SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.
Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?—Luke 12, 6.
Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?—Luke 12, 6.
Our Lord always spoke in the plainest possible terms. Whenever a vital truth was to be stated, an important doctrine to be set forth, He did it in language so clear that no one could misunderstand. The statement of our text this morning shares that quality. "Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?" The little creature mentioned is one of the most insignificant that could be thought of; the Lord selected it just for the sake of that utter insignificance to bring out a significant and all-inspiring truth. That truth is this: that God is in relation with everything that exists; that He superintends all; that there is nothing so minute as to be overlooked or forgotten. We call this the doctrine of God's providence, and a most prominent teaching of God's Word it is, as also one of the most cheering and practical.
Prompted by the Gospel-lesson of to-day, which shows us our blessed Lord as providing miraculously for the four thousand with seven loaves and a few small fishes, let usI. seek to establish the doctrine of God's providence;II. show its application and effect upon us and our lives.
"I believe that God has made me and all creatures, that Hehas given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still preserves them," thus we confess in the explanation of the First Article of our Creed, and what our Catechism thus confesses, the sacred Scriptures with especial clearness teach. God did not only, as some are willing to admit, create the universe, but He also now governs it personally and completely. It is the theory of our modern evolutionists and materialists that God has left the world to govern and develop itself, that, having placed it under certain natural laws, it must take care of itself, wholly independent of God's interference. As Melanchthon once characterized their position: "They think of God as a shipbuilder, who, when he has completed his vessel, launches it and then leaves it, or like a clock which you wind up, and then let run off." A different impression is that received from God's Holy Book. That assures us that, so far from turning over His government to unalterable laws, so far from retiring from His works to dwell apart in His own unapproachable Godhead in some distant sphere, unconcerned and uncaring for such a world and such creatures as we, there is nothing done, nor said, nor thought, nor felt by man but He knows it and notes it, and orders His dealings with reference to it. His providence includes every event,—the rise and fall of nations and states, the experiences and vicissitudes of the Church, the occurrences of the history of each family, the unnumbered instances which make up the life of each individual, no matter what their character. His supreme hand is in and over them all. Those words which we so commonly use in daily speech—chance, accident, strictly and consistently regarded, are untruthful, for there is no such thing as chance, an accident; nothing happens but it has been determined in His wisdom, and is sent, directed, or permitted according to His will. Chance or accident rule in nothing—God's providence in all. What more satisfactory assurance would we desire for that than what is told us in the text? It was a customary thing to see sold in the market-place of Jerusalem, as an article of merchandise, the little creatures here mentioned. The price was a minimum, five sparrows for two farthings, equal at the most, to two cents of our money. Our Lord, in referring to it, calls attention to the little regard taken by men of this poor little bird, and brings out in vivid and grand contrast the regard taken of it by God. "And not one of them is forgotten before God."
Elsewhere, in one of the Psalms, God says: "I know all the fowls upon the mountains, and the wild beasts of the field are in my sight." We watch in their season of immigration the flight of birds, when in long flocks they cross the sky, passing from the North to the South, or back again. To think that each in those countless tribes is known, as if by name, to its Creator, not one confounded with the other in the view of God! We observe the tiny sparrow as it skips from ground to housetop, busily gathering its food, or the frail materials wherewith to construct its nest below our house roof; how little we reflect that every one of them is numbered in that sight which nothing can escape, and that in the ephemeral history of the poor little bird, of which the great God and Savior deigns to speak, not one item is forgotten, each is seen and known and retained in a faithful memory; "not forgotten," implying a knowledge that lasts, a consideration though the thing known may no longer exist. This, then, is the way we are taught to think about our God. All things that transpire, all that has been and shall be—all are embraced within the circle of God's unforgetting, all-remembering knowledge, vision, providence. That is the Christian doctrine as taught by our Lord in such plain illustrations as this, and as preached by His apostles on the pages of the Old and New Testament throughout.
Let us now ask of the application. That it means something to us when the Lord says about God's not forgetting one of the sparrows sold in the market-place of Jerusalem is a matter of course. What does it mean? The doctrine of God's providence is, we would thus consider it first, a stern and restraining truth. Consider for a moment,—there is nothing about you, or in you, or of you, but God knows and sees it all, the thoughts of your mind, the desires of your heart, the motives of your deeds. He spieth out all your ways, He understandeth your thoughts afar off. Yesterday, for example, He saw you when your eyes first opened to the light, and He traced your steps till they closed once more in sleep. You know what you did, and He also knows. You may have thought yourself unobserved, and some things there are which you should prefer to forget, wish that you could conceal them, ashamed or afraid to have them known. God does not forget, from Him you cannot conceal; all the while you are standing in the concentrated blaze of a light, brighter than the brightest sun, and eyes that seeeverything are reading you through and through. That is, as stated, a stern and awful truth. But let us not deceive ourselves concerning it. Let us remember that there is no privacy anywhere for us, though we may long for it, and many live as if they had it. Our follies and vanities, our erring steps, our ugly temper and evil disposition, every idle word that you spoke, every oath that has fallen from your lips, every vile action, every dollar you have wasted in luxury, folly, or withheld in miserly selfishness, every influence you have exerted, apt to lead a brother or sister astray,—God sees and knows them all. You are read like a book by the Reader of the lives of all men. Man, my beloved hearers, needs a check upon him, a hand to keep him straight. He has it in this belief. A person cannot go far wrong who believes that God sees and knows all. The sense of His nearness is a moral force, a thousandfold greater than any other that can be named. He that thinks thus of His God is ever putting to himself the question whether God approves what he is about at any given moment. That saves him; it acts as a constant check; it is a lantern to his feet, a light to his paths, a bridle to his lips. And God knows we all need to be so held in. That communities are defiled, that the social order is imperiled, that men are shocked at the growing ravages of sin, and souls are ruined one by one, we may trace these things to their sole cause, the losing sight of the fact that God's eye is on them always, and that they are accountable to Him for what they do. Let the doctrine of God's providence be generally rejected, and it is only a question of time till that comes to pass again which once occurred in the days of Noah, when God saw that the wickedness of man was great, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Here, then, is a truth which may be called the beginning of the moral law, the foundation of Christian ethics, the Alpha and Omega of Christian practice. The doctrine of God's providence is a stern and restraining doctrine.
But there is another side to the picture. To that shall we turn for the greatest comfort and peace that mortal man can know. "Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?" "Ye are," continues the Master, "of more value than many sparrows." If one of them cannot fall to the ground unnoticed by our Father, how much more in His thoughts, (that is the evident line of argumentation,)are we, His children, made in His likeness, redeemed by His own precious blood. What should there be for us each day and hour but loving, unwavering trust. It cannot fail to impress every reader of his Bible how it dwells continually upon this very point. Our Lord knew what a burdensome world this is, and how easily perplexed men are. He has sought in all possible manner and ways to bring home to us the truth we are considering. He has given us precious and numerous promises. "Trust in the Lord and do good," is one of them, "So shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed." Another is: "Whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe." Still others: "My grace is sufficient for thee:" "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee." These might be multiplied from the Scriptures by the score and hundred. And again He has sought to impress His divine providence upon us by numberless examples. There is, for instance, Noah. Noah trusted Him, and lo! when the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the floods rose, and millions of the ungodly sank into a watery grave, sheltered and shut in by God's protecting hand, the ancient saint outrode the deluge in safety, with his family. Elijah, alone yonder in the wilderness, in time of famine, trusted Him, and, behold, even the ravens, divinely bidden, came flying with bread to feed him. And so David, and Daniel, and Peter, and all of God's illustrious saints whose biography the Bible records, put their trust in His governing providence, and never were ashamed, and their experience has been the universal experience and testimony of all who have ever really put their faith in Him, and that applies as much to us as to them. Come what will, the true and trusting child of God feels secure. "Have we trials and temptations, is there trouble anywhere?" Is ghastly pestilence mowing down its victims? Is financial depression over all the land, labor unobtainable, wages low, and bread scarce? Has sickness prostrated one? Has death broken the family circle, and is the heart bleeding under bereavement? In the midst of it all the Christian sees the wise, loving, all-governing providence of God, the almighty and all-gracious hand of His own divine heavenly Father; and in this assurance, that God is thus in all that befalls him, his soul is filled with abiding calmness. There is nothing, amid it all, which is more calculated to banish our cares, to throw sunshine across life's path, to make us more content, than the belief that our God holds the reins ofuniversal rule, and that all is controlled and guided by His wise and kind hand.
And this, to conclude, also gives a Christian strength and encouragement in his work. The thought that God is near us, the feeling that He is working with us, gives an impulse, a force which nothing else can impart. To rise in the morning with that sense of divine presence, that God sees all our endeavors, is to take up one's work with an entirely different mood than where that feeling is missing. Nor are we then easily discouraged; it gives us renewed inspiration, the courage required for long, steady, earnest work.
We have considered a glorious truth of Christian doctrine from the lips of Him who never exaggerated, never erred. Lay hold of it, believe it, not languidly, but as a power in your lives, and be happy in such belief. Amen.