Sermon XXXVIII. Matthew 24:45–46.

But that Reward is the last part of my text. Before we reach it, we must consider our Work — and that is the second part, which (having dealt with our Office, our being Servants, and yet made Rulers over God’s Household) we come to in the words τὸ διδόναι αὐτοῖς τὴν τροφὴν ἐν καιρῷ to give them their food in due season. It is to give them their Food in due season.

1. I will not dwell on what some nonetheless observe from the word διδόναι — that it is a giving, not a selling of this Food to the Household. Christ once whipped buyers and sellers out of the Temple, but later ages complained bitterly that they had gotten back in. This Food for the Household is the Master’s Provision, merely placed in the Steward’s hands for his Household’s use. All your grace, wisdom, and ability to dispense the Word and other Ordinances, to govern the Church, etc. are God’s Gifts — entrusted to you not to enjoy, or to make a market of for your own gain or applause, but for the Glory of your Master and the service of his Spouse. And therefore, although the laborer is worthy of his hire (Luke 10:7), yet you must never on the one hand be so mercenary as to regard your maintenance as the hire you aim at and for which you dispense God’s Ordinances. No — in this sense, freely you have received, and therefore freely give.

Nor should the People be so base as to think that, having paid their pittance, they have bought you as slaves — and like savvy buyers have made a fine purchase of the Word, and the

the rest of God’s Ordinances — which they accordingly claim as their due, and should they fall short of them (even through their own fault), you shall fall short of yours. But how unworthy of you — whether as a Minister or as a Christian — are such base, simoniacal traffickings: something akin to Judas selling and the Jews buying Christ for thirty pieces of silver, a goodly price “wherewith I was prized at of them,” says the Lord (Zechariah 11:13). The Apostle would lift us to higher thoughts when he calls the provision for Church Officers not Wages but Honor (1 Timothy 5:17) — to be freely and honorably given, not as a recompense for their labor, but as an honorable token of love and respect; not as the price of the Gospel, not all that we intend to give for it or that ministers should have in view when dispensing it. God expects far more for it from the People, and his Ministers should have far more in view in their administration of it. They are first — διδόναι — to give the Household their Food in due season.

2. The second thing to observe is what they are to give, expressed in the word τροφήν — their Food and Nourishment, by which Jerome means Cibaria doctrinarum the provisions of doctrine; others, verbi & Sacramentorum pabulum the sacred food of the Word and Sacraments — not excluding either the wholesome medicine of Church-Censures (for it is medicine as well as food, which we pray for when we ask for our daily bread, Matthew 6:11), or the due administration of any other part of Church-Government. For as Christ ποιμαίνει feeds / shepherds while he rules (Matthew 2:6) — Kings are ποιμένες λαῶν shepherds of peoples — so we may properly be said to Feed by Governing as well as Teaching. With reference to both, Paul in his charge to the Elders of Ephesus calls upon them ποιμαίνειν τὴν ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Θεοῦ to feed the Church of God (Acts 20:28). That is their task — as you cannot conceive otherwise if you consider:
3. Either the Master of the House and his royal bounty. He would not have his Family starved, and therefore takes care that they shall be fed. “In our Father’s house there is bread enough” (Luke 15:17).
4. Or his Servant’s Office and Duty. They are elsewhere called Shepherds, and a Pastor’s work is to feed the flock (Zechariah 11:7). They are called Nurses, and they suckle and cherish their children (1 Thessalonians 2:7). In the passage of Luke parallel to the text, they are called οἰκονόμοι Stewards, whose whole work both here and there is summed up in this

this comprehensive expression of giving food to the whole household. And to quicken you in this, the application of this

Proclaims the great need of God’s people — a need even greater for these spiritual supplies than any person can have for bodily ones. The fainting soul stands in more need of being plied with promises and encouragements than the swooning man with cordials; the careless and polluted sinner needs threats and admonitions more than the diseased body needs stronger purges; and the obstinate sinner needs to be cast out more than the gangrenous limb needs to be amputated. All of us need this spiritual food as much and more than any, than all of us need our natural food — and Job called that necessary food (Job 23:12) — and therefore it is no wonder that Paul said, “a necessity is laid upon me, and woe to me if I preach not the Gospel” (1 Corinthians 9:16). God and nature are not wanting to you in necessaries: do not let grace suffer you to be wanting to your charge in their necessities. Christ was willing to bleed, that from his flesh and blood he might make the provisions — will you not be willing to bear the cost, even if it be of your sweat, to set them on the table? Let your people’s hungering desires call forth your pity. It was one of the saddest notes in the Church’s Lamentations that the children asked for bread, and there was none to break it to them (Lamentations 4:4). Or should their desires be silent, yet let their wants cry for your compassion. Cogita de cibo & potu animalium tuorum, says Bernard, nam esuriunt, & non petunt — they are often hungry, and yet so weak, sullen, or shamefaced that they will not or cannot ask; nay (which is worse) inedia languent, & tamen non esuriunt — they are too often half-famished, and yet are not hungry, ready to die not so much for want of food as for want of appetite, as is the case with too many in our flocks today. And therefore (in this case if in any), if there be any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, let our bowels yearn over them. Starved souls will be frightful ghosts to us when they and we at last stand together to give up our account and to receive our doom. Let this make us think of our charge and mind our work: it is to give food to God’s household.

Which calls for a second part of our care — that what we give them be indeed τροφή, nourishing food. If they ask bread, give them not a stone; or if fish, let it not be a serpent (Matthew 7:9–10), in hard and harsh usages. It is

It is food — not the poison of heresies and corrupt doctrines, or of destructive administrations. Your power is given for edification (2 Corinthians 10:8), and not for destruction. It is τροφή — solid, nourishing food — not the froth of airy notions, or our fine-spun, high-flown speculations; not the trash, hay, and stubble of our own fancies, humors, and passions; nor even the rarest flowers of our wide reading and elaborate elegancies. The sheep of Christ’s pasture tend to feed on more wholesome herbs, letting such flowers stand by. The Word is the immortal seed that begets us (1 Peter 1:23) — these being too dilute to be generative, as are those of the philosopher’s books: animum non dant, quia non habent — and the sincere milk of 1 Peter 2:2 that nourishes us. From these empty things we can suck nothing but wind, which makes us swell, and that is all. What is the chaff to the wheat? (Jeremiah 23:28). It is τροφή, ἄρτος — the solid, nourishing bread of life — and therefore, away with all such kickshaws.

3. The third thing observable in this second part is that what Matthew here calls τροφήν, their food, Luke in the parallel passage calls σιτομέτριον, demensum, their portion of meat — which Agur phrases (though in another sense, Proverbs 30:8) “food convenient for me.” There are in God’s household young babes as well as grown men. The same dispensation will not suit all, either in kind or measure. Some are sick and weak, others healthy and strong; some sick of lighter fevers, others of more putrid, perhaps hectical or malignant complaints. What will feed the child will starve the man; and what is food to the healthy may be poison to the sick; and what will heal a whitlow will not cure a gangrene. As therefore God in his greater house of the world has such both store and variety that he answers the want and desire of every living thing (Psalm 145:16), so in this presence-chamber of his Church he has so fully fitted and furnished it that in his Word, Sacraments, Censures, and other administrations his manna is suited to every palate: he has a fit medicine for every malady, both a rod and a pot of manna in his ark. But now to know which of them to use, and to whom — this ὀρθοτομία, this right dividing of the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15), so that the proud sinner may not presume nor the fainting Christian droop; the right administration of the keys, that no false pretender, for all his great shows, may be let in, nor the weakest believer, for all his many weaknesses, kept out; that we do not on

the one hand, in too rigorous a way kill a fly on our brother’s forehead with a beetle, nor on the other, through ignorance, inadvertency, self-interest, or the like, blow whole a corrupt ulcer that has only a thin skin over it. This is one of the hardest parts of our work. hic labor, huc opus, & τις προς ταυτα; Lord, who is sufficient for these things? 2 Corinthians 2:16. This would call for in ministers a more diligent inspection into, and knowledge of, the state of our flock (Proverbs 27:23) than I fear any of us has attained to, or many of us have endeavored after; for which we had great need this day to be deeply humbled for our want and neglect. This requires all the qualifications which Christ here mentions — faithfulness, wisdom, sincerity, constancy, instancy — which (I said) are contained in the third part of the text, so worthy to be sought, and yet so hard to be found; so that if all of you should be like some of us, Christ may in both respects ask the question here: Who is that faithful and wise servant, whom his Lord shall make ruler over his household, to give them their food, or due portion of meat, in due season?

4. Which last words, εν Καιρω — in season — is the fourth particular in this second part of the text.

Food is to be given, and that in a fit proportion, and also in a fit season. This is the way with orderly men and in well-ordered families (Ecclesiastes 10:17), and God would not have his house worse ordered. The wise physician, as he weighs the dose he gives, so he calculates the time at which he should most seasonably give it. It is the wisdom of God as governor of the world, that as he satisfies the desires of his creatures in giving them their food, so he gives it in due season (Psalm 145:15); and accordingly, as the lawgiver of his church, you shall observe how punctual he is in the law to require his ordinances to be observed in their season — Exodus 13:10, Leviticus 23:4, Numbers 9:3,7,13 & 28:2. He is now no whit less careful of it in the dispensation of the gospel. Ευκαιρως ακαιρως is the apostolic precept, 2 Timothy 4:2 — be instant in season. He adds indeed “and out of season too,” though that phrase is absent from some copies; but if you take it in, you must understand it of what the wisdom of the flesh accounts out of season — as, that it will not now suit the minister’s profit, or the people’s occasions or humors. For otherwise it is both the faithfulness and wisdom of ministers and other church officers heedfully and watchfully to watch and catch all the fittest opportunities in which they may act most seasonably:

1. Hard

1. Hard to hit upon, and therefore the more carefully to be heeded. Much good is lost because the opportunity is missed — for since to every purpose there is a time and judgment, the misery of man is therefore great upon him (Ecclesiastes 8:6).
2. Most successful usually, if observed. The thing is then beautiful (Ecclesiastes 3:11), and therefore compelling; it rides upon wheels, and therefore goes on smoothly. I am no Arminian, to make the efficacy of grace consist in moral persuasions applied tempore & modo congruis — in the fitness and seasonableness of such applications. No: I know that God, to show the freeness and prevailing efficacy of his grace, sometimes works it (as in Paul and others) when the sinner is most indisposed, just as Christ the physician came when the world was most corrupt — who, unlike other physicians, can to purpose give physic in the height of a fit, as he cured Simon’s wife’s mother, In aestu Febris, in the very paroxysm of her disease. Nullum tempus occurrit Regi.