Weariness in Well-doing

Read the two previous verses, and mark the apostle’s censure of those who are busy-bodies, “working not at all.”

A church should be like a hive of working bees.

There should be order, and there will be order where all are at work.

The apostle condemns disorder in verse 11.

There should be quietness; and work promotes it: verse 12.

There should be honesty; and work fosters it.

The danger is, lest we first tire of work, and then fancy that we have done enough, or are discharged from service by our superior importance, or by our subscribing to pay a substitute. While any strength remains we may not cease from personal work for Jesus.

Moreover, some will come in who are not busy bees, but busy-bodies: they do not work for their own bread, but are surprisingly eager to eat that of others; these soon cause disturbance and desolation, but they know nothing of “well-doing.”

The apostle endeavors to cure this disease, and therefore gives—

I. A SUMMARY OF CHRISTIAN LIFE. He calls it “well-doing.”

1. Religious work is well-doing. Preaching, teaching, writing books and letters, temperance meetings, Bible-classes, tract-distributing, personal conversation, private prayer, praise, etc.

2. Charitable work is “well-doing.” The poor, the widow and the fatherless, the ignorant, the sick, the fallen, and the desponding, are to be looked after with tender care.

3. Common labor is “well-doing.”

   • This will be seen to be the point in the text, if we read the previous verses. Well-doing takes many forms: among the rest—
   • Support of family by the husband.
   • Management of house by the wife.
   • Assistance in house-work by daughters.
   • Diligence in his trade by the young man.
   • Study of his books by the child at school.
   • Faithful service by domestics in the home.
   • Honest toil by the day-laborer.

4. Certain labor is “well-doing” in all these senses, since it is common labor used for charitable and religious ends.

   • Support of aged persons by those who work for them.
   • Watching over infirm or sick relatives.
   • Bringing up children in the fear of the Lord.
   • Work done in connection with the church of God, to enable others to preach the gospel in comfort.
   • Everything is “well-doing” which is done from a sense of duty, with dependence upon God, and faith in his word; out of love to Christ, in good-will to other workers, with prayer for direction, acceptance, and blessing.
   • Common actions become holy, and drudgery grows divine when the motive is pure and high.
   • We now think it will be wise to gather from the epistle—

II. A WARNING AS TO CAUSES OF WEARINESS IN WELL-DOING.

1. Unworthy receivers of charity weary generous workers: verse 10.

2. Idle examples tempt the industrious to idleness: verse 11.

3. Busy-bodies, and disorderly persons in the church, hinder many from their diligent service: verses 11, 12.

4. Troublers, such as “unreasonable and wicked men,” dispirit those who would serve the Lord: verse 2.

5. Our own flesh is apt to crave ease, and shun difficulties.

   • We can make too much of works, and it is equally easy to have too few of them. Let us watch against weariness.

Let us now conclude with—

III. AN ARGUMENT AGAINST WEARINESS IN WELL-DOING. “But you, brethren, be not weary in well doing.”

1. Lose not what you have already wrought.

2. Consider what self-denials others practice for inferior things: soldiers, wrestlers, rowers in boat-race, etc.

3. Remember that the eye of God is upon you, his hand with you, his smile on you, his command over you.

4. Reflect upon the grandeur of the service in itself as done unto the Lord, and to his glorious cause.

5. Think upon the sublime lives of those who have preceded you in this heavenly service.

6. Fix your eye on Jesus, and what he endured.

7. Behold the recompense of reward: the crown, the palm.

   • If others tire and faint, be not you weary.
   • If others meanly loaf upon their fellows, be it yours rather to give than to receive.
   • If others break the peace of the church, be it yours to maintain it by diligent service, and so to enjoy the blessing of verse 16.

Whetstones

A true Christian must be a worker. Industry, or diligence in business, is a prime element in piety; and the industry God demands is the activity of our whole complex nature. Without this a man may be a dreamer, but not a “doer”; and just so far as any faculty of our nature is left unemployed do we come short of a complete Christian character. I must be doing, I—I, my entire self, my hand, my foot, my eye, my tongue, my understanding, my affections—must be all, not only resolving, purposing, feeling, willing, but actively doing. “Let us be doing.”

But more than this. I must be “well-doing.” The Greek word expresses beauty, and this enters into the apostolic thought. True piety is lovely. Just so far as it comes short in the beautiful, it becomes monstrous. But, as used by Paul, it goes far beyond this, and signifies all moral excellence. Activity is not enough; for activity the intensest may be evil. Lucifer is as active, as constant, and earnest as Gabriel. But the one is a fiend, and the other a seraph. Any activity that is not good is a curse always and only. Better be dead, inert matter—a stone, a clod—than a stinging reptile, or a destroying demon; and herein lies the great practical change in regeneration. It transforms the mere doer into a well-doer. It is not so much a change in the energy as in the direction.—Charles Wadsworth, D.D.

The Hebrews have a saying, that God is more delighted in adverbs than in nouns: ‘tis not so much the matter that’s done, but the matter how ‘tis done, that God minds. Not how much, but how well! ‘Tis the well-doing that meets with a well-done. Let us therefore serve God, hot nominally or verbally, but adverbially.—Ralph Venning.

Think nothing done while anything remains to do.

—Samuel Rogers.

D’Israeli tells the following story of two members of the Port Royal Society. Arnauld wished Nicolle to assist him in a new work, when the latter replied, “We are now old; is it not time to rest?” “Rest!” returned Arnauld, “have we not all eternity to rest in?” So Gerald Massey sings—

“Let me work now, for all Eternity,

With its immortal leisure, waits me.”