John 9.4
Due to us having electricity in America we have work going on at night.
Nightshifts
Open 24 hours
Road work is done at night under the lights. 10-6am we see the signs on Sunrise and Southern State.
While we may able to do a little work at night, the great majority of the work is still done from sun up to sun down.
The Bible tells of this of this in Psalm 104.22-23
The sun rises...then man goes out to his work, to his labor until evening.
I remember working the night shift 10am to 6am. I did it over the summers when I was in college. It felt like I was always tired. Night is for sleeping. I remember friends whose father worked the night shift back in the hey days of Grumman when it has contracts with NASA. Their father worked the night shift. When we got together at their house we had to be real quiet because he was sleeping.
Go to the first century Israel or to any third world country and you will find the cessation of work at sun down.
1. Day Is The Time For Work.
This point is appreciated more by those who live in places where there is no electricity. It is true spiritually all over the world.
We need to recognize this.
I must work the works of Him that sent Me—a most interesting statement by Jesus. It tells us:
*that He had a precise work to do upon earth, with every particular part of it arranged and laid out to Him.
So do we!
Psalm 139.16 All the days ordained for me were written in Your Book before one of them came to be.
Ephesians 2.10 For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
All we need to do is to walk in them.
*that all He did upon earth was just "the works of God"—particularly "going about doing good," Not just the miracles but by all He did.
Everything Jesus did and said was foreordained by His Father, the time, the place.
His period for work had definite termination.
Ours does as well.
Psalm 90.10, 12 The length of our days is seventy years or eighty if we have the strength... Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
He acted ever under the impulse of these considerations, as man—"the night cometh when no man (or no one) can work." What lessons are here for others, and what encouragement from such Example!
*Brother Hazard
In Wyandanch on Monday night, told how I was there when the church was dedicated. I was about 14 years old.
*Seymour Cole, Pastor of Bronx Bethany, went home to be with the LORD this Friday at 88 years of age. Heard him speak last year at 87 years of age.
*Dr. McCoy Oyster Bay Baptist Church
The Real McCoy
I need to tell a story now, about Charles McCoy, a great waterfall rider. I got it from Franklin Graham's book, This One Thing I Do. McCoy was pastoring a Baptist church in Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York, when at age 72 his denomination mandated his retirement. A life-long bachelor, he had cared for his mother as long as she lived. In his spare time he had earned seven university degrees, including two Ph.D.s, one from Dartmouth, the other from Columbia. But now, at 72, he was being forced out of the pastorate because he was considered too old.
He was depressed. "I just lay on my bed thinking that my life's over, and I haven't really done anything yet. I've been pastor of this church for so many years and nobody really wants me much—what have I done for Christ? I've spent an awful lot of time working for degrees, but what does that count for? I haven't won very many for the Lord."
A week later he met a Christian pastor from India, and on impulse asked him to preach in his church. After the service the Indian brother asked him matter-of-factly to return the favor. Since he had preached for McCoy, would McCoy come to India and preach for him? McCoy told him that he was being forced to retire and move into a home for the elderly down in Florida. But the Indian insisted, informing him that where he came from, people respected a man when his hair turns white. Would he come?
McCoy prayed about it and decided to go. The members of his church were aghast. The young chairman of his deacon board summed up the congregation's attitude: "What if you die in India?" I love McCoy's answer. He told him he reckoned that "it's just as close to heaven from India as it is from Oyster Bay."
He sold or gave away most of his belongings, put what was left in a trunk, and booked a one-way passage to India. It was his first trip out of the United States.
When he arrived in Bombay, he discovered to his horror that his trunk was lost. All he had were the clothes on his back, his wallet, his passport, and the address of missionaries in Bombay he had clipped from a missionary magazine before he left. He asked for directions, got on a bus, and headed for their house. When he got there, he discovered that while he was on the streetcar his wallet and passport had been stolen!
When he knocked on the door of the missionaries' house, he was greeted with a polite smile and a blank look. Not only were they not expecting him, but the man who had invited him to India was still in the U.S. and would probably remain there indefinitely.
What was he going to do now? Unperturbed, McCoy told them he had come to preach and that he would try to make an appointment with the mayor of Bombay the next day. The missionaries warned him that the mayor was very busy and that in all the years they had been missionaries there, they had never been granted an appointment with him.
Nevertheless, McCoy set out for the mayor's office the next day. When the mayor's secretary gave him McCoy's business card, listing all his degrees, he thought McCoy must not be merely a Christian pastor, but someone much more important. Not only did he get an appointment, but the mayor held a tea in his honor, and invited many of the city's influential officials.
Old Dr. McCoy was able to preach to these leaders for half an hour. Among them was the director of India's West Point, the National Defense Academy at Poona. He was so impressed at what he heard that he invited McCoy to preach there.
Thus was launched, at age 72, a brand-new 16-year ministry for Dr. Charles McCoy. Before he died at age 88, this dauntless old man circled the globe preaching the gospel. There is a church in Calcutta today because of his preaching, and a thriving band of Christians in Hong Kong because of his faithful ministry. He never had more than enough money to get him to the next place he needed to go. He died one afternoon in a hotel in Calcutta, resting for a meeting he was to preach at that evening.
I remember a young boy going with my parents to his Memorial Service in that Baptist Church in Oyster Bay.
Brother Hazard, Dr. Seymour Cole and Dr. Charles McCoy... Examples of those who worked while it was still day. Their works do follow them.
In 1956 the famous missionary Jim Elliot was speared to death, along with his four colleagues, by the tribal people they were trying to reach with the Gospel. Jim was a passionate follower of Jesus Christ. About four years before he died, he wrote in his journal, “When it comes time to die, make sure all you have to do is die.”
2. Night Is Coming.
The things we needed to do in Bellevue Haiti when the evening came. Lights may come on or may not.
There it hit home. Since the electricity is very spotty and only comes on at night if it does come on we would prepare to get all the things done we needed to before the sun set. When it rained the government would shut the electricity off.
There was a sense of urgency. We need to have that spiritually these days.
Our Saviour felt that He was commissioned as a Servant of his Father, sent here to do a certain work, and He must be doing it. It is well for God’s servants to feel a holy compulsion. It does not take away from them the freedom of their action, and their delight in the service of God; but still it exercises a powerful influence over a man when he feels, “Woe is me, if I preach not the gospel;” or when, like the LORD Jesus, He says, “I must work the works of Him that sent me.” Did the Well-beloved, the Prince of Heaven, come under compulsion? Did He put himself under that “must” which is for the king? Then you and I may well put ourselves under holy bondage for the Lord. Then, do not hinder me; do not tell me that I am too feeble in health; “I must work the works of Him that sent me.”
We are reminded every day by our hands and the sunrise and sun set that for us night is coming when all possibility of work will cease.
Psalm 39.5 You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before You.
3. When Night Comes No One Can Work.
I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day: Instead of focusing on the man as a theology problem, Jesus saw him as an opportunity to work the works of God. Jesus sensed an urgency to do this while it was still day – the time of His earthly ministry.
* I must work is a marvelous statement of Jesus. The Worker is “a well-earned title to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the worker, the chief worker, and the example to all workers.” (Spurgeon)
* “He worked under the limitations of mortality, and recognized in the brevity of life another call to eager and continuous service.” (Maclaren)
* “Whenever you see a man in sorrow and trouble, the way to look at it is, not to blame him and inquire how he came there, but to say, ‘Here is an opening for God’s almighty love. Here is an occasion for the display of the grace and goodness of the LORD.’” (Spurgeon)
The night is coming when no one can work: Jesus understood that opportunities for service and doing good don’t last forever. Jesus knew that healing this man on the Sabbath would bring greater opposition from the religious leaders who already wanted to silence and kill Him. Yet His compassion for the man drove Him to do it anyway.
Our LORD as a man here on earth had a day. It was only a day-a short period, and not very long; He could not make it longer, for it was settled by the great LORD. (Spurgeon)
Anna Louisa Walker was born in England in 1836. She moved to Canada with her family some years later, where her father worked for the railroad. The family lived for a time in Sarnia, Ontario. There Anna and her sisters operated a girls’ school. It was in 1854, while living in Canada, that Anna wrote the words for a gospel song based on the words of the Lord Jesus in John 9:4, “The night is coming when no one can work.”
In this statement, Christ is speaking figuratively of the time when our earthly labours come to an end. “Man goes out to his work and to his labour until the evening” (Ps. 104:23). No matter how long we live, our day of opportunity to serve the LORD here will soon be over. We need to make good use of the days allotted to us. With these thoughts in mind, the author wrote:
Work, for the night is coming,
Work through the morning hours;
Work while the dew is sparkling,
Work ’mid springing flow’rs.
Work when the day grows brighter,
Work in the glowing sun;
Work, for the night is coming,
When man’s work is done.
We sing Jesus Here Am I...
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