Among the friends of Paul, Titus was one of the most useful and one of the best beloved. Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles, and Titus was a Gentile. I should suppose that both his parents were Gentiles, and in this respect he differed from Timothy, whose mother was a Jewess. Timothy would well serve as a preacher to the circumcision, but Titus would be a man after Paul’s heart as a preacher to the Gentiles. He seems to have been a man of great common-sense; so that, when Paul had anything difficult to be done, he sent Titus. When the collection was to be made at Corinth on behalf of the poor saints at Jerusalem, Paul sent Titus to stir the members up, and with him another brother to take charge of the contributions. Titus appears to have been a man of business capacity and strict probity, as well as a man who could order the church aright, and preach the gospel with power. Paul was, on one occasion, comforted by the coming of Titus. At another time, he was sad because Titus was not where he had hoped to meet with him. Though we know little about him from the Acts of the Apostles, or anywhere else, he appears to have been in every way one of the ablest of the companions of Paul, and the apostle takes care to mention him over and over again in his Epistles to the Galatians and to the Corinthians, rendering honour to whom honour is due. It is a great pity when eminent men forget those who help them, and it is a sad sign when any of us do not gratefully feel how much we owe to our coadjutors. What can any servant of God do unless he has kind friends to bear him up by their prayers and their help? Paul did not forget to mention his friend and helper, Titus.

Dear brethren, in this particular verse, which I have chosen for my text, it seems to me that Paul has brought together five points in which he was one with Titus. It is a great blessing when Christian men are in union with each other, and when they are willing to talk about the bonds that unite them. The more we can promote true unity among Christian men, the better. “First pure, then peaceable,” must be our motto; first, the truth; afterwards, unity in the truth. We must not be content with merely contending for the faith; we must next fight the battles of life, and do all we can to note the points in which true Christians are agreed. I desire, at this time, to “stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance,” to refresh your memories in regard to all the love that we have borne to one another in the days and years that are now past, and to exhort you to a still closer union in heart unto the glory of God.

There are five things in which Paul seems to me to bring out clearly his union with Titus; I might call them, “five links in a golden chain.” I shall only briefly speak of each of the five, and try to apply them to ourselves.

First, Paul says of himself and Titus, that there was a close relationship between them: “Titus, mine own son.”

This was a very close relationship;-not that Titus was Paul’s son after the flesh, for there was no natural relationship between them at all. Probably, in the early part of their lives, they had been total strangers to one another; but now, Paul views Titus as his son. We know, beloved, many of us, that the grace of God creates relationships of a very near and tender kind, relationships which will endure through life, relationships which will outlast death, and be, perhaps, even more strong and vivid in eternity than they are here. Up yonder, where they neither marry nor are given in marriage, I should think that the relationships which come of the flesh will, to a large degree, be merged in their celestial condition; but there, the sonship of Titus towards Paul is even stronger than it was when they twain were here below.

How comes that sonship? It comes often through God blessing a ministry to the conversion of a soul. Henceforth, he who has spoken the Word with power to the heart bears to him who has heard it the relationship of a father to a son. There are many in this place to whom I stand in this most hallowed relationship. You recognize it, I know, and I desire to express my intense and fervent love to the many of you who have been born unto God by the preaching of the Word here. I do not know of anything that has more greatly comforted me during the last week or two, in the time of sharp contention for the faith, than the reception of so many letters, from persons of whom I have never before heard, saying, “You do not know me, but you are my spiritual father; and now, at such a time of trial as this is to you, I must write and send you a word of good cheer.” It is always a marvel to me that my feeble testimony should ever be blessed to the conversion of a seeking soul; but when I think of the hundreds, and the thousands,-ay, I am not exaggerating when I say thousands,-whom I have met with here on earth, and the many more, at present unknown to me, whom I hope to meet with either here or in heaven, I do rejoice, yea, and I will rejoice; and I cannot help expressing my great love to all those who have been brought to the Saviour by the words which I have preached and published.

The apostle Paul not only said of Titus that he was his son, but he called him his “true” son. The Revised Version correctly translates it, “My true child.” We have, alas! some who have called us “father” in a spiritual sense, of whom we have cause to be ashamed. There are converts and converts. There are those who say they have received the Word, and perhaps they have after the poor fashion in which the brain can receive it, but they have never received it in the heart; so, after running well for a while, they grow weary, and turn aside, and then the gainsayer says, “That is one of your converts!” They throw this in our teeth, and we do not wonder that they should do so. These base-born ones, these who have no part nor lot in the matter, though they pretend to have it, these are a perpetual grief to us, a wound in our spirit, which is hard to bear. But, oh, what a mercy it is when we know that many of our converts are our “true” spiritual children, in whom the work of repentance was deep, and whose profession of faith was sincere, who are not the products of free will, but the products of the Holy Spirit, and who bring forth fruit, not of themselves, but their fruit is found in Christ Jesus to whom they are eternally joined! Oh! those of you, between whom and myself there is this intimate relationship, let us feel some touch of this sacred kinship, and rejoice before God that we do feel it.

But, beloved, many of you are joined together by spiritual ties in other relationships; you also have been the means of bringing souls to Christ, and there are those sitting by your side who, for that reason, look upon you with great love. Others of you are brethren in Christ; there is a brotherhood, produced by the Christian life, that will remain when other brotherhoods have all disappeared. An ungodly man may be the literal brother of a saint; but they will be separated in that day when there shall be weeping at the judgment seat of Christ, and they shall be eternally separated, for, though they seemed to be of one family, they were really of two families, the one an heir of wrath, the other receiving grace to become a child of God. But beloved, as many of you as believe in Jesus Christ, are members of one family; you are related to one another in the highest possible way through the kinship of the spiritual life. Wherefore, let us now salute each other in the Lord; standing or sitting in our places, and without using any outward sign or symbol, let our hearts go out to one another in loving greeting. One family we dwell in Christ, knit to one another by ties of sympathy, and love, and mutual delight, because knit to Christ Jesus the Lord. I want you to feel that blessed union. Let us make this service a sort of family gathering, as when the father stands up at the head of the table, at Christmas time, or on New Year’s day, and says that he is glad to see all the family at home once more. I seem to stand among you thus, not as the oldest in years, but still the chief official member of this church, and I salute you all, and bid you rejoice together because of ties of love which time cannot loose, and death itself cannot dissolve.

Then the apostle, wishing to show how real was the union between himself and Titus, next mentioned that they were brethren by a common faith: “Titus, my true son after the common faith.”

Yes, beloved, and our faith is also common. It is the same faith in two respects; first, because we believe the same truths; and, secondly, because we believe them with “like precious faith.” We who are rightly members of this Tabernacle Church have believed the same truths; there is no dispute or discussion among us about the fundamentals of our faith. To us, there is one God,-Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. To us, there is one Mediator,-Jesus Christ the Saviour. We believe in the election of grace by the Divine Father; we believe in the vicarious sacrifice of the Eternal Son; we believe in the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, and in the need of it in the case of every living man, and woman, and child, We believe in “one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” I feel intensely grateful for this unity of faith. A church divided in its doctrine,-what can it do? If it has to spend its strength in continual debate, what force has it with which to conquer the world? But knowing, as we do know, that the Scriptures are our unerring guide, that the Holy Spirit is the infallible Explainer of the Scriptures, we come to one common fount to learn what we are to receive, and we receive it with one common anointing, even the anointing of the Spirit of God.

This unity of the faith is one of the things in which we ought continually to rejoice. I hope that I love all Christians; yet I cannot help saying that, when I sit down and talk with a brother who believes the doctrines of grace, I feel myself a great deal more at home than I do when I am with one who does not believe them. Where there is the unity of the faith, there seems to be a music which creates harmony, and that harmony is delightful to the renewed spirit. God grant, dear friends, that none of us may err from the faith; but that we may be steadfast, immovable, firmly fixed in our belief of the great doctrines of the gospel, for this is the way in which we are made truly one.

Then, Paul says that he and Titus were one “after the common faith;” that is, the one faith was believed by them in the same way. There is only one faith worth having; Paul calls it, in the first verse, “the faith of God’s elect.” It is real faith, cordial faith, childlike faith, God-given faith. It is not a faith that springs out of human nature unaided by the Holy Ghost; but it is precious faith, faith which is the gift of God, and the work of the Holy Spirit. Now, if we believe only intellectually, we do not enter into sympathy with one another as we do when we both believe spiritually, with heart and soul, from the very depths of our being. Beloved, I trust that I can say of myself, and of you also, that we have received faith as a gift from God; here, then, is another sacred tie binding us together. You have that jewel of faith gleaming on your bosom, and here are others who have the same precious gem, so by that very fact you are drawn to each other. Your faith and my faith, if they are both true faith, are “the common faith.” I may have very little faith, and you may have the full assurance of understanding; but your faith and mine are of the same sort. Your faith may be but as a grain of mustard seed, and your friend’s faith may have grown into a tree; but it is the same faith: it clings to the same Christ, and will produce the same eternal results in the salvation of the soul. Come, then, let us spiritually shake hands again over this second point. First, we are closely related to one another; secondly, we possess a common faith which is a wonderful bond of union between us.

Carefully note the third link. It is this: we have a mutual benediction, for Paul wishes for Titus, “Grace, mercy, and peace.”

This is just what Titus would have wished for Paul if he had been sending him a benediction; and I wish to you, beloved, “Grace, mercy and peace,” and I think you are in your hearts wishing for me also, “Grace, mercy, and peace.” We all alike need these three choice favours.

First, we need “grace” to help. I know how it is with the weak believer; he sees some brave Christian doing mighty works for God, and he says, “Oh, I wish that I were like him! Oh, that I were as strong as he is!” and he gets the notion that this more prominent worker has no fainting fits or weaknesses such as he has. Oh, no! he supposes that his brother’s head is bathed in everlasting sunshine, and that his heart is continually flooded with rivers of delight. That shows, my friend, that you are greatly mistaken, for the most eminent saint has no more grace to give away than the least in the family of God has. I sometimes wish that I could disabuse the minds of our dear trembling friends, Miss Much-afraid and Mr. Despondency, of the ideas they have concerning some of us to whom they look up with esteem. I am not going to let you into all our secrets; but, believe me, our heads ache as much as yours, and our eyes are sometimes as wet with tears as ever yours are, ay, and our hearts get quite as heavy as yours do. “Yes,” you say, “very likely, but then, somehow or other, you are stronger than we are.” Just so, but suppose you have to carry fifty pounds weight, and you can carry that, and no more; well, you have strength enough for your task. If another man has to carry a hundred pounds weight, and he can just carry that, and no more, he is in exactly the same condition as you are. Here is a brother who has a large measure full of manna, which he is carrying for the supply of his family. Here is another, who has quite a small measure, and as he carries it into his tent, he says to himself, “Oh! I wish that I had that great bushel of manna that my brother took into his tent just now.” Yes, but listen: “he that gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack.” Mark you, I do not discourage the attempt to gather much grace, I would urge you to get all you can of it; for, however much you gather, you will have none too much; but I would discourage your despair if there should seem to be but little falling to your share, for you shall have no lack. The fact is, all of us need grace. You who preach the gospel, you who are deacons, you who are elders, you who teach the infant class, you who can only give away a tract, you must do all these works with grace, or else you will not really do them at all; and our need of grace is a common meeting-place for us all. Only grace can save you, and only grace can save me; and the grace of God shall be given to us and all believers as we have need of it.

Our next want is, “mercy” to forgive. Titus perhaps thought to himself, “Well, Paul wishes mercy for me, but can hardly wish it for himself, for he is such an eminent servant of God, so holy, so consecrated, so zealous, so self-denying, that he does not need mercy. I reminded you, in our reading, that Paul, in writing to a church, says, “Grace be to you, and peace;” but when he writes to a minister, he says, “Grace, mercy, and peace.” It looks as though ministers needed more mercy than their people do; and it is my firm conviction that the more eminent is their office, and the more remarkable is their usefulness in the service of God, the more mercy do they require. Brethren, how can we meet our responsibilities unless we constantly cry, “Lord, have mercy upon us”? How can we deal faithfully with the souls committed to our charge, and be clear of the blood of all men, unless the Lord shall have mercy upon us, and upon us beyond all others?

All of us, then, need mercy. I do; do not you? You are only a plain man, with a family growing up around you; but you need mercy for your sins as the head of the household. Perhaps you are only a domestic servant, my sister; but you need mercy even in that humble calling of yours. You, perhaps, dear friend, are very rich, oh, you need much mercy! And you, on the other hand, are very poor; I am sure that you need mercy. Some of you are in full health; you need mercy lest you should pervert that strength to an evil purpose. Others of you are very sickly; you may well cry for mercy, that you may bear up under your many pains and depressions of spirit. We all need mercy; so that is another point in which we are one.

The third word of the bendiction is “peace” to comfort. I hope that many of us know what peace of conscience means, what peace with God means, and what peace with man means. If God has given us his peace, it is a treasure of untold value, “the pearl of great price.” To be at peace with God, is better than to be a millionaire, or Czar of all the Russias. Peace of mind, restfulness of heart, quiet of spirit, deliverance from care, from quarrelling, from complaining,-I know that I want that kind of peace, and you want it, too, do you not? You need it in your family, in your business, in your own hearts. Well, then, here we meet again, having this same want of peace; and, when we get it, we meet once more in finding the same delicious enjoyment of it. I wish to you, beloved, now and henceforth, grace, mercy, and peace; and I believe that you wish the same to me; and herein again we join our hands, and bless God that we feel true union of heart.

Upon the next part of my subject, which is more weighty still, I must say but little. It is this: “Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” That is, we are one in the source of every blessing.

All good comes to us from God the Father, through the one Mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour. I love to think of this,-that all the grace, mercy, and peace that come to you, and all the grace, mercy, and peace that come to me, come from the heart of God. How many waggons there are upon the road of grace, and all of them heavily laden! One stops at that brother’s door, and another waits at this sister’s gate; but they all started from one spot. Look on the side of the waggons, and you will see the name of the same Proprietor on every one. “The chariots of God are twenty thousand,” but they are all the Lord’s; so that whatever grace, mercy, and peace come to us at all, come from the same place. Get to the very foundation of this truth, and you will see that we who believe all eat bread baked in the same oven, our clothes come out of the same wardrobe, the water that we drink comes from the same rock, ay, and the shoes that we wear were made by the same mighty Worker who bade Moses say to Israel of old, “Thy shoes shall be iron and brass; and as thy days, so shall thy strength be.” You have not anything that is worth having but what your Father gave to you; and your Father is my Father, and the hand that passeth the blessing to you passeth the blessing to me and to the whole family of believers.

These blessings not only all come from the same source, but they all come by the same channel: “the Lord Jesus Christ.” There is the sacred blood-mark on every covenant blessing, whether you have it, or your brother has it, or some Christian far away in India gets it. It all comes by the same divinely-appointed channel,-the man, the God, Christ Jesus our Lord. I do not know how you feel about this matter, but it seems to me as if this ought to bind us very closely together. I recollect when first I left my grandfather, with whom I had been brought up as a little child, how grieved I was to part from him; it was the great sorrow of my little life. Grandfather seemed very sorry, too, and we had a cry together; he did not quite know what to say to me, but he said, “Now child, to-night, when the moon shines, and you look at it, don’t forget that it is the same moon your grandfather will be looking at;” and for years, as a child, I used to love the moon because I thought that my grandfather’s eyes and my own somehow met there on the moon. How much better it is to think that you, dear friend, going right away to Australia, are looking to the Saviour, while we are doing the same thing here, and so our eyes meet! You go to God at the mercy-seat in prayer, and that is just where we go; so, after all, we pray at the same sacred spot, and our petitions meet at the great throne of mercy. Thus we are made to feel our blessed union in Christ.

Some people say that they try to recollect other people; but if you really love them, you will not “try” to recollect them, you will not be able to keep from remembering them. Their image will come up before your mind’s eye; you cannot avoid it, and you will not wish to avoid it. So, dear friends, we will not say that we will try to remember each other while we are parted a while; but every blessing that comes to us shall remind us that it comes from our Father, through Jesus Christ our Mediator, and so we shall feel that we are truly one.

Then, to close, there is one more point of union, and that lies in our common relationship to our Lord Jesus Christ. See how Paul puts it, “The Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour.”

I must dwell briefly upon every word of this title. First, Jesus is Lord to all his people, and equally to be obeyed by them all, and adored by them all. It is important that, with bowed knee, and reverent love, we call him Lord and God. We put our finger into the print of the nails, and the wound in his side, confessing that he is and must be real man; but, at the same moment, we cry-with Thomas, “My Lord and my God.” I cannot pretend to have any union with the man who cannot from his heart say that. If thou dost not count Christ to be God, well, go thy way, my fellow-man, and I will go mine; but thy way and my way cannot be the same. We know that this is the Christ of God, and he who does not know it needs to be taught of God the very first principles of the gospel. So, you see, we have a true unity in the lordship of Christ; we desire, as one man, to be obedient to all his commands, and to worship him as “very God of very God.”

Then comes the next word, “the Lord Jesus Christ.” That will come over again when I speak of the word “Saviour”, so I pass on to the following word, “the Lord Jesus Christ.” He is, to all of us who believe, the Anointed One, so anointed that every Word that Jesus Christ has spoken is to us infallibly inspired. We believe in Jesus, not only as men say they do to-day; but we believe really in Jesus, for we believe in his doctrine, in that which he himself spoke, and in that which he spoke by his inspired apostles. We cannot separate between Christ and the truth he came to preach, and the work he came to do; nor will we attempt to do so. He is to us the Anointed of God, as Prophet, Priest, and King, and we accept him in all the offices for which he bears that anointing; do we not, my brethren? I know that we do; as brethren in one common faith, we rejoice in the common Christ whose anointing has fallen upon us, too. Though we are but as the skirts of the garment of our Great High Priest, yet the holy oil upon his head has come down even to us, as it is written, “ye have an unction from the Holy One.”

The apostle further writes, “The Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour.” Sometimes, in the Bible, we find the Lord Jesus Christ called “a Saviour.” “Unto you is born in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” That is good, but it is not good enough for what poor sinners need. Our Lord Jesus Christ is not a Saviour among other saviours, though he does instrumentally make his people saviours, as it is written, “saviours shall come up on Mount Zion;” and happy are they who, as instruments in his hands, save souls from death, and hide multitudes of sins. But Jesus is also called the Saviour.” He is “the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe,”-the Saviour, par excellence. Then next, he is my Saviour, as Mary sang, “My spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.” Oh, that is sweet indeed,-to get a personal grip of him, and to know that he has saved me from despair, from sin, from the power of evil, from death, from hell. But there is, in some respects, a superior sweetness in this plural pronoun, “our Saviour.” Selfishness is gone when we come to feel an intense delight in this truth, that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Saviour of many more beside ourselves. “Our Saviour”-does not this bind us to one another? A common delight in one person is one of the strongest bands of sympathetic union that can bind men together; and a common obligation to some one superior being becomes a great reason for our being knit together in love. My Saviour, your Saviour, our Saviour: “The Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour.” Whenever we feel any disposition to break off from this brother and from that, whom we know to be, after all, saved in the Lord, let us come together with a fresh clasp of the hands as we say to one another, “We rejoice in our Saviour, and we are one in him.”

What I want to say,-as a parting word, before I leave you once more for my season of rest,-is just this. Let us keep close together now, shoulder to shoulder, if ever we did so in all our lives. “Close your ranks!” must be the message to the faithful in these evil days. Let us feel heart touching heart in the deepest and truest Christian affection; for, in proportion as we are welded together in love, we shall be strong for all the practical purposes for which the Holy Spirit intends a church to be used.

These thirty-four years,-is not that the number?-they are so many, I begin to forget the figures,-a third of a century have I served among you as a preacher of the gospel. I am always fearing that I shall get “flat, stale, and unprofitable,” and that my voice will cease to have any music for you; but there is one thing I know, from the first day I came among you until now, I have preached nothing but “the glorious gospel of the blessed God,”-“Jesus Christ and him crucified,” and I am not afraid that that gospel will ever get “flat, stale, or unprofitable,” and this is the golden chain which has bound us together in holy fellowship. This is the foundation on which we have built,-“One Lord, one faith, one baptism.” Yes, one baptism; there are others who hold another baptism, but we know of no outward baptism but the immersion of the believer into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and upon this point we are all agreed, as we are upon the rest of the articles of our faith.

So, being one, let us show to all the world what the power of Christian unity really is. Keep together in the prayer-meetings. Never let those precious gatherings decay or drop. If you have come together in large numbers,-and you have in my presence,-do so much more in my absence; let each one feel bound to meet with his brothers and sisters in prayer. I am longing for a genuine revival of religion,-a revival of religion everywhere; and I think I can see signs that it is coming; I find that many of the Baptist ministers who love the gospel, are going over the groundwork, preaching the fundamental doctrines more than ever they did; that is a good thing. I find that the churches are meeting together for prayer at this juncture, more than they have done, seeking that God will help and guide them to be faithful; that also is a good thing. And people are talking about the plan of salvation,-on the tops of omnibuses, and in the railway carriages,-everywhere it comes up as a subject of debate. In the daily papers, the same theme is brought forward, for which I thank God; and though I have had to bear my share of reproach for the truth’s sake, yet I joyfully accept it. Anything which can call public attention to the gospel of Christ is a help to us; and I believe that the attention called to this question is hopeful, that the discussion of it by so many is still more hopeful, and that the firm adherence to the faith, which I see in so many, will be attended by an intense zeal for the conversion of souls, and then we shall see a revival. God has been hindered and hampered by the false doctrine and heresy that have been cherished in so many of the churches; and the Spirit of God has been grieved and driven away by the utter rottenness of worldliness that has been indulged in by so many professing Christians. We have let a little light into this darkness; we have opened a door here and there, and a clear cold draught is blowing out some of the miasma, and the ill gases of the stagnant atmosphere that has been poisoning our people far too long.

Now is our time, brethren. Let us, as one man, pray God to send this benediction from on high,-“grace, mercy, and peace.” I charge you, while I am away,* to be instant in and out of season about this matter; and to let this be a special object of supplication with the members of this church, that we should have a revival of religion here, at any rate, while the pastor is away. It is better for it to come while he is away, for nobody will then put the credit of it upon any instrument. Break out, heavenly fire! Descend! Descend! Descend! Let the sacrifice be consumed!

As for you who do not know and love the Lord, we love you, we desire to bring you into the blessed circle of love by the door of faith in Christ. Look alone to Jesus Christ, who is the only way of salvation for you as for us. Oh, that you would look to him, and live! God grant it, for Christ’s sake! Amen.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

TITUS 1 and 2

While reading this chapter, we must understand that Titus was sent to Crete, to superintend the preaching of the gospel throughout that island. Crete was at that time inhabited by a people who were only partially civilized, and sunk in the very worst of vices. Paul, therefore, tells Titus to speak to them about things which would hardly be mentioned to Christians nowadays.

Chapter 1 Verses 1-4. Paul, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God’s elect, and the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness; in hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began; but hath in due times manifested his word through preaching, which is committed unto me according to the commandment of God our Saviour; to Titus, mine own son after the common faith: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour.

You have probably noticed that Paul’s benediction, when he is writing to a minister, is always, “Grace, mercy, and peace.” Writing to churches, his usual formula is, “Grace be to you, and peace;” but God’s servants, called to the work of the ministry, need very special “mercy”-as if the higher the office, the greater the liability to sin, and therefore, in his Pastoral Epistles, whether he is addressing Titus or Timothy, Paul wishes for his sons in the faith, “Grace, mercy, and peace.” Oh, what a mercy it will be for any of us ministers if, at the last, we are clear of the blood of all men! If, having been called to preach the gospel, we shall do it so faithfully as to be acquitted and even rewarded by our Lord and Master, it will be mercy upon mercy.

5, 6. For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city, as I had appointed thee: if any be blameless, the husband of one wife,

For there were many converts there who had two or three wives. Whatever position they might be permitted to occupy in the church, they could not become officers, they must keep in the rear rank.

6-12. Having faithful children not accused of riot or unruly. For a bishop must be blameless, as the steward of God; not selfwilled, not soon angry, not given to wine, no striker, not given to filthy lucre; but a lover of hospitality, a lover of good men, sober, just, holy, temperate; holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers. For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision: whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre’s sake. One of themselves, even a prophet of their own,

According to Jerome, this was Epimenides, a prophet-poet, who lived in Crete in the sixth century before Christ.

12. Said, The Cretians are always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies.

They were a degraded people; and hence, those who would teach them had a most difficult task, and needed great grace. Paul exhorts Titus that only specially fit men, men whose example would have influence, and whose characters would have weight, should be allowed to be elders in such churches.

13-16. This witness is true. Wherefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith; not giving heed to Jewish fables, and commandments of men, that turn from the truth. Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled. They profess that they know God; bat in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate.

This was bad soil; but it had to be ploughed, and to be sown, and with an Almighty God at the back of the gospel plougher and sower, a fruitful harvest came even in Crete. We need not be afraid of the adaptation of the gospel to the lowest of the low. If there be any quarter of the town where the people are more sunken in vice than anywhere else, there the gospel is to be carried with more prayer and more faith than anywhere else. Depend upon it, God can bless his Word anywhere, among Cretans, or among any other sort of degraded people.

Chapter 2 Verse 1. But speak thou the things which become sound doctrine;

There are certain things which are suitable to go with sound doctrine; they are meet and fit and appropriate thereto.

2. That the aged men be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith, in charity, in patience.

Among the heathen, old men often gave themselves up to drunkenness and gluttony; so now, this is the teaching that is to be given to aged Christian men. They need faith, love, and patience, as well as the virtues of sobriety, gravity, and temperance. The infirmities of old age often create petulance, so the grace of God is to make the venerable Christian to be full of faith, love, and patience.

3. The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things;

Old women also among the heathen were often addicted to the taking of much wine, so here they are cautioned against it by the Spirit of God. They are also tempted to spread slanderous reports against people: having little to do in their old age, they are apt to do that little by way of mischief; so they are warned that they are not to be “false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things.” And how beautifully can an aged Christian woman, by her kindly example, be a teacher of good things! There is no more charming sight under heaven, I think, than that of an elderly Christian lady, whose words and whose whole life are such as becometh the gospel of Christ.

4, 5. That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.

There were some women who supposed that, the moment they became Christians, they were to run about everywhere. “No,” says the apostle, “let them keep at home.” There is no gain to the Christian Church when the love, and the industry, and the zeal, which ought to make a happy home, are squandered upon something else. The young women of Crete appear to have been such that they needed to be taught “to love their husbands.” That expression does not occur elsewhere in Scripture. Christian women do not need to be told to love their husbands; but these Cretans, just brought out of the slough of sin, had to be taught even this lesson. Oh, what a blessing is love in the marriage relationship, and what a gracious influence love has upon children! How are they to be brought up aright except the whole house be perfumed with love?

6. Young men likewise exhort to be sober minded.

That exhortation is as necessary in London as it was in Crete. Young men often know a great deal, or think they do; and they are very apt to be intoxicated with the idea of knowing so much, and being able to do so much, so that the exhortation to them is to “be sober minded.”

7-9. In all things shewing thyself a pattern of good works: in doctrine shewing uncorruptness, gravity, sincerity, sound speech, that cannot be condemned; that he that is of the contrary part may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say of you. Exhort servants-

Or, as it might and should be rendered, “bond-slaves”-

9, 10. To be obedient unto their own masters, and to please them well in all things; not answering again; not purloining,

Not picking and stealing, which very naturally was the common habit of slaves; and who wonders at it in their wretched condition?

10. But shewing all good fidelity; that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things.

Is not that a wonderful passage? Here is a slave able to be an ornament to the gospel of Christ! This blessed gospel is not sent to kings and princes only; when Paul preached it, the great mass of the population were in cruel bondage, treated like dogs, or even worse; yet the gospel had a message even for them, it told them that they might, by a godly character, adorn the doctrine of God their Saviour.

11-15. For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man-despise thee.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-728, 729.

FAITHFUL STEWARDSHIP

A Sermon

Intended for Reading on Lord’s-day, November 24th, 1895,

delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington,

On Thursday Evening, April 14th, 1887.

“Moreover it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful.”-1 Corinthians 4:2.

It is well that our dear brethren should make a right account of us. Paul says, in the verse preceding our text, “Lot a man so account of us,” for there are some who make a wrong reckoning as to the ministers of the gospel. Some go to an extreme, for they glory in men. One glories in Paul, who is so deep in doctrine; another in Cephas, who is so energetic and plain-spoken; another in Apollos, who is so exceedingly eloquent, and mighty in the Scriptures. But Paul says, in the latter verses of the third chapter, “Let no man glory in men. For all things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are Christ’s; and. Christ is God’s.” You do not belong to your ministers, you must not put yourselves down as followers of them; you belong to Christ, and Christ himself and all his ministers belong to you.

But while some erred in thinking too much of their ministers, as no doubt they still do,-God deliver them from such a delusion!-there were, no doubt, others who erred in not thinking enough of them, not appreciating their position and condition so as to sympathize with them, and pray for them. Had they known to what a responsible office they were called, and what was required at their hands, they would lovingly have borne them upon their hearts, and gone with their names to the mercy-seat in continual prayer. Hence, it is very important that men should so account of us as to judge of us correctly; so that, while they do not rely upon us in any wrong sense, they may at the same time feel an affectionate sympathy with us, and constantly bear us up before the throne of grace.

Paul goes on to tell us how we ought to account of the ministers of Christ. The word should be “servants” of Christ. There is a great respectability about the word “minister” which really does not belong to it; for, if you take it to pieces, it means an under-rower, one of those men who had to take an oar on the lowest benches of the trireme. There were three benches for the rowers, and it was a hard task for all who were at the oars; but to the under-rowers, who had to bend to their work in the most trying position as they sent the galley flying through the water, it was stern toil indeed. Now, God’s ministers, if they act as they should do, are under-rowers of Christ. They are tugging away at a very heavy oar, and they may well ask you to pray that, as they use up their strength, fresh force may be imparted to them from the God of all power, that they may not labour in vain, nor spend their strength for nought.

We ask men, therefore, to account of us as servants, not as masters. The word “bishop” has come to have a wonderful signification about it which is not in the least degree Scriptural. We are simply to be shepherds of the sheep, and a shepherd is no great lord. He is the servant of all the sheep; and though he leads them, it is by going first, taking the brunt of all that comes, and finding out the best places for them to feed and to rest. Let a man so account of us as servants; but not merely as servants to the church, certainly not as servants to men, but as servants of Christ. That is our honour as ministers, we serve the Lord Jesus Christ, the best of masters. But, as he deserves to have the best of servants, the responsibility of the position weighs down the honour attached to it. Oh, if they who serve men should serve them faithfully, how much more should they be found faithful who are the servants of Christ!

Then the apostle adds that men are to account of us as stewards, and it is about that office that I am going to speak to you: “It is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful.” Although my text no doubt refers, in the first place, to those who labour in word and doctrine, to whom it is a life’s vocation, yet all the people of God are stewards, and each child of God, in his own way and in his own place, should reckon that whatever of gift he has should be used for the Lord Jesus Christ, and laid out for him; and he should also recollect that he is made one of the Lord’s stewards, and that it is required of him that he be found faithful. And I may even add that every unconverted man has a stewardship to fulfil. As God’s creature, he is bound to be God’s servant; and at the last great day he will have to give an account of every opportunity and capacity for service which God has given to him, and woe unto him if he be found an unfaithful steward in the day of his Lord’s reckoning!

If I should seem to speak rather more about ministers than about anybody else, I will ask you kindly to pick out all that belongs to yourselves, you who are private Christians, and you who are not Christians at all. I pray the Lord to make use of what I say to myself, and then to you who are his people, and to those also who are not his people, that they may be pricked to the heart, and made to feel how ungenerously they have acted towards the great Lord of the house. To begin, then, I will first ask,-how are we stewards? Secondly, if stewards, how are we to behave? Next, how are we in danger of misbehaving? And, lastly, what will be the result of right behaviour on of misbehaviour in those who are stewards?

First, then, how are we stewards?

Well, God’s ministers are stewards, first, as appointed to look after other servants. You know, dear friend, if you are a servant, you have enough to do to mind your own work; but if you happen to be an upper servant, such as a steward is, you have not only your own work to mind, but it is a part of your own work to look after the work of other people. There are some who are so foolish that they look only at the honour of this position; whereas, if they were wise, they would look more at the responsibility of it. Brethren, if I had my choice, I would rather look after a horse than look after a man. The second is much the more difficult animal to manage; and to look after many men,-oh, this is indeed a difficult task! I had an old friend, who was for forty years a shepherd, and after that he became a minister; and he lived to be forty years a shepherd in a spiritual sense. I asked him once, “Which was the easier flock to manage?” “Oh!” he replied, “the second flock of sheep was a deal more sheepish than the first.” I understood what he meant. They say that sheep have as many diseases as there are days in the year; ay, but men have as many complaints as there are minutes in the year; it is not long that they are free from one malady or another. I mean, men and women, all those that belong to the spiritual flock of which the minister is the shepherd; there is a certain form of trouble arising out of each one. True, there is a certain amount of comfort and joy arising out of every Christian; yet there is a measure of difficulty that must come to the steward from every one of his fellow-servants. It is by no means a position which any man who understands it might desire for himself. The real steward is one who has been appointed to the position; and if he is not appointed, why, he has no right to be a steward at all! It is the great Master of the house who calls this one or that to look after the other servants, and it is from this calling that he has the right to interfere in any respect with them.

Next, notice that the servants of God-whether called ministers or not,-those who are really so, are stewards because they are under the Master’s near command. An ordinary servant in God’s house may take his orders from the steward, but the steward takes no order from anybody but the Master; and hence, he is in an evil case, and the household is in an evil case, too, if he does not often resort to the Master, if he does not distinctly recognize his position as an underling of his Master, and if he does not so keep up his daily fellowship with the Master that he himself knows the Master’s mind, and is able to communicate it to his fellow-servants. There are many of you, dear friends, who have around you your children, your servants, your fellow-workers. Well, in that respect, you are a steward to them; they have to do a good deal that you tell them. Then do, I pray you,-and I speak this to myself as well as to you,-do let us wait upon the Master; let us come forth to speak to our fellow-servants, not our own words, but the words of him who is Master and Lord to the whole household. How beautifully Jesus, the greatest of all stewards, did this! How constantly he said, “The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.” He was always referring those who were his brethren back to the great Head of the family, and he did not speak without his Father’s authority. Having taken up the position of a subordinate in order to work out our redemption, he continually declared that he was his Father’s servant. It is an ill day for us when we begin to think that our thoughts are to be given out in the house instead of the Master’s thoughts. It is not for us to deliver our own speculations, but to go straight away to the Word, and by the teaching of the indwelling Spirit to come forth to the people with what we have received, not what we have invented. You shall find no power, my brothers and sisters, in doing Christian work unless you keep on doing it as receiving your mission and commission from the great Lord of all. I recollect how McCheyne says, “It is God’s Word that saves, not our comment on God’s Word.” And I am sure that it is so. It is God at the back of the steward who blesses all in the household; but when the steward does not go to the Master, and get his orders from him, he soon puts everything into confusion. He loses his own standing, and he is apt to do desperate mischief to all who are round about him.

Then, the true steward is called upon to give in an account; and if he does it often, so much the better. I am persuaded that, in the things of God as well as between man and man, “short reckonings make long friends,” and that, if we will often go to our Master with our service, and present it to him, and overhaul it under his divine guidance, confessing our shortcomings, and blessing him for every particle of success that has attended it, we shall do much better than if we go on for a long stretch without a reference to him. Brothers and sisters, you who are teaching your classes of boys or girls, bring your Sunday work to the Lord at the end of the Sabbath; and when we have finished a sermon, those of us who stand up to preach, let us not be satisfied until we have brought that piece of our work under our Master’s eye. I am sure that, if the steward can get to the side of his Master every evening, or every morning say to him, “We did so-and-so yesterday, and there is so-and-so which we propose to do to-day,” that is the way for the house to be well-ordered. Things go right when there is no absentee landlord, but when the great Master is always close at hand, and the steward constantly goes to him with an account of all his work. Oh, brethren, let us constantly act thus! We do not live near enough to God, do we? I know that some of you do wait upon him day and night, and you abide under the shadow of the Almighty; but I fear that there are some workers who forget to do this. We should work with the hands of Martha, but yet keep near the Master with the heart of Mary; we want a combination of activity and meditation. When we get that, when we inwardly retire for consultation with our Lord, and then come out actively to labour for our Lord, then shall we be good stewards in the little part of the great house with which he has entrusted us.

Further, a steward is a man who is put in trust with his master’s goods. This is the main point of his stewardship; nothing is his own, it is all his master’s. When he begins to open an account of his own, it is wonderful how apt he is to mistake what is his master’s, and to call it his own; and by-and-by he gets into a muddle, and cannot distinguish his master’s accounts from his own. Oh, it is a glorious thing when you have not any “own”; when you do not live for yourself at all, but wholly for Christ! Then you will not make any blunders; there will not be any of Christ’s property getting into your cash account, so that you will have a difficulty in disentangling it. “No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life,” for he can say,-

“’Tis done, the great transaction’s done,

I am my Lord’s,”

“and all the business I have here below is his. I have no sub-ends or secondary objects, but all I have and am is for him.” Then it is easy to keep our accounts, and to make no mistakes in them.

The true steward is put in trust with his master’s property, first, to protect it. Oh, with what earnestness ought we to guard the gospel of Christ! With what holy valour ought we to contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints! “Hold fast the form of sound words,” wrote Paul to Timothy; not only the words, but the particular form of them which the apostle had delivered; not merely sound doctrine, but the very words in which those doctrines had been made to take shape. The true steward is to defend his master’s treasure with his very life. The Lord has put us in trust with the gospel, and all the people of God, in their measure, have also become trustees of those inestimably precious doctrines wherein will be found the glory of God and the salvation of the sons of men. So we are to defend our Master’s property.

And next, we are to dispense it. It is the steward who provides for the table of the household; he brings out of that treasury things new and old. He never forgets, when the table is spread, to put the bread and the salt on it; the bread is Christ himself, on which we feed; and the salt is the grace of which we cannot have too much. The true steward does not starve the children, but he sees that each one is fed with food convenient. To one he brings milk, for he is a babe; to another, he gives strong meat, for he is a man who has had his senses exercised to discern between good and evil. The steward keeps his master’s stores, and sees that they are not wasted; but he takes care also to magnify his master’s liberality by seeing that none of the household know any want. I have known some who pretended to be stewards of Christ who evidently did not understand the business. There was an old fable of a man who gave bones to the sheep, and grass to the dogs, but neither of them did well on such fare; and some preaching seems to me just like that. The preacher assumes, in his opening prayer, that all his hearers are converted, and the whole service goes on as if everybody was a Christian; and yet, if you listen carefully, you will hear that there is an undertone implying that nobody is really saved, and that everybody is saved in imagination. Brethren, if we cannot discern between the righteous and the wicked, we shall never he as God’s mouth to our hearers. If we have not a javelin for God’s foes, as well as butter in a lordly dish for his friends, he will never make use of us as stewards in his house. There is much grace needed in the dispensing of our Master’s goods,-the rightly dividing the Word of God, and bringing out every truth in due proportion and in due season,

These are two parts of the steward’s business, to protect his master’s property, and to dispense it.

Besides this, he is to use his master’s property for his master’s benefit. The goods entrusted to him are to be put out to interest, or used in business to bring in profit for his master. I trust that there are many of us hero present who are using the gospel for the glory of Christ. What little we know, we try to tell out, that sinners may be converted, and that the Saviour may be glorified. It is a wonderful thing for us to have the Bible, is it not? But oh, to use the Bible every day so as to bring glory to God! It is a good thing to be even a tract-distributor, or to do the least service in the kingdom of Christ; but the one point for us to aim at is to do it so that the profit of it may come, not to us, but to our Master. The steward must not get trading on his own account. As I have said before, if he does that, there is apt to be a lot of mistakes made in the reckoning; but everything that the steward does is for his master. Abraham said, “The steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus,” and Abraham trusted him to go and find a wife for Isaac. So does our Lord use us, and trust us, as his stewards; our great God trusts us to go and find a spouse for Christ, and our business is to go and discover her, to find her out, and ask her to come with us, that she may be joined to that blessed Lord of all, the Son of the great Father, to whom he hath left the inheritance Happy are we, when, like the steward of Abraham, we can bring back the beloved one for our Master’s Son. This is a part of our work, to make use of everything that the Master entrusts to us for his own dear Son, and to look upon the church with which we have to deal as the bride we are to bring to Jesus, that she may be married to him for ever.

I will say no more upon the first part of my subject except this: a steward is charged with the general care of the family. He has not merely to look after the stores, but he has to take care of all the family. The steward of the olden times used to reckon all that belonged to his master as if it were his own, and he got into the habit of talking of it in that way. His lordship once asked his steward, “What is that coming up the drive?” “Oh!” he answered, “it is our horse and carriage, my lord.” “Our horse and carriage?” exclaimed the nobleman, “and who may be in it?” “Oh, my lord!” replied the faithful servant, “it is our wife and children!” Exactly so; the man had come to look upon everything that belonged to his master as belonging to himself; and that is the spirit which our Lord would have us cultivate. Those children of his, they are our children. Those that are newly converted to God, oh, they are specially ours, and we love them dearly! And this great church,-well, it is a bride to us even as it is to Christ. Our whole self is given up to the blessed service to which Christ has given up himself. Oh, that we could come anywhere near to this ideal of what a true steward should be! God help us so to do!

II, Our second enquiry is, how are we who are stewards to behave?” Our text supplies the answer: “Moreover it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful.”

Note, the apostle does not say, “it is required in stewards, that a man be found brilliant.” No minister will be blamed if he does not prove to be brilliant, nor even if he should not be successful. We shall not be condemned, even if the seed does not spring up, provided that we sow it. You are responsible, not for the result of what you do, but for doing it honestly, sincerely, devoutly, prayerfully, believingly. I do not think that, in such a case, you will be unsuccessful; certainly not as God judges success. Still, the apostle’s point is that “it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful.” What, then, should each one of us be with regard to faithfulness?

First, faithful to our Master. Oh, whatever we do, let us not be traitors to him! Let us not be apparently doing his work, yet not really doing it. Let us not be preaching without praying, let us not be talking about doing good without always trusting in him without whom nothing can be good, or strong, or right. O God, may we each of us be able to say at the last, “I am clear of the blood of all men”! If we have dealt truly with our Master, if we can feel that we are sincerely seeking, not our own glory, but his glory, and working not for men, but for him alone, it is well with us.

Next, we must each one he faithful to our office, whatever that office may be. If you, as stewards of Christ, are called to be ministers, be faithful to your ministry. If you are called to have substance, and to give it away, give it with cheerfulness, and be faithful in your office. If you are called to teach half-a-dozen children, and no more, it is quite enough to give an account for at the last; so be faithful to your office. Do not run about finding fault with your fellow-servants, and thinking that you could do their work better if you had it to do; but oh! for Christ’s sake, and for the sake of his great grace, do what you have to do with all your heart, and mind, and soul, and strength. Make full proof of your ministry, whatever that ministry is.

Then, next, he faithful to the goods committed to you. I have already dwelt upon the necessity of earnestly defending the faith. Oh, do not, I pray you, tolerate in yourselves any cavilling at God’s Word, any picking and choosing out of the great truths of inspiration! Endeavour to know the Lord’s way, the Lord’s truth, the Lord’s life; and in way, and truth, and life, follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. Search the Scriptures, and follow where the Scriptures lead you. Let no book composed by the wisest of men dictate to your conscience. Remember that the Bible, and the Bible alone, has the stamp of infallibility upon it. Follow its guidance, and so be faithful to the treasure that is entrusted to your hands. Had good men, in past ages, been but faithful to the Word of the Lord, there had not been so much of schism, and heresy, and false doctrine in the world; and if all professing Christians shall ever be faithful to the pure Word of God, then will come the days of the true unity of the Church of Christ, and the conquest of the world by Christ.

Next, we are bound to be faithful to every person in the household. This is a difficult work, but let us try to accomplish it. All of us, according as we are put into the stewardship, must labour for the good of all our brethren and sisters in Christ. We sang just now,-

“Hast thou a lamb in all thy flock

I would disdain to feed?”

and I hope that our answer is, “No, great Shepherd of Israel, there is not a single lamb in all thy flock which we do not reckon to be better than ourselves.” Do you not sometimes feel as if, if you could be as sure of being right as the very least of the Lord’s family, you would be perfectly content? We long to rise to the greatest heights of holiness and consecration; but yet, if we are allowed to wash the saints’ feet, it will be a great honour for us. To do anything for Jesus, to be a door-mat at the temple gate, is a high privilege for any one of us. Let us try, then, to do all that we ought to do in love and kindness to all the members of our Master’s household.

And then we must be faithful to the outside world as well. You see, a steward who looked to everything indoors, and then allowed people out of doors to cheat his master, and run away with his goods, would not be a faithful steward; and you and I have much to do with the souls of men outside the Church of Christ. Oh, what a world this is! What a world it is! Shall we be clear of the blood of all these millions in London? Ride or walk from one end of this great city to another, and see if you do not feel a mountain of granite pressing on your soul! O Lord, what can we do? “Who is sufficient for these things?” Living in such an age as this, and in such a thronged city as this, oh, how shall we be faithful to all the people? When George Fox was dying, he said, “I am clear, I am clear.” I have envied him a thousand times, for I believe the Quaker was clear of the blood of men. He said many odd things, and some things he had better not have said; but he never kept back anything that seemed to come from his soul. It mattered not to whom he spoke,-whether it was to the king or to a beggar,-he said what he believed, without fear of mortal man. Think of brave John Knox, of whom they could say when they buried him, “Here lies he who never feared the face of man.” O stewards of God,-and I have already said that all you Christians are, in your measure, stewards of Christ,-may this be said of you! “It is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful.” I have shown you what a wide field that one requirement covers; only the grace of God can be sufficient for us that we may be found faithful.

Now, very briefly indeed, I want to answer the third question, how are we, in our stewardship, in danger of misbehaving? Well, we can very readily misbehave by acting as if we were masters. You know the tendency of Jack in office; let us avoid anything like that. Remember what our Lord said about the man who began to domineer over his fellow-servants, and to beat them. This is not the way for a steward to behave, for he is himself only a servant. He has to look after other servants, but his master will look after him; and if he gives himself great airs, he must beware lest his master should dismiss him from his service, and say to him, “Thou shalt be no longer steward.”

Next, a great deal of misbehaviour is caused by endeavouring to please men. If the steward begins to try to please his fellow-servants, and to curry favour with them that they may speak well of him, he will very soon be a traitor to his master. O dear friends, seek to please men for their good to edification; but never forget that he who is the servant of men cannot be the servant of God, for “no man can serve two masters.” May the Lord help us to feel that we are not judged of men’s judgment, but that we are going to do our duty as under the great Taskmaster’s own eye!

Next, we can very much injure our stewardship by idling, or trifling, or growing careless, or leaving our hearts out of our work. We can do this in the Sunday-school, and we can do this in the pulpit. When a man’s heart is in his service, he does not need to tell you that it is, for you can soon see it; and I believe that there is more power in downright sincerity than in all the talent that God ever gave to men. A simple, humble, lowly speaker, who only says what the Holy Spirit prompts him to say, and who is quite indifferent about how he says it so long as he can say it in a right spirit, he is the man who will reach the hearts of other men. Brothers, if we begin turning over our words, so as to find out comely syllables with which we may please and tickle human ears, we shall lose all power over our hearers. I think that the very best nosegay we can ever give to our friends may be made by plucking a handful of field flowers just as we find them, and then saying, “These grew in God’s garden; we have not arranged them very prettily, for their innate beauty is such that anything artificial would but injure them.” Oh, let us see to it that we live wholly and alone for this great work of winning souls and glorifying our Master, and let us ever speak with the accent of conviction! If you do not believe the gospel, do not tell it to others; but if you do believe it, say it as if you meant it. I read, the other day, the story of a minister, whose boys came to him, and asked if they might go to a certain show, and he said, “Well my dear boys, I,-I,-I,-I hardly like it; I will show you by-and-by the objections there are to it; I do not decidedly forbid you,”-and the boys were out of the room in a minute. They ran off to their companion, and said, “Jack, we may go.” Yes, their father’s hesitation was quite enough for them; he was going to say, “I do not decidedly forbid you, but, but, but,”-only the boys did not care about his “but.” So, there are some ministers who, in preaching, say that a false doctrine is true to some extent, only there are certain objections, and difficulties, and so on. People do not wait to hear the objections and difficulties, but off they go at once with a bit of bad doctrine. It is often so, and it is a pity that it should be so. Ah, me! this trifling with divine truth, this playing with God’s Word, will be sure to do an infinite deal of mischief, and mar the stewardship of any man who yields to it!

Next, we can prove ourselves unfaithful stewards by misusing our Master’s goods, employing what he entrusted to us for some other end than his glory; or by neglecting some of the household. We may so preach that there is never any milk for babes; and, on the other hand, we may so preach that there is never a morsel of meat for men, and the milk may be so watery that it is not even good enough for babes. It is a sin to neglect any one member of the household, for we must be found faithful to them all if we would be judged to be faithful at all.

We can also misbehave ourselves as stewards by conniving at whatever is wrong in our fellow-servants. “Anything for a peaceful life!” is the motto of the’ unfaithful steward. “Let men live as they like; we cannot rebuke them, because then they might quarrel with us.” Ah, dear me, if we are not prepared to bear a little of that sort of reproach! Even if reproof of sin must bring unkindness in return, we must not withhold that reproof; but must administer it with all the more prayerfulness and kindness. It must be given lest, as it was with Eli, a curse shall come upon our house because our sons made themselves vile, and we restrained them not.

And, dear friends, there is one other thing that any steward may do, and thereby spoil his stewardship; that is, prove unfaithful by forgetting that his Lord will soon come. He may come before we begin our next piece of work, he may come while we are in the middle of it, or he may come just as we are closing it, and may there and then require an account at our hands. Oh, how earnestly we should live if we were sure that Christ would come to-night! What family prayer you would have to-night if you knew that, ere the morning dawned, Christ would come! Some of you, perhaps, would want to give something extra to his cause, if you knew that it would be the last opportunity you would have of doing so. Some of you would go and wake your children up, and talk to them about Christ, if you knew that he would come before the morning light. There is a great deal left undone by most of us; we are not all like Mr. Whitefield, who could say when he went to bed, “I have not left even a pair of gloves out of their place; if I were to die to-night, everything is right.” It is a beautiful thing so to live, and that is how God’s stewards should live. “Ready, aye, ready,” to live or to die, to go on or to leave off, to stop here or to go to heaven, just whichever the Master appoints. This is good stewardship; but if we forget that he will come, we shall get into a loose and slovenly way of acting, and that will be to our own discredit, and to our Master’s dishonour.

Now, finally, what will be the result of our stewardship? Supposing we are good stewards, what will the result be? A reward from our Master’s own lips. In the day of account he will say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Now, after that, you do not want a crown, do you? You do not want any ruling over many cities. You will have all that; but I think that this utterance of our Master is quite enough for any steward of his, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Oh, if he should ever say that to us, there is enough in it to make for us a whole eternity of bliss!

But suppose that, at the last, we are found unfaithful, what will the result be? Punishment from the Lord’s own hand. If it be so, that we have never washed our robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb; if it be so, that our hearts have never been renewed by divine grace; if it be so, that we have never been saved from our sin, and consequently have never been saved from our unfaithfulness; if it should turn out that we have never been saved from living to ourselves, never been so saved as to live honestly and faithfully to God,-then what will the result be? I mean, for you who profess to be Christians? Here are our Lord’s words; I am not going to enlarge on them any more than I did on the other words: “The lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers,”-as if that was the worst punishment that could be meted out to him. God grant that none of us may ever have that portion!

But oh, you who are unbelievers, do you not see that your portion is that which God will appoint to those who are unfaithful, and only worthy of condemnation? What is your portion? It is something truly terrible, for it will be that which God appoints as a punishment for the worst of sinners, the treacherous and the unfaithful. O unbelievers, I would not be in your place five minutes for all the world! As the Lord liveth, there is but a step between you and hell! Only a breath, and you may be gone. If I were in your place, I should be afraid to eat a morsel of bread to-night, lest a crumb should go the wrong way, and by causing my death should land me in everlasting misery. One might be afraid to shut his eyes to-night as an unbeliever lest, as he closed them on earth, he shut them for ever to all light, and hope, world without end.

“Ye sinners, seek his grace,

Whose wrath ye cannot bear;

Fly to the shelter of his cross,

And find salvation there.”

Oh, fly to Jesus at once, for he has said, “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” God help you to trust to Christ to-night, and to go out of this Tabernacle saved men and saved women, for Jesus Christ’s sake! Amen.

Exposition by C. H Spurgeon

LUKE 12:35-48

Verses 35-37. Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning; and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately. Blessed are those servants, whom the Lord when he cometh shall find watching: verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.

This is a wonderful passage. Christ has already had one turn as a servitor. He was Master and Lord, yet he washed his disciples’ feet; but he says that, if we are watchful and faithful, if we truly serve him, the day shall come when, in all his robes of glory, he shall gird himself, and serve us.

38-40. And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants. And this know, that if the goodman of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched, and not have suffered his house to be broken through. Be ye therefore ready also: for the Son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not.

This is a warning to Christ’s own people; but it is still more a warning to those who do not know him. Suppose he were to come to-night; where would you be, you who have hitherto lived as if you were your own masters, and were by no means the servants of Christ? Take heed unto yourselves, for ye know not when your Lord shall come.

41-44. Then Peter said unto him, Lord, speakest thou this parable unto us, or even to all? And the Lord said, Who then is that faithful and wise steward, whom his Lord shall make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of meat in due season? Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing. Of a truth I say unto you, that he will make him ruler over all that he hath.

What rewards Christ has in store for his people! If we will but be his servants now, and the servants of our brethren, he will make us rulers over all that he has. I cannot attempt to explain all that these words mean, but I bless the Lord that they are absolutely true.

45, 46. But and if that servant say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; and shall begin to beat the menservants and maidens, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken; the lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers.

Again let me say that I cannot attempt to explain all that these words mean; but, oh! what will be the horror, the terror, of the punishment which will fall upon the unfaithful steward, the minister who is untrue to his holy calling, the professor who says that he is a child of God, and a steward of Christ, and yet is unfaithful to his trust I will read our Lord’s words again. You know how we are sometimes accused of saying things too dreadful about the wrath of God in the world to come; but, beloved, we never say anything dreadful enough. If you will carefully examine the Word of God, you will find there expressions such as even Dante or the mediæval preachers, with all the horrors they depicted, never Surpassed. We cannot exaggerate the awful depth of meaning which we find in the words of the loving Christ himself; let we read this verse again: “The lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers.”

47, 48. And that servant, which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be mush required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.

Judge ye, then, brethren and sisters, how much of ability and talent your Lord has entrusted to you, and be not content to have rendered him some service; but look for proportionate service, and humble yourselves in his presence if your service is not in proportion to the opportunities entrusted to you. Who among us can refrain from humbling himself before God when he thinks of this?

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-709, 16, 639.