Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 670
Delivered on Sunday Evening, December 24, 1865
“He gives snow like wool; He scatters the frost like ashes; He casts out His hail like morsels. Who can stand before His cold? He sends out His word and melts them; He causes His wind to blow, and the waters flow.” Psalm 147:16-18.
LOOKING out of our window one morning we saw the earth robed in a white mantle—in a few short hours the earth had been covered to a considerable depth with snow. We looked out again in a few hours and saw the fields as green as ever and the plowed fields as bare as if no single flake had fallen! It is no uncommon thing for a heavy fall of snow to be followed by a rapid thaw. These interesting changes are worked by God, not only with a purpose toward the outward world, but with some design toward the spiritual realm. God is always a teacher. In every action that He performs He is instructing His own children and opening up to them the road to inner mysteries.
Happy are those who find food for their Heaven-born spirits, as well as for their mental powers in the works of the Lord’s hand. I shall ask your attention, first, to the operations of nature spoken of in the text. And, secondly, to those operations of Divine Grace of which they are the most fitting symbols.
I. Consider first, THE OPERATIONS OF NATURE. We shall not think a few minutes wasted if we call your attention to the hand of God in frost and thaw, even upon natural grounds.
1. Observe the directness of the Lord’s work. I rejoice as I read these words, to find how present our God is in the world. It is not written, “the laws of nature produce snow,” but, “HE gives snow,” as if every flake came directly from the palm of His hand. We are not told that certain natural regulations form moisture into frost—no, but as Moses took ashes of the furnace and scattered them upon Egypt, so it is said of the Lord, “HE scatters the frost like ashes.” It is not said that the Eternal has set the world going, and by the operation of its machinery ice is produced. Oh no, but every single granule of ice descending in the hail is from God—“HE casts out His hail like morsels.”
Even as the slinger distinctly sends the stone out of his sling, so the path of every hailstone is marked by the Divine power. The hail is called, you observe, “His hail.” And in the next sentence we read of His cold. These words make nature strangely magnificent. When we look upon every hailstone as God’s hail, how precious the watery diamonds become! When we feel the cold nipping our limbs and penetrating through every garment, it consoles us to remember that it is His cold. When the thaw comes, see how the text speaks of it—“He sends out His word.”
He does not leave it to certain forces of nature, but like a king, “He sends out His word and melts them; He causes HIS wind to blow.” He has a special property in every wind—whether it comes from the north to freeze, or from the south to melt—it is HIS wind! Behold how in God’s temple everything speaks of His Glory. Learn to see the Lord in all scenes of the visible universe, for truly He works all things.
This thought of the directness of the Divine operations must be carried into Providence. It will greatly comfort you if you can see God’s hand in your losses and crosses. Surely you will not murmur against the direct agency of your God! This will put an extraordinary sweetness into daily mercies, and make the comforts of life more comfortable still, because they are from a Father’s hand. If your table is scantily furnished it shall suffice for your contented heart when you know that your Father spread it for you in wisdom and love. This shall bless your bread and your water! This shall make the bare walls of an ill-furnished room as resplendent as a palace, and turn a hard bed into a couch of down.
My Father does it all. We see His smile of love even when others see nothing but the black hand of Death smiting our best beloved. We see a Father’s hand when the pestilence lays our cattle dead upon the plain. We see God at work in mercy when we ourselves are stretched upon the bed of languishing. It is ever our Father’s act and deed! Do not let us get beyond this—but rather let us enlarge our view of this Truth of God and remember that this is true of the little as well as of the great. Let the lines of a true poet strike you—“If pestilence stalks through the land, you say the Lord has done it—has He not done it when an aphid creeps upon the rosebud? If an avalanche tumbles from its Alp, you tremble at the will of Providence—is not that will as much concerned when the sere leaves fall from the poplar?” Let your hearts sing of everything—Jehovah-Shammah—the Lord is there.
2. Next, I beg you to observe with thanksgiving the ease of Divine working. These verses read as if the making of frost and snow were the simplest matter in all the world! A man puts his hand into a wool-pack and throws out the wool. God gives snow as easily as that! “He gives snow like wool.” A man takes up a handful of ashes and throws them into the air so that they fall around. “He scatters the frost like ashes.” Frost and snow are marvels of nature! Those who have observed the extraordinary beauty of the ice crystals have been enraptured, and yet they are like morsels—just as easily as we cast crumbs of bread outside the window to the robins during wintry days!