What a great day the Lord gave us this past Sunday at Riverside Baptist. We rejoiced in the Ressurection! Oh what a Savior! We had about 25 first time visitors here, we were just under 200 for the Morning Attendance and we had souls saved. Sunday night we observed the Lord's Supper and had a great service with full altars. Oh! The wonderful work that takes place when the Spirit of God and the Word of God are allowed to work.
One of the first time visitors that came was a lady who is a waitress at a local restaurant. She waited on myself and a visiting preacher we had last week. I gave her a tip and as always, I placed a gospel tract on the table, or i have it to her directly. I have practiced this for many years as you do I am sure. But, sometimes I do it more out of duty than really expecting to have anything take place. Well, praise God for duty! She came and heard the Word of God becuase of duty! We rip and preach against duty sometimes, but, truly, some things we do out of duty are nothing more than the trained character reacting to a situation. May we all decide to be more dutiful about the sowing of the precious seed. We do not sound trumpets and ring bells when a child cleans their room or puts the plates and cups away from supper or vacuums or cares for a pet. We expect these things becuase of training! If they are not done, then it shows and correction needs to take place. In the chrisitian life, if you read the bible and pray and attend church and go soulwinning and tithe and support missions and love others first and have a family altar and stay close and yielded to the blessed Holy Spirit every day and keep short accounts of sin with the Lord, if these are done by duty and just plain ole' fashioned christian character AMEN! Keep doing those things becuase they are the right things to do. When you and I get to heaven we will allow the Lord to judge that motive and reason we did them, but, on earth, somebody just may get to glory becuase you dutifully gave to a missionary who shared that tract with a lost sinner and that person thousands of miles away was born again. YES!! Dr. Hyles was right. Dr. Jones Sr. was right. There is something to this matter of duty!!
When I as a boy we lived in a little village for 3 years just outside the city of Venice, Italy. It was in a place called Sottomarina in the province of Chioggia. My dad was stationed there in a little Army (go army!) outpost. Every night a different soldier was selected to walk guard over the outpost. As a lad, my father would allow me to sit up with the guard and boy was that fun! I would walk with the soldier and talk with them and i got to know those men very well. We would talk about football back here in the states and baseball and all the latest stuff like that. Then, the guard would stop for supper and eat a can of ham and beans from a little can cooked over a small sterno fire. He would always allow me to have a can as well. Wow! Ham and beans never tasted so good as sitting there in that little post and looking over the barracks and outbuildings there. But, back to the point - That soldier walked guard out of duty, i can tell you, not out of desire. But, whether it was desire, or duty, the others were sound asleep and had confidence that they were safe becuase of that guard.
Brethren, if you and I are going to be the soldier we ought to be, let it start with plain, simple duty and then, who knows, maybe one day you'll wake up and realize how much you really enjoyed that duty after all!!
I close in the words of one of my Heroes , Dr. Gray Sr. - "Just a thought!"
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