Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1432
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, September 8th, 1878, by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
I believe that this sudden grief comes, like every other event, from God, and comes as a voice from God to this our city—a voice which, we trust, will be heard and regarded. “The Lord’s voice crieth unto the city, and the man of wisdom shall see thy name: hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it.” We are of the mind of that old prophet who said, “Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?” (Amos 3:6.) Cometh there anything in the form of calamity upon the sons of men without the permission, control, and overruling of the Lord? Assuredly not. “The Lord killeth and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up.” I know that many minds are so stunned by this tremendous blow, that they can hardly think of God in connection with it, and half wish to believe that the Omnipresent was not there. The problem staggers their reason, and they are unable to leave it among the mysteries of faith. As yet they have not gained the confidence of Job, who denied that affliction cometh out of the dust, but attributed it to the Lord, saying, “He taketh away: who can hinder him?” Even some who love the Lord, and trust him, are somewhat of the mind of Mary and Martha when they said, “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died”; while others who should know better would timidly conceal their belief in an overruling providence, lest the ribald world should scoff at them. Let them scoff, I say; for our God is none the less glorious because his ways are far above and out of our sight. It is an atheistical thought which would put God out of any place; if he be not everywhere, he is nowhere; omnipresence is an essential of Godhead. If his hand ruleth not over evil it is not omnipotent, and thus again it lacks another essential attribute of deity. It would be dreadful to suppose him to have a limited dominion: “His kingdom ruleth over all.”
We are not as those who believe in two co-existent forces, each supreme, one of whom shall create disasters, and the other shall distribute blessings. The prince of evil is, according to our faith, subordinate to the great Lord of all. Thus saith Jehovah, by the mouth of his servant Isaiah, “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and I create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” He reigneth in the calm summer’s day, and gives us the precious fruits of harvest, but he is equally present and regnant in the hurricane which destroys, or the blight which desolates. His providence speeds the ship to its desired haven, but it is equally his providence which sinks the barque and its mariners to the bottom of the sea. It is his power which looses the bands of Orion and binds the sweet influence of the Pleiades; his are the lightnings as well as the sunbeams, the thunderbolts as well as the raindrops. He is able to make the heaven as iron and the earth as brass, so that our land shall not yield her increase; he can call for a famine and break the whole staff of bread; for famine, pestilence, and war are as rods in his hand. Everywhere is God, and in all things his hand is present: in the things which seem to us to be evil as well as in the events which appear to us to be good, God is at work. He doeth no wrong, for God is not tempted of evil, neither tempteth he any man, but we speak of physical evil, which causeth sorrow, pain, and death among men, and we say that certainly God is there. If not a sparrow falleth to the ground without our Father, we are sure that no great calamity can befall us apart from him. He is not far from us in our deepest sorrow, and however we may trace a calamity to the carelessness or the mistake of men, these are but the second causes, and we see behind all mere detail the permit of the Lord. If it were not so, mourners would be deprived of the greatest reason for submission, and the surest source of consolation.
Even where a terrible event is the result of crime God is not excluded. He shares not the guilt, but he overrules the act. Think of the crucifixion of our Lord, and remember that though the sin of it lay heavy upon those who perpetrated it, yet the grand design of it was God’s. Read Peter’s words in the Acts: “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.” Who shall deny that God was at Calvary, though sin there reached its culminating point?
We freely admit that we do not understand this, and therefore we do not attempt to explain it; but we believe and adore. Happily, we need not attempt to justify the ways of God to man, for he asks no defense at our hands, and deigns not to give any account of his matters: this only is our resolve, “Though he slay me yet will I trust in him.”
Now, the question which has very naturally suggested itself to many is this,—If there be a providence, why does it permit these terrible evils? It is dreadful that human life should be lost on such a scale: God is omnipotent, nobody doubts that; why, then, does he not interfere to save? That shall suggest to us the first point of our discourse this morning, that miraculous interpositions in the affairs of this life are not to be expected, and we may not hope literally to use the words of our text and say,” He sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of many waters.” Still, secondly, we shall note that, according to our text, providential interpositions of another kind are vouchsafed; and thirdly, and best of all, gracious interpositions are given for the salvation of men. What though the Lord doth not nowadays send from above, and take his servants, and draw them by miracle out of the waters of the river, yet doth he uplift us from the depths of trouble, and especially doth he upbear us from the deeps of sin to our eternal salvation, for thus saith the Lord, “I will bring again from Bashan, I will bring my people from the depths of the sea.”