Encourage Your Minister!

Spurgeon opens with a brief exposition of why Moses could never lead Israel into Canaan — because the Law can convict but never save, and only Joshua (whose name is the Hebrew form of Jesus) could give the people their inheritance — before settling on the surface lesson: that God is genuinely and tenderly considerate of his servants' courage, charging Moses to encourage Joshua because a discouraged leader cannot do the work, and drawing out three reasons why God takes this so seriously — his fatherly love for his children, his honor which is bound up in their success, and the fact that a leader's despondency spreads like an epidemic through an entire congregation, undermining prayer, making Satan's attacks easier, robbing the people of the infectious courage that carries them through trial. He then insists that God uses people rather than angels for this encouraging work, and catalogs who should be doing it: elderly saints whose decades of proved faithfulness make their testimony worth more than any argument (illustrated by Spurgeon's own grandfather calmly declaring that God had been faithful to him for seventy years), doctrinally knowledgeable members who should use their understanding to apply promises rather than cavil at sermons, naturally cheerful believers who should pursue and lift their despondent brothers rather than letting them sink in their marsh, and materially blessed members who should let generosity prevent poorer brothers from feeling beneath notice. He closes with an unusually personal appeal, delivered on behalf of his own biological brother who was beginning a new ministry in that building, explaining that ministers feel the weight of lost souls at all hours, are ambushed by Satan the moment they leave the pulpit, and are uniquely vulnerable to anonymous cowardly attacks — and calling the congregation to encourage their minister by consistent attendance, fervent prayer-meeting presence, open confession of conversion, consistency of life in the workplace, and active assistance in reaching the poverty-stricken neighborhood outside their doors, closing with a word to the unconverted that the single greatest encouragement they could offer would be to repent and trust Christ now.Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on October 18, 1863.