Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2601
“For who has despised the day of small things?” Zechariah 4:10.
IT is a very great folly to despise “the day of small things,” for it is usually God’s way to begin His great works with small things. We see it every day, for the first dawn of light is but feeble and yet, by-and-by, it grows into the full noontide heat and glory. We know how the early spring comes with its buds of promise, but it takes some time before we get to the beauties of summer or the wealth of autumn. How tiny is the seed that is sown in the garden, yet out of it there comes the lovely flower! How small is the acorn, but how great is the oak that grows up from it! The stream commences with but a gentle rivulet, but it flows on till it becomes a brook, and then a river—perhaps a mighty Amazon—before its course is run!
God begins with men in “the day of small things”—He began so with us. How little and how feeble were we when first we came upon the scene of action! He that is now a giant was once so feeble that he could not move from place to place except as he was carried in his mother’s arms. Let us, then, not despise “the day of small things,” as we see that God begins with little things in Nature and among the sons and daughters of men. And I am sure that He does so in the great work of His Church. Long ago He began to build a spiritual temple for His own habitation, but, at first, the stones of the foundation were hidden from the great mass of mankind. How little was known in the world at large concerning Abraham and his seed! How very, very slowly did the walls of that great temple rise! Even in the time of Zechariah, it was still “the day of small things” with the people of the Lord.
Comparatively speaking, it is still so, for what is the Christian Church compared with the great mass of the heathen world and of those who reject the Savior? Our Lord’s method of spreading His Truth among men was to begin with a handful of disciples in an upper room at Jerusalem, to fill them with His Spirit and then to let them be scattered over the whole known world. This is usually God’s plan of working in His Church and also in individual Believers. Of course there are various degrees of ability and Grace even among the Lord’s own people. One of the old Puritans said that some men are born with beards and, certainly, there are some Believers who, almost as soon as they are converted, seem to take great strides and to make speedy advances so that they soon become very useful and are even able to teach things which others only learn after long years of experience. But, generally speaking, this is the order of the growth of Grace in the heart, “First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.”
First, the Truth of God is heard and felt, and the heart bleeds under conviction of guilt. By-and-by another Truth is discovered and the wounded heart is bound up by faith in Christ. This faith grows to full assurance—there is a gradual conformity to the image of Christ—and that image becomes more and more clear till the man reaches the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ Jesus. But first there is the beginning which is small and afterwards there is the latter end which shows a great increase. It is within our souls as it is in the world—the day begins with the dawn, but the shining light “shines more and more unto the perfect day.”
Woe unto that man who despises “the day of small things” in the Church of Christ, or who despises “the day of smart things” in any individual Believer, for it is God’s day—it is a day out of which great things will yet come and, therefore, he that despises it really despises his Maker’s work and despises the great and glorious things which are to come out of the small things which are at present apparent! I know some professing Christians who, I am afraid, despise “the day of small things” in little Churches. There is gathered a small community of godly people. Perhaps they are poor and many of them illiterate. And some of you rich folk who think yourselves wonderfully intelligent—though I am not always sure that you are—if you happen to settle down in that village, you say that you would like to attend the little Chapel or mission room, but the minister puts his h’s in the wrong place and his speech is ungrammatical and, of course, that is very painful to your refined taste! Then the people are very poor and you hardly think that the Church is advancing at all, so to help it, you leave it alone! “God forbid,” you say, “that we should despise the day of small things!” But you are very sorry that everything is on such a small scale! You say that you pity the poor people, but, instead of helping them, you lie quietly by, or you go off to a more fashionable place where you meet with some of your own class and feel more at home. There, the h’s are put in properly, though the Gospel is left out of the preaching! But the people who attend are such a “respectable” sort of folk that you feel it is quite the correct thing to worship with them. If any of you have any respect for yourselves while acting in such a way as that, I hope you will soon discover that there is really nothing “respectable” in that kind of respectability! I mean that there is nothing that should make a man respected when he gives up his convictions and leaves his own true Brothers and Sisters for the sake of getting into a better class of society and seeming to be of a superior order to the godly poor people to whom he might be of real service.