Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2858
“Yes, the stork in the heavens knows her appointed times, and the turtledove and crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming, but My people know not the judgment of the Lord.” Jeremiah 8:7.
IN our text the Prophet makes use of the flight of migratory birds to teach a valuable lesson. He mentions the swallow, which is the most prominent among the summer visitors to our own country, but he also names the stork, the crane and the turtledove, all of them familiar instances of birds that came, at a certain season, to Palestine and, punctual to the hour, at given changes of the weather, winged their way back again to warmer climates. Too many careless observers, like the peasant of whom Wordsworth writes—
“A primrose by a river’s brim
A yellow primrose was to him
And it was nothing more,”
would have seen those birds and soon forgotten all about them. But the Prophet, observing the wisdom of these wanderers of the air, contrasts it with the folly of man who knows not “the judgment of the Lord,” and obeys not so readily the monitions of his God as the birds do the instinct by which He guides them to and fro. We shall mark these migratory birds and set the wisdom of their instinct in contrast with the folly of mankind.
I. The first thing that strikes us is the fact that the stork, the swallow, the crane and the turtledove know WHEN TO COME AND GO.
So far as we know, no audible command is given to them. You and I might forget, in the beginning of summer, that then is the period when the swallow will put in an appearance in our land. And that towards autumn he must take himself away, across the purple sea, to the African strand, or wherever he can find a suitable climate. But these birds know when to come or go—they tell, by some mysterious means, exactly when to start on their long flight. They were never known to go too soon. They are never known to stay too late. The bulk of them depart at one period and the rest a few days later. If we are living in the suburbs, we hear a twittering congregation gathering around the gables of the houses and, in the evening we miss the swift-winged hawks who had, during the summer, found their evening meal among the dancing insects. Their shrill, joyous twittering is hushed, for they have perceived that the heavy dews of autumn and the long nights of winter are coming to strew the earth with fading flowers and falling leaves and, by-and-by, with frost and snow and, therefore, they have flown off to fairer lands where other summers await them! They will come back again in due time, true as the calendar. Whether we look for them, or not, they will be punctual to Nature’s appointment. As sure as the summer’s sun will be their return! They know, without any special instruction, when to come, and when to go.
It is worthy of observation that the young birds which have been born in this country and have never made the long journey before, yet set forth with the older ones at the appointed time. They are novices in the art of travelling, yet they try their callow wings and away they fly to the far-off land where the sun shines as it does not in this higher latitude. I wish that our young people were all as wise as the young swallows are—that they knew their appointed time, that they understood that there is no period in life which has so much of hopefulness about it as the period of childhood and youth—that it is the best time in which to seek the Savior, for it has a special promise attached to it. “Those that seek Me
early shall find Me.” I would that they could hear the Lord Jesus Christ’s peculiarly sweet and tender message concerning them—“Suffer the little children, and forbid them not to come unto Me: for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” Yet, alas, young storks, swallows, cranes and turtledoves fly at the appointed season—but many young men and maidens delay and waste the joyous hours of the morning of their lives in the ways of sin and folly! Yes, they waste the hours which, if consecrated to Christ and to His service, would have brought them a rich return in this life and, in the life to come, would have tended to increase and intensify their everlasting happiness.
Further, the parent birds, also, go their way at the right time. They can, and doubtless do, help to guide the young. They may have made that journey but once before, but they know all about it—they remember how long and how weary a way it was to them, but when the hour has struck, away they go, attended by their little ones! I would that all you who are parents among mankind were as wise as these parent fowls of the air. You have your children around you, but where are you leading them? Your example, if not your precept, is guiding them somewhere—you are influencing them for good or evil. You cannot help doing so. I think you would hardly wish to help it, for a child of yours, over whom you had no influence whatever, would be a strange occupant of your home! Oh, that you would be as wise as these migratory birds! May God’s own wisdom make you so, that your own flight to Heaven may be an impulse to your child to take flight there, also! May your faith help his faith! May your holiness check him from sin! May your consecration to God, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, induce him to give his heart to God while he is yet young!