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The sermon interprets Amos 9:13 as a promise of extraordinary spiritual fruitfulness, including abundant and rapid conversions and renewed activity among Gospel workers. Spurgeon strongly emphasizes God’s omnipotence over human hearts: divine grace can overcome resistance and make barren lives fruitful. At the same time, the church must continue preaching and sowing regardless of immediate results, and should intensify its efforts when God grants apparent opportunity. Unbelievers are warned not to despise the Gospel but to respond to Christ’s call while they hear it.
Theological center: God sovereignly and effectually saves sinners by grace, yet He calls the church to faithful Gospel labor and prayer as His appointed instruments.
Applications: Labor faithfully in every season · Increase Gospel effort during opportunity · Pray earnestly for revival · Respond to God’s grace now
Primary texts: Amos 9:13
“Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt.” Amos 9:13 GOD’S promises are not exhausted when they are fulfilled, for when once performed, they stand just as good as they did before, and we may await a second accomplishment of them. Man’s promises even at the best are like a cistern which holds but a temporary supply, but God’s promises are as a fountain, never emptied, always overflowing, so that you may draw from them the whole of that which they apparently contain and they shall still be as full as ever. Hence it is that you will frequently find a promise containing both a literal and spiritual meaning. In the literal meaning it has already been fulfilled to the letter, in the spiritual meaning it shall also be accomplished, and not a jot or tittle of it shall fail. This is true of the particular promise which is before us. Originally, as you are aware, the land of Canaan was very fertile, it was a land that flowed with milk and honey. Even where no tillage had been exercised upon it the land was so fruitful, that the bees that sucked the sweetness from the wild flowers produced such masses of honey, that the very woods were sometimes flooded with it. It was “A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of olive oil, and honey.” When, however, the children of Israel thrust in the plowshare and began to use the divers arts of agriculture, the land became exceedingly fat and fertile, yielding so much corn, that they could export through the Phoenicians both corn, and wine, and oil, even to the pillars of Hercules, so that Palestine became, like Egypt, the granary of the nations. It is somewhat surprising to find that now the land is barren, that its valleys are parched, and that the miserable inhabitants gather miserable harvests from the arid soil. Yet the promise stands true, that one day in the very letter Palestine shall be as rich and fruitful as ever it was. There are those who understand the matter, who assert that if once the rigor of the Turkish rule could be removed, if men were safe from robbers, if the man who sowed could reap, and keep the corn which his own industry had sown and gathered, the land might yet again laugh in the midst of the nations, and become the joyous mother of children. There is no reason in the soil for its barrenness. It is simply the neglect that has been brought on, from the fact that when a man has been industrious, his savin…