Do you understand the simple command?
https://www.facebook.com/sing.f.lau/posts/2107171834360
October 15, 2011
FEED My Sheep! Hear that?
A Calvinist teacher quoted, in advocating the free offer of the gospel to all, quoted C.H. Spurgeon: "As Spurgeon observed, show me the elect and I shall preach only to them."
Spurgeon must be suffering from a severe bout
of gout when he reasoned thus. And the quoter is similarly unsound!
Does a preacher even need to personally know
who exactly are the elect in order to know that his preaching of the gospel is
only relevant to God's children, i.e. those elect that has been effectually
called out of their state of sins and death to that of grace of righteousness
and eternal life?
Supposing you are given a truckload of hay by
the Chief Shepherd and is commanded to go and feed His sheep, don't you already
know that your work is to feed the sheep, and not entertain the goat; don't you
know that your work is relevant ONLY to the sheep, and not the goats?
But you protest,
how can I distinguish the Shepherd's sheep from the Devil's goats*... they all
appear the same to me! But the Shepherd's sheep and the Devil's goats will
distinguish themselves under the sound of the gospel. (Just as dust and iron filings shall distinguish themselves in the presence of the magnetic field!)
Only the sheep are capable of hearing,
calling, and believing - all these are spiritual activities, performed by those
that possess spiritual/eternal life. 'Whosoever believes has eternal life' - this is a
statement declaring a fact.]
Does a preacher even need to know who
particularly the elect are for him to know that he has been sent to FEED the
sheep? And what has gone into his head to make him think that he has been sent
with the hay to turn goats into sheep? Pure milk and meat are for the living...
not for bringing lives to the dead. Hay is not for turning goats into sheep!
The Lord sends His servants to FEED the
living... God's elect that has been regenerated.
How woolly can new school Calvinists get?
As woolly as their close old-school Arminians
cousins!
In preaching, in the nature of the case, the
preacher indiscriminately addresses all the hearers present. He proclaims the
good news of the salvation that God has accomplished for His people in Christ
Jesus and applied personally to the elect by the Holy Spirit.
The preacher knows that the gospel is only
relevant, and good news to such, and no one else. What he has is relevant only
to the sheep in the audience, the gospel is good news to them. To others it is
foolishness.
1Cor 1:18 "For the preaching of the cross is to them
that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God."
