1 Chronicles 4:23 These were the potters, and those that dwelled among plants and hedges: there they dwelled with the king for his work. I. HOW WORK LINKS MEN TO KINGS. There are many wrong ideas in the world about labour. Not a few people try to bring up their children without it, and you will see a man toil early and late to make money, getting no enjoyment out of it himself, and when you get at the reason it is that he may make his son a gentleman, which means, someone who can live without work. This is not according to the Divine idea: "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." It was not for nothing that Christ toiled at the carpenter's bench. If you were to take out of the Bible all the stories of men who worked for their living, you would rob it of its greatest beauty. The men and women who work, whether with brain or hand, or both, are the people who save a nation from ruin. What is a man's religion worth if it does not teach him to labour? Are we not to work out our own salvation, and that for the best of reasons, "It is God that worketh in us." The sunshine and the rain are useless to the fields that have not been tilled. He who has no plough needs not to trouble to sharpen his scythe. Bibles and sermons to the idle are not, cannot be, appreciated, and Sabbaths are but a weariness to the man who does no kind of Christian work. Do not mistake yourself for a Christian because you like some popular preacher; it is on the same principle that wasps like honey, but they will rather starve than make it. You would not have heard of these men if they had not worked. Their toil has bound up their life with the king's life. Why should you not act so that the story of God cannot be fully told without your name being mentioned? II. KINGS NEED DIFFERENT KINDS OF WORKERS. There is a sense in which God needs us and cannot carry out His plans without us. Whatever your talent there is room for you. Not only genius, but dogged drudgery. We want the artist to paint the picture, and the workman to frame it; the author to write the book, and the printer to give it to the world. How true it is that no one man can do all that needs to be done, even with his own gifts. Does the gardener wish to send in a choice rose he has just cut? Does he wish his rose to stand on the king's table? Then he must have the help of the potter. He must have one of his vases. (Thomas Champness.) Parallel Verses KJV: These were the potters, and those that dwelt among plants and hedges: there they dwelt with the king for his work. |
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