A HOME MISSION

Whatever your hand finds to do, do [it] with your might; for [there is] no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going.” (Ecclesiastes 9:10 NKJV)

 Comments below by Tammy Phillips 
December 27, 2021

I know that if we had lived at the same time, if the Lord had woven our lives together,  my brother in Christ, Charles Spurgeon and I would have been great friends.  We speak the same language.  As I was studying Ecclesiastes 9:10, I realized that his sermon was brilliantly inspired by the Holy Spirit.  I borrowed excerpts from his 7000-word exhortation to share with you.  Hits home for me! It is part of what the Lord shared with me about ten years ago… “Go to YOUR world.”  

A HOME MISSION
by CHARLES H. SPURGEON
New Park Street Pulpit Volume 5
June 26, 1859

 First, I shall explain THE PREACHER’S EXHORTATION. I shall do so by dividing it into three parts. What shall I do? —“Whatsoever thy hand findeth.” How shall I do it? —”Do it with thy might.”—And then, why shall I do it? —”For there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest.

Why cannot you do wonders in the circle in which God has placed you? He does not call you to do that which is leagues away, and which is beyond your power; it is that which your hand findeth to do I am persuaded that our home duties, —the duties which come near to us in our own streets, in our own lanes and alleys, —are the duties in which we ought most of us mainly to glorify Christ. Why will you be stretching out your hands to that which you cannot reach? Do that which is near, —which is at your hand.  Serve God in that which your hand findeth present. Serve him in your immediate situation, where you now are.  Just do that first which is nearest to you. Begin at home.  Stop and attend to y our own work.

Oh, if ire did but understand the true majesty of humility, and how great a thing it is for a Christian to do little things, to bow himself and to stoop, we should rather envy the meanest of the flock than the greatest, and each of us try to wash the saint’s feet and perform the most menial service for the Master. Often, I think, when you and I are standing back for some humbling duty if Christ Jesus should come by that way and do it, how we should blush.

1.  What shall I do? —”Whatsoever thy hand findeth; Do it.”

That is do it promptly; not fritter away your lives in setting down what you intend to do to-morrow as being a recompense for the idleness of to-day. No man ever served God by doing things tomorrow. If we have honored Christ and are blessed, it is by the things which we do to-day. For after all, the ticking of the clock saith-today! to-day! to-day! We have no other time in which to live. The past is gone; the future hath not come; we have, we never shall have, anything but the present. This is our all. let us do what our hand findeth to do.  Do it! Procrastinate not a day. “Procrastination is the thief of time.” Let him not steal thy time. Do it, at once. Serve thy God now; for now, is all the time thou canst reckon on.

2. How shall I do it? —”Do it with thy might.”

“Do it with thy might.” Whatever you do for Christ, throw your whole soul into it, Christ wants none to serve him with their fingers: he must have their hands their arms, their hearts, We must not give Christ a little slurred labor, which is done as a matter of course now and then; but when we do serve him, we must do it with all our bears, and soul, and strength, and might.  If ye cut your works open and cannot find your hearts in them, it is an ill omen for your works—they are good for nothing, and their object shall never be accomplished. The worst part of the Christian church at this time is, that it seems as if many of our ministers and their churches had lost their hearts. Step into your churches and chapels, everything is orderly and precise. but where is the life, where is the power?

But where is the might of a Christian? Let us not forget that. The might of a Christian is not in himself, for he is perfect weakness. His might lieth in the Lord of Hosts. It will be well for us if all we attempt to do is done in God’s strength, or else it will not be done with might: it will be feebly and badly done. Whenever we attempt to serve a loaf in the winning of souls, let us first begin with prayer. Let us seek his help. Let us go on with prayer mixed with faith; and when we have concluded the work, let us commend it again to God with renewed faith and fresh prayer. What we do thus will be well done and will not fail in its effect. But what we do merely with creature-strength, with the mere influence of carnal zeal, will come to nothing at all. “whatsoever thy hand findeth to do,” do it with that real might which God hath promised them that ask it, with that real wisdom which he giveth liberally, which he bestows on all who seek it meekly and reverently at his feet. God help us, then to carry out this exhortation, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it v with thy might.”

3. Why shall I do it? —“For there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest.”

We are to do it with all our might death is near and when death comes there will be an end to all our serving God on earth, an end to our preaching, an end to our praying, an end to our doing aught for God’s glory among the perishing souls of men. If we all lived in the light of our funerals how well should we live.

If you were quite sure of the time of your death, if you knew you had but a week or two to live, with what haste would you go round and bid farewell to all your friends; with what haste would you begin to set all matters right on earth, supposing matters are all right for eternity. Christian men like other men, forget that they are mortal,

Let us pause a moment, and think that in a short time we must die

Mother, you can pray for your children, now; but when death shall have sealed your eyes in darkness, there can be no more prayers lifted up for ever.

All we can do for our fellows we must do, now. For the cerement shall soon enwrap us, the hands must soon hang down, and the eyes be shut, and the tongue be still. While we live, let us live. Work while ye live, and live while ye work; and God grant to each of us that we may discharge in this life all the desires of our hearts, in magnifying God and bringing sinners to the cross.

I enCOURAGE you to STIR UP ALL PROFESSORS OF RELIGION HERE PRESENT TO DO WHATSOEVER THEIR HANDS FINDETH TO DO, TO DO IT NOW, AND WITH ALL THEIR MIGHT. If Christ Jesus should leave the upper world and come into the midst of this hall this morning, what answer could you give if after showing you his wounded hands and feet, and his rent side, he should put this question, “I have done all this for thee what hast thou done for me?”

What have you done for him?

As for some of you, you have done positively nothing. You have joined the church and have been baptized, and that is about all, you have sometimes doled out a little from your abundance to the cause of Christ, but oh, how little when you think he gave his all for you!

But if ye do believe it, act as ye believe; if ye think men are perishing, if the Lord’s right hand is dashing in pieces his enemy, then I beseech you be strengthened by the same right hand, to endeavor to bring those enemies to Christ that they may be reconciled by the blood of the cross.

‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, for he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned.’

Entire sermon may be found here: https://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/a-home-mission-sermon/#flipbook/