Too good to be true

‘They yet believed not for joy.’ Luke 24:41

Suggested Further Reading: 2 Corinthians 4:1–6

If you should see tomorrow a heavy shower of rain, you would not believe, I suppose, that it was made with a watering-can; and if you saw the Thames swollen to its banks from a great flood, you would not believe that the London waterworks had filled it to the brim. ‘No,’ say you, ‘this is God at work in nature. The greatness of the work proves that God is here.’ If you were ever in Cambridge, you might have seen a little mountain which is so small nobody knows how it was made. Some say it is artificial; some say it is natural. Now, I have never heard any dispute about the Alps; nobody ever said that they were artificial. I never heard of any disputation about the Himalayas; no one ever conjectured that human hands piled them up to the skies and clothed them with their hoary snows. So, when I read of the mercies of God in Christ, reaching up like mountains to heaven, I am sure they must be divine. I am certain the revelation must come from God; it must be true; it is self-evidential. I might enlarge this argument by showing that God’s works in creation are very great, and therefore it would be idle to think that there would be no great works in grace. Two works which have been made by the same artist always have some characteristics which enable you to see that the same artist made them. In like manner, to us there is one God; creation and redemption have but one author; the same eternal power and Godhead are legibly inscribed on both. Now when I look at the sea, and hear it roaring in the fulness thereof, I see a great artist there. And when my soul surveys the ocean of grace, and listens to the echoes of its motion as the sound of many waters, I see the same Almighty artist. When I see a great sinner saved, then I think I see the same Master-hand which first formed man.

For meditation: The wonderful works of the one and only God (Isaiah 44:6–8), both in creation (Isaiah 45:5–7) and in salvation (Isaiah 43:10–11; 45:21–22) are fully evident. Have you experienced the second as well as the first?

Sermon no. 425
12 December (Preached 15 December 1861)