The sermon presents the church as both the recipient and the instrument of God’s blessing. Spurgeon connects sovereign grace with vocation: God saves and blesses people in order to make them useful to others, and he may providentially compel them into service. Every church member is personally responsible to participate rather than hide behind collective language or past accomplishments. The church should serve its neighborhood, support surrounding ministries and churches, and proclaim the gospel, trusting God to provide showers of truth, conversion, comfort, forgiveness, and holiness.
Theological center: God sovereignly blesses and sanctifies his church so that every member may serve as an instrument of grace and gospel blessing to the world.
Applications: Serve as an Individual Blessing · Teach in the Sabbath School · Open Arms to the Community · Continue Serving in the Present
Primary texts: Ezekiel 34:26 · Psalms 1:3 · 1 Corinthians 10:26
“And I will make them and the places round about my hill a blessing; and I will cause the shower to come down in his season; there shall be showers of blessing.” Ezekiel 34:26 THE chapter (Ezekiel 34) that I read at the commencement of the service is a prophetical one. And I take it, it has relation not to the condition of the Jews during the captivity and their subsequent happiness when they should return to their land, but to a state into which they should fall after they had been restored to their country under Nehemiah and Ezra, and in which state they still continue to the present day. The prophet tells us that the shepherds then, instead of feeding the flock, fed themselves. They trod the grass, instead of allowing the sheep to eat it, and they fouled the waters with their feet. Thi…