“[Christ] has never refused to bear your burdens, He has never fainted under their weight.”
The Teacher opens up the book of Ecclesiastes by asking the question, “What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?”(Eccl. 1:3) He had exhausted the pleasures of life and the best it had to offer. One of his many conclusions was that, “All things are full of weariness…” (Eccl. 1:8a)
Charles Spurgeon knew that even the greatest of saints, “in toiling towards heaven often grow faint.” Paul knew this as well. He tells of his many burdens to the Corinthian church: the “toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night….” and “the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.” (2 Cor. 11:27-28) Though we might not be “weary of God’s work….we often grow weary in it.”
For Spurgeon, such faintheartedness was due to the many cares life can bring. He understood “…that our cares are manifold.” You would “never be able to count your cares, even though you might count the hairs of your head.” He knew that to renew a sanctified vigor in the face of many trials, the Christian must come to God for continual restoration. Indeed, if not, none could be “ready for the perpetual assaults of hell, or the stern afflictions of heaven, or even for the strifes within.”
Spurgeon believed that God has not remained silent but provides for our weariness in His Word. His instruction is always timely, for “The Bible is always a new book….there is not a stale page in the word of God; it is just as fresh as though the ink were not yet dry.” Spurgeon saw the study of God’s Word as nourishment for the soul as food is for the body. In his beloved devotional Evening by Evening, he urged his readers that “we must repair the waste of the soul by feeding upon the Book of God.” Knowing that the remedy for our weariness is found in God himself, Spurgeon offered these timely words to his congregants, “Would you lose your sorrows? Would you drown your cares? Then go plunge yourself in the Godhead’s deepest sea…and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated.” In contemplating the Godhead there was “a balm for every wound….a quietus for every grief….a balsam for every sore.”
When we lift our eyes from our earthly cares towards heaven’s graces we find a relief from all of our anxieties. In directing our thoughts to the One in whom “all things holds together” (Col. 1:17), we can be assured that he will not allow us to fall apart. For “what seems to you a crushing burden, would be to Him but as the small dust of the balance.” If our Savior indeed is resurrected from the dead, we can hope in the reality that “He lives, and lives to care for us.” Spurgeon knew well the burdens we carry “as we advance in the King’s highway of righteousness”, and reminded his flock that “he [Jesus] is still calling to the weary and the heavy laden to come to him.”
Indeed, Spurgeon identified the Church as the instrument through which Jesus calls us to lay down our burdens at his feet. In the saints, “is the sympathy of Christ flowing through the hearts of his own redeemed ones.” Additionally, Spurgeon noticed that “one fact that keeps the Christian from weariness…is that he looks to the end, to the recompense of the reward.” In short, “When we know that we have eternal life, we do not fret about the trials of this passing life.”
One crisp November evening in 1877, Spurgeon addressed the Sunday School Union. His address was titled “The Cause and Cure of Weariness in Sabbath School Teachers,” and his text that evening was Gal. 6:9, “Let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” Towards the end of the address, he encouraged those teachers who had grown weary in their work. He urged them to “Pluck up courage. Do not be a coward. Hope on, Hope ever. Work on, even though the task becomes more and more trying to you. Do not despise your vocation, nor stay your hand, be not weary in well doing.”
For those that are weary and feel like they “walk the heavenly road all alone,” take heart in the fact that “The promise is not to some, but to all the believing sheep of Christ. ‘They shall never perish.’” This is a work of God whose, “….purpose….secures their final perseverance.” As we pursue Christ by living as citizens of his Kingdom, “there are such fresh things in the Christian’s experience…that we run and are not weary.” As God fed the grumbling Israelites in the wilderness and “‘day by day the manna fell,’ so hour by hour fresh grace streams into our souls.” Come to Christ for “He has never refused to bear your burdens, He has never fainted under their weight.” In the midst of our weariness and fatigue, let us heed Spurgeon’s invitation to, “Come hither, all ye sin-sick ones, and behold the glorious Son of God, made in the likeness of human flesh, breathing out his life upon the cross!” and surrender ourselves “….into those dear hands which were pierced for [us].”
1. “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden,” was the burden of his cry; he is still calling to the weary and the heavy laden to come to him.
1. “Jesus Christ is the same now as he was in times gone by, for the text saith, ‘The same yesterday, and to-day.’ He is the same to-day as he was from old eternity. Before all worlds he planned our salvation; he entered into covenant with his Father to undertake it. His delights were with the sons of men in prospect, and now to-day he is as steadfast to that covenant as ever. He will not lose those who were then given to him, nor will he fail nor be discouraged till every stipulation of that covenant shall be fulfilled. Whatever was in the heart of Christ before the stars began to shine, that same infinite love is there today. Jesus is the same today as he was when he was here on earth. There is much comfort in this thought. When he tabernacled among men, he was most willing to save. ‘Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden,’ was the burden of his cry; he is still calling to the weary and the heavy laden to come to him.”
2. “Having made Jesus his all, he shall find all in Jesus.”
2. “He shall find pasture. He who knows Jesus shall never want. Going in and out shall be alike helpful to him: in fellowship with God he shall grow, and in watering others he shall be watered. Having made Jesus his all, he shall find all in Jesus. His soul shall be as a watered garden, and as a well of water whose waters fail not.”
3. “I do not preach to you, tonight, a sandy foundation that will give way under your feet, but a rock to which you may continually retreat, in which you may always dwell secure.”
3. “I do not preach to you, tonight, a sandy foundation that will give way under your feet, but a rock to which you may continually retreat, in which you may always dwell secure. I do not present to you a salvation that may fail you under some stress of temptation, but a salvation that is strong, having in it ‘the sure mercies of David.’”
4. “One of the sweetest balms to sorrow is the sympathy of Christ flowing through the hearts of his own redeemed ones.”
4. “Does not the text also mean that we are to bear one another’s burdens by having a deep sympathy with one another in times of sorrow? Oh, for a sympathetic heart! Seek after it, beloved Christian men and women. Seek to have large hearts, and tender hearts, for the world is full of sorrow; and one of the sweetest balms to sorrow is the sympathy of Christ flowing through the hearts of his own redeemed ones. Be tender, be pitiful, be full of compassion.”
5. “[Christ] lives, and lives to care for us.”
5. “If our Immanuel be indeed then eternal and ever living, let us never think of him as of one dead, whom we have lost, who has ceased to be. What could be a greater sorrow than the thought of a dead Christ? He lives, and lives to care for us.”
6. “Would you lose your sorrows? Would you drown your cares? Then go plunge yourself in the Godhead’s deepest sea; be lost in his immensity; and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated.”
6. “Oh, there is, in contemplating Christ, a balm for every wound, in musing on the Father, there is a quietus for every grief- and in the influence of the Holy Ghost, there is a balsam for every sore. Would you lose your sorrows? Would you drown your cares? Then go plunge yourself in the Godhead’s deepest sea; be lost in his immensity; and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated.”
7. “As we advance in the King’s highway of righteousness, there are such fresh things in the Christian’s experience, and in Christian truth, that we run and are not weary.”
7. “There is not a stale page in the word of God; it is just as fresh as though the ink were not yet dry, but had flowed today from the pen of inspiration. There have been poets whose sayings startled all England when first their verses were thrown broadcast over the land, but nobody reads their writings now. Yet the pages that were written by David and by Paul are glowing with the radiant glory which was upon them when long ago the Holy Spirit spoke by them! As we advance in the King’s highway of righteousness, there are such fresh things in the Christian’s experience, and in Christian truth, that we run and are not weary.”
8. “Do not paddle about the margin of the water of life, but first wade in up to your knees, and then hasten to plunge into the waters to swim in. Beware of contentment with shallow grace.”
8. “The gospel ought to make us separate from the world, the gospel ought to make us lead a heavenly life here below; and so it will if we drink deep draughts of it; but if we take only a sip of it now and again, we give it no chance of working out its design in us. Do not paddle about the margin of the water of life, but first wade in up to your knees, and then hasten to plunge into the waters to swim in. Beware of contentment with shallow grace. Prove what the grace of God can do for you by giving yourself up to its power.”
Quinn Mosier is pursuing his Master of Divinity at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He also serves as a Spurgeon Scholar in The Spurgeon Library.
