The Falling Rain and the Budding Earth 2
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VI. But what is the grand aim and object of the all-wise Creator in sending rain and snow upon the natural earth? "That it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater."Two objects are here mentioned for which rain and snow are given. We not only need grain to be ground into bread to feed the body, but to provide seed also with which to sow the ground for a future year. Under the fertilizing influences of snow and rain, the earth brings forth so abundantly as to supply not only bread for the present, but seed for the future.
Let us see the spiritual meaning of this. First, we have a distinction made here between the eater and the sower. The "eater" is the child of God, who eats the bread of life; as the Lord said, "He that eats me, even he shall live by me" (John 6:57). His provision is the finest of the wheat, and he is one of those to whom the Lord says, "Eat, O friends; drink, yes, drink abundantly, O beloved" (Sol. Song 5:1). See the links of this wondrous chain. Rain and snow are sent to fertilize the earth; it is thus made to bring forth and bud; but its produce is employed in two different ways. There is seed for the sower, and bread for the eater. Now see the spiritual analogy. The word falling from its divine Author upon the heart, going, as he says, out of his mouth, either in the snow of conviction, or the rain of consolation, fertilizes the soul. It buds, and brings forth the fruits and graces of the Spirit. "Christ is formed in the heart the hope of glory." He is fed upon by faith as the bread of life.
But not only is there this bread for the eater, there is also seed for the sower. By "the sower," we may understand a servant of Christ, a minister of the gospel, according to the well-known parable, "A sower went forth to sow" (Matt. 13:3). From this we gather, that as corn in the grain differs from corn in the loaf, so the seed of "the sower" differs from the bread of "the eater." The sower must have bread to eat; but he has seed in the basket, as well as the loaf in the pantry. There are many eaters, but few sowers. When the Lord is pleased to raise up a man, and sends him into his vineyard, he not only gives him bread to eat for himself, but he also puts seed into his seed-basket for others. By this "seed" we may understand those portions of divine truth which are applied to his soul, which spring up from time to time in his heart in meditation and prayer, those texts and passages which are specially given him for the benefit of God's people.
This is a point which private Christians ought well to consider. How many there are, who because God has done something for their souls, think they must immediately rush into the ministry, as though, because the Lord has made them Christians, he had also made them ministers. He may have given bread to them as eaters; but has he put a seed-basket around their shoulders, and stored it with seed for them as sowers? Does he open to them the scriptures, raise up spiritual ideas, bring forth out of their hearts life and feeling, give them "acceptable words" (Eccl. 12:10), and enable them to scatter with a skillful and liberal hand the seed of the word? And bear in mind, that bread is one thing, and seed another. We do not sow bread, but grain.
If you are a minister, you must have something beyond a good experience. You must have a spiritual gift, as Timothy had; and when you put on your seed-basket to step among the furrows, you must have good sound grain put into it by the Lord of the harvest. The same bounteous Benefactor, who makes "the earth bring forth and bud, so as to give bread to the eater," is not unmindful of the sower. But let no man envy him who carries the seed-basket. It is no slight work, no easy task, to be tramping up and down in the furrows, "to cast abroad the fitches and scatter the cummin, and cast in the principal wheat and the appointed barley and the rye in their place." To do this aright "his God must instruct him to discretion, and teach him" (Isa. 28:25, 26).
No man need wish to carry the seed-basket, to have all eyes fixed on him, all arrows aimed at him. Everyone who is appointed to scatter the word of life will have many things to try him, and make him wish again and again that he never had been thrust into such an arduous post. As far as ease and comfort are concerned, it is much more pleasant to eat bread in the pew, than to stand up with the seed-basket in the pulpit. It has been my experience in dark and trying moments, again and again to envy anybody and everybody who has not to stand up and preach. Sometimes a sense of my unworthiness and unfitness, sometimes a natural repugnance to appear in a public capacity, sometimes deadness and darkness of mind, sometimes a feeling of my many wanderings and general unprofitableness, sometimes powerful temptations and fiery darts, and sometimes the persecutions I have endured, have made me feel the lot of a preacher to be of all the most hard. There are but two seasons when I feel any satisfaction in carrying the seed-basket--1. When I have bread to eat, and grain to sow; and 2. when I hear of instances that I have not carried the seed-basket in vain.
VII. But we pass on to consider the promise which God has given relative to his own word--"So shall my word be that goes forth out of my mouth; it shall not return unto me void." What a blessing it is that all success is of God! Sometimes it makes my very heart ache to think – here I am laboring under an exercised mind and a weak and wearied body, trying to bring forth something that may be made a blessing to God's family. Whether it be a temptation or not, I cannot say; but it seems sometimes as if I labored in vain. The people look hard and dead; and to judge from present feeling, little real blessing seems to attend the word. I think it must be a temptation; for I have afterwards heard of blessings received, when I have thought there could be none. But what a mercy it is, that we have nothing to do with the matter; that the whole blessing is from God! It is not what I may attempt to do, or the work I may try to perform. Were I to preach with the eloquence of an angel, if God did not bless the word, all the eloquence I could exert would be in vain! How this takes the load off man, and puts it on those shoulders which support the world!
He says, "So shall my word be that goes forth out of my mouth." It shall be as sovereign, as free, as suitable as the rain and snow which come down from heaven. A minister can no more command the Lord to bless his word to this or that soul, than he can go abroad, and say, 'Clouds, clouds, drop down rain on this particular field.' He may, and indeed ought to pray for the blessing, but command it he cannot. The sovereign good pleasure of God gives it how, when, and where he will.
"So shall my word be that goes forth out of my mouth; it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it." "It shall not return unto me void," that is, destitute of the purpose which I have designed to accomplish by it. Those whose heart is in the work will complain sometimes– 'I have labored in vain, and spent my strength for nothing. I have tried to address myself to people's consciences, but in vain; their hearts are as hard as flints; they will not receive my testimony.' Ministers may so complain, whose soul's desire is the people's good, and as the prophets of old did before them. No, hearers too, in a similar fit of unbelief, may say, 'What is the use of my going to hear? No blessing, no power, no life, no feeling attend the words to my soul; why need I go? I may just as well stay at home today.' Thus, ministers and hearers often hang down their heads because so little visible good seems doing by the preached word. But the Lord still says, "It shall not return unto me void." There are but few to be saved, and therefore there are but few to be blessed. But some are. The Lord still by his word quickens, delivers, comforts, strengthens, and encourages his own family. It is God's own promise, who cannot lie, that his word shall not return unto him void. It shall return to him here in thankfulness and gratitude, and hereafter in an eternal revenue of praise.
This is an encouragement, then, to ministers to go on preaching, through evil report and through good report, that God's own word shall not return unto him void, but shall accomplish that which he pleases; and shall prosper in the thing whereto he sends it. The Lord has a certain work to carry on by the preached word in the hearts of his people, and that work he will accomplish by it. Thus, we find, that the preached word is attended with various effects; no, the very same sermon, or it may be the same sentence in a sermon, shall produce opposite effects; and yet both be of God. For instance, there shall be some experience traced out in harmony with the word of God, which shall come with a blessing to one who has passed through it. It shall especially comfort and encourage his soul. But to one sitting side by side with him in the same pew, it shall come with cutting conviction. Rain to the one is snow to the other.
Or some sweet manifestation of the Lord Jesus Christ shall be spoken of, and various parts of scripture brought forward to prove it as a thing needful to be experienced. To him who has enjoyed it there shall be a sweet reviving of the work of God, and a kindling up afresh of the mercy, goodness, and love of Christ to his soul. But it shall come with conviction to another--'This is what you never experienced.' This seems therefore to cut him off, works conviction in his soul, sends him home with a burden, raises a cry in his heart, makes him feel that he comes short, and he is anxious, restless, until Christ is pleased to reveal himself to his soul. Thus, the very same word shall produce what may seem to be opposite effects, yet both be of God, both a blessing.
Or, perhaps, you may be in some secret snare, and hardly know how you got into it; the trap had been laid so craftily, that you fell into it before you were well aware. You shall go to hear, and the minister is led to speak of that very snare in which you have been entangled. It is now opened up to you; you see how Satan laid it, and how you have been entangled in it. Thus the word shall be made use of to bring you out of the snare, make you confess to the Lord how you have been entangled, seek his pardoning mercy, and in due time experience his delivering grace. Or, you may have had a real work of grace upon your soul; Jesus Christ, the foundation, may have been rightly laid in your conscience; yet wood, hay, and stubble may have been built upon it; you may have gone aside into carnal ease, into vain security, and fallen asleep in Zion.
But in this state you may go and hear, as might be thought almost accidentally, a certain minister; you may hear a doctrinal religion exposed, a letter faith described. You begin to tremble; a secret conviction is fastened in your conscience; you can go step by step with the description; you feel it true as he declares, that this letter religion, this doctrinal confidence brought no peace in your conscience, never gave you liberty of access to God, never broke to pieces idols, never delivered you out of temptation; but under the cover of this smooth, easy profession, you could indulge in sin, walk loosely, and give a rein to the evils of your heart. An Antinomian spirit, you find, had been secretly creeping upon you. This opium draught little by little had lulled you to sleep, and under its influence you have said in your dreams, 'It is all well; I know that I have felt in times past the goodness and mercy of God; I know too that I have wandered from him, been slack in prayer, gone much into the world, neglected his word, not been so strict as I used to be in my general walk and conversation; but, but (now see the opium working) it does not alter my eternal state, nor affect my interest in Christ.' You may have come with this Antinomian torpor upon you, to dream out in the the pew your stupefied condition. But a word from the pulpit suddenly arouses you; "an interpreter" arises to interpret your dream, and show you the miserable state of soul into which you have fallen. As you listen, the words sink with power into your conscience, and distress and trouble fill your mind.
Or, you may have been very slack in the things of God, fallen into a worldly spirit, got among companions who may be doing your soul sad injury, and through them be entangled in temptations from which you have no power to deliver yourself. You come and hear these temptations described, which you may have thought no child of God ever was entangled in; no, could not believe any one with the grace of God could have felt the power of sin as you have. God makes it the means of setting your soul free from that snare.
Or, you may have been entangled in self-righteousness, been spurning the exercised people of God, despising his experienced family, not knowing yourself the path of tribulation. You come to hear, conviction may be fastened upon your conscience of your shortcomings, and send you groaning home. Through that wound in your conscience, a whole army of terrors may flood your soul, set you to search and examine the groundwork of your religion, and bring you to roll upon your bed in agony of mind, begging of God to have mercy upon you.
Or, you may have come with a heavy burden, not seeing anything like grace in your soul, tried in mind, depressed in spirit, harassed by the devil, and despised by worldly professors. You come to hear; your state and case is described; the word of God is applied to you, comfort is spoken to your soul, and your heart is melted within you by a sense of God's goodness and mercy.
The promise then does not fail--"It shall accomplish that which I please." God knows in this congregation the hearts of all; what their experience is, what their desires, what they are seeking, how they are entangled or tempted. He knows everything concerning them; and can, if it be his gracious will, apply the word to each as is needed. Ministers, for the most part, little know what good they are doing. They stand up to preach; they come praying, and go home begging the Lord to bless the word; but they know not what arrows have entered the conscience; what convictions have pierced the soul; or what comfort and consolation have been administered – all this is left in darkness.
But where there is a real work, solid good done, it will spring up sooner or later to the glory of God; for, he will accomplish all that he has purposed. If God set a man up, no man can put him down; if God puts him down, no man can set him up. If God has sent his word to do a certain work, it shall prosper in the thing whereto he has sent it. If sent for conviction, it shall prosper; if for consolation, it shall prosper; if for encouragement, it shall prosper; if for deliverance, it shall prosper; if to strip, it shall prosper; if to clothe, it shall prosper; if to wound, it shall prosper; if to heal, it shall prosper. See how the Lord takes the whole matter into his own hands!
It is an unspeakable mercy for preachers and hearers, that the Lord has tied himself, so to speak, by his own promise that his word shall prosper in the thing whereto he sends it. Were it not for this, how could I stand up before you this evening with any hope of profiting your souls? If it were left to me to make a divine, lasting, spiritual impression upon your heart, what hope would I have of effecting it? I might perhaps, if I dare, touch your natural feelings; I might, if my conscience permitted me, attempt to work upon your fleshy passions. Were I possessed of natural eloquence, I might turn this place into a theater, myself into an actor, and you into weeping spectators. But would that be "the rain and snow from heaven?" Would that be "the word that goes out of God's mouth?" Would that issue in a crop of "righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations"?
But how grievous it would be, that I should have come and spoken among you this evening, and no blessing to have attended the word; nothing that will stand the last trumpet; that the word from my lips, instead of falling as rain and snow upon the field, should have fallen as showers upon the pavement, without entrance or penetration, dried up in a few minutes, and all left hard, cold, and stony as before! But you will say, 'What is the blessing that you want to rest upon the preached word?' I will tell you. To have the work of grace begun, carried on, or strengthened; to be humbled into the dust of self-abasement; to have a broken heart and a contrite spirit; to have manifestations of God's mercy and love; to see the beauty, blessedness, grace, and glory that is in Christ Jesus; to have a sweet persuasion of our saving interest in the blood and obedience of Immanuel; to be separated in heart, spirit, and affection from the world; to mourn over the evils of our nature; to be kept from every evil way, work, and word; to have a tender conscience, and a watchful, prayerful spirit; and to have the affections in heaven, where Jesus sits at the right hand of God.
And, besides these inward fruits, to live the gospel, as well as profess the gospel; to be Christians not merely in lip and tongue, and by hearing the truth; but in every department of life, as masters and servants, husbands and wives, children and parents; to manifest the grace of God in our trade, business, occupation, or profession; however situated, however placed, to show forth the grace of God, and to yield to him those fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ to his praise and glory. I believe, that solid blessings will always produce these solid fruits, will bring forth a crop in heart, lip, and life; and where this crop is not in some measure brought forth, well may we say, such a religion is vain.
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