Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1626
Delivered on Thursday Evening, August 25, 1881
“The principal wheat.” Isaiah 28:25.
THE whole passage runs on this wise—“Give you ear, and hear my voice; hearken, and hear my speech. Does the plowman plow all day to sow? Does he open and break the clods of his ground? When he has made plain the face thereof, does he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin, and cast in the principal wheat and the appointed barley and the spelt in its place? For his God does instruct him to discretion, and does teach him. For the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about upon the cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod. Bread corn is bruised; because he will not ever be threshing it, nor break it with the wheel of his cart, nor bruise it with his horsemen. This also comes forth from the Lord of Hosts, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working.”
The Prophet, inspired of God, shows that the farmer is wise and skillful in the management of his farm, in plowing, sowing, threshing and in all the processes of farming. He asserts that this skill has been taught him of his God. I suppose that this is set before us, not as poetry, but as fact. The wisdom of earth is a reflection of the light of Heaven. Have you not read—“And the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying, See, I have called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah: and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship, to devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of timber, to work in all manner of workmanship”?
God is the great teacher of agriculture as well as of handicrafts. If there had not been some information concerning farming conveyed to our first parent when he left the Garden of Eden, he would not have known how to till the soil and produce a harvest—and before he had discovered it, by experience, he would have died of starvation and the race would have ended with him. The 26th verse says, “His God does instruct him to discretion, and does teach him.” Yes, God has taught men the rudiments of farming and I conclude, therefore, that if God gives men instruction so that they are able to cultivate the land and produce a harvest of many different kinds of seed, He will much more instruct us if we wait upon Him as to the tillage of our lives so that we may not sow to the flesh and reap corruption, but may learn how to sow to the Spirit, and may, of the Spirit, reap life everlasting!
We are, all of us, farmers. Some of us may be wicked farmers who slay the heir; or slothful farmers who suffer hemlock and darnel to come up where there should be wheat and barley; or fickle farmers who, having put our hand to the plow, have looked back. But we all have fields to till and work to do for the great Landlord to whom all things belong. If any of us wish to be true farmers and sow and reap as to be found accepted of our great Lord—and to produce a harvest unto His Glory—then we had better go to Him for instruction and ask Him to teach us knowledge and guide us in the way of wisdom. Breathe that prayer to God, now, and may He hear it on behalf of every one of us by sending us His Holy Spirit!
I. There is one point which the Prophet mentions as a matter of wisdom on the part of the farmer. It is this—that HE KNOWS WHAT IS THE PRINCIPLE SEED TO CULTIVATE and makes it his principal objective. My text is, “Does not the farmer cast in the principal wheat?” He does not set to work at haphazard without thought and go to the granary and take out wheat, cummin, barley and rye and fling these about right and left! No, he estimates the value of each grain and arranges them in his mind according to their proportionate values. He does not think that cummin, dill and caraway, which he merely grows to give a flavor to his dish on the table, is at all of such importance as the wheat. And, though rye and barley have their values, yet he does not reckon that even these are equal to the corn which he calls “the principal wheat.”
He is a man of discretion. He arranges things and he places the most important thing in the front rank and spends upon it the most care. Herein I would have you learn of the farmer. Keep things distinct in your minds—not mixed and muddled by careless thoughtlessness. Do not live a huddled life, without care and discretion, running all things into one, but sort them out and divide and distinguish between the precious and the vile. See what this is worth and what the other is worth—and set your matters in rank and order, making some of them principal, and others inferior. I suggest to you young people, especially, that, in starting life, you say to yourselves, “What shall we seek?” For he that seeks, finds. “What shall we sow?” “For whatever a man sows that shall he also reap.”