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The design and scope of our apostle in these words is threefold.
1. To set forth the excellency and necessity of the gospel, dispensed to us in the the ministry of the word; he compares it to rain, which doth soften, refresh, and fructify the earth.
2. He discovers the different effect which the word of God, of the doctrine of th gospel, has upon different persons that sit under the preaching and dispensation of it; the sincere Christian becomes fruitful under the dews and showers of divine grace, and receives a blessing; but the barren and fruitless professor is like an howling wilderness, of dry desert, which, after innumerable refreshing showers, brings forth nothing but briars and thorns.
3. He declaes the different state and condition of such persons. A people that answers God's care and cost, is like a field that drinks in the rain, bringeth forth herbs, and receives a blessing. But such a people, as, after all the refreshing showers from heaven, and after all the culture and labour of God's husbandmen on earth, shall remain bushes and briars, barren and unfruitful under all, or worse than such; they are nigh unto cursing and their end is to be burned. Blessing attends the one, burning awaits the other.
Note, 1. That what the rain is to the earth, that is the word of God and the doctrine of the gospel to the souls of men. Is the rain of heavenly extraction? So is the word of God. Does the rain fall by divine direction? So does the word preached: Col_1:6. The word of the gospel is come unto you, and bringeth forth fruit, since the day you heard of it. In a word, as after plenty of rain there follows a great drought, and want of rain, so after a long and plentiful enjoyment of the gospel, if people do not prize and improve their mercies, God will cut them short, and deprive them of them.
Note, 2. That it is possible for a people to sit long under the ministry of the word, that spiritual rain, that celestial dew may be daily dropping and distilling down upon them, and yet that people may be bush and briar after all; barren and unfrutiful in the account of God.
Note, 3. That a people so remaining, and under such advantages, are nigh unto cursing, and their end is to be burned. Barrenness under the dispensation of the gospel, is always accompanied with and increase of sin, and of condemnation also: Those that are not, because they will not be healed and reformed by the preaching of the gospel, are righteously given up by God to extreme obstinacy, and final obduration.