When you see a purple sunset or a field full of daffodils or a breathtaking mountain vista, what does it tell you about the Creator? This world is far from perfect, but God has given us glimpses of himself—and of the New Earth—in the beauty of his creation.
In a sermon titled “God Rejoicing in the New Creation,” Charles Spurgeon said this:
I must confess that I think it a most right and excellent thing that you and I should rejoice in the natural creation of God. I do not think that any man is altogether beyond hope who can take delight in the nightly heavens as he watches the stars and feel joy as he treads the meadows all adorned with buttercups and daisies.
The man who is altogether bad seldom delights in nature. He cares little enough for the fields unless he can hunt in them, little enough for lands unless he can raise rent from them, little enough for living things except for slaughter or for sale. He welcomes night only for the indulgence of his sins, but the stars are not one half as bright to him as the lights that men have kindled. For him indeed the constellations shine in vain.
One of the purest and most innocent of joys, apart from spiritual things, in which a man can indulge is a joy in the works of God. I confess I have no sympathy with the good man, who, when he went down the Rhine, dived into the cabin that he might not see the river and the mountains, lest he should be absorbed in them and forget his Savior. I like to see my Savior on the hills and by the shores of the sea. I hear my Father’s voice in the thunder and listen to the whispers of his love in the cadence of the sunlit waves. These are my Father’s works, and therefore I admire them. I seem all the nearer to him when I am among them.
If I were a great artist, I should think it a very small compliment if my son came into my house and said he would not notice the pictures I had painted because he only wanted to think of me. In doing so he would condemn my paintings, for if they were good for anything, he would rejoice to see my hand in them. Oh, but surely everything that comes from the hand of such a master artist as God has something of himself in it! The Lord rejoices in his works. Shouldn’t his people do so? He said of what he had made, “It is very good.” If a man thinks that what God has made is not very good, he cannot be very good himself. In this he contradicts his God. It is a beautiful world we live in.
There are lovely spots on this fair globe which ought to make even a blasphemer devout. I have said, among the mountains, “He who sees no God here is mad.” There are things that God has made which overwhelm with a sense of his omnipotence: how can men see them and doubt the existence of the Deity? Whether you consider the anatomy of the body or the arrangement of the mighty heavens, you wonder that the scorner does not bow his head—at least in silence—and own up to the infinite supremacy of God.
O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! (Psalm 8:9)
Excerpted from We Shall See God, in which Randy Alcorn has compiled profound spiritual insights on Heaven from the sermons of Charles Spurgeon, one of the greatest theologians of all time.
flower photo credit: chrisotruro via photopin cc
