SERMON XVII. THE GOD OF THE RAIN
(Fifth Sunday after Easter.)
DEUT. xi. 11, 12. The land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land
of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven. A
land which the Lord thy God careth for: the eyes of the Lord thy
God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year, even unto
the end of the year.
I told you, when I spoke of the earthquakes of the Holy Land, that
it seems as if God had meant specially to train that strange people
the Jews, by putting them into a country where they MUST trust him,
or become cowards and helpless; that so they might learn not to fear
the powers of Nature which the heathen worshipped, but to fear him
the living God.
In this chapter is another instance of the same. They were to be an
agricultural people. Their very worship was (if you can understand
such a thing now-a-days) to be agricultural. Pentecost was a feast
of the first-fruits of the harvest. The Feast of Tabernacles was a
great national harvest home. The Passover itself, though not at
first an agricultural festival, became one by the waving of the
Paschal sheaf, which gave permission to the people to begin their
spring-harvest--so thoroughly were they to be an agricultural and
cattle-feeding people.
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