Baptists -- Sermons; Sermons, English -- 19th century
And why is it, my friends, why is it that God gives the cattle the
grass? The reason is, _because they belong to him_. Here is a text to
prove it. "The silver and the gold are mine, and the cattle upon a
thousand hills." God provides grass for his own cattle, and grace is
provided for God's people. Of every herd of cattle in the world, God
could say, "They are mine." Long before the grazier puts his brand on
the bullock God has set his creating mark upon it; so, before the stamp
of Adam's fall was set upon our brow, the stamp of electing love was set
there: "In thy book all my members were written, which in continuance
were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them."
God also feeds cattle because _he has entered into a covenant with them
to do so_. "What! a covenant with the cattle!" says somebody. Ay! truly
so, for when God spake to his servant Noah, in that day when all the
cattle came out of the ark, we find him saying, "I establish my covenant
with you, and with your seed after you; and with every living creature
that is with you, of the fowl, of _the cattle_, and of every beast of
the earth with you." Thus a covenant was made with the cattle, and that
covenant was that seed-time and harvest should not fail; therefore the
earth brings forth for them, and for them the Lord causeth the grass to
grow. Does Jehovah keep his covenant with cattle, and will he not keep
his covenant with his own beloved? Ah! it is because his chosen people
are his covenanted ones in the person of the Lord Jesus, that he
provides for them all things that they shall need in time and in
eternity, and satisfies them out of the fulness of his everlasting love.
Once, again, God feeds the cattle, and then _the cattle praise him_. We
find David saying, in the hundred and forty-eighth Psalm, "Praise the
Lord ... ye beasts and all cattle." The Lord feeds his people to the end
that their glory may sing praise unto him and not be silent. While other
creatures give glory to God, let the redeemed of the Lord especially say
so, whom he has redeemed out of the hand of the enemy.
Nor even yet is our text exhausted. Turning one moment from the cattle,
I want you to notice the grass. It is said of the grass, "_He causeth_
the grass to grow": here is a doctrinal lesson, for if grass does not
grow without God's causing it to grow, how could grace arise in the
human heart apart from divine operations? Surely grace is a much more
wonderful product of divine wisdom than the grass can be! And if grass
does not grow without a divine cause, depend upon it grace does not
dwell in us without a divine implantation. If I have so much as one
blade of grace growing within me, I must trace it all to God's divine
will, and render to him all the glory.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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