Hebrews 4:12-13 For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword… I. We have to do with God fundamently and pre-eminently as our CREATOR Whence came we? How are we? What are we? Who made us? "He made us, and not we ourselves; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture." Now, if God made us, and not we ourselves, if the faculties of our mind, if the energies of our heart, if the wondrous proportions of our body, are all from Him, then can we ever be separate from God? can we ever cease to have that relationship to Him that the creature has to the Creator, the relationship that a child has to a parent? A parent has a claim upon a child as long as it lives. We have to do, then, with a God of love as our Creator. II. We have to do with God as our PRESERVER. Strange that men live on year after year and go up and down, sleeping and waking, toiling and resting, mourning and rejoicing, and yet they can forget how it is that they live and continue in life; how it is that reason still holds its seat; how it is that the heart still throbs; how it is that the harp strings are kept in tune; how it is they are not continually tormented with anguish, distemper, and distress: can any man account for this? If we did not make ourselves, if we did not string the harp, we cannot keep it attuned; if we did not form the mechanism we cannot keep it from decay and dissolution. There is no independent life but in the one Fountain of all life, and all other life is a life of dependence — a dependence of the creature on the Creator, of the thing made upon the Maker, of the thing living on Him that gave it life. We have to do with Him as our Creator; we must have to do with Him in sickness and health, in peril and in safety, in life and in death, in madness and in reason, in the lunatic asylum or the house of prayer; we must have to do with Him as our Creator. "Sir," said a poor maniac, that had escaped from bedlam, and was passing along the streets of London, to a gentleman he met at the angle of one of the streets, "did you ever thank God for reason?" The man stared, and said, "I cannot say that I ever did." "Then do so now, for I have lost mine I " said the poor man. And well I remember, when attending the deathbed of one who died of that most fearful disease, hydrophobia, as, in the agony of the spasms of disease, she grasped my hind until it ached, I repeated to her many of those beautiful prayers of ours, in one of which you have, or ought to have been joining, the thanksgiving, "We bless Time for our creation, preservation"; and she said, with a shriek, "Oh preservation, preservation, how we forget it; look at me, and let none who know it ever forget it again!" Yes, preservation. III. We have to do with Him as our bounteous BENEFACTOR, our gracious Attender, and the Fatherly Provider of all we have. Whether a man is racked with pain all his life, or disordered, as some are, from their mother's womb; whether he is blessed with health and a cheerful mind, or if he has anything that relieves him in this vale of tears, any flower that blooms in the desert, any star that brightens the dark sky of our fallen lot; is it not all from God? It is a terrible thought that men have to do with God in all that they have, and abuse, and prostrate to their own destruction; it is all from God, and they cannot say in one thing they have that it is not from Him. How this should make us reconciled, however He may deprive us; how we should be grateful for anything we have, for anything short of hell is the gift of his grace, to us who are deserving of hell; and, therefore, we ought to say, oh! how often, "Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless His holy name." IV. We have to do with God as our RULER AND GOVERNOR. Does any man suppose that, because we talk of laws, there is no lawgiver? What is law without the power of enforcing it? What is government without a governor? Without the Divine and mighty Ruler of all, what would take place? Universal anarchy, chaos, and desolation. V. Ah! we have to do with Him as our LAWGIVER. He has given a law; and all things — the sun, the moon, the planets, the stars — have laws; summer and winter, autumn and spring, have all their laws and appointed times — the clouds have their laws, and the light above — everything has its laws; and do you Suppose the moral world hath no law, that the great God hath left the mind and spirit without anything to control or guide it? I tell you no. In man, at the first, there was a perfect law en-graven on the tablet of his heart, and it is there still; and though shattered the tablet, and blotted is the writing, man knows far more than he fancies; he knows more what he ought to do, and what he ought not to do, than he will admit; he has a conscience within him, and this is from God. And then we Christians — professing Christians — we have the law of God written again, republished by the Divine Registrar; the law so plain and so simple that any man that has a heart can understand it, and so beautiful, and bountiful, and benevolent, and perfect, that no man with any right moral sense can find fault with it or deny it. It is diversified according to circumstances, but the whole is based upon this principle — love to God and love to man. VI. We have yet further to do with this great God as our JUDGE. A man may refuse to have to do with God in obedience and submission to His will; he may set it at nought and forget it; be may lose all sense of it, by imbruting his moral being and becoming seared as with a hot iron, hut he cannot refuse to have to do with his Judge. And judgment is not all in a future world — it begins here; the conscience of a man passes a kind of judgment upon him as long as he reads it until he blots it out, or drowns it in mirth, in unbelief, in crime, in debauchery, in drunkenness, and so seals it. Not only so, judgment has begun in this world in present punishment, often in present comfort and joy and peace. VII. We have all of us to do with God as SAVIOUR — "a just God and a Saviour." I believe in the beautiful summary of our Creed, and in the scriptural voice of our Chinch, "first, I learn to believe in God the Father, who made me and all the world; secondly, in God the Son, who hath redeemed me, and all mankind; thirdly, in God the Holy Ghost, who sanctifieth me, and all the elect people of God." I believe, therefore, that God laid on His own Son " the iniquity of us all." He did not become simply the Son of man, but the Son of men — the Son of mankind. He did not take the nature of one race, or of one people, or of one colour, or of one clime; but He took upon Him the seed of Abraham: He took upon Him our nature and became the Son of man, so that none can claim Him exclusively, and say, "He did not die for you"; nor can any one say, "He died for me alone." He is the Saviour of all men, and especially of them that belong " to the household of faith." If any of you perish, you perish, not as heathen, bat as professed and baptized Christians; and how this will turn into a source of remorse and " the worm that never dies," if you perish with the name of Christian, with the Cross of Christ, upon your brow! See to it, "for to whom much is given, of him shall be much required." VIII. We have to do with God, or, at least, we may have to do with Him — we have if we are wise, we have if we are saved — as OUR RECONCILED FATHER, "the Lord our Righteousness," in whom we are chosen, in whom we are sealed, in whom we are at peace with God. Oh I to have to do with God in peace, and reconciliation, and adoption; to have to do with God, not because we must, but because we would be "made willing in the day of His power," to have His love constraining us so that we yield ourselves to Him as "those that are alive from the dead, and our poor members as instruments of righteousness unto God." We have to do with Him, "groaning within ourselves, and waiting for the adoption: to wit, the redemption of our bodies"; and we are able to testify that it is through His grace that He has made us His children. IX. Then how sweet to have to do with Him as our SANCTIFIER — Our portion for ever; our Sanctifier, restoring us from the ruins of our fallen race, and raising us again to be a temple meet for His own habitation; beautifying us with grace that shines in the Adam here, and that will shine more brightly in the Second Adam. We have to do with Him in anticipation, that we may be like Him for ever. (H. Stowell, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. |
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