The King’s Mowings¹

A Sermon by C H Spurgeon

Amos 7:1. Thus hath the Lord God showed unto me; and, behold, He formed grasshoppers in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth; and, lo, it was the latter growth after the king’s mowings.

Certain lands belonged to the king to the extent that he always took the first cut of grass for himself and left the rest to those who worked on the land. Now, our great King has His mowings too. His Church is the field which He has enclosed and blessed. At set seasons, the king takes His mowings. Lately, beyond any other time that I remember, the King has been taking His mowings in the church of which He has made me overseer. I have spent many hours at the bedsides of the dying and trying to console the bereaved. Our loss as a church was extremely heavy at the opening of this year. The King has cut down here one and there another.

I propose to speak a little on this subject in a threefold way: (1) by way of consolation; (2) by way of admonition; (3) by way of anticipation.

1. First, by way of consolation. It is sad when our beloved brethren are taken from us. We would be less than men if we did not sorrow. Jesus wept, and by that act He sanctified our tears. It is not wrong, it is not unmanly, much less is it sinful, to drop a tear of sorrow over the departed. Yet let us help to wipe away those tears with a handkerchief of sacred consolation.

First, seeing “all flesh is grass, and all the comeliness thereof as the flower of the grass,” do you lament that the King has been mowing? Then let this thought rebuke you: the King Himself has done it. Death is not an abstract thing, an unloosed monster devouring the saints at will, “drinking the blood of men, and grinding their bones between his iron tooth”. This is a poet’s raving. No destroying angel is sent forth to slay the Israel of God. There is a destroying angel, it is true; but he does not come near those who bear the mark of the blood.

It is not in the power of disease or accident to kill the children of God except as instruments in God’s hand. No saint dies except by an act of God. It is always according to the King’s will; it is His doing. Every ripe ear in His field is gathered by His own hand, cut down by His own golden sickle and by none other. Every flower of grace is taken away by Him, not smitten with blight or cut down by the tempest or devoured by some evil beast. The Lord has done it in every case and, knowing this, we must not even think of com-

¹Taken, with editing, from a collection of Spurgeon’s discourses: Sermons Preached on Unusual Occasions; it also appears in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vol 55. It is particularly relevant after a year when three of our ministers have been removed by death.

plaining. What the King does His servants delight in; for He is such a King that, let Him do what seems Him good, we will still bless Him. We agree with him who said, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him”.

Again, those who have been mown down and taken away are with the King. They are the King’s mowings; they are gathered into His stores. They are not in purgatory; much less are they in hell. They are not wandering in dreary pathways amidst the stars to find a lodging place. “Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory, which thou hast given Me, for thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world”; this prayer has fixed their abode. Where Jesus is, there His people are – not some of them sitting outside or in lower rooms, but they are all where He is. That will certainly content me, and if there be any degrees in glory, you who want the high ones may have them. The lowest degree of glory that I can perceive in Scripture is: “that they . . . be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory”. And that lowest degree is as high as my most vivid imagination can carry me. Here is enough to fill our souls even to the brim.

Now do you sorrow? Do you not almost condemn your tears when you learn that your loved ones are promoted to such bliss? Why, mother, did you ever wish a higher place for your child than to be where Jesus is? Husband, by the love you bore to your wife, you cannot grudge her the glory into which she has entered. Wife, by the deep devotion of your heart to him who has been taken from you, you could not wish to have detained him for a moment from the joy in which his soul now triumphs with his Lord. If he had gone to some unknown land, if you could stand on life’s brink and hear the roaring billows of a dread, mysterious ocean and say, My dear one has gone, I know not where, to be tossed on yonder tempestuous sea – then you might mix your own tears with the brine of that ocean. But you know where they are, you know with whom they are, and you can, by the joy of Christ’s presence here on earth, form some idea of what their bliss must be above.

It is a sweet reflection too that, though our dear friends have been cut down like flowers by the scythe, yet their lot is better than ours, though we are standing and blooming today. Life seems better than death, and the living dog is better than the dead lion; but take into account the everlasting state, and who will dare say that the state of the blessed is worse than ours? Will not all assert that it is infinitely superior? We are suffering here, but they shall smart no more. We are weak and tottering here, but they have regained the dew of their youth. We know what need means, and wipe the sweat of toil from our face, but they rest in abundance for ever.

Worst of all, we still sin and have to wrestle hard with doubts and fears;

Satan still besets us, the world is around us and corruptions within us. But they are where no wave of trouble can ever break the serenity of their spirit, beyond the arrows of hell’s quiver, though there are archers who would shoot their darts into heaven itself if they could. The ingathered ones are supremely blessed; they are far beyond what we are in joy, knowledge and holiness; therefore, if we love them, how can we mourn that they have gone from worse to better, and from the lower to the higher room?

Moreover, although some of you sorrow very bitterly, because God has taken away the desire of your eyes with a stroke, let me remind you that your sorrow for them might have been worse than this. The mother that has to mourn over a grown-up son who has become a profligate has a pang a thousand times more bitter than she who sees her infant carried to the grave. The father who knows that his sons or daughters have dishonoured his name may well wish that he had long ago seen them laid in the silent tomb, and I have known men in the Church whom I would sooner have buried a thousand times over than have lived to see what I have afterwards seen in them. For years they maintained an honourable profession, but they lived to dishonour the Church, to blaspheme their Lord, to go back into perdition, and prove that the root of the matter was never in them.

You need not weep for those in heaven; weep not for the dead, neither bewail them; but weep for the spiritually dead; weep for the apostate and backslider; weep for the hypocrite, the “wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever”. If you have tears, go and shed them there; but for those who have fought the fight and won the victory, for those who have stemmed the stream and safely landed on the other side, let us have no tears. Rather let the trumpet ring out jubilantly the note of victory. It is to them the day of jubilee; why should it be the hour of sorrow for us? They put on the crown and carry the palm branch; why should we don these funeral clothes? There is infinitely more to rejoice in than there is to sorrow for; therefore let our hearts be glad. The Lord has said to them, “Well done”, and rewarded them according to His grace, and this is infinitely better than if they had lived to slip and slide.

“But this is poor comfort,” you will say, and therefore let me come back to the text, and say that the King has taken His mowings. Sorrowful as they may be, it is not the worst sorrow. Yet we must not grudge the King. All the friends we have are lent to us. The old proverb says, “A loan should go laughing home”, that is, we should never be unwilling to return a loan but cheerfully give it back. Our dear ones were lent to us, and what a blessing they have been to us. The Master says, I want them back again. And do we clutch at them and say, No, Master, Thou shalt not have them? It must not

be so. Our dear ones were never half as much ours as they were Christ’s. We did not make them, but He did; we never bought them with our blood, but He did; we never sweat a bloody sweat for them, nor had our hands and feet pierced for them, but He did. They were lent us, but they belonged to Him.

Your prayer was, Father, let them be with me where I am, but Christ’s prayer was, “Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with me where I am”. Your prayer pulled one way and Christ’s another. Do not be envious that Christ won the case, for if I ever enter the Lord’s court of chancery and find that Christ is on the other side, I will not plead. He will have His will, for He and I are one; and if it is His will that all I love be with Him, so be it, for I shall be with Him too before long, and I would not quarrel with His wish. The King has let out this church like a pasture to us, and He says, I must take my mowings sometimes. Well, He has so watered us and given us the smell of a field that the Lord God has blessed that, when He comes and takes His rent, we may not stand at the gate and forbid Him. We must say, Good Master, come, for the field is all Thine own. Thou hast dearly purchased it and Thou hast tilled it with much diligence. Take what Thou wilt, for it is Thine.

Let us add, to increase our comfort, that the King took His mowings at the right time. Out of those whom He has taken away from us, I think we must all confess that the Lord took them when they should have been taken. In one case, a venerable sister who, if she had lasted longer, would have been the prey of weakness and of pain – it was well that she fell asleep. In another case, a dear young friend was pining under that deadly disease, consumption. Her throat was scarcely able to receive nourishment. I think those who loved her best must have felt relieved when at last she fell asleep.

Two brethren rise before my mind’s eye; the one struggled through life and wondered often that he survived as long as he did, for he was like a ship unfit for sea, which every wave threatens to engulf. He served his Lord up to the last and, when all was over, it was well. Another, whom I saw with an afflicting disease, that had brought him very low, had led so gracious a life that he did not need to utter any dying testimony. Beloved brethren also who were once with us in the College have fallen asleep, having finished their course and kept the faith.

I may add that, not only did the King take his mowings at the right time, but in every case I have now before my mind He took them in the easiest way. He took them gently. Some have a hard fight at the last, but in these cases, though there were pains, yet at the end their souls were kissed away by the dear lips of Him who named them by their names and said they were His. They fell asleep, some of them, so sweetly that those who looked on

scarcely knew whether it was the sleep of life or the deeper sleep of eternity. They went at once to their Lord and their God. Putting all these things together, reflecting that the King has done it, that those He has taken away He has taken to be with Himself, that their present lot is infinitely better than anything beneath the moon, we will no longer repine but bless the Lord – for we consider too that we must never grudge the King the heritage which He has so dearly bought, and that He took His mowings at the right time, and took them in the happiest manner.

1. Let me now for a few minutes use the subject by way of admonition. I hardly know if under this head I have succeeded in grouping together thoughts that are truly admonitory. The first one to me is very joyous: as we belong to the King, our hope is that we shall be mown too. We are sitting on the banks of Jordan, especially some of riper years, waiting for a summons to the court of the eternal King. It grows a wonder sometimes with aged Christians why they stay so long. John Newton used to marvel at his own age, and Rowland Hill used to say he half imagined they had forgotten him and hoped they would soon remember him and send for him. Well, we who are younger have not quite got that length, but still we entertain the hope that, some fair evening calm and bright, the angel-reaper will come with the scythe. Then, having fulfilled, like the hireling, our day, we shall lay down our tools of labour and take our rest. Then shall we put down our sword and take off our breastplate and unloose the shoes of iron and brass, for we shall fight no more, but take the palm and claim the victory before the throne.

Never let us look forward to this with dread. It is strange that we should, and we could not if our faith were stronger. When faith vividly grasps the rest that remains for the people of God, we are tempted to long to be up and away. Then why should we wish to linger here? What is there in this old musty, worn-out world – worm-eaten and full of holes, with its very gold and silver cankered – that can satisfy an immortal spirit? Let us away to the hills of spices and to the mountains of frankincense, where the King in His beauty stands and all the hosts that serve Him day and night behold His face and evermore adore Him. Let us anticipate cheerfully the time when the King’s mowings shall include us also.

Brethren, the admonition that rises out of all this is: Let us be ready. Should every Christian man not live every day as if he was to die that day? Should we not always live as if we knew that our last hour was at the door? If a man in his right state were suddenly informed, You will die tonight, he ought not to have to alter his mode of life in the slightest; he should be so living that he may just continue his course. It is said of Bengel, the great scholar, that he did not wish to die with spiritual parade, but in the ordinary way, like someone

called out to the front door from his business – so much so that he was occupied with the correction of his proof sheets at the time of his death as at other times. To me it seems to be the very highest kind of death to die in harness, concluding life without suspending service.

Alas, many are unready and would be sadly put about if the midnight cry were suddenly heard. Let us see that everything is in order both for this world and the next. Nothing should be left to be hurried over in the last few hours. Christian man, are your business affairs all straight? They ought to be; everything ought to be as near to perfect order as you can make it, so that you are ready to go at any minute. George Whitefield used so to live in anticipation of death that he said, “I never go to sleep at night with even a pair of gloves out of place”. O that we could be habitually ready, especially in higher matters, walking before the Lord and preparing to meet Him!

While this departure of many friends admonishes us that we must go, at the same time it teaches us to do twice as much while we are here, seeing our numbers are being thinned. If a brave soldier in the day of battle hears that a regiment has been exterminated by the enemy’s shot and shell, he says, Those of us that survive must fight like tigers. There is no room to play at fighting. If they have slain so many, we must be more desperately valiant.

So today, if one here and there is gone – a useful worker from the Sabbath schools, for instance – then it is time our broken ranks were repaired. Young men, fill up the gap; and you young women who love the Saviour and are already teaching, if a Sabbath-school teacher is gone, teach better, or if you are not teaching, come and fill the place. I pray for recruits; I stand like a commander in the midst of my little army and see some of the best smitten down. What can I do but lead you on and say, Brethren and sisters, fill the gaps in the ranks. Do not let death gain on us, but as one goes into the golden city, let another cry, Here I am; I will fill up the place and seek to do the work until the Master shall call me also to my reward.

As for us who are at work, we must labour more zealously; we must pray more fervently than ever. In my young days, when a certain great man suddenly died in the ministry, I remember an old preacher saying, “I must preach better than ever I did now that Mr So-and-so is gone”. And you, Christian, whenever a saint is removed, say, I must live the better to make up to the church the loss which it has sustained.

One other thought, by way of admonition. If the King has been taking His mowings, the King’s eye is upon His Jacob. He has not forgotten His field, for He has been mowing it. We have been praying lately that He would visit us. He has come, He has come! Not quite as we expected Him, but He has come! And as He has walked these aisles, and looked on this congregation,

He has taken one and then another. He has not taken me, for I was not ready; and He has not taken you, for you are not quite ripe; but He has taken away some that were ripe and ready, and they have gone in with Him. Well, then, He has not forgotten us, and this ought to stimulate us in prayer. He will hear us, His eye is upon us; this ought to stimulate us to self-examination. Let us purge out everything that will grieve Him. He is evidently watching us. Let us seek to live as in His presence that nothing may vex His Spirit and cause Him to withdraw from us. These are the words of admonition.

1. Now a few more words by way of anticipation. I hardly know what head to place them under. What anticipations come out of the mowing? Why, these. There is to be an aftergrowth. After the King’s mowings, there came another upspringing of fresh grass, which belonged to the King’s tenants. So we expect, now that the King has been mowing, that we shall have a fresh crop of grass. Is there not a promise, “They shall spring up as among the grass, as willows by the watercourses”? Fresh converts will come; who will they be? Well, I look around, and I will not say with Samuel, as I look at some young man in the gallery, “Surely the Lord hath chosen him”; neither will I look down here and say, “Surely the Lord hath chosen him”. But I will bless God that I know He has chosen some, and that He means to make this fresh grass spring up to fill up the loss caused by the King’s mowings.

Do you know who I should like to come if I might have my preference? Well, where the daughter died, how glad I should be if the father came, or the brother came; and where the father died, how would I be rejoiced if the son should come; and where a good woman has been taken away, how glad would I be if her husband filled the place. It seems to me as if it were natural to wish that those who loved them best should occupy their position and discharge their work for them.

But if that cannot be, I stand here tonight as a recruiting sergeant. My King in His wars has lost His men, and the regiment needs to be made up. Who will come? I will not stand here and tempt you with lies about the ease of the service, for it is hard service. Yet I assure you that we have a blessed Leader, a glorious conflict and a grand reward. Who will come to fill up the gaps in the ranks, to take up the torch which others have dropped, to stand in their place of Christian service? I will put the question all round the church, and I hope that many a heart will say, O that God the Lord would blot out my sins and receive me! He delights in contrite hearts; “He saveth such as be of a contrite spirit”. He will have whom He will have, but the way to be enlisted is plain.

You ask, What must I do to be Christ’s soldier? To be the Queen’s soldier you do not give anything; you receive a shilling. To be a soldier of the Queen

you take, and so to be Christ’s soldier you must take Christ to be your all in all, holding out your empty hand to receive from His blood and righteousness, to be your hope and your salvation. O that His good Spirit would sweetly incline your wills, so that one after another would be made willing in the day of His power. May He do thus, and our hearts will greatly rejoice.

As I read the passage in Amos from which we have taken our text, I noticed something about caterpillars. It is said that after the King’s mowings there came caterpillars to eat up the aftergrowth. O those caterpillars! When the poor eastern husbandman sees the caterpillars, his heart is ready to break, for he knows they will eat up every green thing. And I can see the caterpillars here tonight. There is the great green caterpillar that eats up all before him; I wish I could crush him. He is called the caterpillar of procrastination. There are many, many other worms and locusts which eat up much, but this worm of procrastination is the worst, for just as the green blade is beginning to spring up, this caterpillar begins to eat. I can hear him gnawing, “Wait, wait, wait; tomorrow, tomorrow; a little more sleep, a little more sleep”. And so this caterpillar devours our hopes. Lord, destroy the caterpillar, and grant that instead of the fathers may be the children. Instead of the King’s mowings may there come up the aftergrowth which shall be a rich reward to the husbandman and bring glory to the owner of the soil.

We have reason to pray that the Lord would send the dew and the rain to bring forth the aftergrowth. “He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass.” Now this congregation is like mown grass. God has mown it – a rich mowing the King has taken from us. Now we have the promise; let us plead it before the throne. All the preaching in the world cannot save a soul, nor can all the efforts of men; but God’s Spirit can do everything, and O that He would come down like rain upon the mown grass now. Then shall we see the handful of corn upon the top of the mountain multiply till its fruit shall shake like Lebanon, and they of the city shall flourish like grass of the earth. The Lord send it; the Lord send it now.

If any would be saved, here is the way of salvation: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved”. To believe is to trust. What you have to trust in is this: that Jesus is God, that He became man, that He suffered in the sinner’s place, and that whosoever believes in Him shall be forgiven because God has punished Christ instead of those who will believe. Christ bore God’s wrath instead of every sinner that ever did or ever shall believe in Him. If you believe in Him, you were redeemed from among men; His substitution was for you and it will save you. But if you do not believe, you have no part or lot in this matter. O that you were brought to put your trust in Jesus! This would be the pledge of sure salvation for you, tonight and for evermore.