Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 885
Delivered on Sunday Morning, AUGUST 15, 1869, by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“Serving the Lord.”- Romans 12:11.
THE harmony of Scripture is admirable. Everything is proportionate and balanced. He who weighed the mountains in scales has had a clear eye to the adjustment of truth in His Word. Within these pages you find a sufficiency of doctrine, for it is the basis of practice. You read abundance of promise, for it is the support of perseverance. But, you meet, also, with frequency of precept, for it is the spur and guide of holiness. We could not afford to dispense with a verse of Holy Writ. The removal of a single text, like the erasure of a line of a great epic, would mar the completeness and connection of the whole. As well pluck a gem from the high priest’s breastplate as erase a line of Revelation.
Absolutely perfect are the proportions of inspired Truth and it is noteworthy that practical Truth has the greatest prominence. It has been remarked by an able Divine that for every exhortation that we have in the New Testament to pray, we have five commands either to work or to give. While the doctrinal part of Scripture is exceedingly full, the practical part is not one whit less copious, and, indeed, the proportion which, in Christ’s ministry, was given to instruction in practical godliness is vastly larger than the share allotted to it in most modern ministries.
God has given to us in Scripture something concerning every necessary thing, but most of all upon the most necessary, namely, holy living. As the Lord distributes, so must we receive. We are not to neglect the knowledge of the Doctrines of Grace. We are diligently to feed upon the promises, but we are also, with affection and reverence, to regard the precepts.
In the verse before us, this same harmony is noteworthy. “Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.” The ordinary duties of our calling we are not called upon to forget—we are not to neglect the shop for the sanctuary—or the counting house for the class meeting. The legs of a fool are not equal, but the holiness of a Believer should always be well arranged. Whatever our position in life may be we are so to order our conduct in it as to commend ourselves for diligence and uprightness both to the Church and to the world. The Christian is not to be a worse tradesman because of his religion, but a better! He is not to be a less skilled mechanic, but he is to be all the more careful in his work.
It were a pity, indeed, if Paul’s tents were the worst in the store and Lydia’s purple of the poorest dye. At the same time observe how the next clause calls our equal attention to the higher and more spiritual matter. “Fervent in spirit.” We must not neglect the spiritual because of the pressing demands of the temporal. Perhaps we are more likely to forget this precept than the former, therefore let us lay it the more to heart. We are to maintain the holy fire within our souls constantly burning, for that is the meaning of “fervent.” Our love to God must not merely be there in a small degree, but it must exist as a vigorous flame. Our spirit must be kept warmly zealous, burningly affectionate. Our spiritual nature is to glow like coals of fire.
The keystone of the arch of life is to be a desire for God’s Glory. At this point the public and the private, the bodily and the spiritual, are to be as one—both in business diligence and spiritual fervency we are to set the Lord always before us. Our everyday labor is to be consecrated into priestly sacrifice, our inward fervor is to be like temple incense and so, our bodies being temples of the Holy Spirit, we are ever to remain “serving the Lord.” My aim in this sermon will be to call upon my believing Brothers and Sisters to fulfill in their lives the meaning of the words which we have now selected as our text, “Serving the Lord,” or as it might be rendered, “doing the part of servants towards God.” “Servantizing”— waiting as servants upon the Most High.
I. And first, I shall have to notice THE ESSENTIALS OF ALL TRUE SERVICE TO GOD. NO one will fail to see that the very first essential must be that the man who would render service must beforehand be accepted as a servant. If a
stranger should, of his own accord, visit your farm and should commence driving the horses, milking the cows, reaping the wheat and so on—if you had never employed him he would be fulfilling the part of an intruder rather than the office of a servant.
Now, it is not every man who is fit to be a servant of God. In fact, in our fallen condition, none of us can be received into His household, even as hired servants. How should the thrice holy God be served by hands unwashed from sin? Lepers cannot stand at His altar, or the deformed dwell within His gates. Unregenerate man cannot serve God—their thoughts and ways are evil and defiled. Unto the wicked God says, “What have you to do to declare My statutes?” No form of homage rendered by the wicked can be acceptable. Until the person is justified, the work cannot be received.