Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2842
“Behold, a sower went forth to sow.” Matthew 13:3.
THIS was a very important event. I do not say that it was important if you took the individual case, alone—but if you took the multitudes of cases in which it was also true, it was overwhelmingly important in the aggregate—“A sower went forth to sow.” Yes, Christ thinks it worthwhile to mention that a single sower went forth to sow, that a Christian man went out to address a meeting on a village green, or to conduct a Bible class, or to speak anywhere for the Lord! But when you think of the hundreds of preachers of the Gospel who go out to sow every Lord’s-Day and the myriads of teachers who go to instruct the children in our Sunday schools, it is, surely, in the aggregate, the most important event under Heaven! You may omit, O recording angel, the fact that a warrior went forth to fight—it is far more important that you should record that “a sower went forth to sow.” You may even forget that a man of science went into his laboratory and made a discovery, for no discovery can equal in importance the usual processes of farming. Do you hear the song of the harvest home? Do you see the loaded wagons follow one another in a long line to the farmer’s barn? If so, remember that there would be no harvest home if the sower went not forth to sow! As the flail is falling upon the wheat, or the threshing machine is making the grain to leap from among the chaff and the miller’s wheels are grinding merrily, and the women are kneading the dough, and the bread is set upon the table and parents and children are fed to the full, do not forget that all this could never happen unless “a sower went forth to sow.” On this action hinges the very life of man! Bread, which is the staff of his life, would be broken and taken from him—and his life could not continue did not a sower still go forth to sow! This seems to me to prove that the event recorded in our text is of prime importance and deserves to be chronicled there.
And, dear Friends, the spiritual’sowing stands in the same relation to the spiritual world that the natural sowing occupies in the natural world! It is a most important thing that we should continually go forth to preach the Gospel. It may seem to some people a small matter that I should occupy this pulpit and I shall not lay any undue importance upon that fact—yet eternity may not exhaust all that shall result from the preaching of the Gospel here—there may be souls, plucked like brands from the burning, saved with an everlasting salvation, lamps lit by the Holy Spirit that shall shine like stars in the firmament of God forever and ever! Who knows, O Teacher, when you labor even among the infants, what the result of your teaching may be? Good corn may grow in very small fields. God may bless your simple words to the babes that listen to them. How know you, O my unlettered Brother, when you stand up in the cottage meeting to talk to a few poor folk about Christ, what may follow from that effort of yours? Life or death, Heaven or Hell, may depend upon the sowing of the Good Seed of the Gospel! It is, it mustbe the most important event that can ever happen, if the Lord goes forth with you when you go forth as the sower went forth to sow!
Listen to the songs of the angels! See the overflowing brightness and excessive glory of your Heavenly Father’s face! He rejoices because souls are born to Christ—but how could there be this joy, in the ordinary course, and speaking after the manner of men—without the preaching of the Word? For it still pleases God, by the foolishness of preaching, to save them that believe! I shall not, therefore, make any apology for again preaching upon an event which is so important, even though it is recorded in such simple words! “A sower went forth to sow.”
I am going to try to answer three questions concerning this answer. First, who was he? Secondly, what did he do? And, thirdly, what was his objective? I. First, WHO WAS HE?
We do not know anything at all about him except that he was a sower. His individuality seems to be swallowed up in his office. We do not know who his father was, or his mother, or his sister, or his brother. All we know is that he was a sower and I do like to see a man who is so much a minister that he is nothing else but a minister! It does not matter who he is, or what he has, or what else he can do if he does this one thing. He has lost his identity in his service, though he has also gained it over again in another way. He has lost his selfhood and has become, once and for all, a sower and nothing but a sower!
Observe, dear Friends, that there are many personal matters which are quite unimportant It is not mentioned here whether he was a refined sower, or a rustic sower—and it does not matter which he was. So is it with the workers for Christ—God blesses all sorts of men. William Huntington, the coal-heaver, brought many souls to Christ. Some have doubted this, but, in my early Christian days, I knew some of the excellent of the earth who were the spiritual children of the coal-heaver. Chalmers stood at the very opposite pole—a master of cultured gracious speech, a learned, well-trained man—and what multitude Chalmers brought to Christ! So, whether it was Huntington or Chalmers, does not matter. “A sower went forth to sow.” One preacher talks like Rowland Hill, in very plain Saxon with a touch of humor. Another, like Robert Hall, uses a grand style of speech, full of brilliant rhetoric and scarcely ever condescending to men of low degree, yet God blessed both of them! What did it matter whether the speech was of the colloquial or of the oratorical order so long as God blessed it? The man preached the Gospel—exactly how he preached it need not be declared. He was a sower, he went forth to sow—and there came a glorious harvest from his sowing!