The Planter of the Ear must Hear

Next Part The Planter of the Ear must Hear 2

“He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? he that formed the eye, shall he not see?” -Psalm 94:9.

The character of a man hinges upon his relation to God. You may know what manner of man he is, and what are his communications, if you find out how he stands towards God. With the many God is a mere name: a word to be pronounced more or less reverently; but nothing more. He is not a force operating upon their daily lives. His glory is no motive of action, no object of desire, no joy of their heart. “God is not in all their thoughts”; and in consequence their lives are not conformed to his holy law. Blessed be the Most High, there are a few to whom God is everything: the first and last, the center and circumference of their being. To them the Lord is the great trust and treasure of their spirit; he is the rock of their confidence, the well-spring of their delight. Such men as they delight in God, will seek after holiness, and aim at perfection. God has shined upon them, and their faces will be bright. God dwells within them, and as from a kindled lamp light will stream forth.

Among the ungodly there are many whose lives prove that they know nothing about God. Indeed, their ignorance of God is their support in their present behavior. They comfort themselves with the notion, “The Lord shall not see, neither shall the God of Jacob regard it.” To them God is out of the world as to observation or practical interference. They do not care whether he sees them or not; for their belief is, that if he does see he cares nothing what men may think or do. He is too far off to be concerned about human affairs. He will neither grow angry with the sin of the wicked, nor take pleasure in the holiness of the godly. Of this practical atheism I am going to speak at this time, pleading against that frame of mind by the argument of the text. “He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? he that formed the eye, shall he not see?” May the Holy Spirit help me in my endeavor, and may all my hearers believe in the living, hearing, seeing Jehovah!

I. Our first observation will be, THE NOTION THAT GOD CANNOT HEAR OR SEE IS PERNICIOUS. In judging it, we will follow the line of the psalm which now lies open before us. We perceive that men who talked in this godless fashion were proud. Hence the prayer, “Lift up yourself, you Judge of the earth: render a reward to the proud.” The man who thinks that God is not in the world, or is not at all concerned in its affairs, thinks that he is, himself, about the greatest person in existence. There may be some other poor creatures about; but he is, in many respects, the most deserving of esteem. He who thinks little of God, thinks much of himself. “Who is the Lord,” says he, “that I should obey his voice?” Who talks like this but Pharaoh, the king, the potent one, accustomed to have his own will in everything? Those speak exceeding proudly who have no knowledge of the Most High. Measuring themselves by others like themselves, they are not wise. The worm exalts itself above its smaller fellow worms, and dreams not of the great Eternal One who fills all things. Pride is very apt to grow great when knowledge is small, and reverence is absent. Proud language usually goes with profane talk and blasphemous ideas; for it comes of the same kindred. “How long shall they utter and speak hard things? and all the workers of iniquity boast themselves?”

If there is no God, or no God to care about, then straightway men delight in uttering things which make the blood of the godly to curdle. They render no praise to God; since they seek all glory for themselves. Because of their own conceit, they question his wisdom, cavil at his Word, doubt his justice, impugn the sentences of his bar, and speak evil of him even as they wish. Give a man of proud heart a fluent tongue, and opportunity enough to speak of God, and then take away from him the idea that God hears him, and there is no telling to what lengths of profanity he will hasten. His tongue is set on fire of hell, and it burns with a fury inconceivable.

If you have ever been forced to hear or read the expressions of renowned infidels, you can form some idea of how completely Satan works his will with godless men. Take God away, and the brakes are taken off, and the train dashes down hill at terrific speed. “Their tongue walks through the earth,” says David. No bounds can be set to the evil perambulations of an atheistic tongue. Not even heaven itself is free from the assaults of its pride: “They set their mouth against the heavens.” They slander God himself, because they imagine that he does not hear.

Nor is this the end of the mischief. When the fear of God is taken away from men, they frequently proceed to persecute his servants. The prophet complains, “They break in pieces your people, O Lord, and afflict your heritage.” As they hate God, so they manifest their hate against his people. If they cannot get at the leader, if they cannot smite the shepherd, they will at least worry the flock. Read the long and cruel story of human malice against the church of God: it mingles with the record of every nation: it is an awful history, written in tears and gore. The sacramental host of God’s elect has left behind it in its marches a trail of blood and ashes, filling up, in the people of the persecuted, that which was behind of the sufferings of the Lord; for all that grief was meant for him if his enemies could but have poured it on his head.

At times it has seemed as if God had given up his people, and caused the rod of the wicked to rest upon his heritage. No wonder that it was so with them; for thus it pleased him to deal with his Only-begotten Son. He delivered him up to the world to do with him as it wished. The Father did not interpose, though they spat in his face, though they scourged him, though they blindfolded him and buffeted him, and made nothing of him. Yes, though they nailed him to the accursed tree, and stood to gloat their cruel eyes upon his agonies, the great God did not interfere to save the Beloved of his soul.

A greater force than almighty power held omnipotence itself in check, that it should not lift its finger to rescue the Lord’s anointed. If he was to save others, he could not be saved himself. Though he cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” yet Jehovah left his own Son to die in the hands of the ungodly. You know the reason why; but, apart from that, it was a strange procedure.

The Lord may deal thus with his own church and his own cause, until his people cry, “How has the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger!” The truth may appear to be wounded, slain, dead, and even buried. But yet, as Jesus rose again, so shall his true church and cause rise again, though they be laid in the grave, and the stone is sealed, and the watch is set. Truth, though entombed, must rise again; for her Lord arose, and God is with his cause as he was with his Son. But, beloved, when men think that there is no God, and speak evil of the Most High, we need not wonder that they take liberty to persecute the chosen of God.

There is no telling to what lengths of cruelty men will go when unhindered by a sense of God’s presence. The psalm says, “They slay the widow and the stranger, and murder the fatherless.” Take God away, and what a place this world would be! Without the Christian religion, our earth would soon become a huge Aceldama, a field of blood. Ah, dear friends! men little know what they owe to the presence of God’s people even in a city like this. There is no reason but Christianity why London should not become like Paris during the Reign of Terror. If it were not that God has respect to the faithful that dwell in the midst of the city, he might give it over to the ungodly; and no greater plague could come upon it.

When men say, “Does God see? Does God know?” then they seek every man his own; and, if they can, they turn like tigers upon each other; society is torn to pieces, and the weak are devoured. If the Lord had not left us a remnant who fear his name, we had been as Sodom, and had been made like unto Gomorrah. There is no telling how far the evil one may be let loose to excite men to evil; but, in any case, the chosen means of the devil will be the spread of atheistic principles among the masses. A world without God is a world without fear, without law, without order, without hope.

Note well, that if we were persuaded that God did not hear, and did not see, there would be an end of worship. Would there not? Could you worship a deaf God? I must confess that such a being would not be God to me. If he could not hear, and hear all things, I should see at once a limit to his nature; and a being of limited nature is not God, since God is, and must be, of necessity, infinite, to be God at all. Though it is hard to conceive what infinity must be, we must predicate it of Godhead; and, if it be gone, Godhead is gone with it, and there is an end of belief in God.

The idea of a deaf God is absurd. Does not Jehovah see me? then he does not see all things-he is blind to something. Could you worship a blind God? If you could, you are on a par with those to whom you talk of sending missionaries; for their gods “have eyes, but they see not: they have ears, but they hear not”; and they that make them are like unto them. He is an idolater, and not a worshiper of the living and true God, who worships a being of whom he entertains the notion that he cannot hear or see.

There is clearly an end of worship when there is an end of belief in a hearing and observing God. Nor is this all it seems to me that there is, to a large extent, an end of the moral sense. If there is no God to punish sin, then every man will do as seems right in his own eyes; and why should he not? By what consideration will he be hindered? If there be no reward for righteousness, and righteousness involves self-denial, why should he deny himself? If there is to be no punishment for sin, and sin is pleasurable, why should he not seize the pleasure?

Take away all thought that God sees and hears, and you have removed the underlying basis upon which morality itself is to be built up. A godless world is a lawless world. Anarchy comes in when the fear of God goes out; and all the mischiefs that you can imagine, and much more, rush in like a flood. Without God, or even with a god that does not see and does not hear, where is the hope of the despairing? Tonight she will go home with a broken heart, for, alas! her last friend is dead. She will cover her face and sit astonished in her sorrow; and now what can she do? Poor woman, with no helper upon earth, where will you look? If she can bow by the side of that poor bed, and cast her care on God, that loves and cares for her, she will rise out of the deep of her distress. But if there be none in heaven to note her misery, the help of the helpless, the hope of the hopeless, is taken away. What now remains?

And he that is full of disease, and near to die, upon whom the physician has looked down as he lies in the hospital, and has shaken his head, and he knows that his doom is sealed, and that he will never leave that bed except to exchange it for the grave-if he has no God, how will he turn his face to the wall in the gall of bitterness, and moan in anguish never to be assuaged. But if God sees and hears, the widow is not without a helper, and the dying man, in all his agony, is not without a hope.

O cruel unbelief, put not out our one sun, take not from the mourner his one consolation. Let me lose myself, but not my God, who is more than life to me. Yes, if you can, you may blot the glory out of heaven, and silence every angel’s harp, and quench in endless night the sevenfold luster of the celestial light; but leave me my God, and I shall have all heaven back again in him, and somewhat more.

Oh, yes, a God that hears and sees-we must have him, or else we are orphaned indeed! If God does not see and hear, we are shipwrecked upon the rock of blank atheism. I do not care a bit what men believe in, whether it be pantheism, or agnosticism, or theism; if they have no personal God that hears and sees, they have, in fact, no God at all. “There is a power that makes for righteousness,” said one; but if that power is insensible, and never communicates with man, and never notices him, there is nothing in the forced admission of any use to him who makes it or hears it. It is big talk, such as men call “bosh,” and nothing more. Though it be veiled in the language of philosophy, the scientific jargon which makes God into insensible force is covert atheism.

I must have a God that hears and sees, and comes into the arena of my daily life, and helps me because he loves me, or else I have no God. My God dwells with me, and works for me, or else I have no God. Fine words, pretty phrases, and magnificent definitions, are so many wind-bags, and go for nothing: there cannot be a deaf God, nor a blind God, nor an insensible God. If any of you so believe, you should go to Bedlam, and find there your fit associates. As for us, we know that the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob is the living God, and his memorial is that he hears prayer. So much for that first point.

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