Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 757
Delivered on Lord’s-day Morning, JUNE 23, 1867, by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“He causes the grass to grow for the cattle.”- Psalm 104:14.
VE who are condemned to live in this great wilderness of brick are very likely to forget the seasons altogether. And our friends who live out in the green country and see the changing seasons, are quite as apt to hear the voices of the seasons with their ears only, and not to learn the inward meaning with their hearts. Spring, summer, autumn, and winter are God’s four Evangelists whom He sends into this world to teach those who are willing to be taught. But the most of men are far too much intent upon the problem of how they may be fed to care for spiritual instruction.
“He that has ears to hear, let him hear.” As for others, in whom the god of this world is reigning, they will not hear though Heaven, and earth, and Hell should mingle their voices into one great thunder-clap. Just now all the world is busy with ingathering the hay, and you could scarcely ride for a few minutes in the country without enjoying the delicious fragrance of the hay field and hearing the sharpening of the mower’s scythe.
I believe there is a Gospel in the hay field, and that Gospel we intend, this morning, to bring out as we may be enabled. Our text conducts us at once to the spot and we shall therefore need no preface. “He causes the grass to grow for the cattle”—three things we shall notice. First, that grass is, in itself, instructive. Secondly, that grass is far more so when God is seen in it. And thirdly, that by the growth of grass for the cattle, the ways of Divine Grace may be illustrated.
I. First then, “He causes the grass to grow for the cattle.” Here we have something WHICH IS, IN ITSELF, INSTRUCTIVE. There is scarcely any emblem, with the exception of water and light, which you will find more frequently used by inspiration than the grass of the field. In the first place the grass may be instructively looked upon as the symbol of our mortality, “All flesh is grass.”
The whole history of man may be seen in the meadow. He springs up green and tender, subject to the frosts of infancy which imperil his young life. He grows. He comes to maturity. He puts on beauty even as the grass is adorned with flowers and the meadows are bedecked with varied hues. But after awhile his strength departs and his beauty is wrinkled even as the grass withers, and is followed by a fresh generation, which withers in its turn. Like ourselves, the grass ripens but to decay.
The eons of men come to maturity in due time, and then decline and wither as the green herb. Some of the grass is not left to come to ripeness at all, but the mower’s scythe suddenly removes it, even as swift-footed Death overtakes the careless children of Adam. “In the morning it flourishes and grows up. In the evening it is cut down and withers. For we are consumed by Your anger, and by Your wrath are we troubled.” “As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourishes. For the wind passes over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.”
This is very humbling for us to remember, but we need frequently to be reminded of it, or we dream of immortality beneath the stars. We are and we are wot! We are not substance but shadow! Our years are as a shadow which declines and, as for our age, it is gone as a weaver’s shuttle. We pass away like the swift ships. We fly as the eagle. We burst as the bubble. We sink back into the wave of time that bears us as the foam dissolves into the sea—
“Great God, how infinite are You! What worthless worms are we!”
We ought never to tread upon the grass without remembering that whereas the green sod covers our graves, it also reminds us of them. And it preaches, with every blade it has, a sermon to us concerning our mortality of which the text is, “all flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field.” In the second place, grass is frequently used
in Scripture as an emblem of the wicked. David tells us from his own experience that the heart of a righteous man is apt to grow envious of the wicked when he sees the prosperity of the ungodly.
We have seen them spreading themselves like green bay trees, and apparently fixed and rooted in their places. And when we have smarted under our own troubles, and felt that all the day long we were scourged, and chastened every morning, we have been apt to say, “How is this just? How can this be consistent with the moral government of God?” But we are reminded that in a short time we shall pass by the place of the wicked, and lo, it shall not be. We shall diligently consider his place, and lo, it shall not be, for he is soon cut down as the grass, and withers as the green herb. The grass withers, the flower fades away, and even so shall pass away forever the glory and excellence of those who build upon the estate of time, and dig for lasting comfort in the mines of earth.