Ecclesiastes 3:14

Ecclesiastes 3:14

It is a thought worthy of Almighty God that everything He touches partakes of His own immortality; that He cannot lay to His hand in vain; that what has once lain in His counsels must one day, sooner or later, stand out into the light, and that which once has taken form under His power must go on for ever and ever.

I. The heavens which God made at the first and the earth which God made at the first they were and they are eternal. This world, or at least part of it, was made a paradise. Think you that man's rebellion has put God away from His first design? Nay, it has confirmed it; it has secured it. The sin brought the Cross, the Cross brought the throne of Jesus, and the throne of Jesus shall restore, and restore ten-thousandfold, the forfeited Eden.

II. From time to time God has opened His mouth and made known to man the future. And so it comes to pass that we have the "sure word of prophecy." And what is a prophecy? A thing for ever, with manifold intent. And the whole Bible what is the Bible but one mind once revealed? And yet all the things which are transacted upon this globe all that men say, and think, and do, all joys and sorrows, all good and evil are only verifications and transcripts of that book; and constantly we meet God's word in our everyday life. And as I trace that strange harmony, that response between God's word and God's world, "I know that whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever."

III. These curious bodies of ours they are God's masterpiece. And when these bodies, spiritual, but the same, come up like the flower from the seed, what is this but "I know that whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever "? And if so with the body, how much more with the soul. "The gifts and calling of God are without repentance."

J. Vaughan, Sermons,1868, p. 44.