Humble, Willing and Diligent

This clip is part of the sermon “Frustrations to Joy" delivered by Kevin DeYoung at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, NC on September 28, 2025.

Can you get rich without hard work? Well, yes, you could inherit it. You could just be in the right place at the right time, invest in the right thing, and it comes back.

Can you be famous without hard work? Well, you certainly can. You can be famous for being famous.

Can you be popular without hard work? Yep.

But no Christian has made real progress in holiness, or been truly fruitful in ministry, or learned to love their spouse or their friends without a lot of hard work. If God is to rescue you from whatever plight you feel you’re in right now – financial, emotional, marital, spiritual – it is almost certain, not the only thing, but one of the things, he will use is diligence. That’s not all. This is not just pull yourselves up, but it’s one of the things.

You say, can you give me the Christianity that doesn’t require hard work? Nope, it’s not there. Even, remember in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul just got done celebrating the gospel, and it’s about Jesus and the resurrection and dying for our sins, and then he says, “I praise God, I work harder than all of you. Yet, not I, but the grace of God that is within me.”

Remember what Zechariah was preaching to them. I think I mentioned this briefly last week. Zechariah 4:10. You don’t have to turn there. You’ve probably heard this before. Absolutely one of my favorite verses in the Bible, and I learned it in the NIV, a little different than the ESV renders it. Zechariah 4:10. And it’s absolutely foundational. It’s one of my life verses. It’s one of my foundational planks in my philosophy of ministry.

There you have, in Zechariah 4, the temple’s completed. And the workmen, they’re bringing the plum line, like the level. They’re squaring off the last corner. We’ve done it. The temple is completed. They’re looking forward to that day, and they say – when they square off the last corner, when they measure it out, they put the last finishing touches, and you stand back and you see the completion of that glorious temple – Zechariah 4:10 says, you will learn, do not neglect the days of small things.

That temple wasn’t built in a day. Small things.

Maybe some of you are feeling, in particular with the volatility in our country and upheaval that we sense and certain cultural dynamics, maybe you’re sensing in a really powerful way, how can I make a difference with my life? How can I serve Christ most effectively? Maybe you’re saying, I will do whatever it takes, I just want my life to count. And if you’re asking that question, first of all, good that the Lord is stirring in you to ask that question.

Selfish ambition is bad. But Jesus said, “Zeal for thine house hath eaten me up.” That's a good thing, to be zealous for the Lord. Paul says in Romans 12, “Never be lacking in zeal.” So if you have that zeal – you say, I want my life to count – well, here’s one of the first and last things you need to know: do not neglect the days and weeks and months and years of small things.

We might like to think that the answer is how do I make – today I go, and the next week and the next month, and my life makes a massive difference for Jesus. That’s not usually how it works. The temple didn’t drop out of the sky. So when that’s done, you’re going to look back and say I’m glad we didn’t despise the days of small things.

If you want to make a better marriage, if you want to make a difference for Christ, if you want to – even just simple, worldly goals of financial security – all of them require little by little, small things after small things. That’s how you make a difference in life. It’s how you make a difference for Jesus. You read your Bible. You go to the meeting. You pray. You say you’re sorry. You learn what you can. You serve wherever God has you. You ask some big dreams and some of them God delivers, and others he doesn’t, and you keep going.

Richard Baxter, the Puritan who knew what it was to face many sufferings in life, once wrote, “Oh, what a life might men live if they were but willing and diligent. I dare say that God would have our joys be far more than our sorrows. Yea, he would have to us all of our sorrows turned to joy.”

Willing and diligent – don’t underestimate what you can do. Whether you think you have one talent or two or five, whether you have great experience or very little, great gifts or very meager, to simply say, “I’m humble, I’m willing, and I will work hard.” The Lord used their diligence.