Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3215
“If the clouds aire full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth.” Ecclesiastes 11:3.
IT was raining very heavily this afternoon at four o’clock when I was thinking over this text. The sharp crack of the thunder and the quick flash of the lightning seemed to be constant where I sat. When I came here, I found that you had not had a drop of rain—the weather was just as hot and feverish as ever. This seemed to me an example and an illustration of the Sovereignty of God’s dispensations. It is still true in the spiritual as well as the natural economy, that one place is rained upon and another is not rained upon. In one part of the Church, God’s Grace descends in a flood, while another part remains as dry and arid as the wilderness, itself. Even under the same ministrations, one Christian’s soul may be refreshed till it becomes like a watered garden while another may remain parched as the desert. God has the key of the rain and it is for us to ask Him to give us of the dew and the rain of His Holy Spirit. Let us walk humbly before Him lest He should say of us, as He did of His Jewish vineyard of old, “I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.” We may stand up and look to the Most High and learn our dependence upon Him for spiritual blessings, just as the farmer, knowing his dependence for his harvest upon God, watches the sky and the clouds—for without the rain what can he do?
But now, to come to the text itself, I propose a meditation upon three of its practical uses. First, as suggesting a comfort for the timid. Secondly, as giving an argument with the doubting. And thirdly, as furnishing a lesson to the Christian.
I. First, I think we may fairly use the text as A COMFORT FOR THE TIMID.
The clouds are black, they lower, they shut out the sunlight, they obscure the landscape. The timid one looks up and says, “Alas, how black they are and how they gather, fold on fold! What a dark, gloomy day!” What makes them black? It is because they are full of rain and, therefore, light cannot pierce them. And if they are full, what then? Why, then it will rain and the hot earth will be refreshed! And every little plant and every tiny leaf and rootlet of that plant will suck up moisture and begin to laugh for joy. Out of the black sky comes the bright daisy and the garden is painted with many colors—and the only palette that is used is, after all, that black one—for the sky does it by its rain.
Now, Christian, you too, are of a timid disposition and every now and then, your circumstances are not as you would like to arrange them. Losses come very closely, one upon another. Friend after friend forsakes you. Sickness treads upon the heel of sickness. All things seem to be against you, as against Jacob of old. The clouds are very black, but may they not be black for the very same reason as the clouds above you—because they are full? And is it not very possible that it will be with you as it has been with all God’s saints, according to the hymn we sang just now—
“You fearful saints, fresh courage take.
The clouds you so much dread
Are big [yes, black] with mercy, and shall break
Li blessings on your head”?
If the clouds were not black, you might not expect rain! If your afflictions were not grievous, they would not be profitable. If your adversities did not really pain and trouble you, they would not be blessed to you. We have heard some people say, “If this trouble had come in such-and-such a shape, we would not have minded it.” But God meantyou to mind it, for it was in your minding it that it was blessed to you! “The blueness of a wound,” says Solomon, “cleanses away evil.” When the stroke causes black and blue wounds, when the spirit is really thoroughly wounded, then the blessing comes! It is not merely said in the Scriptures that there is a necessity for affliction. That is a great Truth of God, but it is added
that there is a necessity that the affliction should lower our spirits. Listen to the words—“Now for a season, if necessary, you are in heaviness through manifold temptations.” The necessity is not merely for the temptation, but that you be in heaviness through the temptation—not for the iron, only, but for the iron entering into your soul. If the child liked the rod, it would be no chastisement—and if the Christian loved his affliction while he was in it—and it seemed joyous to him, then it would be no affliction! But it is the very sharpness of it, the vinegar and gall, that is the medicine that produces the good effect. The blackness of the cloud proves its fullness—and its fullness brings the shower.
I suppose we know this experimentally. As a Church, we can look back upon mercies which God has given us in a very extraordinary manner God intended that this house should be full of hearers every Sabbath for years. It is a very remarkable circumstance and one that always astonishes me more, perhaps, than it does any of you, when I see the aisles and every place crowded Sabbath after Sabbath. But how much of the success, with which God has crowned our ministry, has been due to the most afflicting Providence that ever befell a Christian minister or a Christian Church? Was it not, dear Friends—to allude to that sad event which is still upon the minds of some of us, and will be till we die—when the cry was raised and death came into the midst of our solemn assembly? Was it not due to that, to a very great extent, that the preacher became known and that so he has had an opportunity of speaking to many more souls than otherwise would have listened to him concerning the unsearchable riches of Christ?