Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 818
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, June 28, 1868, by C. H. SPURGEON, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington..
“Can you bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?” Job 38:31.
MOST of you know that singularly beautiful cluster of stars called the Pleiades—very small, but intensely bright. These are most conspicuous about the time of spring, and therefore, in poetry the vernal influences which quicken the earth and clothe it with the green grass and the many-colored flowers are connected with the Pleiades. By the sweet influences of the Pleiades we understand, then, in plain language, those benign influences which produce the spring and the summer. These, it is said, no man can restrain.
Orion, a very conspicuous constellation with its glittering belt, is best seen towards the close of autumn, just before the coming in of the winter. It is a southern and wintry sign and therefore, poetically, the winter is traced to the bands of Orion, and we are told in the text, literally, that no man is able to loosen the bonds of frost, or check the incoming of the cold. In other words, the whole verse asserts that none can stop the revolutions of the seasons! When God ordains the spring the shining months come laughing on. And when, again, He calls for winter, snow and ice must rule the dreary hour.
The farmer is entirely dependent upon the God of Heaven. He may plow with industry and cast in the good seed with hope, but unless the sweet influences of Heaven shall be given he can reap no harvest. If the drought is long and severe, he cannot cause the clouds to drench the thirsty furrows, or, if the rain descends in torrents, drowning the pastures, he cannot seal up the bottles of Heaven. He is absolutely dependent upon God, who governs all things according to His will. And we who know so little of agricultural operations—being so far removed from the country which God has made and living in the town which man has made—we, also, are as much dependent as any—for even the king is nourished by the fruit of the field! And follow what merchandise we will, ultimately it is still from the fields that our nourishment must come.
All of us, then, and not us alone, but all the beasts and birds, and all the creatures are entirely and absolutely dependent upon God, and unless He helps them, they cannot help themselves. This is the simple teaching of the verse, but it was doubtless used to teach Job that as he could not alter the ordinances of Heaven, so neither could he change the purposes of God in the events of Providence. You cannot hasten the spring nor postpone the winter! Neither can you prevent those calamities which plunge nations in distress, nor prohibit those mercies which lift up tribes into prosperity. Evil comes to the sons of men by God’s purpose, and good comes also. Neither is it in your power, O son of man, with all your discretion and skill, with all your economy and industry to avert the evil which God appoints!
The scythe of the dread mower cannot be arrested by wisdom—the inevitable hour comes to all. Need and sickness, and bereavement invade us at the Lord’s bidding, and although we may greatly mitigate their rigor, yet we cannot avert them, for the ordinances of God must surely come to pass. Whatever is written in the folded book of the Divine decree must, in due season, be fulfilled in the history of man. If you cannot alter, then bow yourself and submit! If you cannot change the purpose, then yield to it and ask to have it sanctified to you! O Job, if your cattle must be taken away, if your children must die, if sore boils must break out upon your body, if you must sit upon the dunghill, if you have no power to alter a single circumstance—then accept the affliction at the hand of the Infinite One! Humbly kiss the hand that smites, and say, “It is the Lord. Let Him do what seems good to Him.”
The doctrine of a Divine Providence is calculated to create in the minds of the thoughtful and believing, the spirit of resignation. They might, perhaps, rebel and struggle, if this were of some use, but since it would be utterly useless—since the great wheels of Providence proceed in their perpetual revolutions, not pausing for our tears nor hastening for our groans—then it is best for us to admire it as it revolves, to believe that it is producing good and to submit ourselves to whatever the Lord appoints.
However, I do not intend using the text in that sense this morning, but as we are told that no man can restrain the benign influences of the Pleiades, so, in the first place men cannot utterly prevent the working of the gracious Spirit. And as men, in the second place, cannot loose the bands of Orion, so men, of themselves, are not able to overcome those wintry powers which sometimes seize upon the human heart. These two things, and then, in the third place, the lessons from them.