Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1066
“Come my beloved, let us go forth into the field, let us lodge in the villages. Let us get up early to the vineyards; let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender grapes appear, and the pomegranates bud forth: there willI give you my loves. The mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for you, O my beloved.” Song of Solomon 7:11-13.
I REMEMBER to have heard it said that when a Church is in a right condition, all that it wants on the Sabbath is that the sermon should be like the orders given by a commanding officer to his troops—it need not be rhetorical or eloquent, it only need be clear and plain—a word of direction for the Lord’s servants. If the soldiers are prepared for action they will not look to be regaled with oratory, but having heard the words of command they will, with all their hearts, go about to obey them.
Assuredly the Church needs instructing, consoling and edifying, as well as directing, but this morning I feel that I have a word from the Captain of our salvation, addressed first to this particular regiment and next to those other portions of the Grand Army which are represented here this morning. I speak as unto wise men—judge what I say! Traveling along our island just now you see everywhere the sickle, or the reaping machine, in full work. Harvest whitens the plains! Everywhere the loaded wagons are bearing home the precious fruits of the earth. My spirit is stirred within me and my soul is on fire, for I see everywhere a harvest except in the Church of Christ.
Reapers are busy everywhere except in the fields of our Divine Boaz. All fields are ripe but those of Bethlehem! All barns are filling but those of the Great Husbandman! Christ Jesus has scarcely a sheaf ingathered of late. We hear of very few results from the sacred sowing of the Word of God. Here and there the Church, like Ruth, gathers an ear—a very precious ear, it is true—for who shall estimate the value of a single soul? But we have no wave-sheaves as in the days of Pentecost, or, if we have them, they are few and far between. And as for the harvest home which we have so long expected, our eyes fail in looking for it in vain.
As a Church constituting a part of the Master’s field, we have had, for years, one continued harvest but still never such an one as has satisfied our spirits, for our idea of our King is such that the largest increase to His Church would not content us—we should still feel that our Lord Jesus deserved far more! As He has not yet seen of the travail of His soul so as to be satisfied, so neither are we, His servants, content on His behalf, but we long, and cry, and pray for a larger harvest as His reward for the dread sowings in bloody sweat and streams of vital blood of Gethsemane and Golgotha!
The time when our Churches can operate extensively with the greatest convenience will soon be upon us. We do not usually look for any great things during the summer, when congregations are scattered at the seaside and workpeople are busy many hours in the day. The summer of Nature is the winter of the Church, and the earth’s winter is our harvest. These warm days will soon be gone and the long evenings will come—and with them abounding opportunities of doing good. Therefore, it seemed to me to be a seasonable thing to give the rallying cry this morning and bid our friends remember that the harvest of the Church comes on quickly!
I would urge you all to sharpen your sickles and with good hope and prayerful confidence prepare for the appointed weeks of our harvest! May God, by His Holy Spirit, inspire you with zeal for the work which awaits you and give you to walk in fellowship with Jesus in all that you do.
I. We shall, this morning, first of all, call your attention to the fact which is implied in the words of our text, that LOVE IS THE GREAT MOTIVE FOR ACTION IN THE CAUSE OF CHRIST. All through these verses the spouse acts with reference to her beloved. It is for him that she goes forth into the field. For the sake of his company and the quiet
enjoyment of his love she would lodge in the villages. And all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which are stored within her gates she declares to be laid up for her beloved. Love, then, is the fittest and most powerful motive to holy service. “The love of Christ constrains us.”
This love has about it certain marked peculiarities. It is first a love which realizes the person of the beloved. In the text the spouse speaks of “my beloved” as of a real person, whom she sees, upon whom she leans, and with whom she talks. Christ Jesus is to His Church no fiction, no myth, no imaginary hero. Throughout the song both the personages are most real to each other, so real that they both enter into graphic descriptions of each other’s beauties and present us with portraits drawn by the pencil of admiring love. Now a Church will always be strong when the Lord Jesus is real to her! By this, indeed, may her power be estimated. Jesus must be to us no historical Person who was once on earth, but is now dead and powerless—He must be an actual Person living still in our midst.