A camel, a gnat, and a preacher walk into a garden

Charles Spurgeon once preached a sermon called “Supposing Him To Be The Gardener.” It was a play off words from the text of John 20:15. Let us hear from the preacher:

You know the “him” to whom we refer, the ever-blessed Son of God, whom Mary Magdalene in our text mistook for the gardener. We will for once follow a saint in her mistaken track; and yet we shall find ourselves going in a right way. She was mistaken when she fell into “supposing him to be the gardener”; but if we are under his Spirit’s teaching we shall not make a mistake if now we indulge ourselves in a quiet meditation upon our ever-blessed Lord, “supposing him to be the gardener.”

It seems a dangerous thing to tamper with God’s word like that. Stick to the meaning of the text, buddy! The literal eyes of grammatical historians and historical grammaticians blaze with fire at the unspeakable indecency of the Spurgeon.

And yet, his sermon was owned by the Spirit. I defy any believer to read it without experiencing deep affection for Christ. Some of Spurgeon’s regular congregants said that, prior to this occasion, they didn’t really know what eloquence was. But how could it be, if he handled the text so carelessly? Because the mighty Spirit owned the Christ-bearing discourse in spite of its apparent unfaithfulness to the text.

Spurgeon was faithful to the whole text of the Bible in what he preached, and it hit with Holy Spirit power. It is better to place our emphasis upon the right doctrine, even if taken from the “wrong text,” than to insist too much upon any lesser matter, though exposited according to every modern standard of Calvie dispy excellence. Get us to Jesus as fast as you can preacher. Let your exposition be painstaking, but for the love of all things good and decent, let there be no more of this straining out exegetical gnats and swallowing doctrinal camels.

Do yourself a favor and suppose Christ to be the gardener with Heavy C here.