Matthew 18:14

Matthew 18:14

Nothing impresses us so much with God's inexhaustible love in creation as tracing it into its minute provisions, and searching for its arrangements which escape the common sight of men. However we may fail to reach the extent of that love of creation, one lesson is powerfully impressed upon every reasonable being by such appearances that it is not the will of our Creator that one of the least of His creatures should perish. Where the farthest and smallest rillets are pure the fountain must be pure also. The creative mind of God is love.

I. When we speak of God's creative love we must infer that human effort is included in that creative love; that when our Creator declared it to be His will that His creatures should not perish He took into account the powers which he bestowed on man. In creation God has ordained that we should be workers together with Him, in carrying out His beneficent purposes.

II. From the world of matter let us pass upwards to the world of spirit. This, too, is God's creation. And here likewise His creative love is equally visible. But here, again, as in creative, so in redemptive love, God distinctly takes into account and weaves into His purposes the agency and diligence of His people. Without man, it is His ordinance that His earth remain unfilled, and bring not forth bread to the eater; without man, it is equally His ordinance that spiritual culture shall not take place. We should never, in creation, providence, or grace, sever the love of God from that which it involves, our own most earnest striving together with Him in the direction of that love; every thwarting and making void of God's love is against ourselves, not against Him. If the husbandman, through idleness or wilfulness, till not his ground, though others so far lose, he is the chief sufferer; if a church, or a family, or an individual work not together with God in His will that none should perish, there may be general loss ensuing, but that church, that family, that man shall bear the chief burden to all eternity.

H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons,vol. iv., p. 257.

Consider the love of God for little children. It is

I. A love of utter unselfishness.

II. A love of delight in them.

III. A love of compassion towards them.

IV. A love of trust in the almost infinite capacities of children.

T. Gasquoine, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xii., p. 389.

References: Matthew 18:14. H. M. Butler, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xviii., p. 241; see also Harrow Sermons,p. 230; C. Garrett, Loving Counsels,p. 161.Matthew 18:15. A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve,p. 209. Matthew 18:15. Parker, Inner Life of Christ,vol. iii., p. 49.