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‘I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, and his smell as Lebanon. They that dwell under his shadow shall return.’
Hos_14:5-7
And religion always must be in that order. God’s grace to begin with. All first principles there. What God is in Himself, and what He is to us. Then, our personal condition, and our relations to God. And then the power we exercise, and the work we do in the world. ‘I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. Its branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, and his smell as Lebanon. They that dwell under his shadow shall return.’
God begins: ‘I will be as the dew unto Israel.’ Where the peculiar charm and excellence of the promise is—not that God will shed ‘dew’ upon Israel, but that He will be ‘the dew.’ We find what we want in Himself—in a personal God. And to have the Giver is better than to have the gift. ‘I will be as the dew unto Israel.’
How the Holy Spirit distils upon us, or why, we cannot tell. The commencement of the Divine life, and its supplies, are perfectly inscrutable. Why God should ever have visited me, how His Spirit can mingle with my spirit, and become a part of my being—I cannot tell. But I know it is lovely and comely. The workings are secret, but the results are patent.
Such is God to His people, and the great secret of the possession of it lies in finding it in God Himself, not in His ordinances, not in His word,—not in His sacraments,—not in His people. They are beautiful channels, only channels. In Himself! A felt Presence—a realised Indwelling, an appropriated, Living Being,—our own—a God we go to, a God we hear, a God we speak to, a God we feel. ‘I will be as the dew unto Israel.’
II. Now trace the consequences on the man himself.—The metaphor is sustained. It is by the dew-like, gentle workings of God’s Spirit—by myriads of drops, each imperceptibly small: ‘He shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, and his smell as Lebanon.’ There are five things: growth, strength, expansion, beauty, fragrance.
III. But I have to carry the image a little further, to the point of influence.—In this colder region of our earth, the idea of ‘shade’ is almost always associated with what is unpleasant, and drear, and chill! But, in the hotter latitudes, where the scenes of the Bible mainly lie, it is naturally the reverse. ‘Shade’ is good—a thing to be desired. Therefore, with the exception that it is sometimes used as a metaphor for shortness, I am not aware that ‘shadow’ is ever taken in any but a happy way in the Bible.
Now we all ‘cast our shadows’; and though our ‘shadow’ cannot be what St. Peter’s was, yet our ‘shadow’—the influence we carry, the effect we produce—may be, and should be, and must be always for good and for God. And this is the characteristic of a Christian, that ‘they that dwell under his shadow shall return’!—‘return’ to what they have lost; ‘return’ to peace; ‘return’ to the good land; ‘return’ to Canaan; ‘return’ to Him.
There are many that are ‘dwelling under your shadow’: more perhaps, than you have thought of. And very few realise their own weight and power for good or evil in the world.
Let me ask, have all those ‘under your shadow’ reason to be thankful that they ever came there? Have they ‘returned’? Has your influence led them towards ‘returning’? Have you tried? Or, are you a upas tree? Awful thought! if you have sent them farther off! if it had been better for them that they had never come near you!
So throw your ‘shadow’—make such use of the contracts of life everywhere—that you may be always either bringing back a lost one, or helping a seeker, or strengthening some one on the way, that all who come near to you may have cause to bless God that they ever were brought ‘under your shadow’!
Rev. Jas. Vaughan.