If the clouds are full, they will pour out rain upon the earth; whether a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where it falls, there it will lie.If the clouds are full of rain, they empty themselves on the earth; and if a tree falls toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falls, there shall it be.If the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth: and if the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be.If the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth; and if a tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there shall it be.
4 sermons cite this verse
This is the word of God. You may be seated. Some years ago, I can't remember when it was actually, I was the guest at Tuskegee University and I stayed at the Kellogg Center across from the famous statue where Booker T. Washington is pulling the veil from over the head of a slave. It was the image, you know, of enlightenment, of how we pull back darkness and let light flood in and how we are to make the world better as we know and go along. Ecclesiastes is that kind of literature, is wisdom, and you can imagine like that statue of Booker T. Washington pulling back the veil of ignorance that Ecclesiastes in many ways sit people like you and like me down in the veil of darkness of spiritual ignorance so that the light can illumine us with God's truth is wisdom literature. And wisdom is something that we need, but a lot of people are impatient to receive. But it's good to have wisdom. Wisdom can lead you through life. …
… be a final destiny. There's no chance after death. Ecclesiastees chapter 11 in verse 3 says, and if the tree fall toward the south or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be. That's just a poetic way of saying, when you die, your destiny is fixed. Revelation chapter 22 verse 11, he that is unjust, let him be unjust still. He that is filthy, let him be filthy still. I've studied this book for many years. I've read it, loved it, and preached out of it. I cannot find one place where God offers one shred of hope to those who die outside the Lord Jesus Christ. Not not one. To the contrary, the Bible says it's appointed unto man once to die. and after this, the judgment. Now if you're on the broad way today, you're on that turnpike to torment, you're on that highway to hell, and there are a lot of people, and you're having a big time, and God brought you to this service this morning, and God put this preacher in front of you, and this preacher is holding up a sign, and you know what it says? …
7. Consider, that you know not what calamitous and necessitous circumstances you yourselves or your children may be in. Perhaps you are ready to bless yourselves in your hearts, as though there were no danger of your being brought into calamitous and distressing circumstances. There is at present no prospect of it; and you hope you shall be able to provide well for your children. But you little consider what a shifting, changing, uncertain world you live in, and how often it hath so happened, that men have been reduced from the greatest prosperity to the greatest adversity, and how often the children of the rich have been reduced to pinching want. Agreeable to this is the advice that the wise man gives us, Eccles. xi. 1, 2. ’‘Cast thy bread upon the waters; for thou shall find it after many days. Give a portion to seven, and also to eight; for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon earth.” Thou knowest not what calamitous circumstances thou mayest be in thyself, in this changeable uncertain world. You know not what circumstances you or your children may be brought into by captivity, or other unthought of providences. Providence governs all things. Perhaps you may trust to your own wisdom to continue your prosperity; but you cannot alter what God determines and orders in providence, as in the words immediately following the fore-mentioned text in Ecclesiastes, “If the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth; and if the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north; in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be; ” i.e. you cannot alter the determinations of Providence. You may trust to your own wisdom for future prosperity; but if God have ordained adversity, it shall come: as the clouds when full of rain, empty themselves upon the earth; so what is in the womb of Providence shall surely come to pass. And as Providence casts the tree, whether towards the south, or towards the north, whether for prosperity or adversity, there it shall be, for all that you can do to alter it; agreeably to what the wise man observes in chap. vii. 13. “Consider the work of God; for who can make that straight which he hath made crooked?” …
"If the clouds aire full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth." Ecclesiastes 11:3. IT was raining very heavily this afternoon at four o'clock when I was thinking over this text. The sharp crack of the thunder and the quick flash of the lightning seemed to be constant where I sat. When I came here, I found that you had not had a drop of rain—the weather was just as hot and feverish as ever. This seemed to me an example and an illustration of the Sovereignty of God's dispensations. It is still true in the spiritual as well as the natural economy, that one place is rained upon and another is not rained upon. In one part of the Church, God's Grace descends in a flood, while another part remains as dry and arid as the wilderness, itself. Even under the same ministrations, one Christian's soul may be refreshed till it becomes like a watered garden while another may remain parched as the desert. God has the key of the rain and it is for us to ask Him to give us of the dew and the rain of His Holy Spirit. Let us walk humbly before Him lest He should say of us, as He did of His Jewish vineyard of old, "I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it." We may stand up and look to the Most High and learn our dependence upon Him for spiritual blessings, just as the farmer, knowing his dependence for his harvest upon God, watches the sky and the clouds—for without the rain what can he do? …