Spurgeon quote for the day! 2-25-12

"For as the earth brings forth its bud, As the garden causes the things that are sown in it to spring forth, So the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations." - Isaiah 61:11

DURING the past week the air has been balmy with the breath of spring and all Nature has felt the influence of the “ethereal mildness.” The earth, of which, through the long winter, we might have said, “she is not dead, but sleeps,” has now awakened and she begins already to put on her garments of glory and beauty. Wild flowers are springing up in the hedgerows, buds upon the trees are hastening to burst, the time of the singing of birds is come and if the voice of the turtle is not heard in our land, yet we trust the winter is past—the rain is over and gone.

Now, Nature is not at work to amuse and please us merely—its mission is instruction. Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter are God’s four Evangelists, bringing each one a different version of the self-same Gospel of Divine love. Spring has its own peculiar testimony and it is for us to read it, and to interpret it, by the light of God’s Spirit. A close analogy is often hinted at in the Old and New Testaments between the springtime and the work of God in the hearts of men. As God has promised in the outward world, that there shall be seed time and then a harvest-winter and a following summer, so He declares, over and over again, that His Word, which, when it goes forth, is like unto the sowing, shall not return unto Him void, but shall prosper in the thing for which He has sent it.

As surely as in due season the earth brings forth her buds and the garden causes the things that are sown in it to spring forth, so shall God’s great purposes be accomplished and righteousness and praise shall spring forth before all the nations. The teaching of this morning is that there is a spiritual springtime appointed of God and it will surely come! As certainly as spring comes to the earth physically, so surely will it come to the Church spiritually! As certainly as God keeps His Covenant with the elements, so will He keep His Covenant with His Church and with His Son.

C.H. Spurgeon- "Spring"