The Harvest Past, and the Balm of Gilead

Edward Griffin (1770—1837)
 

Jeremiah 8:20-22
"The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved." Since my people are crushed, I am black; I mourn, and horror grips me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people?"

The Jewish prophets, born and educated among an agricultural people, borrowed many of the most striking images which adorn their writings from scenes of husbandry, and frequently from the season and employments of harvest. By the latter figure is sometimes meant the proper season for activity in divine things. Thus: "He who sleeps in harvest is a son that causes shame."

At other times is meant by it the end of the world, when the wheat shall be gathered into the garner and the tares burnt with unquenchable fire.

In our text it may mean either or both of these. When the word summer is used metaphorically by the sacred writers, it always means the proper season to lay up provisions for a future day: thus: "He who gathers in summer is a wise son." The first part of the text may therefore be paraphrased thus: The season to discharge the great duties of life is past, the time allotted to lay up provisions for futurity is ended, and we are not saved.

Or if the text is supposed to look forward to the end of the world, then its meaning will be: The awful process of gathering the wheat and burning the tares is past: the concluding scene is closed: ended is the whole period allotted mankind to lay up provisions for eternity: the last opportunity is over, and we are not saved.

In the next verse the prophet takes up a tender lamentation over his unhappy people. In all the bitterness of heart-felt woe he exclaims, "For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt. I am black: [either, I am clad in mourning, or, I walk in darkness.] Astonishment has taken hold on me!" Jeremiah was a man whose heart-strings seemed attuned to woe. "One would think," says one, "that every letter was written with a tear; that every word was the noise of a breaking heart; that the author was a man compacted of sorrows; disciplined to grief from his infancy; one who never breathed but in sighs, nor spoke but in a groan."

Having thus vented his grief, he makes the tender inquiry: Why need it be? "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?" Gilead was the name of the country east of Jordan, which fell to Reuben and Gad and half of Manasseh. As early as the time of Jacob it was celebrated for a medicinal balm, known in commerce, and which in later ages furnished a figure to illustrate the healing virtue of the Gospel.

In further pursuing the text, I shall take its parts in an order somewhat inverted.

"For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt. I am black. Astonishment has taken hold on me." Serious indeed must be the state of sinners, if a faint view of it can fill the pious heart with so much grief and astonishment. Extreme must be that ruin, a glimpse of which could cause the distressed prophet to cry, "O that my head were waters and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!"

Just so, awful must be that wrath, a sight of which could press the blood through the pores of the agonized Savior, and to deliver men from which he could come down from above all heights to the manger and the garden and the cross.

And why will they die? "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?" Why do wretched millions lie weltering in their blood? Why does a demolished world lie in ruins? Why do infatuated nations rush down together to eternal despair? Why must the benevolent cry over a dying world, as they did over wretched Moab: "O vine of Sibmah, I will weep for you with the weeping of Jazer." "I will water you with my tears, O Heshbon and Elealeh."

Why do multitudes on every side swarm the road to ruin, and urge their impetuous course, and never slacken until they plunge into eternal damnation? Is it because no remedy is provided? Not so! There is balm in Gilead, and an able Physician there. God has not been lacking on his part. He can appeal to Heaven and earth, "What could have been done more—that I have not done?"

The providing of this Physician and balm proved that men were sick. Yes, sick unto death, in the whole head and heart. "From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness." All is "wounds and bruises and putrefying sores!" The disease has infected the brain and induced madness. Like many other maniacs, while deeply diseased, they imagine themselves in perfect health. They spurn the remedy, and account their best friends to be their greatest enemies for urging it upon them. They are constantly struggling to destroy themselves.

But "is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?" Yes, all the rivers flow with balm, and a Physician there is as powerful as God, who offers his healing aid "without money and without price."

When it became manifest that God must abandon his law or the human race or sacrifice his Son, he "spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all." By sufferings never endured by another, the Savior fully answered the purpose of our punishment, and by his obedience he purchased for us all the positive blessings of both worlds. And now if we want pardon, his expiation and covenant-claim secure it. If we want sanctification as well as pardon, he is exalted "to be a Prince and a Savior—to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins." He is our Prophet to teach us; he is our King to rule, protect, and enrich us. He is "the first born among many brethren," the "Heir" under whom the "joint heirs" inherit. He "is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption."

He is our refuge from all the cares and ills of life.

He supplies all our needs, and prevents all the evils we shun.

In all respects he is just such a Savior as we need.

There is an infinite fullness in him.

His willingness to save is equal to his power. When our astonished eyes follow him through the labors and sufferings of his life, we perceive, not only a willingness, but an unspeakable eagerness to save. We see none turned from his door, but find him, with untiring zeal and pity, seeking the lost sheep upon the mountains.

If we go to his Gospel, and listen to the invitations and entreaties which there forever plead, or if we mark his providence, and see the warnings and long suffering there displayed, and the wooings of the Spirit—our impression will be the same. He is infinitely willing and able to save. There is indeed balm in Gilead and a Physician there!

"Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?" The Physician himself has told us: "You will not come to me that you might have life." To this charge however sinners do not readily plead guilty. They often say, I would give all the world for a saving interest in Christ, but I cannot obtain it. While under strong apprehensions of future wrath, they may indeed consent to part with present comforts to purchase future safety; and knowing Christ to be the only Savior, they may indirectly desire him, just as a sick man desires a disagreeable potion for the recovery of his health. But a direct desire after Christ, arising from a view of his loveliness and the glory of the Gospel—never dwelt in unsanctified souls. While the heart remains "enmity against God" and in love with sin, it cannot desire a way of salvation which lends all its influence to support the law and to condemn sin.

But the particular reasons for refusing to come to Christ, are selfishness, pride, and unbelief.

Selfishness takes the sinner's part and pleads not guilty to the charges of the law, and thus denies the need of a Savior.

Pride cannot come down to the state of a criminal and to the feet of Christ, and sue for pardon on account of another. It clings to self-righteousness and makes demands on God, and when denied, rises in angry resentments against him; and then goes to work with greater earnestness, under the notion of offering a greater price.

Selfishness and pride beget unbelief; and unbelief excludes a realizing sense of everything: of God, law, sin, the Savior, the reality of his appointment, the sincerity of the invitation, and the truth of the promise. The fault is altogether with the sinner. "How often would I have gathered your children together, even as a her gathers her chicks under her wings, but you would not." His blood therefore must be upon his own head. If he mourns at the last when his flesh and his body are consumed, he must pour upon the ear of Hell the eternal complaint, "How have I hated instruction and my heart despised reproof!" "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved!"

In contemplating these affecting words, the impression comes over us that the present life is the season to perform all our duties to God and man, and to lay up all our provisions for eternity.

The great errand on which we came into the world, was to do the work of God and to prepare to leave it. Of how little value are all the pleasures and profits of this life viewed in any other light than as related to eternity. The idols which we most fondly infold in our arms, will soon be torn from our embrace and crumble into dust! "You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting" is inscribed on all the charms of a world groaning under the curse of Adam's God. This state was intended for a higher end than that of present enjoyment. It was designed for a school in which to learn lessons of God, of his government and works—of Christ and the wonders of grace—to catch the spirit of Heaven, to become inured to obedience, and trained to the employments of the heavenly world.

The comforts of earth are bestowed, not so much for their own intrinsic value, as for helps to further us on our way to Heaven. That comfort which does not answer this purpose, ceases to be a blessing, and fails of the end for which it was bestowed.

What ought deeply to impress us, is that this golden season will soon be closed. The summer of life will soon flit away like the evanescent shades of night, and the vision of our worldly hopes and calculations will burst like a morning dream! The joys which we inherit below the sun will in succession soon forsake us, or we shall at once take our leave of them. And even though we outlive all our comforts, and for a few days longer water this valley with our tears, yet the end of our pilgrimage will come; a joyful event which will lay to rest many a weary soul—or a dreadful event which will be to many but the beginning of sorrow. Not a person in all these seats, however young, but must soon become a breathless lump of clay, and be done with all the busy scenes of life, with the means of grace, and with a preparation for a never ending eternity. Our comfortable habitations must soon be exchanged for the dark and narrow house; our dearest friends must soon be exchanged for the company of worms, and our downy pillows must soon be exchanged for the cold clods of the valley. The places which now know us, will know us no more forever.

We shall become strangers in our father's house. A new generation will arise to occupy our seats. A few surviving relatives may for a time remember that we lived; but those few will soon follow us to the land of silence. We shall no longer be missed. Our names will be forgotten on earth. Strangers will walk over our graves without knowing that we ever had existence.

The world will not be changed by our departure. Seasons will revolve and the sun will arise and set as usual. Mirth and diversion will be as brisk as ever. No one on earth will care for our joys or sorrows, while we shall be either spreading our pinions in the regions of immortal day and skimming the air of paradise, or—or—how shall I express it?—or be tossing on the fiery billows of the wrath of an infinite God, where all the millions of ruined sinners will roar forth the eternal complaint, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved!"

O let our excited souls approach and see a wretched sinner looking back to a misspent life with this dismal lamentation upon his tongue. Enter his gloomy chamber, you who have nerves to endure the sight. Look through the mournful curtains, if room can be found among the weeping friends. See the writhings of his agony. Mark the wild despair of his glaring eye. His quivering lips attempt to speak. "O earth, earth, earth—open and receive a wretch, who is called to appear before an angry God, and who dares not, cannot go. O eternity, eternity, who can enter you when you are filled with fire? O life, how have you been spent?" A convulsion stops his voice. Support that sinking mother and that fainting sister. His cries are heard again. "A thousand worlds for one more year—for one more day! O my soul, what will become of you? And must I go? I cannot. And yet I must. I cannot. But O there is no reprieve, and plunge I must, this moment, into eternal burnings!"

Is there any spectacle so awful on this side of the regions of the damned? My flesh trembles, and my spirit cries "Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his."

Or if we understand by the harvest the end of the world, how dreadful will be the condition of those who will then have this lamentation to make.

The process of the general judgment will be so awfully interesting as to awaken the strongest emotions of the worlds. To see the judge descend with ten thousand of his saints—the sepulchers of many generations broken open—columns of rising dead filling all the air, some with shrieks, and some with hallelujahs on their tongues—some surrounded with the glories of the sun, and others stamped with the horrid emblems of the damned—the earth and the heavens on fire—all the works of God in confusion and uproar—the universe disjointed and falling to ruins—the spirits in Heaven descending with songs to judgment—the affrighted spirits of Hell coming out of their prison convulsed with horror; to hear saints and angels shouting their triumphs and thanksgivings, and devils and damned men uttering their most piteous shrieks of woe and vomiting out their raging blasphemies! O this will be an awful day!

When the moment comes for the two armies to separate to different worlds, will you not desire to ascend with the righteous? Can your heart endure to be torn from your godly relatives, and as you turn to enter the regions of night, to say, "Farewell, my father, mother, wife, and children! Farewell you worlds of light—you joys which once I knew. And hail, you haunts of devils and you regions of the damned. You alone are left me of all that this universe contains; and never, never shall I have more?" You deathless souls, in the name of the eternal God I charge you not to have, in that day, this lamentation to make.

From the heights of these sublime and solemn wonders, I descend to earth to cry in the ears of my beloved hearers: Prepare for the great and terrible day of the Lord!

As life in general is a harvest season, certain portions of it are so in a peculiar sense.

1. Such is the period of youth. If provisions are made for eternity, it is many to one that they will be made before this season passes off. It is generally thought that by far the greater part of the elect are called under the age of twenty. So strongly fixed are the associations which are formed in early life, and the habits which are founded on those associations, that the character is generally settled for both worlds before the days of manhood. One of the commonest and most subtle of Satan's temptations is to persuade youth to postpone religion until future life, and to encourage them to hope that little hazard will be incurred by the delay. Never was a greater falsehood uttered by the father of lies—and yet it is his constant resort, and the most successful of all his devices. He knows if he can prevail in this, he is likely to prevail finally, and therefore he bends his chief attention to this point. And silly youth, unwarned by the millions thus seduced to ruin, believe and follow him, "as the ox goes to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks!"

My dear young friends, the present is the harvest season of your lives. Could you realize its unspeakable importance, you would not let it pass unimproved. O devote yourselves to early piety. Fulfill the joy of your pious parents, and dry up those tears which have often flowed for you in secret, by remembering your Creator in the days of your youth. Let not the almond tree blossom on your heads before He who dwelt between the cherubim has taken up his abode in your hearts. When "the evil days" of old age shall "come" and "the years draw near" in which you shall "say, I have no pleasure in them," may not your dim eyes be then drenched in tears while looking back on misspent youth, nor your hearts surcharged already with sufficient sorrow, be forced to heave the unavailing sigh, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved!"

2. Such also is the season of a revival of religion. "Think not to say within yourselves," We are not awakened, and therefore it is no harvest season to us. As well might the sleeper in the time of the natural harvest say: It is no harvest season to me because I refuse to work. It is a harvest season to him, and he must answer for it. To the truest sleeper the harvest offers the most favorable season for successful labor, and the summer, the best season to lay up provisions for winter. Such a season is now afforded you all. A faithful attendance on the means of grace, or even one solemn effort to think or pray—may now be attended with effects far greater than at other times. The Spirit is now offered to all, and stands ready to assist the beginning of every humble and earnest effort. The chances are far greater than at other times for every one in particular that he will fill his granary with immortal fruits. Your chances for conversion in sleepy times are very small. Two or three in an ordinary congregation in the course of a year, are as many as can be expected. But what are these compared to the number of births within the same bounds of time? If you are to be saved there are many chances to one that you will be converted in a revival. But when if not in this? If you ever live to see another, it will find you older and a less probable subject; it will find you harder and less likely to be subdued; it will find you laden with the guilt of rejecting this call, and therefore less likely to be approached by the Spirit, and perhaps sealed over to hardness of heart.

The abuse of this harvest season will involve infinitely more guilt and danger than you imagine. It is the highest reach of madness to neglect another hour to press into the kingdom of God. O that that voice from Heaven might be heard again, bearing upon you with boundless authority and love: "Seek the LORD while He may be found; call on Him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD, and He will have mercy on him, and to our God, for He will freely pardon!" Isaiah 55:6-7

God forbid that any of you should throw away so infinitely important an opportunity to make your fortune for eternity, and have a few months hence, to cry, with regrets which come too late, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved!"

3. Such, in a very special sense, is the season with a sinner when the Spirit of God is moving upon his mind and heart. This affords advantages and imposes obligations beyond all others.

It is the Spirit rousing a soul from sleep and convincing him of his guilt and ruin and helplessness, and bringing home to his conscience the general truths of the Bible, and whispering in his ear a particular invitation to come home to the Savior's arms. It is the Spirit preparing the way for him to come to the Savior's feet with a distinct understanding of his necessities and of what he owes to his Deliverer; so that, if he has a mind to believe, nothing shall stand in the way of an enlightened faith.

It is the Spirit coming near and offering his own assistance to carry the man through to Heaven if he will only cast himself on him. It is putting salvation more immediately within his reach. It is bringing all the discoveries and truths of God nearer to him, and into contact with the sensibilities of his soul, and making their authority and claims to bear upon him directly and most powerfully.

It is bringing him near to the kingdom of Heaven, and opening the door, and showing him the Savior within, and urging him to enter, and pressing him from behind with all the authority in the universe and with all the boundless force of truth.

Is not such a moment of all others, the harvest season of the soul? Is it not the time to act for God if ever there is a time? Is it not of all periods the summer to lay up provisions for eternity? There is an importance and a sacredness hanging around this moment which belong to no other—a weight of obligation which can scarcely be increased. Under all these circumstances is it not the great crisis to act and to provide for eternity? What tremendous guilt and hazard, if this moment is abused—if, right in the eye and ear of God, there is a refusal to act.

My immortal friends, I cannot hold my peace. In the midst of this solemn crisis, and environed with all these solemn obligations, here you are holding out against God. Instead of falling dissolved at his feet under mercies so wonderful and distinguishing, you are fighting against him—you are hating him—you never loved nor thanked him. You are rejecting the Savior and putting your own duties in the place of his atonement and righteousness and intercession. You are rejecting the Spirit and putting your own power in the room of his offered assistance. You are disobeying the Spirit and refusing to do anything that he suggests except the outward form, and are taking strong measures to grieve him from you forever. You are wrong in everything and do nothing right!

How long shall this abominable state of heart continue? How long shall this horrid ingratitude remain? O that you knew, in this your day, the things which belong to your peace, before they are hidden from your eyes. Why should you hold out against God another moment? He commands you, O rebel, now to lay down your weapons. Will you obey God and live, or will you disobey him and die? I wait for your reply. What answer shall I carry back to him who sent me? All Heaven is waiting to hear; what is your answer? Shall I come around among those seats and ask you one by one: what is your decision? Have you made up your mind? Why this delay? Ah! and you will delay; and some of you, I fear, will go back to seven fold darkness—to infidelity itself—to open vice—to an early grave—to a Hell lower than that of pagans—than that of devils! How distressing to think that any of you should turn this affecting grace of God into an eternal curse; that you should have to look back from the profoundest deeps of Hell to this blessed season, and pour forth the heart-rending and perpetual lamentation: "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved!"

Before I conclude, I must address a few words to the impenitent in general. When I consider the infinite and eternal evils into which you are plunging, "for the hurt of the daughter of my people, am I hurt." To think of seeing you eternally crying for a drop of water, is more than I can bear! And why will you die? Why need you die? "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?" Is there no mercy in the heart of God? "As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live!" If there is any sincerity in the God of truth, your blood must be upon your own head. You are deliberately committing the highest and most flagitious act of soul-suicide! Stop, I beseech you, that murderous hand! Have mercy on your own soul. When you shall see your former companions in Heaven, who fled to Christ in this revival, and you yourselves eternally cast out—what agonies of regret will fill your soul! Then we can no longer pray for you nor compel you to tome to Jesus. We must acquiesce in your damnation, and say: Alleluia! as the smoke of your torment ascends up forever and ever. But at present the thought is very afflicting. How does it seem to you? Would you for ten thousand worlds be found at last in the circumstances which have been described? I can say no more? If you will not hear—my soul shall weep in secret places for your pride, and my eye shall weep sore and run down with tears, because you are carried away captive to that land from which there is no return. Amen.