Isaiah 28:24-29

The Parable of Agriculture

Isa 28:24-29

This is a kind of parable of agriculture. It has pleased God through the prophet to show somewhat of his method of discipline, and somewhat of his purpose of government. In effect, he says Look at agriculture, and you will see on a small scale what I am doing on a scale immeasurably larger: look at the farmer, and see the spiritual cultivator; look at the method of producing food, and learn something of the method of producing character. This is an invaluable method of teaching, because it enables us to get quite close to the divine worker. When he himself fixes the symbol, when he calls attention to any actor or economy, and says, Watch there, and you will see as much as you now can see of my purpose and method, we should look with undivided attention, so that nothing shall escape out notice; for God himself has fixed the lesson book and told us to read with the utmost care. Let us yield ourselves to the spell of every vision, or parable, or sign that can help us to understand a little more than we can at present comprehend of the divine spirit and method and purpose.

What is ploughing? Does a man plough merely for exercise? Does ploughing express a whim for ground-cutting? Do we say, Every man has his occupation or his amusement, and this man has taken up with the fancy of cutting the ground, simply that he may exercise himself in a bodily way, and promote his own health? Ploughing is not an end. Ploughing is a means to an end. Everything depends upon our seizure of that simple fact. That is the explanation of discipline. There is nothing in the discipline itself. God does not smite, and cut, and bruise, and slay merely for the purpose of showing that he is much stronger than we are. He does not exercise almightiness in crushing feebleness. When he sends the red-hot ploughshare through our heart he has an object in view: that is an act preparatory to some other act. We miss the whole genius, and moral inspiration of discipline if we suppose that we are merely clay in the hands of a potter, merely objects upon which God plays off the miracles of his omnipotence. That view is full of insult to God's wisdom and God's love. When the Lord throws a man down it is not that he may trample him in the dust, but that he may work in him some wondrous ministry of grace and love. Let us understand, therefore, that all the discipline through which we pass is in itself nothing. We are no better for the discipline which we have not turned to account. Who is the better for the food he has not digested; for the books he has merely read in the letter without ever storing them in his mind, or digesting knowledge into wisdom? The mere fact of our having suffered a great deal amounts to nothing, if we have not made life through suffering. In fact, unless we have done that we are the worse for the suffering. It comes to one of two issues: either we are softened, subdued, chastened, purified, and refined by the discipline we have undergone; or, Pharaoh-like, our hearts are hardened, and our soul withdraws itself within a more obstinate induration, so that God's light and rain and smile cannot penetrate to the soul's hiding-place, and make it glad. We are to be co-workers with God in all this matter of discipline. To submit because we cannot successfully resist is not piety. To kiss the rod and say, Bless the hand that wields it! is true religion. Where God ploughs he means to sow. If we could realise that word it would be comfort to the comfortless, the very beginning of heaven to those who think they have been forsaken. Could the earth speak, it would say, I have felt the hard plough today; I know what is coming, I have now to do something; in due time I shall be sown with seed, and in a few days or weeks or months I shall be crowned with gold, or I shall be decorated with a robe of many colours: when the plough-point first struck me I was full of pain and distress, and I could have cried out for very agony, for the point was sharp, and the ploughman drave it through me with great energy; but, now I bethink me, this means the blade, the ear, the full corn in the ear, golden harvest, and harvest-home; and what a rest I shall have when I have done my duty, filled the barns of men, and driven hunger away from the streets and homes of the world. In all such apologues there is a veil of fine teaching, could we bow down ourselves in our intellectual vanity to accept it, and could we so far subdue our moral obstinacy as to receive the sacred lesson. When the plough of God's providence first cuts up a man's life, what wonder if the man should exclaim a little, yea, if he should give way to one hour's grief, and say he thought he had escaped all that kind of treatment! But the man may come to himself ere eventide and say, Plough on, Lord; I want my life to be ploughed all over that it may be sown all over, and that in every corner there may be golden grain or beautiful flowers: pity me that I exclaimed when I first felt the ploughshare; thou knowest my frame, thou rememberest that I am but dust, but now I recollect, I put things together, I see thy meaning; so drive on, thou Ploughman of Eternity. Then pain has a meaning, loss has a blessing, death is a great black door that swings back upon immortality.

If we are to read between the lines of this parable, and discover divine methods from human actions, then we should see that different characters require different treatment. There is a spirit of discrimination running throughout the whole statement For "fitches" read "fennel seed"; and fennel seed is amongst the very smallest of seeds, as indeed so is cummin. This is to be sown broadcast. It is not to be sown mechanically or geometrically, but is cast abroad, thrown out with a lavish hand on every side. Now wheat and barley, referred to also in the text, are larger, and they are to be dropped in more deliberately and carefully, and run into lines. The wise cultivator adopts different methods. Discrimination is a secret of power. With regard to character and its treatment, we are to have compassion on some, making a difference. It is even so with the wise teacher. He says, What can these scholars bear? what quality are they? what is their intellectual range? can I give strong meat to all, or must I give milk to some? Every one must have a portion of meat in due season. There are times when the preacher must broadcast his gospel, and speak in great general statements of invitation, exhortation, and appeal, so that all men may have an opportunity of catching somewhat of the heavenly voice, somewhat of the heavenly seed. Then there are times when he is quite a different man, so much so that they who only look upon the external say they would not have thought it was the same preacher. In the first instance he was sowing fennel seed, cummin, something that required to be thrown abroad, cast forth with great liberality; and in the second place he was slowly, deliberately, carefully going through his exposition, his grammar, his statement of dogmatic truth, his vindication of great solemn doctrines; he was a careful husbandman, studying the field, studying the seed, studying the season; in that ministry, in so far as he was a devoted servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, he was faithful to his trust, giving to each what each could take, and using each occasion for its own special purpose. Herein there should be great co-operation between preacher and hearer, teacher and scholar, pastor and flock. Regarding the minister as a husbandman, those who are wise and who are looking on should say, To-day he is sowing fennel seed: watch with what a liberal hand he throws it abroad, even at the risk of a great deal of it being lost, inasmuch as it may fall into stony places or amongst thorns, and may bring forth nothing in the end; still, he goes forth hopefully, saying in effect, All this seed may come back again, some ten, some thirty, some sixty, some an hundred fold. Then they shall say, To-day he is busy with the rye and the wheat and the barley and another kind of seed or grain altogether; and now look how carefully he lays down the lines, and how sedulously he plies his vocation; in the whole of it he means that there shall be fruit, food, harvest, and at the end of all there shall be a great harvest-home sung by himself and those who have been with him in the mystery of his husbandry.

The ploughman is divinely instructed "his God doth instruct him" ( Isa 28:26 ). Literally "he treateth each as is fitting, his God instructing him." There is nothing rough-and-ready; everything is studied, adapted, and directed to an end. In all labour there is profit. The difficulty is lest the field itself should start up and say, I want to be otherwise treated, especially I want to be let alone. Then the work of husbandry becomes very wearisome and impracticable. But where the field can say, Oh thou sent of God to make the most of me, I yield myself into thy hands! then every seed day is a harvest day: to sow is to reap, to scatter is to gather, and all the days are too short, so sunny are they and so rich and sacred with music. "His God doth instruct him." Ploughing is not an art of our discovery. We discover somewhat of the plough, but the ploughing is a far greater thing than the plough. We mistake the instrument for the music in many instances. We think that having fashioned a hammer we have sundered a rock; we suppose that because we have made a mechanical arrangement we have got into the very secret of creation and are working from the internal centre. Ploughing was in man at his very creation. Almost the first thought he had was about ploughing. But he had no plough. Given the inspiration of ploughing, and the plough will soon be found. Given the desire to find God, and God will soon be forthcoming. Given the passion for reading, and books will be procured if they cannot be bought or borrowed. The spirit of wisdom will find out the sanctuary of understanding. What is wanted is the spirit, the genius, the inspiration, the overwhelming spiritual impulse. You cannot keep a man back from making a plough who has the spirit of agriculture in him. With regard to his plough he would be very critical: it should be thus, and so, and he will offer prizes for improvements, and when it is finished, he will suppose that he thought of ploughing himself, and is the secret and inspiration of his own action. No. There is a metaphysic behind everything. There is a mystery in a plain deal. The agnostic takes up a beam of wood and says, All I can do is to say that it is forty inches long, six inches one way, and nine another: but what is in it I cannot tell. So with regard to all our civilisation, and culture, and progress; so with our hewing of marble into images that almost speak. The Lord doth instruct the cultivators, husbandmen, artists, painters, poets, teachers, merchantmen, all according to his own wisdom and purpose. Recognising this, we shall see in variety only a large display of divine wisdom; in eccentricity we shall see a divine action, not a human whim; in all out-of-the-way things we shall see the colonial dependencies and relationships of the great central crown. Ploughing may be praying. To work may be to worship. He who can truly say, "I got this plough from God," prays when he seizes it with both hands. He loves it as the musician loves his instrument.

But after ploughing and sowing there is something more; how is the food itself to be produced?

"For the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about upon the cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod" ( Isa 28:27 ).

What does all that mean? It means divine wisdom. This is a beautiful illustration of the way in which discipline is measured and administered. Fennel seed is not threshed with iron; when the crop comes the wise farmer takes a little rod and gently taps it, or he seizes it with a gentle hand and shakes it so as to get the fruit, the multiplied seed. But when he has to deal with wheat or barley, then he wants the flail, the threshing instrument. Things must be treated according to their nature. So it is with man. Some men require very little hard usage. A tap will do, a gentle stroke, a touch that hardly amounts to a blow, a ministry that may be wrought out with the tips of the fingers. Other men require flail, and iron instrument, and harrow, and cart wheel, and rough treatment: they are differently organised, they are differently constituted. What would be thought of a man who blew up birds' nests with gunpowder? Who would not say, There is great want of proportion in that man's method of looking at things; he is expending far too much energy upon the object? So with regard to the divine discipline. Some men could be almost brought to fulness or fruition by a smile. Of some men God says, Thou art not far from the kingdom of heaven; one little step would bring thee right home. God whispers some men into heaven. But what thunder he needs for others! It would seem as if he must almost tear the heavens asunder to arouse the attention of some men. God treats character according to the variety of character. With the wheat how gentle he is! He will not break the bruised reed; he will not quench the smoking flax. Christ will not lift up his voice, or cry, or cause himself to be heard in the streets; and at other times he will stand forth and pour out his woes like a cataract of maledictions. The divine economy has different aspects. The divine ministry works in different ways. We must not judge one another according to the processes through which we have passed. That is an unwise administration of the kingdom of heaven which insists that each man should have the same experiences, pass through the same processes, and be able to express himself in the same language with every other man. Nowhere is that unwisdom to be found in any book of God's writing. Everywhere God recognises differences, sometimes critical and infinitesimal, altogether concealed from human analysis, and he is Lord, not man, not the priest, not the minister, not the teacher. There is one Lord. Let him work according to his own counsel, for he moves from eternity.

The end of discipline is to produce fruit, satisfaction, solid result. But observe that whether in the case of the fennel seed or the wheat there is an instrumentality, a tapping or a bruising, something that amounts to test, trial, discipline. Here we find a word which occurs frequently in Scripture, and is associated with a very vivid and suggestive etymology, the word "tribulation." It comes from the word tribulum , and tribulum means a threshing instrument. Whatever the man used who was treating the growth in its latest phases was called a tribulum, and he tribulated the harvest into bread. The seed did not go from the field into the oven; it had to undergo the action of the tribulum. Watch it there: what is that seed now undergoing? tribulation. This is the bread that came out of much tribulating, tribulation, tearing asunder, shaking, beating. In order to get a real grip of any language one ought to have a dictionary all pictures. The great words of human speech represent some human action or invention or ministry or method. A hundred instances will occur at once. Here you see the tribulum, a threshing instrument; threshing or tribulating; tribulation necessary as a middle action between the growth and the bread that man can eat. Now that you see the thing before your eyes, now that it is pictured to the imagination, you can easily transfer the process to moral tribulating, tribulation. A man has grown all over fennel seed or cummin, or wheat, or rye, or barley. Is that enough? No. Now all that he has grown must pass through the action of the tribulum; it must be tribulated into food that men can eat. So figure the language you speak that you shall be master of all its uses. Take an instance, given by one of the most acute etymologists. We had the word "desultory": what is the meaning of that word? Only he can tell who knows the picture; and only he can never forget it who knows the picture. To be in the dramatic history of the word is to be master of all its uses and is to be saved from its misapplication. Here is an amphitheatre: here is a great ring: within that ring there are many horses: guiding and using the horses is a man, who leaps from one horse to another; what is his name official name? Desultor ; he is the desultor the leaper from one horse to another. So the desultory conversation is a conversation that leaps from one subject to another; the desultory book is the book that leaps from one topic to another, here speaking of agriculture, there speaking of astronomy; here the gossip of the day, yonder the philosophy of the century. So this word tribulum also brings up its picture, and having once laid hold of it the mind keeps it for ever, and the sufferer takes it with him into the sanctuary of his sorrow, and he says, This is right; I have been in the open fields, I have been ploughed, I have been sowed, I have grown all this character: now I must be tribulated, or the whole thing would be lost; certainly I must undergo the action of the tribulum. "Yea," saith the apostle, "we glory in tribulations also, knowing that tribulation worketh" and then comes the list of the virtues and the graces issuing from the action of the threshing instrument. Let the well-fed and the prosperous remember that if they have not been tribulated, whatever they may have grown in the field of their life, it has not come into utility for the blessing of others. "No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous." The crop never said, I like the action of the tribulum; it rather said, I should be glad if I could do without this, it is unpleasant; but it is necessary. How good some of us might be if we could have a little more tribulation! but when every bargain means an increase of property; when every day means a battlefield in which we win the victory; when the putting out of the hand is equal to the giving of a command that cannot be disobeyed; when we say to one, Go, and he goeth, to another, Come, and he cometh; and when to breathe is to prosper, how can we enter the kingdom of heaven? Others there are who seem always to be in tribulation: they are not strong, they have few opportunities in life; they are baffled and disappointed; their dreams are all turned into nightmares that afflict and affrighten them, and all life seems to be a process of pain. It is even so. It must be hard to bear. It is hardest, methinks, poor sufferer, when thou art silent. I would have thee talk. "It soothes poor misery listening to her tale." It is when thou art silent that I fear the tribulum is most severe upon thee. Oh that thou couldst cry a whole hour yea, shed tears all the day long, for then next day would be a day of joy. Bear it. Say, Lord, it is hard, but not too hard if thou wilt stand near me: I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. Poor tribulated heart, God is now getting out of thee what is necessary for thine own sustenance. Let him alone. Do not interfere with him. Yield thyself and say, Thy will, my God, be done!