OUR text begins with God, and God is great; it tells us that He loved the world, and the world is small. Even to us it appears to be small in comparison with what we used to feel about it, now that men can fly round it in a few days; but how small it is in comparison with the universe.
Sir James Jeans commences one of his books with a staggering paragraph. He says, “A few stars are known, which are hardly bigger than the earth, but the majority are so large that hundreds of thousands of earths could be packed inside each and leave room to spare; here and there we come upon a giant star large enough to contain millions and millions of earths. And the total number of stars in the universe is probably something like the total number of grains of sand on all the seashores of the world. Such is the littleness of our home in space, when measured up against the total substance of the universe.”
Those who believe the Bible, and they are wise men who, believe it, know that God, and not accident, is the Maker of those mighty stars, for the Bible begins with, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” and as to the stars and their number and their names, it also tells us that “He calleth them all by their names” (Psa. 147:44He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names. (Psalm 147:4)). And the question may well arise in the mind, “How can God, who is so great, care for a world that is so small?” and, further, and more puzzling still, how can He have a personal interest in any one of the two thousand millions of people who live on it? It was this that puzzled a man with whom I talked. He had imbibed more learning at Continental Universities than comes within reach of most English-speaking men, and he was not an atheist. He had a reverent and humble mind, and believed in the existence of God, but he could only conceive a God who was great and distant. He was impressed with the greatness of God, for he had studied astronomy, and he owned that only an omnipotent God could be the Maker of those countless worlds that bear their silent testimony to His eternal power and divinity; but he said, “How can God, who is so great, take any notice of such an insignificant and useless man as I am?”
How shall we answer his question? There is only one way, we must believe God’s Word as to it. We receive the witness of men, but the witness of God is greater. If a man brings us tidings that we are glad to hear, we believe him; why should we not believe God when He speaks? Or do we imagine, as some do, that God, having made us, is unable to communicate His thoughts to us? The notion is absurd. He that made the mouth, can He not speak? He has spoken, and His words tell of a love that exceeds all our comprehension. We may not understand it, but we may believe it, and “he that believeth not God hath made Him a liar; because he believeth not the record that God gave of His Son.” And what is the record? It is that to all that believe, “God hath given eternal life, and this life is in His Son.”
There is no other way of knowing this great fact; we cannot arrive at it by studying the stars or by digging into the secrets of nature. The philosophies of men do not reach to this. “Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection?” No, here the best intellects are baffled, and the wisest men are fools, for the things of God knoweth no man, until they are revealed to him, but God has revealed them, and they are very real to the man who believes. God has revealed His love, and that revelation is contained in the words of John 3:1616For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16). And they stand out, even amongst the words of Holy Scripture in an unsurpassed glory. The man whose mind is blinded by the god of this world will refuse the revelation, but the heart in which faith has awakened will receive it, and sing:
“How Thou canst think so well of us
Yet be the God Thou art,
Is darkness to my intellect,
But sunshine to my heart.”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the poet, spent a night behind a telescope at the Greenwich Observatory, and afterward remarked, “That’s the sort of thing that makes one think little of county families.” And indeed it is as well to be impressed with the littleness and futility of men, who strut and pose in their pride, yet we must not judge of things by their size. We are impressed with the vastness of the stars, as astronomers descant upon them, but when we come to the Bible, they are treated in a mere incidental way. The creation chapter tells us, “He made the stars also.”
And we may be sure that they were all made for a great purpose, the fact that God calls them all by name means that, and that purpose will be revealed when “the mystery of God is finished.” But the souls of men are evidently of more value to God than the stars, for, for their salvation He gave His only begotten Son. It is to man that He has revealed His love in JESUS, and “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.”
We are, indeed, small and insignificant, one blast of God’s indignation against us for our sins would have been our utter extinction, yet of such value were we in His sight that He gave His only begotten Son for us, yes, for ungrateful rebellious men He gave His Son!
For men, both vile and guilty, the living stream of blessing flows! It is a wonderful story, but is it true? “If only what you have been telling us were true,” said one of my hearers to me, at the close of a Gospel service. “Yes,” I said, “wouldn’t it be good?” He admitted that nothing would equal it in goodness. “Well,” I said, “you may stake your immortal soul upon it, it is as true as it is good, and it is as good as it is true; for it is ‘the Gospel of God concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.’”