Baptists -- Sermons; Sermons, English -- 19th century
Brother worker, are you getting a little weary? Never mind, rouse
yourself, and plough on for the love of Jesus, and dying men. Our day of
work has in it only the appointed hours, and while they last let us
fulfil our task. Ploughing is hard work; but as there will be no harvest
without it, let us just put forth all our strength, and never flag till
we have performed our Lord's will, and by his holy Spirit wrought
conviction in men's souls. Some soils are very stiff, and cling
together, and the labor is heart-breaking; others are like the
unreclaimed waste, full of roots and tangled bramble; they need a steam
plough, and we must pray the Lord to make us such, for we cannot leave
them untilled, and therefore we must put forth more strength that the
labor may be done.
I heard some time ago of a minister who called to see a poor man who was
dying, but he was not able to gain admittance; he called the next
morning, and some idle excuse was made so that he could not see him; he
called again the next morning, but he was still refused; he went on till
he called twenty times in vain, but on the twenty-first occasion he was
permitted to see the sufferer, and by God's grace he saved a soul from
death. "Why do you tell your child a thing twenty times?" asked some one
of a mother. "Because," said she, "I find nineteen times is not enough."
Now, when a soul is to be ploughed, it may so happen that hundreds of
furrows will not do it. What then? Why, plough all day till the work is
done. Whether you are ministers, missionaries, teachers, or private
soul-winners, never grow weary, for your work is noble, and the reward
of it is infinite. The grace of God is seen in our being permitted to
engage in such holy service; it is greatly magnified in sustaining us in
it, and it will be pre-eminently conspicuous in enabling us to hold out
till we can say, "I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do."
We prize that which costs us labor and service, and we shall set all the
higher value upon the saved ones when the Lord grants them to our
efforts. It is good for us to learn the value of our sheaves by going
forth weeping to the sowing. When you think of the ploughman's ploughing
all day, be moved to plod on in earnest efforts to win souls. Seek--
"With cries, entreaties, tears to save
And snatch them from the fiery wave."
Doth the ploughman plough all day for a little bit of oats or barley,
and will not you plough all day for souls that shall live for ever, if
saved, to adore the grace of God, or shall live for ever, if unsaved, in
outer darkness and woe? Oh, by the terrors of the wrath to come and the
glory that is to be revealed, gird up your loins, and plough all day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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