The World's Great Sermons, Volume 07: Hale to Farrar
Religion
The World's Great Sermons, Volume 07: Hale to Farrar
Sermons
There is a very good expression of God's way of dealing with us
in a line of the twenty-third Psalm, "My cup runneth over." This
seems unnecessary. To have the cup full, or a little less than full,
is enough for us, and more convenient. For us, but not for God,
who delights in filling it; and when we bid Him stay His hand, He
keeps on pouring, and the water flows, till, presently, the cup is
overflowing, but not because we thought to have it so, but because
of His great delight in giving; until it would seem as if He could
not stop, or content Himself with that which He has already bestowed
upon us. Let this stand as a simple expression of His way with us.
When we come upon anything that all good men approve, we may be very
certain that we have found something which God Himself approves,
and which is the method of His life. We like, among ourselves, this
principle of the cup that runneth over. Our liking for it we have
inherited from God. We might expect, therefore, that when the Son of
God has His life in the world He will live by this rule, which is of
heaven and of earth; and it is even so. His first miracle would seem
unnecessary. There have been people who blindly but honestly wished
that He had never wrought it. Why did He do it if there was no need
of it, if it were even possible that it should be wrested from its
meaning? He had gone as a guest to a wedding, perhaps because the
bride was his friend, and there came that grave calamity which would
mar the feast; for presently it was whispered to Him, "They have
no wine." Surely they could have a wedding without wine. Not that
wedding. Not in the custom of that time. He knew that the bride,
if she lived to be old, would never recover from the shame of her
wedding-day, whose beauty was lost. Here was a necessity, in love,
in kindness; and that the cheeks of this girl might not redden with
shame, He reddened the water into wine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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