Gently! Gently!

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon

Genesis 33:13

And he said to him, My lord knows that the children are tender, and the flocks and herds with young are with me…

I. LET US VIEW JACOB AS AN EXAMPLE TO US. Tender consideration for the young and feeble.

1. How we may overdrive.

(1) Puzzling them with deep and controversial points of doctrine, and condemning them because they are not quite correct in their opinions (Romans 14:1).

(2) Setting up a standard of experience, and frowning at them because they have not felt all the sorrows or ecstasies which we have known.

(3) Requiring a high degree of faith, courage, patience, and other graces which in their case can only be tender buds.

(4) Fault-finding and never commending.

2. Why we should not overdrive the lambs.

(1) Common humanity forbids.

(2) Our own experience when we were young should teach us better.

(3) We may again become weak, and need great forbearance.

(4) We love them too well to be hard with them.

(5) Jesus thinks so much of them that we cannot worry them.

(6) The Holy Spirit dwells in them, and we must be gentle towards the faintest beginning of His work.

(7) We should be doing Satan's work if we did overburden them.

(8) We should thus prove ourselves to have little wisdom and less grace. If we kill the lambs now, where shall we get our sheep from next year?

(9) We dare not bear the responsibility of offending these little ones, for terrible woes are pronounced on those who do them wrong.

(10) We remember how tender Jesus is: and this brings us to our second point.

II. LET US VIEW JACOB AS A PICTURE OF OUR LORD JESUS. See His portrait in Isaiah 40:11.

1. The weak have a special place in His love.

2. He will not have it that any of them should die.

3. Therefore He never overdrives one of them.

4. But He suits His pace to their feebleness, "I will lead on softly" (Genesis 33:15).I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Has He not thus been very tender to us? " Thy gentleness hath made me great" (Psalm 18:35). Let us not fret and worry as though He were an exactor. We are not driven by Jehu, but led by Jesus. Let us rest in His love. At the same time let us not be slower than need be. Towards others let us be tenderness itself, for we are to love our neighbour as ourselves.

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