SERMON XX – William Elbert Munsey
MAGNITUDE OF THE DIVINE COUNSEL’S AND WORK.
” Great in counsel, and mighty in work.” — Jer. 32:19.
THE prophet is exhibiting God as the Governor and Rewarder of men, the Maker and Ruler of the universe ; and the text appears to be the expression of a sentiment naturally enkindled in his mind — ” Great in counsel, and mighty in work.” God’s counsels are His purposes, designs, and decrees — what He wills. Many of the counsels of God are apparent, others are mysterious. God has secret counsels in nature, providence, and religion. They are God’s secrets, because, says Mr. Watson : 1st. He only knows them. 2d. He has not revealed them. 3d. He has the right of property of them. ” The secret things,” says Moses, ” belong unto the Lord our God : but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for- ever, that we may do all the words of this law.” ” Great in counsel :” —
I. Because they are supreme — supremus, supra, above — above all angelic, diabolical, and demoniacal counsels. No power in heaven, earth, or hell can disannul or render them void. ” For the Lord of hosts hath purposed, who will dis- annul it?” (Is. xiv. 27.) “As I have purposed, so shall it stand.” (Is. xiv. 24.) Again, ” There is no wisdom, nor understanding, nor counsel against the Lord.” ” My counsels shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure.” (Is. xlvi. 20.) God s counsels are supreme in nature. Every material thing exists, moves, and changes, only to carry out God’s designs and purposes. For this the sun shines, the moon waxes and wanes, the planets revolve. The storm spreads its wings and flies howling along the face of the sky, or folds them in its mysteiious caverns according to the Divine decree. The lurid lightnings slumber in the bosom of the latent storms, or stalk in living thunders through the firmament as God directs. ” Fire and hail, snow and vapor, and stormy winds 1 fulfil ‘ his word,” says the Psalmist. Who ever heard of a rebel element in nature ? God’s counsels are supreme amongst growing herbs, ripening fruits, running waters, and moving worlds. There is a tendency to throw God out of nature. God is the first and final cause, the absolute and universal cause, into which all the phenomena of the material universe ultimate.
Even the casual events of earth and time crowd into one procession, and march in unbroken columns at the Divine bidding, and for the accomplishment of the Divine purposes. Fortune’s ” freaks,” so-called, are under the control of God ; and every revolution of its uncertain wheel is under the kindled eye of Him whose counsels are sovereign. There never was such a thing, there is no such thing, there never will be such a thing, as absolute accident in the universe of God. Many things occur which God does not order, and which God from His nature would prefer would not occur, but could not prevent their occurrence without destroying the moral agency of the creatures whom He made, therefore rendering them incapable of holiness in order to prevent them from being wicked ; but one thing is certain, God will permit nothing to occur, unless under the sovereignty of His government he can derive an equal or greater amount of glory from it than if it had not occurred at alL God’s glory is not selfish but benevolent.
The counsels of God comprehend all the vast ranges of material and immaterial being. In the language of inspiration : ” It is high as heaven …. and deeper than hell.” Angels, though possibly able to understand at a glance the profoundest counsellings of the human mind, yet submit with J9y to the counsels of Jehovah. ” He maketh his angels spirits and his ministers a flaming fire.” Yet, surpassingly astonishing ! devils and demons excepted, man presents the strange anomaly, as far as we know, of a created being trying to circumvent the counsels of an infinite mind — actually defying God. Ungrateful and veritable madman ! he, the greatest beneficiary of the Divine goodness probably in the universe, would neutralize the power, and disappoint the agencies employed for his own reclamation and felicity. Man, whose counsels are circumscribed by the small area of his acquaintance and the brevity of his life, and is powerless himself to execute any resolves he might make, to endeavor to vie with, much less try to defeat the counsels of God, is the most reckless insanity, or the most horrid presumption.
The sinner may endeavor to defeat God’s counsels, but they will stand. “They intended evil : . . . they imagined a mischievous device, which they are not able to perform.*” (Ps. xxi. ii.) “The wicked is snared in the work of his own hands.” (Ps. viii. 6.) ” A man’s heart deviseth his way : but the Lord directeth his steps.” (Prov. xvi.) ” The prepa- ration of the heart in man and the answer of the tongue is from the Lord.” “The way of man is not in himself.” (Jer. x. 23.) The brethren of Joseph sold him to prevent the fulfilment of his dream, but God accomplished several things by this act of His providence. 1st. He honored Joseph. 2d. He provided for Jacob during famine. 3d. He disciplined the Israelites by suffering. 4th. Isolated them from the idol- atrous Egyptians by slavery. 5th. Put them in a condition to make them think of Him as their only help. 6th. Put them in a condition to reveal Himself most favorably to them.
Life and death are placed before every man as alter- natives. The sinner may accept life or reject it as he chooses. He may accept it to-day and throw it away tomorrow. All this is within the purlieu of moral agency. It is a personal matter. But the sinner as a being whose actions affect other men, and God’s administrations with respect to other men, is powerless. God has an especial administration with other men. God does not decree what you suffer, but other men cannot afflict suffering unless God can press the act into His service. God has a thousand ways of preventing it, without destroying your moral agency. He can inspire fear or dread, arouse the conscience, present other motives, or make you sick. God will hold you accountable, however, for all your intentions. God never forces men’s wills upon moral questions ; He would rule all holiness out of the world, if He were to do it. If this much is not implied in government, His government is a farce — strength would win all battles, and swiftness all races. There is a time coming when you shall acknowledge the supremacy of God’s counsels — ” I have spoken it, I also will bring it to pass ; I have purposed it, I will also do it.”
II. Because God’s counsels are unchangeable. God is self- existent, or there is no God. Self-existence is perfect existence ; perfect existence cannot be added to or subtracted from, for there is no change in the absence of addition or subtraction ; then God is essentially unchangeable, therefore Eternal. God’s counsels are emanations of His own nature. If His nature is unchangeable His counsels are. Hear the Scriptures: “The counsels of the Lord standeth forever.” (Ps. xxxiii.) ” There are many devices in a man’s heart ; nevertheless the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand.” (Pro v. xix. 21.) “I have spoken it, I have purposed it, and will not repent, neither will I turn back from it.” (Jer. iv. 28.) God’s infinite knowledge forbids that He shall form a do cree or counsel without being perfectly acquainted with all the facts in the case. Therefore a reason could never arise throughout all eternity for the changing of the decree which God did not know before. His counsels are founded in the reality of the existence and relations of things, which God knew from all eternity, therefore necessarily as eternal and unchangeable as truth itself. ” Thy counsels of old are faithfulness and truth.” And truth from its very nature could not possibly change without losing its entire character as truth, therefore its existence. The existence, relation, and character of facts upon which truth is founded may change, so that the thing which was the truth yesterday may not be the truth to-day ; yet truth, the essence of which consists in being the exact representation of facts as they exist, has in the abstract remained the same eternal and unchangeable principle. As it is with truth so it is with the counsels of God. And as the existence, relation, and char- acter of facts may change without affecting the character of truth, so that the truth today with relation to them may not, with relation to them, be the truth of yesterday, so it is with the counsels of God.
God has decreed that all the righteous shall be saved. He has decreed that all the wicked shall be damned. These decrees are found among the immutable decrees of God. ■ If a man wills to be righteous he will be saved according to the immutable decree of God ; if he wills to be wicked he will be damned according to the immutable decree of God. We have illustrations of the immutability of the Divine counsels, in the regularity and uniformity of the laws of nature ; in the fulfilled promises of His word ; in the unalterable principles, conditions, and effects of the plan of salvation ; in the universal connection between sin and misery ; in the universal connection between Religion and happiness ; in the universal and uniform action of the conscience with reference to moral actions. What an assurance for personal salvation we have in the unchangeability of God’s counsels ! Hear Paul : •’ God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath ; that by two immutable things, in which it was im- possible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before us.”
III. Because God’s counsels, by which we understand His decrees, purposes, and designs, are emanations of His intelligence. Intelligence is necessary to the constitution of spirit. At least, in its application to God there is no controversy. Intelligence is an essential quality inhering into the unity of the Divine existence. The supposition that God is not intelligent is not only wholly unwarrantable and absurd, but profane and monstrous. God is essentially intelligent. Now, intelligence in the absence of design or purpose, which is all we mean by counsel, is preposterous. If intelligence is essential to the nature of God, and He is infinite, His intelligence must be infinite ; for if we accommodate the idea of God’s totality to our poor understandings as being constituted of parts, no aggregation of finite parts can make an infinite whole. If the whole is infinite, the parts or qualities of the whole must be infinite too. And if there is no intelligence in the absence of counsel, then the. counsels of God are as infinite as Himself. If God is great, and great He must be if infinite, His counsels must have an equal great- ness. We might imbibe the spirit of the prophet, and exclaim : “Great in counsel ! “
But we have no practical idea of God’s counsels in the! absence of their exhibitions. And God cannot exhibit them,, unless He has power equal to His purposes, and equal to His designs. Hence the prophet exclaims : ” Great in counsel, and mighty in work.” God’s counsels are equal to Himself, and equal to conceive, decide, and purpose any thing. His power is equal to Himself, equal to His counsels, and able to execute His conceptions, decisions, and purposes. Infinite in counsel, and infinite in work. With relation to the two qualities existing essentially in God, and taught by implication in the text, there is no such thing as difficulty throughout the length, breadth, height, and depth of universal being — yea, in eternity in its loftiest and most comprehensive signification.
” Mighty in work.” The sacred writers love to dwell on the Omnipotence of God, as exhibited in His works. 1st. They present as evidence of God’s Omnipotence, the act of creation. ” He hath made the earth by his power, he hath established the world by his wisdom, and hath stretched out the heavens by his discretion.” “I have made the earth, the man, and the beasts that are upon the ground, by my great power and by my outstretched arm, and have given it unto whom it seemed meet unto me.” ” By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.” ” He commanded, and they were created.” To throw created matter into forms, and fashion it into worlds, flowers, and fruit, and make many of its con- formations, vegetable, animal, and lapidarious, self-multiplying and self-productive, involves a power beyond our com- prehension ; but when there was with reference to material things an unimaginative nothingness, to make worlds, suns, and galaxies, many of which, and probably all, teeming and peopled with life, evinces an immensity of power as incom- prehensible as God, as incomprehensible as nothing itself.
2. They present the vastness, number, and variety of created things as evidences of His power. Hear the Scriptures : ” He spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of the sea : he maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the South: he doeth great things past finding out, yea and wonders without number.” ” He stretcheth out the North over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.” ” He bindeth up the waters in his thick clouds, and the cloud is not rent under them ; he hath compassed the waters with bounds until the day and night come to an end.”
How immense the magnitude of creation’s works. When we walk amid the mountains and cliffs of our country we feel so strangely small. But let us go to the ranges and spurs of the Sierra Madra, or the Mexican Andes, and gaze upon Popocatapetl, their grim old king, as he lifts his cold, blue, and dreary dome, helmeted with ice, and yawning with a savage and hideous crater eighteen thousand and seven hundred feet high, upon whose lofty top winter finds an eternal eyrie though in the tropics — a gray and glittering dome propped upon beetling columns of porphyry, and naked cliffs three thousand feet high, rent with gorges down which cataracts plunge, and which once rocked and bellowed while continents shook. Or, let us go to Cotopaxi and gaze upon its mysterious cone, piercing the clouds, smoking like a furnace, as it rises nineteen thousand feet above the level of the sea. Or, let us go to that higher peak, Chimborazo, which rises twenty-two thousand feet above the level of the sea, and towers away above clouds, and storms, and heats, and dares to wear his frosty crown in the sun’s *very eye, and near the world’s equator. Or, let us go to Aconcagua, the monarch of the Western continent, rising above the sea to the height of twenty-three thousand one hundred feet, which not only towers above the clouds, but which really soars away beyond all his Andean compeers, and islands his glacial dome in the calm deep blue of the upper sky. Or, let us go to the Eastern continent, to the Himalayas, whose inexplorable and unscalable tops prop up the very heavens— in comparison with one or all, we diminish to a point.
But were our minds and visions so enlarged as to take in the earth, nearly eight thousand miles in diameter, or the immense circumference of Jupiter, fourteen hundred times larger than this earth ; or looking up at noon, could we comprehend that vast body eight hundred and eighty- nine thousand miles in diameter, and fourteen hundred thousand times larger than * this earth, hung propless and blazing in space over our heads, mountains would sink to atoms, continents to islets, and we to nothing. The number of created things is equally astounding. Count the sands of Sahara ; the corals in the sea ; the drops of the ocean ; the grass upon the plains ; the trees of the forest ; the countless millions of living creatures which throng every drop of water, and every particle of air, and luxuriate in every ripe and luscious berry ; or those of more ponderous frame which plow the deep, and rove the forests ; or that highest type of animal existence who tenants every valley, and whose lordly bearing proclaims him God-descended. Nature is crowded, and numbers are confounded. Every unit of this vast calculation was made, and is now held in being by the power of God.
In the dynamics of volcanoes are furnished some tremendous exhibitions of power. Vesuvius is more than three thousand feet high, yet it has thrown scoria into the air four thousand feet above its summit. Cotopaxi is nineteen thou- sand feet high, yet it has thrown matter six thousand feet above its summit ; and once it threw a stone one hundred and nine cubic yards in size, nine miles. From a volcano in Iceland, in 1873, two streams of lava flowed in opposite directions, one fifty miles long and twelve miles broad ; and the other forty miles long and seven miles broad, one hundred feet deep, and sometimes six hundred feet.
To suppose the chimney of a volcano to descend only as far below the sea’s level as it ascends above it, it would require in Cotopaxi the force of fourteen hundred and ninety- two atmospheres exerted upon the lava to make it simply pour over the crater, with an initial velocity of eleven hundred and four feet per second. And other volcanoes in the same proportion. If the chimneys extend lower, which they do as a matter of course, a much greater force is required — – especially if the lava should be ejected into the air. Then how great the force which was sufficient to throw the peaks of Teneriffe from the bottom of the sea thirteen thousand feet above its level ; or the island of Hawaii, containing four thousand square miles, from the bottom of the sea eighteen thousand feet above its level. But what is all this to compare with the tremendous power which drives the earth along its orbit at the rate of sixty-eight thousand miles an hour ?
To go back beyond the six creative days, to that dateless beginning, when God only existed, and when by an incomprehensible evolution out of Himself, and from Himself, by His all-powerful Word, He created and originated ” the heavens and the earth,” so far transcends all finite power, that appalled we must turn the other way, or go mad. To approach the edge of the revealed, and peer over into that bottomless abysm, instinct with eternal God, and atomless, and voiceless, in our consciousness we shrink into mere sensitive specks, quivering with horror as if blown upon the stage of existence by the breath of the Almighty without volition or notice of His own ; and as if expecting to be caught up the next moment in the blast and whirlwind of His creative Word, and dashed into nothingness. Oh, the throes of the Divine Power which lifted out of an apparent nihilism the materials to forge worlds and suns to hang in burning zones of awful beauty upon the neck of eternity, and around whose dread circumference possibly an angel could not fly during the everlasting ages which make God’s life-time — eternal duration ! Oh, my little soul ! get away from the first verse of the genesis of the universe, as recorded in this Book ; and come to the great formless earth, wrapped in roaring waters, under darkness, and see the great brooding Spirit of God, and the flash of cosmical light, and the emergence and development of the world in grand series ; till the hour that the dry land appeared, and the waters raged in chains, and the grass grew, and the flowers bloomed, and the trees waved, and the birds sung, and the lions roared, and the sun shone, and man lived, moved, and thought under the benediction and smile of God, and the world’s Sabbath set in and God rested from His labors.
IV. They present the ease with which God sustains , orders, and controls all His works as illustrative of His poiver. He marks the shore of the ocean and saith : ” Hitherto shalt thou come and no farther, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed.” Oceans, enamoured of the celestial goddess of the night, may raise their tidal arms to her embrace, and try to follow her around the world ; but cities and states feel secure, for God has said, ” Hitherto shalt thou come and no farther.” In the day of the storm they grow mad, and with terrible and commingled howls of horror, gather up their plunging surges and dash them on the shore, but God has said, ” Here shall thy proud waves be stayed.” ” He hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance.” These descriptions are often terrible : ” The pillars of the heaven tremble and are astonished at his reproof, he divideth the sea with his power.” When the defenceless thousands of Israel — old men and maidens, women and children — were pressed in the rear by the armed hosts of Pharaoh, and flanked by mountains and confronted by the sea, the descending sword of Omnipotence cleft the waters, and His breath posited them in gleaming walls on both sides, and they went through dry shod. When Israel was saved, and the pursuing enemy was marching along the floors of the sea, paved with zoophitic beds, with which the Gulf of Suea abounds, the power of God was withdrawn, and the two walls, rushing together with the crashing roar of a thousand hurricanes, buried them forever. ” He divideth the sea with his power.”
Again : ” He toucheth the mountains and they smoke.” How true : when the foot of Jehovah descending touched the ragged cliffs of Sinai’s granite top, the mountain instantly caught fire, and smoke and flames, light and darkness, blending in awful grandeur, rose to the sky. ” He removeth the mountains and they know it not ; he overturneth them in his anger, he shaketh the earth out of his place, and the pillars thereof tremble ; he commandeth the sun and it riseth not, and sealeth up the stars.” At the walking of the footsteps of the Divine Power, giant earthquakes shiver through the earth, and jar its very foundations — mountains and hills fly howling into yawning abysms, and valleys upheaving kiss the clouds. At God’s bidding the sun comes forth from his chamber rejoicing, with his bride gorgeous Day leaning upon his arm, in their daily promenade from oriental palace to hesperian garden, from the gates of morn to the gates of eve. With His own Almighty Hand, He conducts the royal pair down the west, behind the mountain- tops, and beckons out the constellations to laugh, and shine, and to make music with their twinkling feet on heaven’s high empyrean.
So supreme His power, ” He bringeth princes to nothing,” ” He teareth down one and setteth up another ; ” and impresses into His service angels, Satan, man, sin, hell, death, and the grave, with all their hosts, influences, agencies, and efforts, to carry on His work. So tremendous His power, with one sweep of His arm, He cleared heaven of rebels, and astounded the universe with the fall of the apostate angels.
Habakkuk, however, treats of the Divine power in a more interesting direction to us. He represents God clothed with light, and filling the heavens with His glory, as coming from Teman, with horns emblematical of power coming out of His hand, heralded by pestilence and walking in fire. Says the prophet : ” He stood and measured the earth, and drove asunder the nations : and the everlasting mountains were scattered, the perpetual hills did bow.” ”The overflowing of the water passed by : the deep uttered his voice, and lifted up his hands on high. The sun and moon stood still in their habitation : at the light of thine arrows they went, and at the shining of thy glittering spear.” “Thou didst march through the land in indignation, thou didst thresh the heathen in anger.” ” Thou didst walk through the sea with thine horses, through the heap of great waters.” Why such terrible exhibitions of Divine power ? The prophet answers : “Thou wentest forth for the salvation of thy people.” The whole power of God so mightily illustrated in nature exerted for the salvation of His people. But the power exerted by God to save His people is not the mere executive power of the Almighty we call Omnipotence, which made worlds and upholds them. Such power has only been exerted in a col- lateral sense to promote such an object, but it has been exerted for such a purpose collaterally, and in its Almightiness is the measure of that mental and moral potentiality whose dynamic manifestations have been, and still are, so fully and sublimely seen in the splendid scheme and the purposes of the plan of human salvation.
In the search after cause, it is found in mind — in that essential characteristic form of mind we call power. In tracing the chain of cause and effect as it glitters in physics and metaphysics, in nature and supernature, we find its first link, the first cause, in the mind of God, in that essential characteristic form of the Divine mind we call power. In God alone is executive ability found equal to the philosophical condition of that formal essence of mind designated by the word power. God is power — this is abstract power : God makes worlds, and saves his people — this is concrete power. God is power — this is subjective power : God makes worlds, and saves His people — this is objective power. And as the unity of the Divine essence is such that no one part of God can be engaged in one thing and other parts quiescent or non-engaged — so Salvation is the infinite power of God in the concrete, the infinite objective power of God : ” For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God.
But I told you, in the search after cause it is found in mind — in that essential characteristic form of mind we call power. This is general principle in an especial application ; so in keeping with the general principle, and in another ap- plication of it, in tracing the chain of human work and human action, we find its first link, the first cause, in the mind of man, in that essential characteristic form of the human mind we call power. And as the whole power of God has become objective, and is exerted in the concrete for man’s salvation, it is only become objective and concrete in this form upon the condition that the whole power of man becomes objective and concrete in \he form of faith. Hence, ” For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto every one that believeth.” The gospel is the objective power of God with reference to human salvation ; faith is the objective power of man with reference to God; the gospel is the concrete power of God with reference to human salvation ; faith is the concrete power of man with reference to God. God’s power is objective and concrete, upon the condition that man’s power is the same. It is the co-working of two causes — the co-working of two powers, the one Divine, the other human — the powers in both being the ultimate causes in both in the abstract. God saves me, and I save myself. This is the philosophy of Redemption, and take this idea out of the text and it is nonsense, and any exposition of the text which ignores this idea is also non- sense. Here we have infinite power put forth upon the condition that the power of the creature is also put forth — ■ glorifying the agent of the exercise of the first power, and saving the agent of the exercise of the last power.
Both agents exercise all their power respectively, but God’s power is infinite. Salvation involves infinite difficulties : Infinite power solves them and perfects the scheme. Salvation in the abstract is a system of powerless principles : Infinite power enthrones itself in the system, and arms every principle with Omnipotence. Salvation’s conquests must be among its adversaries : Infinite power attends it. Salvation is in the land of its enemies : Infinite power defends it Salvation from the guilt of sin, the power of sin, the fetters of sin, the bondage of sin, the darkness of sin, the death of sin, the penalty of sin — imparting purity, life, light, liberty, happiness, and heaven — are but so many manifestations of the Divine power working within the well-defined boundaries of a completed scheme. “Great in counsel, and mighty in work.” His power testifies to the greatness of His counsels, and His works testify to the mightiness of His power. Faith, man’s power, properly exercised would bring into requisition the full power of God to hasten the conquest of the world.