A rewarding encouragement

“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” (Mt. 25:40)

Here is both a rewarding encouragement and a warning that should bring us up short. Whatever we do to Christ’s brethren is reckoned as being done unto Himself.

We can show kindness to the Lord Jesus any day by showing kindness to a fellow-believer. When we show hospitality to God’s people, it is the same as if we entertain Him in our homes. If we give them the master bedroom, we are giving it to Him.

Almost anyone would be quick to do everything possible for the Savior if He came as King of kings and Lord of lords. But He commonly comes to our door in very humble guise, and it is this that puts us to the test. The way we treat the least of His brethren is the way we treat Him.

A godly old preacher visited an assembly in hopes of being able to share with the saints from the Word. He did not have personal charisma and may not have had a dynamic pulpit style. But he was a servant of God and did have a message from the Lord. The elders told him that they could not ask him to stay for meetings and suggested that he go to a meeting in the black ghetto. He did, and was warmly received by the brethren there. During his week of meetings, he took a heart attack and died. It was as if the Lord was saying to the brothers in the fashionable assembly, “You may not have wanted him but I did. In refusing him you refused Me.”

In his poem “How the Great Guest Came,” Edwin Mark-ham tells of an old cobbler who made elaborate preparations for a dreamed-of visit from the Lord. The Lord never came. But when a beggar came, the cobbler put shoes on his feet. When an old lady came, the cobbler helped her with her load and gave her food. When a lost child came, the cobbler took her back to her mother.

Then soft in the silence a voice he heard:

Lift up your heart, for I kept my word.

Three times I came to your friendly door;

Three times my shadow was on your floor.

I was the beggar with bruised feet,

I was the woman you gave to eat,

I was the child in the homeless street.

W.D.