Our Duty and His Strength
Charles Spurgeon
“And they say unto him, ‘We have here but five loaves, and two fishes.’ He said, ‘Bring them hither to me.’” — Matthew 14:17-18
Our line of duty begins, first of all, in immediate obedience to Christ’s first command: “Bring ye them to me.” “Five loaves, Master, it is all we have; two fishes.” “Bring ye them to me.” “Master, they are barley loaves; only five.” “Bring them to me.” “There are two fishes; they are only two; they are not worth thinking of; let us keep them for ourselves.” “No, bring them to me.” “But they are such little fishes.” “Bring them to me,” saith he, “bring them to me.” The Church’s first duty is, when she looks to her resources and feels them to be utterly insufficient for her work, still to bring all that she has to Christ. But how shall you bring them? Why, in many ways.
You must bring them to Christ in consecration. There is a brother yonder who says, “Well, I have but little money to spare!” “Never mind,” says Christ, “let what you have be brought to me.” “Ah,” says another, “I have very short time that I can spare in laboring to do good.” “Bring it to me.” “Ah,” says another, “but I have small ability; my stock of knowledge is very slender; my speech is contemptible.” “Bring it to me.” “Oh,” saith one, “I could only teach in the Sunday school.” “Bring it to me.” “Ah,” says another, “and I do not know that I could do that; I could but distribute a tract.” “Bring it to me.” Every talent that the Church has is to be brought to Christ, and consecrated. And mark you this – I speak a strong thing which some will not be able to receive – anything which you have in this world, which you do not consecrate to Christ’s cause, you do rob the Lord of. Every true Christian, when he gave himself to Christ, gave everything he had. Neither calls he anything that he has his own, but it is all the Master’s. We are not true to the Master’s cause unless it be so.
Bring ye them to me – not only in consecration, but also in prayer. I think our prayer-meetings should be the seasons when the Church brings up all her barley loaves and fishes to Christ. To get them blessed, here we come together around the altar. We are weak and feeble, we come to be made strong; we have no power of ourselves, we come that we may receive power from on high; and we wait in the prayer-meeting, as thy disciples did in the upper room at Jerusalem, till the Spirit be poured out. It is marvelous how a man with one talent can sometimes do ten times more than a man with ten talents, for he has ten times the grace. A soldier, after all, is not always useful according to his weapon. Give a fool an Armstrong gun [an early machine gun], and perhaps he will destroy himself with it. Give a wise man but the poorest piece of fire-arms, and you shall find, with good and steady aim, and bold advance, he shall do more service with his small weapons, than the other with far better arms. So there are men, who seem as if they might be leaders in God’s house, that are laggards, doing nothing, while there are others who are but little in Israel, whom God through his grace makes to be mighty. Bring ye hither, O ye servants of the Lord, all that ye have kept back, pour ye all the tithes into his storehouse, that his house may be full.
“Prove me now,” saith the Lord of hosts, “if I do not open the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.” Let us bring all we have to Christ, likewise in faith, laying it all at his feet, believing that his great power can make little means suffice for mighty ends. “Lord, there are only five loaves,” – they were five loaves only when we had them in our hands, but now they are in thy hands, they are food for five thousand men. “Lord, there are two fishes,” – they were paltry to insignificance while they were ours, but thy touch has ennobled them, and those little fishes shall become food for that vast multitude. Blessed is that man who, feeling that he has truly consecrated all to God, can say, “There is enough. I do not want more talent; I do not need more substance; I would not wish to have more, there is enough for my work; I know it is utterly insufficient in itself, but our sufficiency is of God.”
Oh! do not tell me, sirs, that we, as a denomination, are too feeble to do much good. Do not tell me that the Christianity of England is too weak for the evangelization of the whole world. No such thing: there is enough, there is plenty if the Master pleases it. If there were only six good men living, and these six were thoroughly consecrated to God, they would be enough for the world’s conversion. It is not the multiplication of your means, it is not the complication of your machinery, it is not the organization of your societies, it is not the qualification of your secretaries that God cares for a whit; it is your consecrated men who are wholly his and only his. Let them believe that he can make them mighty, and they shall be mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. I hesitate not to say that there are some pulpits that would be better empty than occupied; that there are some congregations to whom it would be far better if they had no preacher at all; for, having a minister who is not ordained of God, and not speaking by faith, they content themselves with things as they are, and grow listless. Were the sham taken away, they might cry out for a real ministry. God would bestow on them one taught of the Holy Ghost, who would speak with a tongue of fire, with inward witness and with spiritual energy, resting his confidence in God’s promises and his Word. Oh dear friends, we ought to believe that there is enough means if Christ do but bless them, enough to bring in God’s chosen ones.
“Bring ye them to me,” once more, in active service. That which is dedicated to Christ in solemn covenant, and in earnest prayer, and in humble faith, must be dedicated in active service. Are youall at work for Christ? Are you all doing something for Christ? I think there should not be a single member of this Church who is not somehow occupied for the Master. Shall I except any? – except the weak upon their beds; and they can speak a good word for him when they are visited: except the dying upon their couches, and they can bear a blessed testimony to his faithfulness when they are going through the river: except the dumb, and they can act religion, when they cannot speak it: except the blind, and they can sing his praises: except the utterly incapacitated, and these can magnify the Lord by their patience. Still we ought, everyone of us, if we be Christ’s, to be serving him.
Now dear friends, if you want any inducements to lead you to bring all that you have to Christ, let me urge this. In bringing it to him, you put your talent into his hand, whose hand was pierced for you. You give to him who is your dearest friend; you give to him who spared not the blood of his heart that he might redeem you. Do you not love him? Is it not an honor to be permitted to show your love to so notable and noble a personage? We have heard of women that have worked and all but starved themselves to bring food for their children; and as they put the precious morsels into the little ones’ mouths, they felt their toil to be nothing, because they were giving it to those they loved. And so with the believer – he should feel that he most blesses himself when he blesses Christ. And, indeed, when the Christian doeth ought for Jesus, it more blesses him that gives than him that takes.
Besides, when you give to him, you have another inducement, that you are thus giving to the multitude. I know people think, when they are doing something for the Church that they are pleasing the minister; or pleasing the deacons. Oh! dear friends, it is not so. What interest have I in all the world but the love of poor souls. There is a man, I think, present now, who I remember, some two or three winters ago, came to me to join the Church. And when I sat down in the room to talk to him, I saw by the look of the poor man’s face he wanted bread natural as well as bread spiritual. So I said, “Before I talk to you, I should like to see you a little refreshed;” and we fetched him something to eat. I looked at him for a minute, for I saw his eyes glisten, and I left the room, for fear he should not eat so much when I was there. This though I can tell you, when I saw the great pleasure with which he ate, it would have been sufficient compensation to me if that little had cost ten thousand pounds. And when you see the poor sinner lay hold of Christ so greedily, and yet so joyfully, when you see his gleaming eye, and the tear as it runs down his cheek, you will say, I am too well paid to have done good to such a poor heart as this. Lord, it is enough; I have fed these hungry souls.
Then to close this point. “Bring ye them to me, and ye shall have as much left as ye had when ye brought them.” They took up of the fragments more than ever they gave. Christ will never let any man die in his debt. What ye have done unto him is abundantly repaid, if not in temporals, yet in spirituals. The fragments shall fill the baskets that are so liberally emptied. You shall find that while watering others you are yourself watered. The joy you impart shall be mutual. To do good is to get good, and to distribute to others for Christ is the surest way of enriching one’s self.
The rest of the believer’s duty I will briefly sum up. When you have brought your talents to Christ and have a conscientiousness of your great mission, your next duty is to look up. Thank God for what you have got: look up! Say, “There is nothing in what I do; there is nothing in my prayers, my preachings, my goings, my doings, except thou bless the whole. Lord, bless it!” Then, when you have blessed, break. Go abroad and actively serve the Master, and when you have thus broken and have thus distributed to others, mind that you only distribute from Christ’s own hand. You are to put your talents and abilities into Christ’s hand. He gives the blessing on it; then he gives back to you: afterwards, you give it to the people. If I give you bread from this pulpit to eat that is my own, it will be of no use to you. But if, having gotten it in my study, I put it in the hand of Christ and come up here, and Christ hands it back to me and I give it to you, you shall be fed to the full. This is Christ’s way of blessing men; he does not give the blessing first to the world; it is to his disciples, and then the disciples to the multitude. We get in private what we distribute in public. We have access to God as his chosen favorites. We come near to him. He gives to us, we give to others.
Now I want to end by making you say, “We can.” Yes! Christ is with us, and we can. God is for us, and we can. The Holy Ghost is in us, and we can. God the Holy Spirit calls us, Jesus Christ the Son of God cheers us, God the Father smiles upon us; we can, we must, we will. The kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. But have we believed in Christ ourselves? If not, we can do nothing. Come to Jesus first, then work for Jesus. Give him your own heart first, then give him all that you have. So shall he accept your offering, and bless your soul for his name’s sake.
Excerpted and edited from Spurgeon’s sermon, “Compassion for the Multitude.”
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