Baptists -- Sermons; Sermons, English -- 19th century
Take care, also, that you water every part of your religion, as the
farmer watered each plant. Pray for grace from on high that you may
never be parched and dried up. Perform to your faith, to your hope, to
your love, and to all the plants that are in your soul every other
service which the husbandman renders to his wheat. Give grace your
principal care, for it deserves it.
V. With this I close. Do this, because FROM THIS YOU MAY EXPECT YOUR
PRINCIPAL CROP. If religion be the principal thing, you may look to
religion for your principal reward. The harvest will come to you in
various ways. You will make the greatest success in this life if you
wholly live to the glory of God. Success or failure must much depend
upon the fitness of our object. It is of no use _my_ attempting to sing,
for I shall never be able to conduct a choir. I could not succeed in
that, but if I preach, I may succeed, for that is my work. Now you,
Christian man, if you try to live to the world you will not prosper, for
you are not fitted for it. Grace has spoiled you for sin. If you live to
God with all your heart you will succeed in it, for God has made you on
purpose for it. As he made the fish for the water, and the birds for the
air, so he made the believer for holiness, and for the service of God;
and you will be out of your element, a fish out of water, or a bird in
the stream, if you leave the service of God. The Eastern farmer's
prosperity hinges on his wheat, and yours upon your devotion to God. It
is to Godliness that you must look for your joy. Is there any bliss like
the bliss of knowing that you are in Christ, and are the beloved of the
Lord? It is to your religion that you must look for comfort on a sick
and dying bed, and you may be there very soon.
In the world to come what a crop, what a harvest will come of serving
the Lord! What will come out of all else? What but mere smoke? A man has
made a million of money, and he is dead. What has he got by his wealth?
A man's fame rings throughout the earth as a great and successful
warrior, and he is dead. What has he as the result of all his honors? To
live to the world is like playing with boys in the street for halfpence,
or with babes for bits of platter and oyster shells. Life for God is
real and substantial, but all else is waste. Let us think so, and gird
up our loins to serve the Lord. May the divine Spirit help us to sow
"the principal wheat," and to live in joyful expectation of reaping a
happy harvest according to the promise, "They that sow in tears shall
reap in joy."
SPRING IN THE HEART.
"Thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly: thou settlest the furrows
thereof: thou makest it soft with showers: thou blessest the springing
thereof."--PSALM 65:10.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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