8 SEPTEMBER (1878)
Divine interpositions
‘He sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of many waters.’ Psalm 18:16
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Isaiah 45:1–13
We do not believe in two co-existent forces, each supreme, one creating disasters, and the other distributing blessings. The prince of evil is, according to our faith, subordinate to the great Lord of all. Thus says Jehovah, by the mouth of his servant Isaiah, ‘I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.’ He reigns in the calm summer’s day and gives us the precious fruits of harvest, but he is equally present and reigning in the hurricane which destroys or the blight which desolates. His providence speeds the ship to its desired haven, but equally sinks the boat to the bottom of the sea. His power looses ‘the bands of Orion’ and binds ‘the sweet influences of 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 your bread’, for famine, pestilence and war are as rods in his hand.
Everywhere is God and in all things his hand is present: in things which seem evil as well as in events which appear good, God is at work. He does no wrong, ‘for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man’, but we speak of physical evil which causes sorrow, pain and death among men, and we say that certainly God is there. If not a sparrow ‘fall on the ground without your 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 only the second causes, and we see behind all mere detail the permit of the Lord.
FOR MEDITATION: Isaiah 45:7 shows God in creating: ‘I form the light’ (see Genesis 1:3), in concealing: ‘and create darkness’ (see Job 9:7), in common grace: ‘I make peace’ (see Psalm 145:9; Matthew 5:45), and in condemning: ‘and create evil’ (see Amos 3:6), all consistent with his character—‘I the LORD do all these things.’
C. H. Spurgeon and Terence Peter Crosby, 365 Days with Spurgeon (Volume 4), (Leominster, UK: Day One Publications, 2007), 262.
Divine interpositions
‘He sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of many waters.’ Psalm 18:16
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Isaiah 45:1–13
We do not believe in two co-existent forces, each supreme, one creating disasters, and the other distributing blessings. The prince of evil is, according to our faith, subordinate to the great Lord of all. Thus says Jehovah, by the mouth of his servant Isaiah, ‘I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.’ He reigns in the calm summer’s day and gives us the precious fruits of harvest, but he is equally present and reigning in the hurricane which destroys or the blight which desolates. His providence speeds the ship to its desired haven, but equally sinks the boat to the bottom of the sea. His power looses ‘the bands of Orion’ and binds ‘the sweet influences of 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 your bread’, for famine, pestilence and war are as rods in his hand.
Everywhere is God and in all things his hand is present: in things which seem evil as well as in events which appear good, God is at work. He does no wrong, ‘for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man’, but we speak of physical evil which causes sorrow, pain and death among men, and we say that certainly God is there. If not a sparrow ‘fall on the ground without your 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 only the second causes, and we see behind all mere detail the permit of the Lord.
FOR MEDITATION: Isaiah 45:7 shows God in creating: ‘I form the light’ (see Genesis 1:3), in concealing: ‘and create darkness’ (see Job 9:7), in common grace: ‘I make peace’ (see Psalm 145:9; Matthew 5:45), and in condemning: ‘and create evil’ (see Amos 3:6), all consistent with his character—‘I the LORD do all these things.’
C. H. Spurgeon and Terence Peter Crosby, 365 Days with Spurgeon (Volume 4), (Leominster, UK: Day One Publications, 2007), 262.
8 SEPTEMBER (1878)
Divine interpositions
‘He sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of many waters.’ Psalm 18:16
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Isaiah 45:1–13
We do not believe in two co-existent forces, each supreme, one creating disasters, and the other distributing blessings. The prince of evil is, according to our faith, subordinate to the great Lord of all. Thus says Jehovah, by the mouth of his servant Isaiah, ‘I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.’ He reigns in the calm summer’s day and gives us the precious fruits of harvest, but he is equally present and reigning in the hurricane which destroys or the blight which desolates. His providence speeds the ship to its desired haven, but equally sinks the boat to the bottom of the sea. His power looses ‘the bands of Orion’ and binds ‘the sweet influences of 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 your bread’, for famine, pestilence and war are as rods in his hand.
Everywhere is God and in all things his hand is present: in things which seem evil as well as in events which appear good, God is at work. He does no wrong, ‘for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man’, but we speak of physical evil which causes sorrow, pain and death among men, and we say that certainly God is there. If not a sparrow ‘fall on the ground without your 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 only the second causes, and we see behind all mere detail the permit of the Lord.
FOR MEDITATION: Isaiah 45:7 shows God in creating: ‘I form the light’ (see Genesis 1:3), in concealing: ‘and create darkness’ (see Job 9:7), in common grace: ‘I make peace’ (see Psalm 145:9; Matthew 5:45), and in condemning: ‘and create evil’ (see Amos 3:6), all consistent with his character—‘I the LORD do all these things.’
C. H. Spurgeon and Terence Peter Crosby, 365 Days with Spurgeon (Volume 4), (Leominster, UK: Day One Publications, 2007), 262.
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