Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1414
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Evening, May 12, 1878
“He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on thejust and on the unjust.” Matthew 5:45.
[On this night the Tabernacle was free to all comers, the regular congregation having vacated their seats.]
You see our Lord Jesus Christ’s philosophy of Nature. He believed in the immediate Presence and working of God. As the great Son of God, He had a very sensitive perception of the Presence of His Father in all the scenes around Him and, therefore, He calls the sun, God’s sun—“He makes His sun to rise.” He does not speak of the daybreak as a thing which happens of itself as a matter of course, but He traces the morning light to His Father and declares, “He makes His sun to rise.” As for the rain, our great Lord and Master does not speak of the laws of condensation causing the vapor to become fluid and fall to the earth in a beneficial shower, but He says of His Father, “He sends rain upon the just and upon the unjust.”
Jesus knew far better than any of us all the laws by which the great Creator governs the world of matter and yet He never speaks of these laws as though they operated without the Divine power making them to be effective. In Christ’s philosophy, the Lord God Himself was everywhere present, working all things—yes, even numbering the hairs upon the heads of His chosen—and marking the falling of a sparrow to the ground. Let such be your philosophy and mine, for it is the true one! Dr. Watts taught us to sing when we were children—
“My God, who makes the sun to know
His proper hour to rise,
And to give light to all below,
Does send him round the skies.” So our mothers taught us and they taught us the truth. But the very wise men of this proudly enlightened age seem to be spinning all sorts of theories to get rid of God, to turn our Benefactor out of His own world and put man’s best Friend as far away as possible.
I am sometimes reminded by these schools of philosophy and science of Tom Hood’s, “I remember, I remember.” Here is a verse of it—
“I remember, I remember, The fir trees dark and high I used to think their slender tops Were close against the sky. It was a childish ignorance, But now ‘tis little joy To know I’m farther off from Hea ven Than when I was a boy.”
It were a good thing for our skeptical teachers who have banished God out of His own universe if they could go back to their mothers’ knees and learn to talk simply and naturally after the fashion of the wisest man that ever lived, namely, our Lord and Master. Then would they also confess that our heavenly Father “makes His sun to rise and He sends the rain,” for so it is. Laws of Nature can do nothing without a power at the back of the laws. What is Nature, about which many infidels speak so very plentifully? Ask them to tell you what Nature is and they will reply, “Why, it is Nature.” Well, but what is that? And they can only say, “Why Nature, you know, you know, you know, Nature is Nature.”
Some such sensible reply was given to certain of our friends on Kennington Common by one who was there reviling his Maker. Now, if men did but understand Nature, they would know that Nature is simply God’s creation, workshop, laboratory, storehouse and banqueting hall. In Nature, what God has made and what God is doing are made visible before our eyes. God is among us still, blessed be His name! Believing this, we at once perceive that the Lord has been talking with us during the last few days very sweetly and delightfully. The merciful Father speaks to us with charming eloquence on such a day as this, of which George Herbert would have said—
“Sweet day so cool, so calm, so bright, The bridal of the earth and sky.” Coming just in the middle of this fair season of hope and promise, concerning which he sang—
“Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, A box where sweets compacted lie,” it has a still small voice which all should wish to hear.
What a blessing to have enjoyed such a May day as this has been! We have had God speaking to us according to the exact style of our text—He has made His sun to shine, and He has us sent rain. Our days, for some little time, have been made up of sunshine and shower with, every now and then, that wondrous masterpiece of glory in the sky which we call the rainbow, of which God has said, “I, even I, do set My bow in the cloud,” “whose warp is the raindrop of earth and whose woof is the sunbeam of Heaven!” Glorious symbol of His Grace and faithfulness, who hung it in the clouds! Now what does God say to us in the sunshine and the shower which come, the one after the other, in such pleasant alternation, making the grass so green and causing flowers to deck both tree and herb? What does He say in all this?
There is a voice full of the music of love, to which we shall do well to listen. There is one instruction in it and only one that I shall be able to expound tonight. It is the fact brought out in the text, “He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” One of the most considerable heights anywhere near London is Leith Hill, near Dorking. And if you have ever stood there, as I often have done with delight, you may, perhaps, have thought over our text. You see far around the distant lands, pasture, parks, woods, with here and there the laughing water. And beyond the blue hills the distant sea. Up comes a gleam of sunlight, where all was cloud before. By-and-by the sun bursts out in full beauty.