Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2352
“And there was great joy in that city.” Acts 8:8.
“Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached Christ to them,” and the result of his preaching was that “there was great joy in that city.” He had a very speedy and very remarkable success. He scarcely opened his mouth without gaining attention and had not long proclaimed his message before people willingly received it and many were converted to Christ, so that, “there was great joy in that city.”
What was the explanation of this wonderful blessing? Something had been done, years before, to prepare the way for Philip. There had come to that region a weary Man who sat on the well at Sychar and spoke to Samaria’s daughter concerning the Living Water! And she had heard, believed and been saved. And she, fallen woman as she had been, had gone back to the city to tell the men that she had met the Messiah, which is called Christ. In all probability, the work done by our Lord at Sychar had affected the whole district, so that, when Philip went to the city of Samaria, he found there a people prepared of the Lord. Jesus sowed the seed—Philip came and reaped the harvest!
Learn, therefore, that no good work for God is ever lost. If you have labored in a village or town and have seen no great success, someone else may see it. If you have prayed especially for the salvation of any person and labored to win that one for Christ, and yet have not brought that soul to a decision, someone else may do it. We are workers together, as well as workers together with God—and what one man begins, another may finish! Paul plants. Apollos waters. Someone else may come in to gather the increase—and if God gets the Glory, what matters it to you what part you have had in it? If your Lord and Master was satisfied with sowing the good Seed of the Kingdom, leaving Philip to reap the harvest, can you not be satisfied if you are called to do work that will not yield an immediate return?
Often, during my winter’s holiday, year after year, I have seen the carts coming down towards the breakwater at Men-tone, bringing huge masses of stone, weighing many tons, which were thrown into the sea. For a long time, I saw no result whatever of this effort. Tremendous blocks of stone were cast into the sea and covered by the waters. Yet I felt persuaded that something was being done out of sight, though nothing was visible to the eyes. After a while, the piles of stone began to show above the surface of the water and then we saw that the great foundation-work had been done. Now that the structure is nearly finished and they begin to square up, and put everything in order, we say, “how quickly the work goes on!” Yes, but it really went on just as quickly when we could not see anything of it! Those thousands of tons of stone were not lost—they all went to make the underwater foundation—and whatever is built upon it, afterwards, is not to have the credit of usefulness any more than that which lay down deep at the bottom of the sea.
Some of us may have to work on for years and never see any result of our toil. Let us not faint for a moment, nor be disheartened—some other person may come, by-and-by, and all men’s mouths may be filled with wonderment at the great work that he does! And yet, after all, He who reads history aright, even the great God who writes it, will know that this man who seems to be so successful owes much of his usefulness to the work of other persons who labored before him. We cannot tell how much the Master’s own service prepared the way for Philip’s success when he went down to Samaria.
And I believe that, in this great London, we shall see better and brighter days than these, because of all the work that has been done here in years gone by. Do not tell me that the preaching at Paul’s Cross by men who became martyrs for the faith were lost efforts! I do not believe that those declarations of the Word of God in Smithfield, by men who were burnt,
there, for their fidelity to Christ, will ever be lost! Let us not imagine that the glorious testimony for Christ of the long succession of Puritan preachers, who occupied yonder Churches across the water, will ever be lost! Neither shall it be that the witnessing in later times of John Newton, Romaine, Whitefield and the other faithful preachers of the Gospel shall be in vain, and that all they did shall be lost! No, London may be, at this time, far from what we want it to be, but, as surely as the labors of the Christ were not lost, so the Seed sown by those who came and labored for Him, and have now gone to their reward, shall spring up and bring forth fruit on some happier and sunnier day than this! When, perhaps, some of us shall sleep with our fathers, there shall come a day when there shall be great joy in this city as the direct result of our service for our Lord. In Cromwell’s time, if you had walked down Cheapside at a certain hour of the morning, it is said that you would have seen every blind down because in every house there was family prayer. And at that hour, every morning, you might have gone from window to window and have heard the singing of a Psalm at almost every merchant’s house in the city. It is not so, now, but it may be so again! Let us have faith in that Seed which lies still in the ground—it only needs someone to turn it up and it shall germinate and grow to the praise and Glory of God!