Drawing Lightning.
The wonderful suggestiveness of this passage is found in its theme. A wild threat, four hundred years old, is suddenly removed in a flash of benediction. The curse in Malachi is omitted in Luke the lightning is drawn. The Gospel fulfils the law when it accepts children. God receives the fathers into favour and communion again when their hearts are turned to their offspring. This is the doctrine of the text. Hence, I present now as a legitimate subject of consideration the work of the Sunday school organisation; it discharges harmlessly the Old Testament maledictions, and it becomes the instrument of fulfilling the benedictions of the New. It is the world's helper and the Church's servant.
I. The subjects of Sunday school effort are, of course, understood to be the young of our race. Oftentimes these are the least noticed and the last noticed of all classes of beings with souls. And yet there is no truth more settled than that civilisation, chivalry, and Christianity reach their highest culmination in the caring for children.
II. Consider next the nature of the work we desire and propose to do on behalf of children. This is no less than to seek out, to educate, and to redeem children. (1) To seek them out. They must be sought out and brought under the power of the Gospel. They never will be until Christians become more Christlike. Brazilian rivers are full of diamonds; what then? The costliest jewels will only drift down the current and be lost in the sands, unless somebody goes to crown-making and gathers them carefully up. (2) To educate them becomes another part of this work. There is no agency which is doing more in this direction than the Sunday school. This will appear if you consider the class of instructors, the lesson they inculcate, the text-book they use, and the spirit by which they are actuated. (3) To redeem children, however, is the main end. God converts souls; our office is to lead them up under the force of the means of grace. And is there not in the Sunday school arch a fitting symbol of the Divine promise, the very bow of the ancient covenant, bending over these young immortals, with its benediction of peace?
C. S. Robinson, Sermons on Neglected Texts,p. 182.
References: Luke 1:17. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. v., p. 273.Luke 1:18. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxiv., p. 1,405.