Let the word speak on its own terms

Further to my discussion with pyromaniac about allowing the Bible to speak, I found this great Spurgeon quote (from sermon No 289)

I think it is needful that when a minister gets his text, he should say what that text means honestly and uprightly. Too many preachers get a text and kill it. They wring its neck, then stuff it with some empty notions and present it upon the table for an unthinking people to feed upon. That man does not preach the whole counsel of God who does not let God’s Word speak for itself in its own pure, simple language.

If he finds one day a text like this: It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy, the faithful minister will go all the lengths of that text. And if on the morrow the Spirit of God lays home to his conscience this: Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life, or this other: Whosoever will, let him come, he will be just as honest with his text on that side as he was on the other.

He will not shirk the truth. He will dare to look at it straight in the face himself and then he will bring it up into the pulpit, and there say to it: O Word, speak for thyself, and be thou heard alone. Suffer me not, O Lord, to pervert or ministerpret thine own heaven-sent truth. Simple honesty to the pure Word of God is I think requisite to the man who would not shun to declare the whole counsel of God.