The Ploughman

“Does the ploughman plough all day to sow?” — Isaiah 28:24 (ESV)

It’s a simple farmer’s question, and Spurgeon shows it cuts two ways at once.

First way: yes — the ploughman really does plough all day. He doesn’t do three furrows, get bored, and go inside. He works the field from sunrise to sundown, up one row and down the next, again and again. And Spurgeon says that’s a picture of how patient God is with a person. God will work on some hearts for years — through childhood, through the teenage years, into old age — the same steady, patient ploughing, refusing to give up on ground that hasn’t cracked yet. If you’ve been feeling God quietly working on you for a long time and nothing’s “happened” yet, that’s not God losing interest. That’s the ploughman still going at sundown.

And it’s a picture for anyone who’s trying to reach someone else, too. Spurgeon tells of a mother who told her child the same truth twenty times, because — she said — nineteen times wasn’t enough. That’s the ploughman’s patience. You keep working the hard row. You don’t plough three times and quit.

He also throws in a line worth keeping. An old street preacher used to say: it’s no use trying to sew with the silk thread of the gospel unless you first use the sharp needle of the truth. The ploughing that hurts a little — the part that breaks up your comfortable excuses — isn’t God being harsh. It’s the needle going in first so the thread can follow.

Second way: no — even the ploughman doesn’t plough ALL day. That would be ridiculous. The whole point of breaking up the ground is to plant in it. Ploughing forever with no sowing would be pure waste. And here Spurgeon turns serious, because a lot of people get stuck on the ploughing and never move to the planting. They feel bad about their sin, they get stirred up in a service, they know they should do something about God — and they stay right there, feeling stirred, for years. That’s a field ploughed over and over and never once sown. It comes to nothing.

So there has to be a move. The convicted feeling is meant to lead somewhere: to actually trusting Jesus. Spurgeon’s warning image is the near-miss. Picture running for a train, close enough to see it, and arriving on the platform just as the doors shut and it pulls out. You weren’t far off. You were seconds away. And you still missed it completely. That’s what it is to be “almost” a Christian — stirred, serious, close, and never actually getting on.

He tells of a young man who said, “I can’t seem to fall into Christ’s arms.” And Spurgeon’s answer is wonderful, because it takes all the pressure off getting it perfect: “Then tumble into them. Collapse into them. Faint into them. Even die into them — only get there.” You don’t have to do faith gracefully. You just have to actually do it. Stop standing on the platform admiring the train.

So both halves of the question land on the same spot. God’s been patiently ploughing — good, that’s his kindness. But ploughing was never the goal. The goal is the seed in the ground and the harvest at the end.

One thing to ask yourself honestly: have you been stuck on the ploughing — feeling moved, feeling guilty, feeling like you should — without ever actually moving to trust Jesus? If so, don’t wait for the perfect moment or the perfect feeling. Tumble in. The move from “almost” to “yes” is the whole thing this chapter is about.