Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3376
“There is a sound of abundance of rain.” 1 Kings 18:41.
FROM the narrative we may learn that things can never be so bad but what God can bring deliverance in His own time. The country had been parched in Palestine for three years. Travelers in the East will tell you how brown and burned that country looks at all times, but how it must have appeared when the clouds cleaved together and all the pastures were turned to dust, I can scarcely conceive. It must have been a terrible and piteous sight when the cattle had perished and the people were ready to die through famine and hunger. Yet, bad as it was, when the clouds had long ago vanished, when the children of three years old did not know what a drop of rain meant, when the skies seemed to be as brass above the heads of poor tortured mortals, then it was that the word of God came to Elijah, saying, “There shall yet be rain.” Courage, then! If the times should be full of danger, if there should be forebodings in the hearts of the bravest, if infidelity should threaten to put out the light of the Gospel, or if Romanism should seem to blot out the name of Christ from under Heaven, yet God can still appear! And if any one Church is left and the Lord commands the clouds that they rain no rain upon her, her hedges be broken down, the wild boars out of the woods waste her and she seem to be utterly left, yet at the last hour of the day, when her hope all but expires, Jehovah, her Friend, may come to help her! And so with us personally—if we are brought to the last handful of meal in the barrel and the last drop of oil in the cruse—if we are brought so low that now it seems relief would come too late, or could not possibly come at all, the Lord, who has His way in the whirlwind and who makes the clouds the dust of His feet, can now come from above! On cherubim and seraphim, right royally can He descend in speedy flight and bring help to His needy servants! Let us, therefore, drive despair away! There is no room for that in Jehovah’s world! As long as He still reigns, let the earth rejoice and let His people wait upon Him in hope.
Further, we learn another lesson, namely, that when prayer has been exercised concerning anything, it is our duty and our privilege to expect the answer!
We sometimes pray and receive nothing—but it is in most cases because we have asked amiss. Or if we are quite sure that our request was a right one, yet we have forgotten the canon or the Law which says, “Let him ask in faith, nothing wavering, for he that wavers is as the waves of the sea driven by the wind and tossed: let not that man expect to receive anything of the Lord.” Now, if we ask believingly, we are quite sure to ask expectantly! We shall go up to the top of Carmel to look for the cloud if we have believingly sought for the rain. We shall send Gehazi yet seven times if he perceives no sign of mercy at the first—and we shall continue in importunate prayer—still believing that Jehovah cannot lie and will, as surely as He lives, be as good as His word and fulfill His promise to those who trust Him.
How bold it was of Elijah to go to Ahab, even before that cloud had been seen, before he had sent his servant to look for it, and to say to him, “There i s a sound of abundance of rain!” What was that sound? I know not. I do not suppose that Ahab heard it, or that anyone else, except Elijah, recognized it. The ears of true faith are very quick and keen. She hears the coming of the blessing, the footsteps of the angels as they draw near, by way of Jacob’s ladder. God has heard her, and she hears her God! God is quick to hear her whispers and her thoughts—and she knows “the secret of the Lord,” for it “is with them that fear Him.” And long before the eyes have seen, or the ears have heard, or it has entered into the heart of man to imagine it, she perceives that the blessing is coming! There are certain sacred instincts which belong to the faith of God’s elect, which faith always comes from God. We must remember its Divine origin and that it
keeps up its acquaintanceship with the Eternal Father by whom it was begotten. Like the shell picked up from the deep sea which always continues to whisper hoarsely of the sea from which it came, so faith continues to hear the sound of Jehovah’s goings. If none else hears them, she perceives them!
I thought of using this fact tonight as an illustration of the Truth of God that there are certain signs which faith can see of a coming revival in a Church. We will take that first. Then, there are certain tokens which faith can perceive of coming joy and peace in an individual heart—of that secondly. In the first place—