I. Consider the sense of wonder in man, and what generally excites it. That God has bestowed on man such a faculty we all know. It is one of the first and most constant emotions in our nature. The greatest minds and the truest hearts preserve this feeling fresh to the very last, and go through life finding new cause for intelligent wonder day after day. The feeling may be excited: (1) by the new or unexpected; (2) by the beautiful or grand; (3) by the mysterious which surrounds man.
II. God has made provision for this sense of wonder in His revealed word. (1) The Bible addresses our sense of wonder by constantly presenting the new and unexpected to us. (2) It sets before us also things beautiful and grand, without which the new would be a matter of idle curiosity. (3) If we come to the third source of wonder, that which raises it to awe,it is the peculiar province of the Bible to deal with this.
III.. Notice the means we are to use in order to have God's word thus unfolded. The prayer of the Psalmist may be our guide, "Open Thou mine eyes, that I may see." (1) He asks for no new revelation. The request is not for more, but that he may employ well that which he possesses. (2) He asks for no new faculty. The eyes are there already, and they need only to be opened.
J. Ker, Sermons,p. 29.
I. We are all born spiritually blind. When man lost his innocence, he lost also his sight. Blindness is the effect of sin.
II. Consider some of the characteristics of this blindness. (1) Blindness deprives its subjects of many pleasures which God's goodness lavishes on us, and through our eyes pours into our hearts. (2) Blindness makes the condition of its subjects one of. painful dependence. (3) Blindness exposes its subjects to deception. (4) Blindness exposes us to danger.
III. The eyes of the blind being opened, they behold wondrous things out of the law of God. Open a blind man's eyes. With what amazement, happiness, overflowing joy, will he gaze, nor tire gazing, on all above and around him, from the sun blazing in heaven to the tiniest flower that springs in beauty at his feet! And let God open a sinner's eyes, the Bible will seem to him a new book, and he seem to himself a new creature. He will see his heart, and wonder at its wickedness. He will see the Saviour, and wonder at His love. He will see how God has spared him, and wonder at His longsuffering. He will see salvation as the one thing needful, and wonder he could have taken a night's rest, ventured to close his eyes in sleep, till he had found peace with God.
IV. God only can open our eyes. We need sight as well as light. Abroad, among the Alps, where the road, leaving the gay and smiling valley, climbs into the realms of eternal winter, or is cut out of the face of precipices, down which one false step hurls the traveller into a gorge where the foaming torrent seems but a silver thread, tall crosses stand. And so, when the path is buried in the drift that spreads a treacherous crust over yawning crevice and deadly crag, he, by keeping the line of crosses, braves the tempest, and walks safely where otherwise it were death to venture. But set a blind man on such a road, and he never reaches home; the earth his bed and the snow his shroud, he sleeps the sleep that knows no waking. Now there is a Cross that points out man's way to heaven; but unless the eyes that sin sealed are open have been opened by God to see it, and all the way-marks that mercy has set up to that happy home our feet shall "stumble upon the dark mountains,", and we shall perish for ever.
T. Guthrie, Speaking to the Heart,p. 183.
Two forms of Divine teaching are implied in these words: revelation and spiritual apprehension to receive that which is revealed, truth in the written word and the inward illumination of the Holy Spirit, the one therefore universal, common to all men the open Bible, the Gospel preached to every creature under heaven the other personal, private, incommunicable by man to man. And in this prayer both these are equally recognised as God's gift. "Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law."
I. Notice, first, that the distinction which is here implied is in perfect harmony and analogy with all the conditions of human knowledge. Every branch of human knowledge has its objective and subjective side. In every art, every science, every pursuit, there are these two things: (1) general laws, rules, theories, principles, illustrations, examples, which can be committed to writing, stored up in books, taught in words by the teacher to the scholar; and (2) there is the personal aptitude, which may be developed by culture if it be latent, but which can never be bestowed when it is wanting.
II. The Bible amply recognises and abundantly teaches this double character of Divine knowledge, this analogy between Divine knowledge and every other kind of knowledge, but at the same time with a broad and vital difference. According to the teaching of the Bible, incapacity for spiritual truth is not the misfortune of individuals; it is the calamity of the human race: and, on the other hand, power to receive and apprehend spiritual truth is not the gift of genius, not the acquirement of plodding industry; it is the dark gift of God; it is the open eye, which God has opened to behold the great things out of His law.
III. It is an unspeakably consoling and delightful reflection that this impossibility of attaining spiritual truth apart from Divine teaching, which God's word so plainly sets forth, puts no hindrance in any man's way, no hindrance in the way of the simplest learner, no hindrance in the way of the unbeliever any more than of the believer, if only the unbeliever is desirous of knowing what is truth.
IV. This prayer implies the Divine inspiration and authority of the Bible; for is it not plainly incontrovertible that if the Bible be a book which the wisest man cannot understand, and therefore cannot interpret, without Divine teaching direct from God, it must be a book which no man could have written without such teaching?
E. R. Conder, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxi., p. 280.
The life of the soul has its wonders as well as the life of the body and the life of nature. It is a complex and mysterious thing. None but "opened eyes" can discern its marvellous treasures; and with themthe further we see the greater is the wonder. God's discipline, God's patience, God's adjustment of men's powers and defects, God's method of answering prayer or seeming to be deaf to it in these and similar dealings we can, if we will, find ever-fresh food for wonder, if only He grant us the gift of a teachable heart and an open eye.
I. Think of that phenomenon, so well known to all Christians, God's strength made perfect in weakness. Sometimes it is in spite of men's weakness; sometimes it is actually in consequence of it. The wonderful thing is to see how God's strength often takes hold of a weak character, and works upon it His miracles of purification. Where the worldly critic despairs, the instructed Christian hopes.
II. Consider another phenomenon in God's discipline: the use which He makes of disappointment. Is there no room for wonder here? To a very young boy disappointment is crushing and blinding. Everything and everybody seem set against him. But when growing years or a riper Christian experience has at last opened his eyes, he begins to discern "wondrous things" in the Divine law of disappointment. He sees, and others perhaps see still more plainly that that was the rock on which his character was built.
III. Notice another wondrous thing of God's law: His permission of sin. Sin is overruled into a trainer of righteousness. There are few more wondrous things in the moral world than to trace how a good man has been trained by his own sins, or rather trained by the Holy. Spirit of God through the permitted instrumentality of his own personal sins.
IV. Once more, if we look at the method by which God works His plans of improvement, may we not find abundant cause for reverent wonder? Think of His patience; His choice of feeble instruments; His choice, too, of unexpected and, as we should have thought, inappropriate means to work out His own ends; His discouragement sometimes of the higher agencies, and apparent preference for the lower. "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!"
H. M. Butler, Harrow Sermons,2nd series, p. 169.
The man who uttered these words felt that he was under Divine law. He felt that he knew it badly, and that it deeply concerned him to know it well; that to realise its sublimity and comprehensiveness, its marvellous wisdom, its perfect righteousness, would be light, and strength, and life to his soul, but that so to realise it God must vouchsafe to him a sacred influence, a spiritual enlightenment, and, he adds, sufficient faith in his God to believe that He was able and willing thus to help him.
I. There are assuredly countless wonders to be beheld in God's law, and we need only open eyes to behold them. In the Bible and other books we have the statements of God's laws; but these laws themselves are far too real to be in any book. No law of God, natural or spiritual, can be shut up in a book.
II. While all the laws of God should, as far as possible, be objects of interest and admiration, yet these laws are not all of the same practical importance to us. There are many of them which we must all be ignorant of, and which we may safely be ignorant of; there are many of them which we might know had we only time to make ourselves acquainted with them, yet we cannot consistently with duty spare the time necessary to understand them. On the other hand, there is a class of laws of awful significance to us, of which we must on no account be ignorant. Clearly it was these laws, which he also describes as the commandments, and precepts, and statutes of God, His righteous judgments, and His testimonies, that the Psalmist prayed to behold.
III. It is not enough to have God's law before us, or His truth disclosed; but we need also to have our eyes opened to see the law, our minds helped to understand the truth. The reason of man can no more act independently of God than his will can. Just as the will has been made to find its life in the holiness of God, reason has been made to find its life in the wisdom of God. Unless God open our eyes to behold the wonders of His law, no clearness in the outward revelation of its wonders will give us a true view of it. We shall see and yet not perceive.
R. Flint, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxii., p. 8.
References: Psalms 119:18. F. D. Maurice, Sermons,vol. v., p. 77; J. Keble, Sermons from Advent to Christmas Eve,p. 312; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons,p. 59.