Do you trust in human ingenuity more than you trust in the everlasting God to accomplish his own will?
I was reading Spurgeon this morning, and something struck me. He wrote:
“I saw a girl on board a steamboat reading a book and crying as if her heart would break; but when I glanced at the volume, I saw that it was only one of those silly yellow-covered novels which load our railway bookstalls. Her tears were a sheer waste of moisture, and so are those which are produced by mere pulpit tale-telling and deathbed painting.”
That is a master-class example of the proper use of the weapon of words—otherwise known as the “serrated edge”—by the Baptist legend himself.
Spurgeon’s words ring as true today as when they were first published, if not more so in the late 1800s. A quick YouTube search for “sermon on love” will reveal countless examples of man after man giving a twenty-minute TED Talk full of emotional appeals and personal stories that attract the listener to the speaker rather than to the Word of God.
To this end, I will direct you to yet another powerful statement from Spurgeon. In his sermon “Christ and His Co-Workers,” he said:
“Suppose a number of persons were to take it into their heads that they had to defend a lion, a full-grown king of beasts! There he is in the cage, and here come all the soldiers of the army to fight for him. Well, I should suggest to them, if they would not object, and feel that it was humbling to them, that they should kindly stand back, and open the door, and let the lion out! I believe that would be the best way of defending him, for he would take care of himself; and the best ‘apology’ for the gospel is to let the gospel out.”
Brothers, your stories about yourselves display your lack of trust in Scripture to do what God sent it out to do, empowered by the Holy Spirit, in the church and the world:
"For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven
and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Isa. 55:10–11).
You will never squeeze every drop from Scripture in one lifetime. Christ is the living Word, and Christ is the living Water who never runs dry (John 1:1; 4:13–14; 7:37–38). So why add to it?
Because you trust human ingenuity more than God’s living Word, even though it is a double-edged sword that never dulls:
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword” (Heb. 4:12).
Instead of drawing God’s people to him, you draw them to yourself. Brothers, that is a burden no man can bear. But here is the good news—the silver lining, the great “shebang,” if you will.
Today, you can make the conscious and active decision to let the Word do the work.
You should know that this will take hard work, but it will be well worth it. Practically, that looks like a great deal of prayer, study, memorization, reading, and so on. Instead of spending hours this week figuring out which story you are going to tell about your life or which prop you are going to use to excite your audience, spend those hours wrestling with the text to understand what God is saying to the people he has tasked you with shepherding.
Learn to truly exegete and apply the text. The more it convicts you, the more it convicts your people—provided that you and they are truly regenerate followers of Christ Jesus.
Emotion is not bad when it comes from the text, but it is deadly when we use the world’s methods to evoke it. What you win them with is what you will win them to. So win them to the Word.
You will find that, as you make this change, you will be much more edified in your ministry, and the fruit you see will be truer and more beautiful. Your ministry will rest upon the indestructible spine of Christ rather than upon the human spine of straw.
[1] Charles H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner (Gideon House Books, 2016), 8. The work was originally published posthumously as The Soul-Winner; or, How to Lead Sinners to the Saviour (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1895).
[2] Charles H. Spurgeon, “Christ and His Co-Workers,” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vol. 42 (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1896), 256.
