Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1545
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, June 27, 1880
“Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings ha ve You ordained strength because of Your enemies, that You might still the enemy and the Avenger.” Psalm 8.2.
In Connection with the Centenary of Sunday Schools
THIS Psalm sings of the grandeur of God as seen in creation. Who has not been impressed with the sight of the starry sky and the moon walking in her brightness? Truly, God is great! Who can stand at night and gaze upward to yonder distant worlds without saying, “O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth! You have set Your Glory above the heavens.” The Psalm with equal vigor treats of the condescension of God which is all the better seen when we have a view of His greatness and Glory. It is not for us to stoop—we are so low already. We sometimes use the word, condescension, in reference to man, but worms were never raised so high above their meaner fellow worms as to be capable of real condescension—that belongs to God alone. “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, what is man, that You are mindful of him? And the son of man, that You
visit him?”
Because of this Divine condescension great honor is put upon man by God and the Psalm sings of it, telling of the exaltation of man who, in his original, was made a little lower than the angels, but by God’s gentleness has been made great and crowned with glory and honor. Hence the inspired poet sings of the Glory of God in man, for he never thinks of extolling man. He only means to say that God is glorious on account of the great things which He has done in and for such a poor creature as man is. So when he has said that man is made to be the viceroy of God over this earth and is set over the works of God’s hands, he concludes, not by praising man, but by reverently singing, “O Lord our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth!”
Mark right well the greatness of God, stooping to the littleness of man and glorifying itself thereby—the stupendous grandeur of the Highest bowing down to the lowest and uplifting it into a place hard by itself and so getting to itself abundant renown. This morning our subject is the power of God displayed in human weakness—strength out of babes’ mouths—the way He glorifies Himself by using the very least and causing them to show forth His praise to the confusion of His adversaries. There is a Glory of God to be seen in creation, but in redemption there are peculiarly bright manifestations.
In creation there was no opposition. When God framed this world there was no opposing force to fight against Him—“He spoke and it was done.” Absolute nothingness was no hindrance to the creation. “In the beginning” neither chaos or darkness were resisting forces in the framing of the world. “Let there be light,” said God, and there was light. He speaks life and things live! No trace of rebellion is seen. It is in the sphere of moral and spiritual things that “the enemy” is met with and here is a labor worthy of God—to overthrow this enemy and still the evil voice which curses the sons of men. It is in conquering the opposition of the powers of evil that God gets to Himself a Glory more remarkable than that which He obtains by the greatest feats of creative power.
So our first thought is that THERE IS A CONFLICT. Our text speaks of “enemies” and of “the enemy and the Avenger.” We know who the enemies are. Are they not the seed of the serpent? Are they not the men of this world, the children of darkness? The enemies of God are all men who have not been renewed in the spirit of their minds—all who have not been turned “from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God.” God has—alas that we should have to say it!—many enemies and, above all, there is the enemy, that leading spirit, the “prince of the power of the air,”
who has dominion over the children of disobedience and over those apostate angels whom he seduced into mutiny so that they revolted, with him, from beneath the standard of God.
Satan is the enemy who contends against the cause of the Truth of God and love, which is the cause of God. He is spoken of as “the Avenger” because he seeks to revenge himself on God. Through his own sin and folly he was expelled from Heaven. The “Son of the Morning” became the Prince of Darkness by his own willful deed and he wanders up and down the universe of God seeking to take revenge upon the just and holy Judge for the sentence which He has passed upon him. There always rages a tremendous battle between good and evil, between God and this avenger and the evil powers associated with him. This battle rages from day to day and will never cease till the Lord has put all enemies under the feet of His glorious Son who is manifested to destroy the works of the devil.