I smote you with blasting, and with mildew, and with hail, in all the labours of your hands.
Blasting and mildew
Very useful and important are the fungi in the world’s busy household. They are working at “chemical problems which have puzzled a Liebig and a Lavoisier,” converting the noxious products of corruption into comely forms and nutritious substances, absorbing into living tissues effete matters which are fast hastening downwards to join the dark night of chaos and death. Parasites, most of them, upon dead plants, they economise the gases which would otherwise escape into the atmosphere and pollute it; and conserve, for the use of nobler forms, the subtle forces of life which would otherwise pass unprofitable into the mineral kingdom. It is one of the strangest things in the world, when we seriously think of it, to see a vigorous life-full cluster of fungi springing, phoenix-like, from a dead tree, exhausted of all its juices, bleached by the sun and rain of many summers, and ready to crumble into dust at the slightest touch. Death is here a new birth, and the grave a cradle. It is one of nature’s many analogies of the human resurrection. But the resemblance is superficial and incomplete. Wisely have the fungi been provided, in the rapidity of their growth, the simplicity of their structure, the variety of their forms, and their amazing numbers, for their appointed task in the economy of nature. Not a leaf that falls from the bough, not a blade that withers on the lea, but is seized by the tiny fangs of some special fungus ordained to prey upon it; not a spot of earth can we examine, where vegetable life is capable of growing, but we shall find a vegetable as well as an insect parasite, keeping its growth in check, hastening its decay, and preserving its remains from being wasted. And out of the eater, too, cometh forth meat. In carrying out the wise and gracious purposes for which they have been designed, the fungi not unfrequently overstep the limits of usefulness, and commit wholesale destruction. They purify man’s atmosphere, but they also destroy man’s food. If their ravages could be confined to useless plants; if they were employed solely in reducing weeds to decay, they would be welcomed by man as among his greatest helps and blessings. But nature knows no straight, arbitrary line of demarcation, such as we draw, between what is useless and what is useful. To every natural good there is a recoil of evil. The fungi are indiscriminate in their attacks. They seize upon the corn which strengthens man’s heart, as readily as upon the thorns and briars which cause him to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow. In this our fallen condition, we must always count upon the blasting and the mildew; upon the years to be eaten by the locust, the canker-worm, the caterpillar, and the palmer-worm, as surely as upon the covenant faithfulness of Him who promised that seed-time and harvest would never cease. Nature with reference to nature completely accomplishes her purposes; but nature with reference to man is not a perfect means to an end. Blasting and mildew were very frequent in Bible times and lands. So terrible were the ravages committed by these scourges, so sudden their appearance, so rapid their progress, so mysterious their origin and cause, that they were universally regarded not merely as a visitation of God, but as a special product of God’s creative power. The cause and the effect were confounded. Fear prevented the Israelites from investigating the nature of the phenomenon. Modern science has given the true interpretation of the riddle. Blasting and mildew are conclusively ascertained to be produced by plants,--to be the diseases occasioned by the growth of minute fungi. Ever since plants have existed, these vegetable parasites have preyed upon them. They appear in greater or less abundance every year. They are fostered into excessive growth by certain favourable conditions of soft and climate, and checked in their development by certain unfavourable conditions. They are the common place everyday product of nature’s laws. They are not special creations of God, but the ordinary growths of the vegetable kingdom. The miraculous element, in connection with God’s judgments, was their extraordinary development and sudden appearance in immediate connection with Divine threatenings. As science advances superstition retires, and the phenomena attributed to supernatural causes are found to have been produced by the operation of physical law. But the miracles of the Bible are untouched by this principle. Science may teach us the economy of miracles, but it cannot persuade us of their unreality and impossibility. A brief glance at the nature of the fungi concerned in the production of blasting and mildew may be interesting and instructive. It will teach us that nothing is so weak and small that the strength and wisdom of God cannot accomplish great ends by its instrumentality. There are four diseases in corn produced by fungi--smut, bunt, rust, and mildew. The black heads, covered with a soot-like dust, noticeable in the cornfields, are caused by a parasitic plant--a true fungus, capable of reproducing and extending itself indefinitely. The seed-vessels of this plant are exceedingly minute. One square inch of surface contains no less than eight millions; and if the seed-vessels be so small, what must the seeds themselves be? Bunt is even more destructive. It has an intolerable odour, like that of putrid fish. It is one of the common diseases to which wheat is subject. It confines its ravages entirely to the grain. It is rare to find any wheat-field altogether free from rust, or Red Robin. It is sometimes so abundant that a person passing among the stalks is completely painted with its rusty powder. It is found upon the wheat-plant at all stages of growth. The term mildew is vague and unsatisfactory. Properly it should be applied to a disease produced by a fungus known to botanists as Puccinia gaminis. It is derived from the Saxon words, Mehlthan, meaning “meal-dew.” it makes its first appearance in the cornfields in May or June, and first takes possession of the lower green leaves, which become sickly. When the corn is nearly or fully ripe, the straw and the culm are profusely streaked with blackish spots, ranging in length from a minute dot to an inch. These evils are found all over the world, wherever corn is grown. All these blights and mildews on the corn crops and the green crops may well be called by God, “My great army.” Individually minute and insignificant, by the sheer force of untold numbers they are mightier for harm than storms and earthquakes. It is indeed a fortunate circumstance that they refuse to grow generally except in stagnant ill-drained places, and under peculiar conditions of warmth and moisture; for, otherwise if, quick with life as they are, they were to germinate wherever they alighted, the fig-tree would not blossom, and there would be no fruit in the vines, the labour of the olives would fail, and the fields would yield no meat. (Hugh Macmillan, D. D.)
Insensibility under material evil
This insensibility, which prevents people from turning to the Lord, is a moral evil, and ought to be charged on the guilty.
1. Instances and examples of this insensibility (Isaiah 5:24-25; Isaiah 9:17; Isaiah 9:20-21; Amos 4:6-11; Jeremiah 5:3; Revelation 9:20-21). Human nature continues always the same. Some vices have a local and temporary prevalence. Insensibility is the palsy of the soul; a stupor that with respect to spiritual things seizeth all its faculties. Hence in its nature it is both immoral and penal; penal, as a judicial stroke on the minds and consciences of men from a righteous and provoked God; immoral, as a course of opposition to His Word and providence, comprehending what Scripture means by stopping the ear, shutting the eyes, hardening the neck, pulling away the shoulder, walking contrary to the Lord, and in the way of our own heart. This insensibility is a reigning principle in natural men. Redemption by Christ from the curse of the law secures His people against its dominion, and yet it frequently prevails and hurts the spiritual life.
2. Investigate its cause. That is atheism, which may be either gross or refined. Though seldom avowed, gross atheism has a secretly malignant influence on manners in the middle and lower ranks of society. There is a refined atheism among persons who profess to know God, and in works deny Him. The truths they hold are not operative and holy principles.
3. Charge this insensibility upon the guilty as a moral evil, which prevents them from turning to the Lord when He smites them with material evil.
(1) Those charged with it are the Lord’s people.
(2) The charge is made by a man invested with the authority of a prophet.
(3) The charge is made in the name of the Lord.
(4) He in whose name the charge is made knew it to be just.
(5) The charge was delivered publicly, in the hearing and presence of the guilty.
(6) The charge was designed to bring former misconduct to remembrance, and to encourage them to present duty.
Application--
1. Sinners are destroyers of their own comfort.
2. The course of nature fulfilleth the purpose and performeth the Word of the Lord.
3. The Lord hath kind intentions in smiting His people.
4. Sensible and material things are uncertain property. (A. Shanks.)
Material evil the scourge of moral evil
There are no dispensations prosperous or adverse, with which we are favoured or chastised, but in the Word of God everything may be found that is necessary to assist our exercise and regulate our behaviour under them. When people refuse to hear, they are sometimes smitten on a tender part, and constrained to feel.
1. Deal with material evil: such as blasting, mildew, and hail.
2. Deal with moral evil. This must be sin. Such as--
(1) Love to the world.
(2) Neglect of temple-building.
(3) A notion that material powers act of themselves, independent of God. This is a branch of atheism, and a virtual denial of the Divine overruling providence.
3. Show the efficiency of God in scourging with the one for the other.
(1) The Lord hath determined to smite and afflict with these evils.
(2) The Lord createth this evil, and giveth its commission. Till He have occasion for its service, it doth not exist.
(3) The Lord hath appointed and always observeth the seasons of smiting. The scourge is neither taken up nor laid down at random.
(4) Places where the evil is collected and inflicted are marked out by the justice of God.
(5) A portion of evil is measured out and allotted for each body of the executioners.
Consider--
1. Moral evils among us have a striking resemblance to those which prevailed among the Israelites in the days of Haggai.
2. The Lord would be just were He to smite us, as He smote them. We have given Him provocation. Our light is clearer, our privileges are richer, and our iniquities exceed theirs in number and aggravation. Material evil is still at the Lord’s call, and ready to fulfil His Word. (A. Shanks.)
Temporal chastisements
The scope of the second part of this sermon is to show that however God will put difference betwixt workers, and knoweth who are sincere and who are not, yet to encourage them to be diligent in it, as being a work which He approves in itself, and which He will reward with temporal blessing, and a change of His former dispensations.
1. Though the Lord’s dispensations be visible and felt by all, yet the right considering and understanding of them is a work of much difficulty, and to which men need serious stirring up, especially to take up the right cause of them.
2. Famine and scarcity is one of the public scourges whereby the Lord chastises the sinful contempt and negligence of His people in His work and service; and He will be conspicuous in inflicting of it.
3. As it is the usual plague accompanying common judgments that they do not work upon the hearts of men, to draw them nearer God, but rather harden them; so such an impenitent disposition when God strikes, is a ground of further controversy; therefore He marks by the way their stupidity. “Yet ye turned not to Me, saith the Lord.”
4. However temporal things are not to be looked on as the chief reward of serving God, nor as absolutely promised, nor yet are they to be so much looked to under the Gospel, as the Church of the Jews might under their pedagogy; yet in this the promise, even concerning these things, holds good, that following God, hath the promise of this life, in so far as it is for the followers’ good; that God’s changing adversity into prosperity when a people set about His work, should be a confirmation to their faith, and strengthen their hands; that whatever adversity come on the Church, it is not to be fathered on God’s work, as if it had been the cause of her woe; that as neglecters of God’s work are real losers in their own affairs, and will prove so in the end, so followers of His work have a real advantage in it; and, in a word, that God’s work is never followed without a blessing evidenced some way or other to the godly’s satisfaction.
5. It is a profitable study to remark the advantages of following God, and to study encouragement in that duty. So much are we taught by the Lord’s exciting them to consider the change of His dealing, as trysting with the very day of their amending their fault.
6. God is so sovereign and absolute a Lord of all things, and hath times and seasons, blessings and cursings so in His hands, as He may undertake to do things, whereof there is no visible probability or certainty in the second causes, and can certainly perform them: therefore doth He undertake to bless them, when second causes and the season could speak no such thing.
7. It is the prerogative of God only to know future contingent events, which depend on times and seasons, and uncertain second causes, and their influences, but only by immediate revelation; this is held forth as God’s prerogative, by His extraordinary prophet, to foretell in the midst of winter, what the succeeding harvest should produce. (George Hutcheson.)