Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2115
“And their nobles have sent their little ones to the waters: they came to the pits and found no water. They returned with their vessels empty. They were ashamed and confounded and covered their heads. Because the ground is parched, for there was no rain in the earth, the plowmen were ashamed, they co vered their heads. Are there any among the vanities of the Gentiles that can cause rain? Or can the hea vens give showers? Are not you He, O Lord our God? Therefore we will wait upon You: for You have made all these things.” Jeremiah 14:3, 4,22.
IT is my heart’s desire and earnest prayer that many in this house may this morning say with the Prophet, “O Lord our God, we will wait upon You.” I shall not be satisfied to have delivered a discourse, nor for you to have heard it, and even approved of it, unless there shall come from it this delightful fruit, that those far off from God shall be drawn near to Him. And that they shall say, in very deed and of a truth, “Therefore we will wait upon You.” In God alone can men live happily. And if they would be recovered from their fallen state, it is to the Lord their God that they must turn, Oh, that they would wait upon Him!
In the last verse we have the word “therefore,” which shows that the speakers had come to this conclusion by an argument. In truth, they had been forced to their resolution by a very painful and personal argument, which God had set before them in the order of His Providence. By their thirst and by their failure to find water anywhere, the Lord had driven them to say, “Therefore we will wait upon You.”
I trust it will not be needful to urge us to conversion by sufferings as terrible. “Be you not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding.” Come willingly, since the argument for coming is clear and cogent. I should like you to go this morning mentally through the process by which the Israelites passed practically when they came to the gracious conclusion, “Therefore we will wait upon You.” Let us begin at once with the argument, praying God to send it home to every heart by His good Spirit, that we may reach the desired conclusion.
I. First, consider that MAN IS A VERY DEPENDENT CREATURE. He is, in some respects, the most dependent creature that God has made. For the range of his wants is very wide, and at a thousand points he is dependent upon something outside of himself. All creation exists by the will of the Lord. And if His will should cease to send forth conserving power to maintain the created things in existence, they would all cease to be. This great world—the sun, the moon, the stars—would all dissolve. And, as a
moment’s foam dissolves into the wave that bears it, they would be lost forever.
“Life, death and Hell and worlds unknown,
Hang on His firm decree—
He sits on no precarious throne,
Nor borrows leave to be.”
Man as a living creature, is peculiarly dependent upon God as to temporals. We see in the text that when the dews no longer fell and the rains were withheld, then the unhappy inhabitants of Palestine suffered from drought and that drought brought with it failure of the harvest, famine, disease and death.
To quote our common saying, the people died like flies. They fell everywhere by thousands, fainting, famished, doomed. On what a feeble thread hangs human life! Water, though it is itself unstable, is needed to the establishment of human life and without it man expires. Many an animal can bear thirst better than man. Other creatures carry their own garments with them. But we must be indebted to a plant, or to a sheep, for the covering of our nakedness. Many other creatures are endowed with sufficient physical force to win their food in fight. But we must produce our own food from the soil.
Behold, how we come into the world, helpless and without strength—utterly dependent upon others. And when our strength is developed and our manhood is perfected, we only enter upon another phase of dependence upon our surroundings for our food—and therefore, for our life, we are dependent upon drops of rain. We cannot produce food from the earth without the dew and the rain. However cleverly you have prepared your soil, however carefully you have selected your seed, all will fail without the rain of Heaven.
Even though your corn should spring up, yet will it refuse to come to the ear if the heavens are dry. Nor can you of yourself produce a single shower, or even a drop of dew. If God withholds the rain, what can the farmer do? Call together the Parliament! Collect a synod of scientists! Convoke a conclave of princes—what can they do? In vain their acts, theories and commands. When the skies are brass, the earth is iron. When God is angry, then the clouds scatter no blessings over our field and earth yields not her increase to the husbandman.