GOD AND THE SOUL
‘Ye are God’s husbandry.’
What this text tells us is this—that Christian people are to God just what the tillage of the earth is to us.
I. Our hearts and souls are like wild, uncultivated land.—As waste land wants time and labour and expense to bring it into cultivation, stones removing, weeds clearing, roots of old trees to be torn up, and then to be ploughed and dressed besides, so we are to understand it is with us. Land cannot bring itself in cultivation. Land cannot bring itself into a state fit for a crop. If land has been out of cultivation for a few seasons only, it wants ever so much care and trouble to bring it back again. It is so with us. We cannot bring ourselves into a state to give God a harvest. All that we produce of ourselves is against it. God has to bring our souls into a state fit to produce a harvest. Bad habits have to be rooted out, and our souls prepared to receive the seed of God’s Word, before there is the least possibility of His Word bringing forth what it ought to do. And we can no more do this for ourselves than the land we till can clear itself of weeds, or tear up the dead roots of trees, or remove its stones, or dress itself for sowing. It is God and God alone Who does this.
II. How does God prepare souls?—He has many ways. All land needs preparing for the seed, but it is not all land that wants exactly the same preparation. And what this text tells us is this, that just as a landowner with land to reclaim deals with each portion according to its nature, so God deals with souls. He knows your nature, and He knows mine, and He sets about preparing our hearts for His harvest, each of us according to what we require. If we will but let Him deal with us as He pleases, and take all that happens to us as His sending, we may be quite sure that all must go right. He knows how to prepare our souls—we are His tillage—and it is as great a mistake for us to murmur at His dealings with us, as for a piece of waste land to grumble at the way its owner takes to bring it into fruitful cultivation. Some hearts He prepares by sorrow, some by anxiety, some by sickness. Some by much trial in the world, others in loneliness and solitude. Others He deals with more gently. But with all He deals rightly; for He knows our nature, and all that He desires is our good.
III. In our hearts He sows His seed.—What that seed will bring forth will depend on how far we have let Him prepare our souls. Land cannot help being properly prepared if the farmer knows his business and takes the proper pains. God indeed knows how to prepare our hearts, and if we will let Him, He prepares them perfectly. But whether we are properly prepared for His sowing depends largely on ourselves. The land cannot resist the farmer, but we can and too often do resist our God. This, alas! is why you see such different results in different souls. Children of the same family, members of the same congregation, dwellers in the same parish, God is tilling all their souls, and you would often say that there was no difference at all in the opportunities they have had, and yet how differently they turn out! And here is the reason. God has been tilling them all; but some of them have yielded themselves to His tillage, and some have not.
Just as men rejoice in harvest over the fruit of their labours, so, too, in the great harvest, the end of the world, God will rejoice, and Christ will rejoice with joy unspeakable over every saved soul, over every one of us who has let God teach and train him, and lead him out of sin and into holiness, and make him fit for the heavenly home.
Illustration
‘Men vary. Men are not all alike. Thus one man is suited to one particular sort of goodness, and another to another. One man is suited to serve God in one way, and another in another. God calls one person to be very patient, and another to be very active; one man to serve Him by being learned, another by working hard in a trade; one man by a life of bustle and mixing much with his fellow-men, another by a life of seclusion and quiet. All are called to be honest and kind, to be true and sober and temperate; to fear God and to love their neighbours. But though all are called to these first duties, still each man has his own particular line, just as different kinds of land are suited to different crops, and therefore no one of us should judge another, but each should strive to do his own duty in the calling wherewith God calls him.’