Isaiah 1:13

The calling of assemblies, I cannot away with

Service not services

1.

Many think religion flourishes if services are well attended. But, unless we are “willing and obedient” our “fat things” will not make us fat. They will rather harm us. Paul says, “Ye serve the Lord Christ.” Your vocation is the main part of your service for Him, provided you are in the place where He would have you be. If you are not clear about that point, be sure and inquire of Him. In a well-ordered house there are many servants, and, if one tried to do another’s work, there would be confusion. Do your work and do it faithfully. If God has special and occasional service, beyond this, He will direct you to it.

2. Again, remember what the apostle says about service, “Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord”--fervent, that is, quite not, boiling. You might as well run a locomotive without steam as try and serve the Lord without fervour. How shall you get it? You can get it in a measure from the influence of those who themselves are warm in God’s service. Catch fire from such as Samuel Rutherford, whose volume reminds me of a contrivance they had before matches were invented. It was a kind of bottle, containing some mixture, into which you dipped the match, and it immediately took fire. These letters of Rutherford’s are just like that. When you feel dull, lukewarm, read one or two of those letters, and, provided your heart is sincere, see if it does not set you on fire. But we have better than that. We have Rutherford’s Master. The central source of holy zeal, of burning love, is there.

3. Again, be willing to do what is humble, what seems useless, if He so direct. It is a great trial of patience. Moses tended sheep forty years. God’s chief difficulty with us is, not filling, but emptying us; not edifying or building up, as it is pulling us down. Look at the history of the Church, and you will see that most, if not all, of those whom God has employed in a signal manner for His glory, have been, in one way or another, among the most afflicted of men either in heart or in body, sometimes in both. Therefore, do not be afraid of suffering; it helps service. The work of God is mostly hidden work, fully known to Him, known partly to those who are the immediate objects of it, scarcely known to ourselves. I am afraid, nowadays, there is a great deal too much speaking about the work done or doing. I have sometimes thought how well the apostles got on without newspapers--and the work was done all the same!

4. if we are thus doing God’s work fervently, humbly, patiently, though obscurely, looking to Him alone, we, like our Master, will finish the work that He has given us to do. Only as we abide in Christ, can we be able to complete our work. Mere machinery and outward activity are of no account without this daily dwelling in, and drawing from, Him. (T. Monod.)

Acceptable worship

To adore God for His goodness, and to pray to Him to make us good, is the sum and substance of all wholesome worship. Then is a man fit to come to church, sins and all, if he carry his sins into church not to carry them out again safely and carefully, as we are all too apt to do, but to cast them down at the foot of Christ’s Cross, in the hope (and no man ever hoped that hope in vain) that he will be lightened of that burden, and leave some of them, at least, behind him. (C. Kingsley, M. A.)