleep in the pulpit offering nothing better than “articulate snoring.” Would that many whose job it is to open their mouths first have ears to hear and wills to decide.
2 Comments
Maybe it’s just because I read Numbers recently, but looking through Spurgeon’s quotes, I couldn’t help thinking the whole time of Balaam. What was the phrase.. ah yes, “Only the word that I speak to you, that you shall speak”. Even such a perverse pagan (who still tries to lead Israel into sin despite his prophesies) could do nothing but say, “The word that God puts in my mouth, that I must speak.” I pray that we who have God’s words written on our hearts and minds as well as on paper right there in front of us would be able to do nothing more or less than that.
What a great description of the stewardship of the Word of God! I pray for generation of preachers who will accurately and precisely teach the Word of God. Praise God for the ones who actually do it!