Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1796
“All Your works shall praise You, O LORD; and Your saints shall bless You.” Psalm 145:10.
Do not throw yourselves back in your seats and say, “This will be a sermon for saints and, therefore, we may be excused from listening to it.” Do you not see that the first clause gives you a fair word and a kindly hint? “All Your works shall praise You, O Jehovah.” Through this you may enter, as by an open door, for if you are not Jehovah’s saints, you are His works and are bound to praise His name! In these days of harvest and full summertime, every created thing appears to praise God by its very existence. Insect and fern, pebble and rippling brook, star and cloud, wind and dew—all reflect the wisdom and goodness of the Most High! Many a man’s works are no credit to him and, even in cases where men have worked well and produced much which is to their honor, yet certain of their works are not to their credit, but deserve to be plunged in darkness.
It is never so with a single work of the Eternal—all His works are perfect! He puts no bad work into them, He uses no base material, He never makes up with paint and varnish for grievous deficiencies. Set all His works in the sunlight— yes, put them all under the strongest magnifier—and they tell no tale against Him, but they all publish Him as the best of workers, the grandest of thinkers, the most complete of designers. You may range high Heaven, or descend into the depths of the sea, or dig into the darkest mines, but you will come upon nothing which can find fault with Him. You may break God’s works in pieces and examine them in minute detail. You may pass them through the fire again and again, but tested as they may be, they bear but one witness—
“The hand that made us is Divine,” and that Divine hand is excellent in knowledge and power.
All God’s works also praise Him by a sort of intent—they make praise His glory as of set purpose. We are speaking of the inanimate creation—we say inanimate—but in this matter they seem to be all alive to the glory of the Lord! The worlds that roll through space and the dust that dances in the sunshine; the fire bolt that levels the tower and the snow-flakes that dance in their wintry courts; the yeast of the foaming sea, the pollen of the ripening flower and the cleavage of the crystal—all vie with one another in proclaiming the greatness of the wisdom and the goodness of the Lord! Not only are the heavens proclaiming the Glory of God, and the firmament showing His handiwork, but the earth and the air, the sea and all deep places, the hillside and the cottage garden are all emulating each other in the blessed work of praising Jehovah!
How often at sunset has it seemed to us as if God held His court far away in the west, amid the bright and burning clouds and there the seraphs bowed as visibly as before the throne above! Looking across the sea, when the sun has just been rising in the morning, we have seen the gates of Heaven opened and the skirts of the Lord’s robes have been as visible to us as once they were to Moses! At hush of midnight, when ten thousand stars are adoring, earth’s stillness proves her to be a profound worshipper. There are a thousand times when Nature keeps her special Sabbaths and in God’s temple does everyone speak of His glory!
Awaken, then, my Friend! You are a creature, if not a new creature in Christ Jesus. Adore your Benefactor if you do not know your Savior! The known may be a step to the unknown. In joining God’s works in His praise, you may be led to join with Himself. You have never fully and properly attended to this first call—you cannot, therefore, complain if you find yourself too feeble for the second. Have you nothing for which to praise the Lord? Is not your body a specimen of His handiwork? Are not the organs of nutrition and the supplies which are given to them, proofs of His goodness? Your
deliverance from fever and a hundred other deaths is something worthy of a song! All your domestic hopes, joys and desires, though they reach not to eternal things and are but draughts from the nether springs, yet they come from the same hand as the higher gifts! And they may lead you home, for the prodigal, who came back to his father, was sweetly tempted there by the remembrance of the bread in his father’s house, of which there was enough and to spare.
Yet I confess that there is, in the text, much that is special for a chosen people. It speaks to those who dwell within the inner circle, who, by position, character and privilege are elevated to the highest form of service. Praise is high as Heaven and lasting as eternity—and yet there is something that is better, for it is written—“Your saints shall bless You.” Everywhere throughout the Word of God you see a very clear and sharp distinction between those that fear God and those that fear Him not—between the two seeds, the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman—between those that are living in sin and those that have been delivered from it, and so are made saints unto God. There are two peoples and always will be while the present dispensation lasts.