posted by Phil Johnson
The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "Ripe Fruit," a sermon preached 14 August 1870 at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, London.
he church wants mature Christians very greatly, and especially when there are many fresh converts added to it. New converts furnish impetus to the church, but her backbone and substance must, under God, lie with the mature members.We want mature Christians in the army of Christ, to play the part of veterans, to inspire the rest with coolness, courage, and steadfastness; for if the whole army is made up of raw recruits the tendency will be for them to waver when the onslaught is fiercer than usual. The old guard, the men who have breathed smoke and eaten fire before, do not waver when the battle rages like a tempest, they can die but they cannot surrender. When they hear the cry of "Forward," they may not rush to the front so nimbly as the younger soldiers, but they drag up the heavy artillery, and their advance once made is secure. They do not reel when the shots fly thick, but still hold their own, for they remember former fights when Jehovah covered their heads.
The church wants in these days of flimsiness and timeserving, more decided, thoroughgoing, well-instructed, and confirmed believers.
We are assailed by all sorts of new doctrines. The old faith is attacked by so-called reformers, who would reform it all away. I expect to hear tidings of some new doctrine once a week. So often as the, moon changes, some prophet or other is moved to propound a now theory, and believe me, he will contend more valiantly for his novelty than ever he did for the gospel.
The discoverer thinks himself a modern Luther, and of his doctrine he thinks as much as David of Goliath's sword, "There is none like it." As Martin Luther said of certain in his day, these inventors of new doctrines stare at their discoveries like a cow at a new gate, as if there were nothing else in all the world but the one thing for them to stare at.
We are all expected to go mad for their fashions, and march to their piping. To whom we give place; no, not for an hour.
They may muster a troop of raw recruits, and lead them whither they would, but for confirmed believers they sound their bugles in vain. Children run after every new toy; any little performance in the street, and the boys are all agog, gaping at it; but their fathers have work to do abroad, and their mothers have other matters at home; your drum and whistle will not, draw them out. For the solidity of the church, for her steadfastness in the faith, for her defense against the constantly recurring attacks of heretics and infidels, and for her permanent advance and the seizing of fresh provinces for Christ, we want not only your young, hot blood, which may God always send to us, for it is of immense service, and we cannot do without it, but we need also the cool, steady, well-disciplined, deeply-experienced. hearts of men who know by experience the truth of God, and hold fast what they have learned in the school of Christ.
May the Lord our God therefore send us many such; they are wanted.
And in that, an adult child who has run away from the faith is a tragedy, but he is a tragedy the church can then deal with as with all adult tragedies of the same stripe. And if he has abandoned the faith, it is on his head and not his father's.
The 
BSERVE carefully the order in which our Lord puts the two blessings he mentions;—first, life through believing on him, and then food to sustain that life;—first, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life;" and next to that, "I am that bread of life." Life comes first, and food follows afterwards. It is impossible for a dead man to feed, or to be fed; only the living can eat and drink.
ne thing I have tried to keep an eye on whilst teaching theology in Sicily is 
It seems that at a recent meeting of the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship International (FBFI), Dr. Dan Sweatt 
What? "Establish Elders"?
That is: you need to be a little more informed about the world God made than a bookish knowledge of how the family works if you want to be an elder/pastor in God's church. You need to have lived the faith before you start theorizing about the faith.
And if you don’t get the implication here, let me say it plainly: the pastorate/eldership is not for guys who are still working out their issues. And by that I mean this: it’s one thing to put someone in charge of a little to see if he can be trusted with more, and another to entrust the spiritual well-being of a flock of believers to someone who, himself, cannot be trusted with his own charge in his family. It’s ironic that ultimately the Bible says that the family is where we test men to see if they are suitable pastors and elders – because in our way of thinking, the family is more precious than the assembled believers. But in God’s economy, the church is where you put experienced men, and the family is where they gain that experience. The family is the lesser thing where men are tested, and the church is the greater thing where those who are qualified should go.
nthony Trollope was a Victorian novelist whose output and popularity rivaled Dickens. His books aren't as well known today as the Dickens classics, but they are still easily available and Trollope still has a passionate following.
Trollope grew up in a poor but aristocratic family. His father, though related to the landed gentry, failed at practically everything he ever attempted. In later years Anthony's mother, Frances Trollope, scored some remarkable successes as a writer (achieving fame but not much critical acclaim with Domestic Manners of the Americans [1832] and several novels). But her earnings were not enough to overcome her husband's failures, and the family ultimately fled to Belgium so that Anthony's father could avoid debtors' prison.
ine language amuses the ear, as the tinkling of their little bells pleases the continental coach-horses, but it cannot satisfy the soul any more than the aforesaid tintinabulations can supply the place of corn and hay.
So no grandstanding. Answer the two key questions and then provide your thoughts on how these two critical issues relate to each other in brief form. If you’re not one of these people who have so many harsh words for the “calvinists”, I’m asking you to resist your urges to fly to the defense of the Gospel and Jesus and all that’s holy and let these people have their say. I promise you: if anyone takes up this challenge, they will do far more harm to their own confession than you ever could by arguing with them. In other words: no rebuttals in the meta. I’ll delete those as well.
