A Line in a Hymn Declares: "Every Work for Jesus Will Be Blest"! For Whom Are You Working? Yourself? Jesus Christ the Master? For Time? For Eternity? Please Ponder This Idea?

Image of a Blacksmith working with his hands to win his daily bread and to serve and minister to his local community. Luther declared everyone benefits when we serve the Lord in our calling or vocation. It is especially poignant when done in a dual manner with an eye to how it affects eternity!

A Devotional Reading

For

The Eleventh Day of April 2025

From the Pen of John Albert Broadus

One of the Four Founders of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

“Spiritual Work has Rich Rewards” [1]

Scripture Portion

"And he that reapeth receiveth wages," saith Jesus, "and gathereth fruit unto life eternal." John 4:36

Spiritual work has rich rewards. It has the reward of success. It is not in vain to try to do good to the souls of men through the truth of God and seeking his grace. Sometimes you may feel as if you were standing at the foot of a precipice a thousand feet high and trying to spring to its summit and were all powerless. Sometimes you may feel as if you had flung your words against a stone wall and made no impression at all. Sometimes you may go away all ashamed of what you have said in public or in private. But there was never a word spoken that uttered God's truth and sought God's blessing, that was spoken in vain. Somehow it does good to somebody, it does good at some time or other; it shall be known in earth or in heaven that it did do good. Comfort your hearts with these words: It is not in vain to try to do good.

You may say, "I have not the lips of the eloquent, the tongue of the learned, how can I talk?" There is many a minister who is eloquent and has preached to gathered congregations, who could tell you that he knows of many more instances in which his private words have been blest to individuals than he knows of such instances in public. I knew of a girl who had been so afflicted that she could not leave her couch for years, who had to be lifted constantly poor, helpless creature! But [she] who would talk to those who came into her room about her joy in God, and would persuade them to seek the consolations of the Gospel, and many were benefited and would bring their friends to her, till after a while they brought them from adjoining counties, that she, the poor, helpless girl, night influence them; at length she even began to write letters to people far away, and that girl's sickbed became a center of blessing to people throughout a whole region.

We talk about doing nothing in the world. Ah, if our hearts were in it! We do not know what we can do. That tiger in the cage has been there since he was a baby tiger, and does not know that he could burst those bars if he were but to exert his strength. Oh, the untried strength in all our churches and the good that the people could do if we would only try, and keep trying, and pray for God's blessing. My friends, you cannot save your soul as a solitary, and you ought not to dare to try to go alone into the paradise of God. We shall best promote our own piety when we are trying to save others. We shall be most helpful to ourselves when we are most helpful to those around us. Many of you have found it so; and all of you may find it so, again and again, with repetitions that shall pass all human telling. "For he that watereth shall be watered also again."

Spiritual work shall also be rewarded in the Lord of the harvest's commendation and welcome. Ah, he will know which was the sowing and which was the reaping. The world may not know; we may never hear; but he will know which was the sowing and which was the reaping, and who tried to do good and thought he had not done it, and who was sad and bowed down with the thought of being utterly unable to be useful, and yet was useful. He will know, he will reward even the desire of the heart, which there was no opportunity to carry out. He will reward the emotion that trembled on the lip and could find no utterance. He will reward David for wanting to build the temple as well as Solomon for building it. He will reward all that we do, and all that we try to do, and all that we wish to do. O blessed God! He will be your reward and mine, forever and forever.

[1] John A. Broadus, “Some Laws of Spiritual Work,” in Sermons and Addresses (Nashville: Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, Copyright by H.M. Wharton & Co., 1886), 26-44.