--The rush to which he refers did not grow in the dry and parched land of Uz, which was the place where Bildad and Job lived. It grew principally in Egypt, and in one or two places in Northern Palestine. It is no other than the famous bulrush of the Nile, of which the ark was made in which the infant Moses was concealed; an ark of bulrush being supposed to be a powerful charm for warding off all evil. The smooth rind or skin of this remarkable plant that once grew in great abundance in Egypt, but is now very scarce, supplied when dried and beaten out and pasted together the first material used for writing on. Our word paper comes from its name papyrus. Perhaps Bildad, who from his style of speech was evidently a learned man, possessed an old Egyptian book made of papyrus leaves, in which he found the picturesque proverb of my text; and it would be a very curious thing if on the very leaf of a book made of the skin of the papyrus or rush, there should be inscribed an account of the way in which the papyrus or rush itself grew on the swampy banks of the Nile. “Can the rush grow up without mire?” Every plant needs water. Water forms the sap which circulates through the veins of every plant; it is the internal stream along which little successions of floats continually go, carrying the materials of growth to every pair of the structure. In Egypt we see in a very remarkable way the dependence of plants upon water; for vegetation only grows as far as the life-giving overflow of the annual inundation of the Nile extends. Beyond that point there is nothing but the parched, leafless desert. Nothing can be more striking than the dry, white sand, and the long luxuriant grass side by side. There is no mingling of barren and fertile soil; and the two endless lines of grey and green come abruptly into contact. But while other plants thus need water, and are dependent upon it, they can nevertheless cling to life and preserve their greenness even during a pretty long drought. The rush, on the contrary, cannot exist without water, even for the shortest period; and the burning sun of Egypt would destroy in a few hours every water plant that grows in the Nile, were the stream to fail and cease to bathe their roots. Bildad tells us this in very striking language. He says, “While it is yet in its greenness and not cut down, it withereth before any other herb.” No other plant so quickly withers in the absence of water, just because it is made to grow in the water. All its structure is adapted to that kind of situation and to no other. Its material is soft and spongy and filled with water, which evaporates at once when the circulation is not kept up. There are in nature two kinds of plants at the opposite poles from each other, and each wonderfully suited to the place in which it grows. There is the cactus, found in the dry-parched deserts of Mexico, where there is no water, no running stream, and no rain for weeks and months together. It has thick, leathery, fleshy stems instead of leaves, without any evaporating pores on their surface, so that whatever moisture they get from the rare rain or the dew by their roots, they keep and never part with, and therefore they can stand the most intense and long-continued drought, having a reservoir within themselves. And there is on the other hand the rush which grows with its root in the waters of the Nile, and, like a vegetable sponge, cannot live for an hour without that outside water ascending its stem and flowing through all its structure. You know our own common rush cannot do without water. It always grows beside springs, and the sources of streams, and on marshy lands. Wherever you see rushes growing you may be sure that the soil is full of water; and if the farmer drains the field where rushes grow, they soon disappear. The moral which Bildad draws from that interesting fact of natural history is that as the rush requires water for its life, so man can only live by the favour of God (Jer_17:7-8). Your natural life is like that of the rush that grows in the water. Seven-tenths of your bodies is water. Seven-tenths of your bodies came from the last rains that fell. Your life is indeed a vapour, a breath, a little moisture condensed. You begin as a fish, and you swim in a stream of vital fluids as long as your life lasts. You can taste and absorb and use nothing but liquids. Without water you have no life. You know after a long drought how restless and parched and irritable you feel; and what a relief and refreshment the rain is when it comes. It shows you how necessary water is to the well-being of your bodies; how you cannot exist without it. And if this be the case as regards your natural life, what shall be said in regard to your spiritual? God is as necessary to your soul as water is to your body. Your souls thirst for God, for the living God; for He, and He alone, is the element in which you live and move and have your being. You are made for God as the rush is made for the water; and nothing but God can suffice you, as nothing but water can suffice the rush. The rush with its head in the torrid sunshine, and its root in the unfailing waters is stimulated from below and from above. Nothing can exceed the luxuriance of the rush, or papyrus, in the waters of Merom, a lake to the north of the Sea of Galilee. Now, what you require for your spiritual well-being is that you should grow beside the well of water that springeth up unto everlasting life. Jesus can be to you as rivers of waters in a dry place. You can flourish in the withering atmosphere of the world, and endure the fiery trials of life, just because all your wellsprings are in God, and the sources of your human steadfastness and hope are high up in heaven. You are independent of the precarious supplies of the world. The sun shall not light upon you nor any heat; and the things of the world that would otherwise be against you will work together for your good. Seek, then, to grow in grace; for you must grow in something, and if not in grace, then you will grow in sin and degradation, in conditions for which you were not made, which will be continually unsuitable to you, and which will make you always wretched. The soil of grace is the only circumstance in which you can flourish and accomplish the purposes for which God made you; for there the roots of your being will draw living sap continually from the fountain of living waters that perpetually wells up. Growth in grace is not subject to the changes and decays of earth. It is the only growth on which death has no power. Without Christ you can do nothing; you are like the rush without the water in which it grows, dry, withered and dead. With Christ you are like the rush with its root in the river; you will flourish and grow in that holiness whose end is everlasting life. You will indeed be a papyrus displaying on its own leaf the reason of its flourishing condition, in the unmistakably hieroglyphics of nature which he who runs may read; a living epistle of Christ, known and read of all men. (Hugh Macmillan, D. D.)
A sermon from a rush
The great hook of nature only needs to be turned over by a reverent hand, and to be read by an attentive eye, to be found to be only second in teaching to the Book of Revelation. The rush shall, this morning, by God’s grace, teach us a lesson of self-examination. Bildad, the Shuhite, points it out to us as the picture of a hypocrite.
I. First, then, the hypocrite’s profession: what is it like? It is here compared to a rush growing in the mire, and a flag flourishing in the water. This comparison has several points in it.
1. In the first place, hypocritical religion may be compared to the rush, for the rapidity with which it grows. True conversions are often very sudden. But the after-growth of Christians is not quite so rapid and uninterrupted: seasons of deep depression chill their joy; hours of furious temptation make a dreadful onslaught upon their quiet; they cannot always rejoice. True Christians are very like oaks, which take years to reach their maturity.
2. The rush is of all plants one of the most hollow and unsubstantial. It looks stout enough to be wielded as a staff, but he that leaneth upon it shall most certainly fall. So is it with the hypocrite; he is fair enough on the outside, but there is no solid faith in Christ Jesus in him, no real repentance on account of sin, no vital union to Christ Jesus. He can pray, but not in secret, and the essence and soul of prayer he never knew. The reed is hollow, and has no heart, and the hypocrite has none either; and want of heart is fatal indeed.
3. A third comparison very naturally suggests itself, namely, that the hypocrite is very like the rush for its bending properties. When the rough wind comes howling over the marsh, the rush has made up its mind that it will hold its place at all hazards. So if the wind blows from the north, he bends to the south, and the blast sweeps over him; and if the wind blows from the south, he bends to the north, and the gale has no effect upon him. Only grant the rush one thing, that he may keep his place, and he will cheerfully bow to all the rest. The hypocrite will yield to good influences if he be in good society. “Oh yes, certainly, certainly, sing, pray, anything you like.” We must be ready to die for Christ, or we shall have no joy in the fact that Christ died for us.
4. Yet again, the bulrush has been used in Scripture as a picture of a hypocrite, from its habit of hanging down its head. “Is it to hang thy head like a bulrush?” asks the prophet, speaking to some who kept a hypocritical fast. Pretended Christians seem to think that to hang down the head is the very index of a deep piety.
5. Once more: the rush is well taken as an emblem of the mere professor from its bearing no fruit. Nobody would expect to find figs on a bulrush, or grapes of Eshcol on a reed. So it is with the hypocrite: he brings forth no fruit.
II. Secondly, we have to consider what it is that the hypocrite’s religion lives on. “Can the rush grow up without mire? Can the flag grow without water?” The rush is entirely dependent upon the ooze in which it is planted. If there should come a season of drought, and the water should fail from the marsh, the rush would more speedily die than any other plant. “Whilst it is yet in its greenness and not cut down, it withereth before any other herb.” The Hebrew name for the rush signifies a plant that is always drinking; and so the rush lives perpetually by sucking and drinking in moisture. This is the case of the hypocrite. The hypocrite cannot live without something that shall foster his apparent piety. Let me show you some of this mire and water upon which the hypocrite lives.
1. Some people’s religion cannot live without excitement revival services, earnest preachers, and zealous prayer meetings keep them green; but the earnest minister dies, or goes to another part of the country; the Church is not quite so earnest as it was, and what then? Where are your converts? Oh! how many there are who are hothouse plants: while the temperature is kept up to a certain point they flourish, and bring forth flowers, if not fruits; but take them out into the open air, give them one or two nights’ frost of persecution, and where are they?
2. Many mere professors live upon encouragement. We ought to comfort the feebleminded and support the weak. But, beware of the piety which depends upon encouragement. You will have to go, perhaps, where you will be frowned at and scowled at, where the head of the household, instead of encouraging prayer, will refuse you either the room or the time for engaging in it.
3. Some, too, we know, whose religion is sustained by example. It may be the custom in the circle in which you move to attend a place of worship; nay, more, it has come to be the fashion to join the Church and make a profession of religion. Well, example is a good thing. Young man, avoid this feeble sort of piety. Be a man who can be singular when to be singular is to be right.
4. Furthermore, a hypocrite’s religion is often very much supported by the profit that he makes by it. Mr. By-ends joined the Church, because, he said, he should get a good wife by making a profession of religion. Besides, Mr. By-ends kept a shop, and went to a place of worship, because, he said, the people would have to buy goods somewhere, and if they saw him at their place very likely they would come to his shop, and so his religion would help his trade. The rush will grow where there is plenty of mire, plenty of profit for religion, but dry up the gains, and where would some people’s religion be?
5. With certain persons their godliness rests very much upon their prosperity. “Doth Job serve God for nought?” was the wicked question of Satan concerning that upright man; but of many it might be asked with justice, for they love God after a fashion because He prospers them; but if things went ill with them they would give up all faith in God.
6. The hypocrite is very much affected by the respectability of the religion which he avows.
III. We have a third point, and that is, what becomes of the hypocrite’s hope? “While it is yet in its greenness and not cut down, it withereth before any other herb. So are the paths of all that forget God; and the hypocrite’s hope shall perish.” Long before the Lord comes to cut the hypocrite down, it often happens that he dries up for want of the mire on which he lives. The excitement, the encouragement, the example, the profit, the respectability, the prosperity, upon which he lived fail him, and he fails too. Alas, how dolefully is this the case in all Christian churches! Yet again, where the rush still continues green because it has mire and water enough on which to feed, another result happens, namely, that ere long the sickle is used to cut it down. So must it be with thee, professor, if thou shalt keep up a green profession all thy days, yet if thou be heartless, spongy, soft, yielding, unfruitful, like the rush thou wilt be cut down, and sorrowful will be the day when, with a blaze, thou shalt be consumed. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
