Matthew 24:39 - Sermon Bible Commentary

Bible Comments

Matthew 24:39

The Moral of Accidents.

I. They who search those common Scriptures, the newspapers, will find many things that will trouble their hearts too much, if these hearts be susceptible and sympathising, unless they also search the Holy Scriptures. If we find God in the Holy Scriptures, then we may find a reason for much that happens in the world, or a reason for believing that there are good ends to be answered by accidents, even the most woful and destructive, although we may not be able to discover what these are. We do not get rid of accidents by protesting that they ought not to happen, and that, in our opinion, they never would happen if there were a God and He cared for the world. But if there be a God, and if He does care for the world, then faith in Him will help us when neither prudence nor science can. And this faith will at the same time make our prudence and science more serviceable to us, for it will instruct us to reason thus, we ought to think that, as accidents happen by God's permission, they have a meaning and a lesson for good; let us then seek this out; let us increase our knowledge of Nature's law, let us exercise fuller care in our obedience to it. When we are considering sad things that happen we should think: (1) How many accidents are but slight as to the hurt they do in comparison with the service of the lesson they teach; (2) from how many things "going to happen" we are saved when loss and danger appear imminent; (3) how manifest and honourable are the works and courage of man in averting accidents, and in lessening the harm they do; (4) how incessant is the beneficial operation of the great natural laws, and how varied in kind is their benefit; (5) how careless and untrue is the work of many men, how needful is it that they should have a warning they would heed; (6) how certain is it that unfaithfulness in work will bring disasters, small and great, which are misnamed when we call them accidents, for though we knew not, we might have known, that they were sure to happen.

II. Many men have lost their lives by accident; no man ever lost his soul by accident. And yet the accident that cuts short a man's life may bring his soul into a sad, disgraced condition, whence he has had ample opportunity to have saved it.

T. T. Lynch, Sermons for My Curates,p. 3.

References: Matthew 24:39. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xiv., No. 823; Ibid., Evening by Evening,p. 308. Matthew 24:40-42. T. J. Rowsell, Penny Pulpit,No. 3,665; Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times,"vol. iii., p. 49. Matthew 24:41. Homiletic Magazine,vol. xii., p. 114.

Matthew 24:39

39 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.