Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2410
“For as the rain comes down and the snow from Heaven, andreturns not there, but waters the earth, and makes it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: so shall My Word be that goes forth out of My mouth: it shall not return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it. For you shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the LORD for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.” Isaiah 55:10-13.
THIS is a text for the springtime! If you read it through tomorrow morning, before the smoke has clouded the heavens, while yet the earliest birds are calling up their mates to sing, you will understand its meaning better than I can make you comprehend it by any words of mine. The whole four verses seem to describe a scene in nature which is only to be witnessed about this time of the year, yet I am not going to look into the poetical meaning of the text so much as to use it as a description of personal experience. I think, no—I am sure that there are many of us who have passed through our spiritual winter. We have also had our spring—we are even coming to our summer—and there are some whose ripe and mellow experience has the peacefulness of autumn about it. Our lives are, in miniature, like the years that so quickly follow one another and every year does but repeat the changes in our lives! I want, at this time, to speak about springtime in our spiritual experience—touching, however, upon a more advanced period, as it will be necessary to do—but my first word is to be concerning our springtime experience.
Brothers and Sisters, by nature we lie in the cold and death of winter—everything is frost-bound, withered, dead. We are nothing. We yield nothing. We can do nothing. The Word of God comes to us as the beams of the sun pour down their warmth from the heavens and, by a mighty and mysterious influence, that Word begins to work upon us and we soon feel that we have entered upon quite another season of life. We are no longer in the cold winter—we have come to a blessed springtime! That is the theme upon which I am going to now speak.
I. First, notice in the text the descent of the Word, THE DOWNCOMING—“As the rain comes down, and the snow from Heaven.”
Our spring begins with April showers alternating with rough winds. There is sure to be, at this period of the year, a rainy season to prepare the earth for bringing forth fruit, to swell the buds on the trees and to work with sunshine to produce the spring. So is it spiritually—the coming down of the Word of God is, to our hearts, like the falling of the rain from Heaven.
Concerning this coming down, I may say, first, that it is usually unpleasant. We are accustomed to speak of rainy weather and especially of snowy weather, as, “bad” weather. We are the wisest people in the world in matters relating to the weather. Having, as some say, no “climate”—only “weather”—we talk a great deal about it and inform each other what kind of weather it is when one can see just as well as the other what it is! Now, when we spiritually begin to live, it is usually rough weather and we are apt to think it is bad weather. Drip, drip, drip, fall showers of repentance. Snow-flake after snowflake falls and buries all our hopes. Our joys are covered as with a winding-sheet. It is bad weather with us and we are not slow to complain of it. Oh, dear Friends, if we did but know how God is blessing us—if we could but realize that these experiences are working out our lasting good—we would thank God that His Word comes down upon us as the rain and the snow fall from Heaven!
The work of Grace in our hearts, however, is like a spring shower in another respect. It differs very much in its method, for rain and snow do not always come down in the same way. Sometimes the rain fails very gently—we can hardly tell whether it is rain or not. Our Scotch friends would call it “a mist.” At another time, the rain, like Jehu the son of Nimshi, drives furiously. Big drops come pouring down and before we can reach a shelter we are wet through and through. So is it with the snow—it falls at times as gently as the dropping of tiny feathers, but it may descend thick and fast—a blizzard blowing it into our faces and almost blinding us. So, there are some to whom God’s Word comes very softly. It does come, but it comes without tempest or storm. There are others to whom it comes very terribly—the Word of the Lord is full of dread to them—it is a tempest, a whirlwind. The rain or the snow comes down to them and there is no mistaking it—they are shivered through and through with its cold, they are wet to the skin with its moisture! Therefore, learn this, you who have been comparing yourselves with others, that as the rain at one time differs from the rain at another time, and as the snow in one place varies from the snow in another place, and yet the rain is always rain, and the snow is always snow, so the entrance of Divine Grace into one heart differs from the way it enters into another, yet it is always the same Grace!