Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1387
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, December 2, 1877
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as the hea vens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:8,9.
VERY often must the great Truth of God expressed by this Scripture have forced itself upon every thoughtful mind. Though we think and are so far like God because, being intelligent beings, we have thoughts of our own, yet our thoughts must forever be weak and fragmentary as compared with His thoughts. And though, as free agents, we have ways of our own choice—in some of which we move with great show of wisdom—yet our ways are upon the earth and cannot attain to the ways of the Lord which are far above us. This is true as to His proceedings in Providence. God’s designs are vast and far-reaching and His methods are frequently strange and inscrutable, though always wise.
We have little plans to suit our little foresight and power, but His ways are unsearchable! Oftentimes He brings light of excessive brightness out of darkness more dense than usual and produces superior joys out of extraordinary sorrows. In infinite wisdom He causes the most furious storms to cast up upon the shore the pearl of peace. He is wonderful both in counsel and in working and always chooses that way in which His Glory is most abundantly displayed. Our way, which for a time we think to be the best, when scanned by the enlightened eye soon turns out to be as much beneath God’s way of accomplishing the desired purpose as the earth is beneath the heavens. Compared with Him our wisdom is folly and our prudence madness.
Indeed, we may not compare ourselves with the Lord, for there is no comparison! Call it a contrast and you have the word. So sublime is Providence that we do not comprehend it! So good is it that we are filled with wonder as we see its designs unfolded. We see its bright side at times and sun ourselves in its warm light and then we adore and magnify the Lord. Yet, we never knew the half of the hidden benefits which He is working out for us, nor do we suspect the Lord of a tenth of the goodness which He stores up for us. At other times we have felt the night side of Providence and have sorrowed in its chill shade. Yes, and perhaps we have even rebelled against it. And yet at that very time the Lord’s purposes have been divinely rich toward us and the night has been the choicest season of benediction.
We have not the wings of eagles on which to soar to the exceeding height of the dealings of the Lord. We walk below and look up wonderingly, as men gaze on the stars—we are sure that we are safe beneath the sublime all-covering power, but we are equally clear that the longest experience and the most profound thought will never measure the height of the thoughts and ways of the Eternal! The words, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways,” are equally true in reference to the things of Divine Grace, for there the Lord of Love has altogether left our thoughts behind.
Could man have dreamed that he was the object of eternal love and that God would assume his nature? Could we have imagined that the Almighty would give His only-begotten Son to die for guilty man? The Atonement was a thought which never would have crossed man’s mind if it had not, first of all, been revealed to him by the great Father. The Divine way of lifting up the poor from the dust and the needy from the dunghill, by His rich, free, Omnipotent Grace, is not of man nor by man! The Lord’s thought of choosing the base things of this world, and things that are not to bring to nothing the things that are—His thoughts of sovereignty and thoughts of Grace—all consistent with His thoughts of justice, are far above human invention and out of man’s range of thought.
Even when the Lord explains His thoughts and ways to us, and brings them down to our comprehension as far as they can be, yet we cannot fail to wonder at their elevation and grandeur—
“Great God of wonders! All Your ways
Are matchless, Godlike, and Divine.”
Have you not often stood in mute astonishment as you have discovered some fresh blessing of the Covenant unknown to you before? Like a miner who turns over another nugget in the mine and stands in amazed delight, so have you mingled faith with astonishment! Have you not known what it is to do as David did when Nathan brought him tidings of the Lord’s Covenant with him—“Then went king David in and sat before the Lord, and he said, Who am I, O Lord God? And what is my house, that You have brought me up to now? And is this the manner of man, O Lord God?”
Have not such fits of astonishment been upon you, also? Have you not cried with the Apostle, “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!”? Hundreds of times between now and Heaven will the same glad astonishment seize us—and perhaps in Heaven, itself, wondering will be a leading part of our enjoyment! We shall—