THE CAUSE AND CURE OF WEARINESS IN SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS – Charles Spurgeon

The Cause and Cure of Weariness in Sunday School Teachers

“Let us not be weary in doing good: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” Galatians 6:9.

This verse occurs in the Epistle to the Galatians, which so plainly sets forth the grand doctrine of Justification by Faith and teaches us most clearly that salvation is not of works, but of Grace. As if to confuse forever those who say that the doctrine of Free Grace is unpractical, the Apostle, before he closes his Epistle, exhorts Believers to labor. And in the verse before us, he gives us a sentence worthy to be printed in letters of gold and hung up forever before the eyes of all Christian workers: “Be not weary in doing good.” It is true, my Brothers and Sisters, that you are not to save yourselves by doing good. Your motive is not selfish, but because you are saved already, you desire to manifest the power of gratitude and to prove to all the world that those who receive a free salvation are the very ones who most cheerfully labor to please God and bring glory to His name. O you who are debtors to infinite mercy, “Be not weary in doing good.”

The Apostle, at the time he wrote our text, had in his mind’s eye the doing good which, by its alms, does good unto all men and also that kindness which leads hearers of the Gospel to communicate in all good things unto him that teaches. Truly, it is easy to be weary in these matters. Giving alms is certainly disheartening work. One is so continually being deceived that giving to the poor becomes a weary business. Impostors abound on all sides! This city of London swarms with impostors who would deceive Solomon himself. I do not wonder that men are driven to organize their charity—but this frequently means bringing it to an end! The tendency is to excuse themselves because, at some time or other, they have been victimized. A cruel hardness is abroad that talks philosophy and renounces giving alms for fear of disturbing our delightful social economy. Alms giving, if we are to believe some men, has become a crime, and the truly good man is he who never interferes with the work of the poor. To these people, it seems odd that our Lord should have commended anything so inconsistent with political economy as giving to the poor! According to the modern school, we may expect those to be blessed who see people hungry and give them no meat, thirsty and give them no drink, sick and in prison and never visit them because hungry people should go to the parish and thirsty people to the pump!

I trust, however, that the Christian spirit which is pitiful to the poor will never die out among us and that, notwithstanding all the difficulties under which we may have to labor, we may not be weary in doing good, for despite all deceits and impositions, in due season we shall reap if we faint not. I am sure I shall not be wrong in taking the text from its immediate connection and applying it to the work of Sunday schools, for, first of all, I am sure, Brothers and Sisters, that your work is well described in the text—it is doing good. Secondly, I am equally clear that you are liable to the evils mentioned here, which are common to all Christian service—weariness and faintness. And it is equally clear that the consolation and encouragement of the text may truthfully be enjoyed by you. “In due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”

I. Your Work is Well Described in the Text

It may be set forth in so many words as doing good. You entered upon it because you felt it to be so, and you continue in it for the same reason. Another description of Christian work is implied in the promise of reaping—your work is sowing. Take the two ideas of doing good and sowing, and they will both be found to be exceedingly well embodied in holy labor among the young. Sunday school work is doing good. How can it be otherwise, for it is an act of obedience! I trust you have entered upon it because you call Jesus your Master and Lord, and you wish to fulfill the great command: “Go you into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.” You find children to be creatures—fallen creatures—but still lovable little things, full of vigor, life, and glee. You see them to be a component part of the race, and you conclude at once that your Master’s command applies to them. You are not like the disciples who would put them back, for you have learned from their mistake and you remember the words of their Master and yours: “Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not.”

You know, too, that “out of the mouths of babes and sucklings He has ordained strength because of the adversary,” so that you are sure that He included the little ones in the general commission when He said, “Preach the Gospel to every creature.” You are doubly sure that you are obeying His will because you have certain special precepts which relate to the little ones, such as “Feed My lambs” and “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he shall not depart from it.” You know that it is our duty to preserve a testimony in the world, and therefore you are anxious to teach the Word of God to your children that they may teach it to their children, that so, from generation to generation, the Word of the Lord may be made known. Be the task pleasant or irksome to you, it is not yours to hesitate, but to obey. The love which has redeemed you also constrains you. You feel the touch of the sacred hand upon your shoulder, the hand which once was pierced, and you hear your Redeemer say, “As My Father has sent Me, even so send I you.”

And, because of that sending, you go forth to the little ones in obedience to His will. He who obeys is doing good, and in this sense your service among the little ones is doing good. Doing good it is, again, because it brings glory to God. We must always continue to receive from God, who is the great Fountain of goodness and blessing, but yet, in infinite condescension, He permits us to give Him some return. As the dewdrop reflects the beam with which the great sun adorns it, so may we, in our measure, make the light of our great Father to sparkle before the eyes of men. Our lives may be as the rivers which run into the sea from where they originally came. Whenever we attempt that which will clearly promote the Divine Glory, we are doing good.

When we make known Jehovah’s Grace, when we work in accordance with His purposes of love, when we speak forth the Truth of God which honors His beloved Son, whenever, indeed, the Holy Spirit, through us, bears witness to the eternal Truths of the Gospel, there is doing good towards God. We cannot increase His intrinsic Glory, but through His Spirit we can make His Glory to be more widely seen—and among the choicest ways of doing this, we give a high place to the teaching of children the fear of the Lord in order that they may be a seed to serve Him and to rejoice in His salvation. And who shall doubt that Sunday school work is doing good towards man? The highest form of charity is to teach our fellow man the Gospel of Jesus Christ! You may give bread to your fellow, but when he has eaten it, it is gone. If you give him the Bread of Life, it abides with him forever. You may give him bread in plenty, but in due time he will die as his fathers have done before him. But if you give him the Bread of Heaven and he eats thereof, he shall live forever!

God has enabled you to hand out to him immortal food, even Jesus, who is “that Bread from Heaven.” What a blessing it is to a man if you are the instrument of changing his heart and so of emancipating him from vice and making him free unto holiness! To lead a soul to Christ is to lead it to Heaven! It is assuredly a noble part of benevolence to deliver the Gospel to the sons of men, and, if possible, this benevolence is of a still higher kind when you deliver the Truth of God to children, for as prevention is better than a cure, so is it better to prevent a life of vice than to rescue from it. And as the earlier a soul has light, the shorter is its night of darkness, so the earlier in life salvation comes to the heart, the better and greater is the benediction. To receive the dew of Grace while we are yet in the dew of youth is a double blessing!

Brethren, your work is one of doing good of the most thorough and radical kind, for you strike at the very root of sin in the child by seeking his regeneration. You desire, by the Grace of God, to win the heart for Christ at the beginning of life, and this is the best of blessings! I hope you are not among those who only hope to see your children converted when they are grown up and feel satisfied to let them remain in their sins while they are children. I hope that you pray for the conversion of children as children and are working to that end by the Spirit’s gracious aid. If you are doing so, I know of no service more fit to engage the angels of Heaven if they could be permitted to undertake it! Surely, if they could teach the Gospel to mankind and had their choice of learners, they might well pass those by who are already hardened in sin and who can only give their tottering age to Christ—and gather for Him the young whose day is but dawning! We may not set one work against another, but at any rate, we may count ourselves happy if our sphere is among the young. Let us gather the rosebuds for Jesus! Let us bring to Him the virgin in her earliest beauty and the young man in his first vigor before sin and age have spoiled them of their charms! Let us find for Him those who can give Him a whole life and honor Him from dawn till its eve! Oh, it is glorious to have such work for Jesus! Go to your youthful charges rejoicing in your work, for it is doing good!

II. Your Service Will Involve Challenges

It is by no means difficult to see that Sunday school work is sowing. Upon this, I will not speak much, for the emblem is easy to be understood. Your schools are the field, the Gospel is the seed, and you are the sowers. Suffer me only to say that yours is a work in which there are great outgoings and apparent losses. Even as the sower casts his seed into the earth, buries it, and it is lost to him, so do you spend your strength, your thought, your love, your talent, your time, and, at first, see no return. You are sacrificing your leisure and much of the religious privileges of your fellow Christians. You are, as some say, burying yourselves in the school—surrendering ease and repose for unremunerated work. I speak after the manner of men. You engage in these self-denials because you believe that the Truth of God, like a seed, ought to be sown and that it is your duty to sow it.

It is frequently said that “truth is mighty and will prevail,” but this must be qualified by the reflection that Truth does nothing by way of conquest till it is spoken out by earnest men. I doubt not that there are hundreds of great Truths of God, in the shape of social reforms, now lying on the shelf and having little or no power because they have not yet found a brave and earnest tongue to proclaim them. When the man shall come who is ordained to be their spokesman, they will ring out like a clarion and hosts will gather to their standard, but meanwhile they lie like sleeping giants whose might sleeps with them. There is power in the Truth of God, as there is life in seed, but it will be hidden till, like seed, it is sown in favorable soil! It needs a sower, and feeling that the Truth ought to be sown, you consecrate yourselves to that work.

You have, moreover, looked at the children and you have felt that the soil of their minds ought to be sown. You hope to find good soil, at least, in some cases, and it strikes you that to delay to sow will be culpable neglect. You are sure that if you do not sow, the devil will, and that weeds will spring up if wheat is not sown. And you wish, if you can, to get the start of some, at least, of the devil’s servants and drop in the seeds of Divine Truth before the grosser vices have come to maturity. You know that abundant seed of noxious plants lies hidden in that plot of ground, by nature, as the result of the Fall, but still, before they have grown into rank luxuriance, you desire to choke the weeds with the rapid growth of Heaven’s own corn.

Your present occupation is to sow the children’s minds. You are delighted when you see the seed spring up immediately, but where it tries your patience, you still sow. When I had a little garden of my own and put in mustard and cress, I went the next morning to see if it was sprouting and was not satisfied to wait for the due season. I turned over the dirt, and I dare say I prevented the growth of the seed by my haste. It is quite possible for teachers to commit the same folly by an unbelieving hurry—expecting to reap tomorrow what they have sown today. Immediate fruit may come, for God works marvelously, but whether it does or not, your plain duty is to sow. Reap you shall, but meanwhile, you must be satisfied to go on sowing, sowing, sowing, even to the end. Reaping is your reward, but sowing is your work. Sowing, sowing, ever sowing till the hand is palsied in death and the seed basket is carried on another arm! Doing good by sowing the seed is your work.

“Let us not be weary in doing good: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” Galatians 6:9.

This verse occurs in the Epistle to the Galatians, which so plainly sets forth the grand doctrine of Justification by Faith and teaches us most clearly that salvation is not of works, but of Grace. As if to confuse forever those who say that the doctrine of Free Grace is unpractical, the Apostle, before he closes his Epistle, exhorts Believers to labor. And in the verse before us, he gives us a sentence worthy to be printed in letters of gold and hung up forever before the eyes of all Christian workers: “Be not weary in doing good.” It is true, my Brothers and Sisters, that you are not to save yourselves by doing good. Your motive is not selfish, but because you are saved already, you desire to manifest the power of gratitude and to prove to all the world that those who receive a free salvation are the very ones who most cheerfully labor to please God and bring glory to His name. O you who are debtors to infinite mercy, “Be not weary in doing good.”

The Apostle, at the time he wrote our text, had in his mind’s eye the doing good which, by its alms, does good unto all men and also that kindness which leads hearers of the Gospel to communicate in all good things unto him that teaches. Truly, it is easy to be weary in these matters. Giving alms is certainly disheartening work. One is so continually being deceived that giving to the poor becomes a weary business. Impostors abound on all sides! This city of London swarms with impostors who would deceive Solomon himself. I do not wonder that men are driven to organize their charity—but this frequently means bringing it to an end! The tendency is to excuse themselves because, at some time or other, they have been victimized. A cruel hardness is abroad that talks philosophy and renounces giving alms for fear of disturbing our delightful social economy. Alms giving, if we are to believe some men, has become a crime, and the truly good man is he who never interferes with the work of the poor. To these people, it seems odd that our Lord should have commended anything so inconsistent with political economy as giving to the poor! According to the modern school, we may expect those to be blessed who see people hungry and give them no meat, thirsty and give them no drink, sick and in prison and never visit them because hungry people should go to the parish and thirsty people to the pump!

I trust, however, that the Christian spirit which is pitiful to the poor will never die out among us and that, notwithstanding all the difficulties under which we may have to labor, we may not be weary in doing good, for despite all deceits and impositions, in due season we shall reap if we faint not. I am sure I shall not be wrong in taking the text from its immediate connection and applying it to the work of Sunday schools, for, first of all, I am sure, Brothers and Sisters, that your work is well described in the text—it is doing good. Secondly, I am equally clear that you are liable to the evils mentioned here, which are common to all Christian service—weariness and faintness. And it is equally clear that the consolation and encouragement of the text may truthfully be enjoyed by you. “In due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”

I. Your Work is Well Described in the Text

It may be set forth in so many words as doing good. You entered upon it because you felt it to be so, and you continue in it for the same reason. Another description of Christian work is implied in the promise of reaping—your work is sowing. Take the two ideas of doing good and sowing, and they will both be found to be exceedingly well embodied in holy labor among the young. Sunday school work is doing good. How can it be otherwise, for it is an act of obedience! I trust you have entered upon it because you call Jesus your Master and Lord, and you wish to fulfill the great command: “Go you into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.” You find children to be creatures—fallen creatures—but still lovable little things, full of vigor, life, and glee. You see them to be a component part of the race, and you conclude at once that your Master’s command applies to them. You are not like the disciples who would put them back, for you have learned from their mistake and you remember the words of their Master and yours: “Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not.”

You know, too, that “out of the mouths of babes and sucklings He has ordained strength because of the adversary,” so that you are sure that He included the little ones in the general commission when He said, “Preach the Gospel to every creature.” You are doubly sure that you are obeying His will because you have certain special precepts which relate to the little ones, such as “Feed My lambs” and “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he shall not depart from it.” You know that it is our duty to preserve a testimony in the world, and therefore you are anxious to teach the Word of God to your children that they may teach it to their children, that so, from generation to generation, the Word of the Lord may be made known. Be the task pleasant or irksome to you, it is not yours to hesitate, but to obey. The love which has redeemed you also constrains you. You feel the touch of the sacred hand upon your shoulder, the hand which once was pierced, and you hear your Redeemer say, “As My Father has sent Me, even so send I you.”

And, because of that sending, you go forth to the little ones in obedience to His will. He who obeys is doing good, and in this sense your service among the little ones is doing good. Doing good it is, again, because it brings glory to God. We must always continue to receive from God, who is the great Fountain of goodness and blessing, but yet, in infinite condescension, He permits us to give Him some return. As the dewdrop reflects the beam with which the great sun adorns it, so may we, in our measure, make the light of our great Father to sparkle before the eyes of men. Our lives may be as the rivers which run into the sea from where they originally came. Whenever we attempt that which will clearly promote the Divine Glory, we are doing good.

When we make known Jehovah’s Grace, when we work in accordance with His purposes of love, when we speak forth the Truth of God which honors His beloved Son, whenever, indeed, the Holy Spirit, through us, bears witness to the eternal Truths of the Gospel, there is doing good towards God. We cannot increase His intrinsic Glory, but through His Spirit we can make His Glory to be more widely seen—and among the choicest ways of doing this, we give a high place to the teaching of children the fear of the Lord in order that they may be a seed to serve Him and to rejoice in His salvation. And who shall doubt that Sunday school work is doing good towards man? The highest form of charity is to teach our fellow man the Gospel of Jesus Christ! You may give bread to your fellow, but when he has eaten it, it is gone. If you give him the Bread of Life, it abides with him forever. You may give him bread in plenty, but in due time he will die as his fathers have done before him. But if you give him the Bread of Heaven and he eats thereof, he shall live forever!

God has enabled you to hand out to him immortal food, even Jesus, who is “that Bread from Heaven.” What a blessing it is to a man if you are the instrument of changing his heart and so of emancipating him from vice and making him free unto holiness! To lead a soul to Christ is to lead it to Heaven! It is assuredly a noble part of benevolence to deliver the Gospel to the sons of men, and, if possible, this benevolence is of a still higher kind when you deliver the Truth of God to children, for as prevention is better than a cure, so is it better to prevent a life of vice than to rescue from it. And as the earlier a soul has light, the shorter is its night of darkness, so the earlier in life salvation comes to the heart, the better and greater is the benediction. To receive the dew of Grace while we are yet in the dew of youth is a double blessing!

Brethren, your work is one of doing good of the most thorough and radical kind, for you strike at the very root of sin in the child by seeking his regeneration. You desire, by the Grace of God, to win the heart for Christ at the beginning of life, and this is the best of blessings! I hope you are not among those who only hope to see your children converted when they are grown up and feel satisfied to let them remain in their sins while they are children. I hope that you pray for the conversion of children as children and are working to that end by the Spirit’s gracious aid. If you are doing so, I know of no service more fit to engage the angels of Heaven if they could be permitted to undertake it! Surely, if they could teach the Gospel to mankind and had their choice of learners, they might well pass those by who are already hardened in sin and who can only give their tottering age to Christ—and gather for Him the young whose day is but dawning! We may not set one work against another, but at any rate, we may count ourselves happy if our sphere is among the young. Let us gather the rosebuds for Jesus! Let us bring to Him the virgin in her earliest beauty and the young man in his first vigor before sin and age have spoiled them of their charms! Let us find for Him those who can give Him a whole life and honor Him from dawn till its eve! Oh, it is glorious to have such work for Jesus! Go to your youthful charges rejoicing in your work, for it is doing good!

It is by no means difficult to see that Sunday school work is sowing. Upon this I will not speak much, for the emblem is easy to be understood. Your schools are the field, the Gospel is the seed, and you are the sowers. Suffer me only to say that yours is a work in which there are great outgoings and apparent losses. Even as the sower casts his seed into the earth, buries it, and it is lost to him, so do you spend your strength, your thought, your love, your talent, your time, and, at first, see no return. You are sacrificing your leisure and much of the religious privileges of your fellow Christians. You are, as some say, burying yourselves in the school—surrendering ease and repose for unremunerated work. I speak after the manner of men. You engage in these self-denials because you believe that the Truth of God, like a seed, ought to be sown and that it is your duty to sow it.

It is frequently said that “truth is mighty and will prevail,” but this must be qualified by the reflection that Truth does nothing by way of conquest till it is spoken out by earnest men. I doubt not that there are hundreds of great Truths of God, in the shape of social reforms, now lying on the shelf and having little or no power because they have not yet found a brave and earnest tongue to proclaim them. When the man shall come who is ordained to be their spokesman, they will ring out like a clarion and hosts will gather to their standard, but meanwhile they lie like sleeping giants whose might sleeps with them. There is power in the Truth of God, as there is life in seed, but it will be hidden till, like seed, it is sown in favorable soil! It needs a sower, and feeling that the Truth ought to be sown, you consecrate yourselves to that work.

You have, moreover, looked at the children and you have felt that the soil of their minds ought to be sown. You hope to find good soil, at least, in some cases, and it strikes you that to delay to sow will be culpable neglect. You are sure that if you do not sow, the devil will, and that weeds will spring up if wheat is not sown. And you wish, if you can, to get the start of some, at least, of the devil’s servants and drop in the seeds of Divine Truth before the grosser vices have come to maturity. You know that abundant seed of noxious plants lies hidden in that plot of ground, by nature, as the result of the Fall, but still, before they have grown into rank luxuriance, you desire to choke the weeds with the rapid growth of Heaven’s own corn.

Your present occupation is to sow the children’s minds. You are delighted when you see the seed spring up immediately, but where it tries your patience, you still sow. When I had a little garden of my own and put in mustard and cress, I went the next morning to see if it was sprouting and was not satisfied to wait for the due season. I turned over the dirt, and I dare say I prevented the growth of the seed by my haste. It is quite possible for teachers to commit the same folly by an unbelieving hurry—expecting to reap tomorrow what they have sown today. Immediate fruit may come, for God works marvelously, but whether it does or not, your plain duty is to sow. Reap you shall, but meanwhile, you must be satisfied to go on sowing, sowing, sowing, even to the end. Reaping is your reward, but sowing is your work. Sowing, sowing, ever sowing till the hand is palsied in death and the seed basket is carried on another arm! Doing good by sowing the seed is your work.