Baptists -- Sermons; Sermons, English -- 19th century
But I come back to the place from which I started. This farm is, by
choice, by purchase, by enclosure, by cultivation, by preservation,
entirely the Lord's. See, then, the injustice of allowing any of the
laborers to call even a part of the estate his own. When a great man
has a large farm of his own, what would he think if Hodge the ploughman
should say, "Look here, I plough this farm, and therefore it is mine: I
shall call this field Hodge's Acres"? "No," says Hobbs, "I reaped that
land last harvest, and therefore it is mine, and I shall call it Hobbs's
Field." What if all the other laborers became Hodgeites and Hobbsites,
and so parcelled out the farm among them? I think the landlord would
soon eject the lot of them. The farm belongs to its owner, and let it be
called by his name; but it is absurd to call it by the names of the men
who labor upon it. Shall insignificant nobodies rob God of his glory?
Remember how Paul put it: "Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos?" "Is
Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the
name of Paul?" The entire church belongs to him who has chosen it in his
sovereignty, bought it with his blood, fenced it by his grace,
cultivated it by his wisdom, and preserved it by his power. There is but
one church on the face of the earth, and those who love the Lord should
keep this truth in mind. Paul is a laborer, Apollos is a laborer, Cephas
is a laborer; but the farm is not Paul's, not so much as a rood of it,
nor does a single parcel of land belong to Apollos, or the smallest
allotment to Cephas; for "Ye are Christ's." The fact is that in this
case the laborers belong to the land, and not the land to the laborers:
"For all things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas." "We
preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your
servants for Jesus' sake."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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