The Spurgeon Series 1857 & 1858. Charles H. Spurgeon

and he permits me to provide a pension for old age, but that is not my object.” “I sell these goods,” said another one, “but the profit I get, God has; what I require for my own food and clothing, and for my household, that God gives back to me; for he has said, bread shall be given to me, and water shall be certain; but the rest is God’s, not mine; I do it all for God.” Now you do not understand that theory, do you? It is not business. No, sirs, but if your hearts were right you would understand it, for it is God’s gospel — the giving up of all to Christ; the giving up of everything to his cause. When we do that, then we shall understand this passage — “Do you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?” For your business, though it is carried on in your name, will, unknown to men, be carried on in God’s name too. Let me beg of you, however, not to tell everyone, if you do it. I have known some that hang the gospel in the window; more attractively, sometimes, than ribbons. I do hate the fanatic, who, when you go to buy ribbons or pay a bill, asks you to have a tract, or invites you into the back parlour to pray; you will see at once what he is after. He wants to sanctify his counter; so that as people catch flies with honey, he may catch you with religion. Put your religion where it will come out, but do not flaunt it. If a stranger should call upon you, and in a moment exclaim “Let us pray”; your best policy is to let him have the street to do it in, and you should say, “Thank you, I do my praying alone mostly. I see what it is. If I thought you had the spirit of prayer, and it had been the proper season, I would have joined with you with all my heart.” But the religion of a man who will just step into your house, to let you see what an extraordinarily pious man he is, is either very sick, or else it is a galvanized thing that has no life in it at all. I regard prayer as a very sacred thing. “When you pray, enter into your closet; and when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand does.” For truly if you do it to be seen by men you have your reward: and a poor one it is; a little praise for a minute, and it is all gone. But, nevertheless, do not run into one extreme by running from another. Consecrate your business by your religion. Do not paint your religion on your sign board; but keep it ready whenever you need it, and I am sure you will always need it.

      17. Another says, “How can I do God’s business? I have no talent, I have no money; all I earn in the week I have to spend, and I have scarcely enough money to pay my rent. I have no talent; I could not teach in a Sunday School.” Brother, have you a child? Well, there is one door of usefulness for you. Sister, you are very poor; no one knows you; you have a husband, and however drunken he may be, there is a door of usefulness for you. Bear up under all his insults; be patient under all his taunts and jeers, and you can serve God, and do God’s business in that way. “But, sir, I am sick, it is only today I am able to get out at all; I am always on my bed.” You can do your Master’s business, by lying on a bed of suffering, for him, if you do it patiently. The soldier who is ordered to lie in the trenches, is just as obedient as the man who is ordered to storm the breach. In everything you do you can serve your God. Oh, when the heart is rightly tuned in this matter we shall never make excuses, and say, “I cannot be about my Father’s business.” We shall always find some business of his to do. In the heroic wars of the Swiss, we read that the mothers would bring cannonballs for the fathers to fire upon the enemy, and the children would run around and gather up the shot that sometimes fell, when ammunition ran short. So that all did something. We hate war, but we will use this illustration in the war of Christ. There is something for you all to do. Oh I let us who love our Master, let us who are bound to serve him by the ties of gratitude let us say, “Do you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?”

      18. And now I close up by addressing all the Lord’s people here, and urging them to serve God with all their hearts, by giving them two or three very brief and very earnest reasons.

      19. Be about your Father’s business with all earnestness, because that is the way of usefulness. You cannot do your own business and God’s too. You cannot serve God and self any more than you can serve God and mammon. If you make your own business God’s business, you will do your business well; and you will be useful in your day and generation. Never shall we see any great revival in the church, or any great triumphs of religion until the Christian world is more touched with the spirit of entire consecration to Christ. When the world shall see us in earnest then God will bring men in; not before. We go to our pulpits in half heartedness: we go to our place of worship mere shells without the kernel. We give the outward ceremony and take away the heart. We shall never see Christ’s cause triumphant in that way. Do you wish to be useful? Do you wish to extend your Master’s empire? Then be about your Father’s business.

      20. Again, do you wish to be happy? Be about your Father’s business. Oh! it is sweet employment to serve your Father. You do not need to turn aside from the way of business to do that. If your heart is right, you can serve God in weighing a pound of tea as much as in preaching a sermon. You can serve God as much in driving a horse and cart as in singing a hymn — serve God in standing behind your counter, at the right time and the right season, as much as sitting in your pews. And oh! how sweet to think, “I am doing this for God. My shop is opened on God’s behalf; I am seeking to win profit for God; I am seeking to get business for God’s cause, that I may be able to devote more to it, and prosper it more by what I am able voluntarily to consecrate to him.” You will have a happiness when you rise, such as you never knew before, if you can think, “I am going to serve God today”; and when you end at night, instead of saying, “I have lost so much,” you will be able to say, “Not I, my God has lost it. But the silver and the gold are his, and if he does not care to have either of them — very well; let them go; he shall have it one way or another. I do not want it; if he chooses to take it from me in bad debts, well and good. Let me give to him in another way, it will be the same; I will revere him continually, even in my daily employment.”

      21. And this dear friends, will be the way — and I trust you can be moved by this — this will be the way to have eternal glory at the last, not for the sake of what you do, but as the gracious reward of God for what you have done. “They who turn many to righteousness, shall shine as the stars for ever and ever.” Would you like to go to heaven alone? I do not think you would. My happiest thought is this, that when I die, if it shall be my privilege to enter into rest in the bosom of Christ, I know I shall not enter heaven alone. Thousands have been there, whose hearts have been pricked and have been drawn to Christ under the labours of my ministry. Oh! what a pleasant thing to flap one’s wings to heaven and have a multitude behind, and when you enter heaven to say, “Here I am and the children you have given to me!” You cannot preach, perhaps, but you can travail in birth with children for God, in a spiritual sense, in another way; for if you help the cause you shall share the honour too. You do that, perhaps, which is not known among men, yet you are the instrument, and God shall crown your head with glory among those that “shine as the stars for ever and ever.” I think, dear Christian friends, I need say no more, except to bid you remember that you owe so much to Christ for having saved you from hell; you owe so much to that blood which redeemed you — that you are in duty bound to say —

      Here, Lord, I give myself away;

      ’Tis all that I can do.

      Go out now, and if you are tempted by the world, may the Spirit enable you to reply, “I must be about my Father’s business.” Go out, and if they call you a fanatic, let them laugh at you as much as they like, tell them you must be about your Father’s business. Go on, and conquer. God be with you. And now farewell, with this last word, “He who believes and is baptized, shall be saved; he who does not believe, shall be damned.” Faith in Christ is the only way of salvation. You who know your guilt cast yourselves on Christ, and then dedicate yourselves to him. So you shall have joy here, and glory everlasting in the land of the blessed, where bliss is without alloy, and joy without end.

      Particular Election

      No. 123-3:129. A Sermon Delivered On Sunday Morning, March 22, 1857, By C. H. Spurgeon, At The Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.

       Therefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if you do these things, you shall never fall: For so an entrance shall be ministered to you abundantly into the everlasting