Psalms 126:6

He that goeth forth and weepeth.

Tearful sowing and joyful reaping

All life is a sowing. Some sow to the lusts of the flesh. A chosen company sow to the spirit. These often sow in sadness, for such sowing involves self-denial and struggling against the flesh. But their reaping will compensate them. Now this holds good in regard to the whole spiritual life, but it applies also to individual incidents in that life. To prayers offered amid tears. To the daughters of affliction, the sons of pain. But we take the text in regard to every Christain worker.

I. Describe his service. It is said of him, he goeth forth. What does this mean? This, that he goeth forth from God. God has sent him. It is a sin beyond all others to take up the ministry as a mere profession. And this going forth is from the place of prayer. Our truest strength lies in prayer. But the word tells of the whither as well as the whence. And this going forth is away from the world, “without the camp,” aye, and beyond the range of ordinary Christian labour. “He that goeth forth,” not he that sits at home, shall win the reward. “And weepeth.” What means this word? As the former word told of the mode of service, so this tells of the man himself. A man who cannot weep, inwardly if not internally, cannot preach. He must be sensitive, tender-hearted, a man in earnest. Some one asks, “Why does he weep?” Because he feels his own insufficiency, because of the hardness of men’s hearts, because he is often disappointed. Blossoms come not to be fruit, or fruit half ripe drops from the tree. Next, we read, “he beareth precious seed.” This an especial point of success. There is no soul-winning by untruthful preaching. The Gospel, and that only, will serve. Tell it out as those who know it is precious, not flippantly, or as though we were retailing a mere story from the “Arabian Nights.” And as those who know that the truth is a seed. Do not speak of it and forget it, or think of it as a stone that will never spring up. Believe there is life in it, and something will come of it.

II. The worker’s success. “He shall come again” to his God whence he set out, come in thanksgiving and praise. “With rejoicing,” yes, even in his very tears, but mainly in his success. Many have asked whether every earnest labourer may expect to have this. I have always inclined to the belief that such is the rule, though there may be exceptions. It seems to me that if I never won souls I would sigh till I did. I would break my heart Over them if I could not break their hearts. I cannot comprehend any one trying to win souls and being satisfied without results. With sheaves. As an old expositor says, he comes with the wains behind him, with the wagons at his heels. They are his sheaves, for though all souls belong to Christ, they yet belong to the worker. God puts it so, “bringing his sheaves with him.”

III. The golden link of “doubtless.” The promise of God says so. The analogy of nature assures you of it. God mocks not the husbandman. And Christ assures you of this. Think, too, of those who have already proved it. See the triumphs of missions. Therefore be up and doing. You who are not saved, I ask you not to sin, but to come to Christ. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The sower and his harvest: -

I. The qualities and requirements of the successful sower.

1. He “goeth forth.” This shows a set purpose, a fixed and definite design. It also suggests that the work is done at some personal cost, some self-denial.

2. He “weepeth.” The burden of souls is laid upon him. A trifler must fail; this thorough earnestness is essential to success.

3. He “bears precious seed.” The seed is the living word for a lost world; truth for souls wandering in fatal error; “the glorious Gospel of the blessed God.” It is precious, because it is the gift of God’s love by Jesus Christ; because of the price paid for it; because of its fruit, peace, love, joy in the Holy Ghost. How does he bear it? Best of all forms, the only perfect mode is in the heart; so that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth may speak.

II. The character of the harvest promised.

1. It is abundant. For seeds in the hand there shall be sheaves on the shoulders.

2. It is gladdening. The sower goes forth weeping; he returns rejoicing.

3. It is sure. (J. McTurk.)

Sowing and reaping

I. The seed.

1. Its origin is Divine.

2. Its vitality.

3. Its value. “Precious.”

(1) Because it is a Divine gift.

(2) Because it meets human necessity.

(3) Because of its blessed, practical results.

(4) Because it is adapted to all classes.

(5) Because it has no equal, and nothing can take its place.

II. The sower.

1. His energy--“goeth forth.” He does not waste his precious time in berating other sowers, or in telling what wonders he is going to do in the future; nor does he allow his zeal to evaporate in sentiment or song. But he “goeth forth.” We have a sufficient number of word-critics and analyzers; we want more men who would rather scatter the seed than argue about its constituent elements.

2. His emotion--“weepeth.” Why?

(1) Felt responsibility.

(2) Discouragements in the way. Poverty, ignorance, drunkenness, sensuality, a disposition to cling to sins and force their way to perdition.

(3) Lack of appreciation and sympathy.

(4) Meagre results of former sowing.

(5) Inability to reach the masses, who need us most.

3. His errand--“Bearing precious seed.” The bread of life for a perishing, famine-stricken world. The God-sent sower is a man of one work and one kind of seed. He is not a drawing-room evangelist; he “goeth forth.” He is not a man of business, he is not a politician, he is not a scientist. He is a worker for God, a sower of the seed. He preaches Christ, not himself; God’s thoughts, not his own.

III. The success.

1. Certain.

2. Inspiring.

3. Remunerative.

4. Individual ownership. “Their sheaves.”

5. Palpable results. “Bringing.” Then to sow is to reap. (T. Kelly, D. D.)

The home and foreign fields compared

Some think the mission cause is less popular now than formerly. This opinion may be true to some extent. There may not now be the excitement which, we are told, prevailed at first. For this several reasons may be assigned. The novelty has passed away. Other institutions have sprung up to divide public interest. But the chief reason no doubt is, that experience is bringing out the real nature of the work undertaken as it was never brought out before. Does not very much of the disappointment and complaint which we sometimes hear expressed at the result of mission work arise from wrong expectations?

I. As to the soil, what a contrast this presents to that at home.

1. Look at its extent. Those who know nature and mankind only in small countries like our own cannot conceive the proportions they assume in the world’s great continents. There is not a greater difference between the hills which we call mountains, and the streams which we dignify as rivers, and those elsewhere, than there is between humanity here and humanity there. It may be thought at least the moral greatness is with us. As to superior civilization, much of this is prejudice, which a wider acquaintance with the world dissipates. I confess that the only indisputable point of superiority in us, as far as I know, is in the possession of a pure and true religion. Take this away, and we should be no better than the rest. But as to material size and numbers, we are comparatively insignificant. Place a man on a peak of the Alps or Himalayas, and what an overwhelming astonishment comes over him. A like feeling is experienced by one who finds himself moving among the world’s great populations. In this country we have thirty millions to deal with--thirty millions to save, one by one. But you might divide China alone into twelve such countries, with twelve times thirty millions. You might cut up India into six such countries, with six times thirty millions. The mind is lost even amid such numbers; but what would it be in measuring entire continents? The number of mission-converts is often compared with the total population of the world. But it would be fairer to make the comparison with the number actually brought under Christian influence. Missions, though universal in spirit and aim, are not so in fact. Compare the ground gained with that actually attempted, and the disproportion will appear less.

2. Contrast, again, the nature of the two fields. In this respect the conditions are as opposite as they can be. At home Christian agencies are more nearly adequate to the work to be done. It is true there is much religious destitution. But what sort of destitution? Not so much destitution of ministers and sanctuaries as of the religion which would make more ministers and sanctuaries necessary. Must there not be more religious success and growth before more of these outward products of religion will be seen? But Christian churches are not all. Our whole country is professedly Christian, and has been a thousand years. A thousand years of history are in our favour. Our doctrines are the doctrines generally received. Besides a powerful Christian literature, the general literature of our country is Christian in spirit. The stamp of the Bible is on our national character. All this is an incalculable gain to the cause of truth. The way of the preacher is made easy. Directly you go into a heathen country, this state of things is reversed. When we speak of the wickedness and spiritual apathy of heathen lands, we may seem to mention nothing special. Are these unknown at home? Bad as the state of morality may be here, we assure you there is worse than your worst. Heathenism makes the same sins blacker. If there is so much wickedness where so many checks are at work, what must there be where most of these checks are unknown, and religion herself becomes the patron of vice? Converse with the priests, read the lives of the deities, observe the images of impurity and cruelty--“lust hard by hate”--which surround you in worship. As to the practical effects of idolatry, its very nature is degrading. In judging of mission work, then, many forget that abroad we meet with all the old hindrances, and others still more formidable.

II. Let us look also at the sowers. In this respect we may think there is no room for difference. The same agencies will suit either field. Let us see. What is the state of things at home? First, the language is the preacher’s own. He has not to plunge into the difficulties of a new tongue and literature. Again, the machinery is provided to his hand. In both respects how different abroad! In many parts a difficult language, imposing long and hard toil, blocks the very threshold. The labourer may be full of zeal. His soul, like Paul’s, may be stirred by what he sees. But he is dumb. For long he is a child learning to speak. Take the other point. Suppose you have a system of agencies formed and at work. Many could most efficiently keep it going who would not be equal to originating it. It is evident that on both grounds the mission-field requires special gifts--mental adaptation, a spirit of enterprise, skill to create and organize. There must be these special qualifications-for the special work which lies before us in other lands. Even the best labourers must often lament their insufficiency. They often feel the terrible disadvantage at which they labour. Every seed as it falls into the earth is wet with tears wrung from earnest, anxious souls. “The sun goes down on a life of faithful toil, and little impression is made on the waste, few ears are gathered. What a contrast between the present beginnings and future destiny of the Gospel! The Church goes forth weeping; she returns with sheaves rejoicing. Now wrong has the majority; the triumph seems to be with error; faith struggles for mastery in one place, for existence in another. All this will be reversed. Instead of sowers weeping, you will hear shouts of reapers rejoicing--shouts which ring louder and sweeter for the years of working and waiting which have gone before. Instead of a few bright patches of fruitfulness, enough to keep faith alive, the world’s wide field shall stand thick with sheaves--sheaves of souls dearly ransomed and hardly won. Meanwhile what is our duty? To sow on. Let not weeping hinder sowing. Sow money, sow sympathy and prayer, sow lives of earnest work for Christ. (J. S. Banks.)

The hope of the spiritual sower

If it takes six months for nature to restore to the farmer his reward, how much do you think is needed before this world is made to rejoice and blossom like the rose? We must be patient, we must be generous, we must be far-seeing; and we must remember that all the money that is sunk in schoolrooms and sunk in good teaching, all the money that seems occasionally to be flung away--I do not mean anything foolish--in this field of education, will be bearing fruit when we are dead. And upon the thoroughness of the education in England during the years to come will depend our prosperity and our position amongst the nations of the earth. We ought to be thankful for our army and navy, but in the future nations are to depend less upon armed men and more upon intelligence. Or if you take the ease of social reform in any of its departments, why, it is over fifty years since men began to work at the temperance cause, and sometimes it does not seem to have advanced greatly. But it is advancing, and habits of temperance and self-restraint are spreading amongst the people. We may not in our days see a sober and thrifty nation; but some day, when this land is delivered from the curse of drunkenness and the improvidence which follows it, people will rise up and bless the sowers in the sleet of past days. And, if that be true of education and morality, what will you say to religion--to recast a single soul in the character of Jesus Christ? To recast a whole race will take centuries; but it is going to be done l He that works for a speedy return works for a passing return; he who works for eternal ends must work deeply and wait patiently. He may die before the vessel comes into harbour, but he is going with the tide that is to carry her into harbour. The throne of God is established in righteousness and not in unrighteousness. Did not Christ, living and dying, triumph over this world? It is with such that this man allies himself, whom you may think so foolish and short-sighted. He places himself beside the throne of light; he places himself beside the throne of Jesus Christ. If he is beaten, he is beaten, when every one of us is beaten, and the whole human race is beaten, and nothing remains but ruin and chaos. If there be order, he wins; if there be righteousness, he is going to come out conqueror. “Well,” you say, “I like to see a little.” Well, then, my friend, will you remember that your life is not the whole life of the Kingdom of God. And although the class you are going to teach this afternoon in that back street is just a little bit of heaven begun, as well as you can begin it, it is not the whole kingdom of heaven. What do you think of the prophets now, and especially the prophets who prophesied the Messiah in heathen Babylon and decadent Jerusalem, and who died and never saw the promise, and never saw the prophecy fulfilled? And now, behold, we have seen everything they said come true, and generation after generation has blessed them for their words. Courage yourselves with the Psalms, with Amos, with Hosea, and the second of Isaiah! What do you say of the prophets? They gave up all they possessed and went out and preached the Gospel. And some preached in heathen cities, some in Europe, some Asia, and we do not know where some of them preached. And they died. So far as we know most of them were martyrs. (John Watson, D. D.)

Harvest joys:

We are just in the middle of harvest. We are reaping; we are bringing our sheaves home: and we, too, reap with joy, more or less; we bring our sheaves home with rejoicing. There are many good reasons for this. The harvest, you all know and feel, is the end and crown of the year,--the end, not in the same way in which winter is the end of the year, as closing its eyes, and laying it in its grave, but as being its consummation and fulfilment. It is the end for which the seasons roll round in their busy course. It is the end for which the earth opens her womb, and pours out her fatness. It is the end for which the sun looks down with his fostering fatherly smiles upon the earth, and cherishes her day by day more and more, according as she can bear it. Moreover, here, too, there is need of tears: there is need that the bosom of the earth should be torn up by the ploughshare. She likewise must go forth on her yearly way weeping, when she bears her precious seed; or she will never come again rejoicing, bringing her full sheaves with her. God has blessed the work of your hands: He has given you a good harvest: it will bring you in much profit. Let it be your care then that the poor shall also be partakers in the blessings, which God’s bounty has poured out for them as well as for you. When any prosperity betides a household, it is right and fitting that all the members of the household, from the highest to the lowest, should partake in that prosperity, that all should be invited to a fellowship in the same rejoicing. So may the servants in a household be encouraged to feel that they are united to their masters by some other bond than the iron chain of necessity,--that there is something in their faithful services beyond the worth of money, and which no money can repay,--that they are moral beings, with hearts and souls, with consciences and affections,--that they are to show this in their conduct, and that their masters also are to show their conviction of this in all their dealings with them. In this manner does it behove you to show your thankful conviction that the harvest is indeed a blessing, and not to thwart God’s gracious purpose, that it should be a blessing, not to you alone, but to all men, of every class and condition. For this is what renders it truly precious. The earth rejoices because she is made God’s minister to pour forth her treasures for the support of mankind. And this is a further reason why you also may lawfully rejoice in the harvest. Joy for any outward good that befalls ourselves is narrow and selfish and barren. But joy for any good we may be enabled to do to others is of a right kind. It is a joy which has the purifying spirit of love in it, a joy such as the angels feel when they are sent on God’s errands of mercy. This is the great privilege granted to you whose calling is to till the ground. You are employed by God as His ministers for the good of your brethren. It is through your means that the race of man is sustained and enabled to live from year to year. It is at your hands that God gives us our daily bread. For this thought, moreover, should be always present to your minds; that that which you do, you do not of yourselves and by yourselves, through any strength of your own arm, or any wit of your own head, but only through the power of God, as His servants and ministers. When we look at the harvest as the gift of God, then it becomes a ground of pure and unmixed rejoicing. As he who is truly suffering from want and distress is thankful if you give him a small alms, and is the more thankful if your alms be large, so, if we are really convinced that the harvest is the gift of God’s bounty, then, even if the harvest be a scanty one, we still rejoice and are thankful to God, from whom we had no right to claim or expect anything richer; and if the harvest be abundant, we are the more exceeding thankful. Indeed this, you will ever find, is one among the many benefits which arise from the habit of looking at all the events and dispensations of this world as the appointment and ordinance of God. You will be confident that, whatever their immediate appearance may be, they are good, and are designed for good. You will be delivered from all repining on account of them. What, ever they may be, you will be thankful for them. If the dispensation be grievous, you will discern something that required to be chastened and corrected: and for that chastening and correction you will be thankful to Him whose chastening is a sure proof of His love. If, on the other hand, the dispensation be such as even the natural heart welcomes with delight, your rejoicing on that account of it will be doubled, when you look on it as a token of your heavenly Father’s bounty. (J. C. Hare, M. A.)

The certain reward of good works

Our text, taken in its largest significance, is to be classed with those passages which speak of the reward of good works, and use that reward as a motive to their performance. There can be nothing clearer from the Bible than that though man can expect nothing for his works, so that his best actions, if tried by their own merit, would produce only wrath; he will, nevertheless, be judged by his works, and receive a recompense, of which these works will determine the extent. It is impossible that man should gain any reward, if you connect with reward the notion of merit; but it is quite possible that while that which is bestowed is of grace and not of debt, yet there may be a rigid proportion maintained between his actions and his condition, so that his final allotment will be dependent on his works, as though those works could establish a right to some portion of happiness. And when this principle has been settled--the principle that though We cannot merit from God our actions will decide our condition--we may speak of good works as to be hereafter rewarded, because they shall as actually regulate our portion as though that portion were a recompense in the strictest sense of the term. If, then, it be lawful to speak of reward, we may certainly speak of the husbandman who “goeth forth weeping, bearing precious seed,” as coming “again rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.” It will frequently happen that we have no means of ascertaining that any beneficial results have been produced by our most earnest and disinterested labours; and it is quite possible that no such results have yet followed, and that they never will follow. The minister may have toiled in vain; the parent may have striven in vain; the philanthropist may have been generous in vain. Not only may it be true that none of these parties can discern any fruit of their exertions and sacrifices; it may be further true that no fruit whatsoever has been yielded; so that minister, and parent, and philanthropist have apparently spent their strength for nought. And yet, even in this extreme case, you can only suppose that the retributions of eternity will abundantly prove the statements of our text. The “precious “ seed has been sown; the man perhaps “weeping” as he sowed it, and our decision must be, if we shut out the appointments of the future, that it is utterly lost, and will never, in any fruit, return to its original proprietor. But, if you bring those appointments of the future into the account, you presently discover the falseness of such a decision. You show that God has kept an exact register of our every effort to promote His glory and the welfare of our fellow-men, and that whatever may have been the success of that effort, it will receive a recompense proportioned to its zeal and sincerity. There must be no such thing as the giving up in despair, because hitherto we seem to have been toiling in vain. We cannot tell that it has been in vain. We know that the remark is often made that the children of religious parents turn out worse than those of worldly; but we have no faith in the historical accuracy of this remark. Now and then there will be striking and melancholy cases; and these cases the more noted because occurring in families upon which many eyes have been fixed, are taken as establishing a general rule, and that a rule which concludes against the worth of religious education. But we are persuaded that the sum total of the evidence from fact is immeasurably the other way; and we have no hesitation in appealing to this evidence as corroborating the gracious description of our text. It will sometimes happen that the parent’s efforts are frustrated, so that neither during his life, nor after his death, is the prodigal child reclaimed from his wanderings. But ordinarily you have the spectacle of the old age of a father and a mother cheered by the piety of their offspring. If the sons and the daughters have been carefully trained in the way they should go, then adherence to it will be generally amongst those rich consolations which God ministers in their last days to parents. (H. Melvill, B. D.)

Better plant than build

If a man builds, Nature straightway sets to work to undo his building. Rust eats into the iron and decay into the wood, and little by little time ravages and destroys. But if a man plants, Nature proceeds to complete his unfinished work. He sows a seed, and behold wheat; he plants a cutting, and behold a tree. Such is the difference between working alone and working with God. He who sows truth in human hearts works with God. The seed drops into the heart; lies there; is long hidden; sprouts; pushes forth the blade and ear, and finally the full corn. Not at once, often only after long delay; but it fails not. Heaven and earth shall pass away; all things material decay. “But My words shall not pass away;” truth is imperishable. (Lyman Abbott, D. D.).

Psalms 127:1