“No man cared for my soul.”
(Psalms 142:4)
“Master, carest thou not that we perish?”
(Mark 4:38)

No one is more interested in rescue than the man who has just become aware he is in danger. The dozing passenger on the falling airplane quickly loses his drowsiness when he is alerted to the impending crash.

We listened to two Bible stories this morning -one from the Old Testament and one from the New – both dealing with the subject of impending dangers and the possibilities of rescue. The lesson from the Gospel of Mark presents the alarm of the disciples caught in a storm at sea. Frantically they put their question to Jesus who is asleep in the ship’s stern: “Master, carest thou not that we perish?” Then follows the description of how Jesus stopped the storm and rescued them.

The other story from Genesis records the intercessory prayer of Abraham for the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorroh, when Abraham becomes aware of the destruction God is about to visit on them for their gross, evil ways. And the question of care here is addressed to God by Abraham who asks: “Carest thou not that good people will perish with the wicked?”

Both these stories pose the question: “Who cares when danger and destruction threaten?  Does God care? Do we care? How much do we care? Do we care enough to pray, as Abraham did? Do we care enough to do more than pray?”

First, let us notice the strong agreement of both the Old and the New Testament scriptures on the broad Biblical teaching that God is concerned over the salvation of all human beings. God cares what happens to them all. The disciples in peril of their lives on the Sea or Galilee awaken Jesus with their excited cry: “Master, carest thou not that we perish?”

Though this is a genuine expression of their desperate need and cry for His immediate help for them and them alone, there is also implied the suggestion that surely He, who has never spared Himself to rescue from sickness and sin and suffering the multitudes of unknown and unworthy people who flocked to Him — surely He would not fail His own close and dearest friends in their emergency.

Then we read the amazing story of Abraham’s haggling with God over the number of righteous persons in the city of Sodom for whose sake God would spare the whole populace.  This story reveals the desperate concern of the God of all the universe for every child of His — even the wicked ones.

But where did Abraham get this strange interest he has in the welfare of the sinners of Sodom? Where, why from his — Abraham’s friendship with God. That’s where he acquired it. That is where Abraham learned that it would not be presumptuous to ask and expect of God that the wicked would be spared for the sake of a few righteous.

John Donne’s famous quotation about never sending to ask for whom the bell tolls — begins with these words, not so well known, but ever so biblically significant: “All mankind is of one author and in one volume. No man is an island unto himself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Whatever the emergency, no matter whence the danger rises to threaten the physical or spiritual life of any of His children, God is concerned about their welfare. He is their creator, their author who has bound the story of their lives all in one volume. He is their loving Heavenly Father and is Himself preparing for their rescue and their salvation. God cares.

Von Hugel, that great hearted Roman Catholic theologian, has said that the whole of the Christian message can be summed up in just these two words: “God cares.” And our own illustrious Presbyterian leader, Dr. John Mackay of Princeton, observed that God cares primarily about two things: about righteousness and about mercy. These are the two great Christian antinomies, said Mackay. He compared God’s righteousness to a majestic, towering mountain range which through the centuries stands, unmoved and unmoving, proclaiming to the spirits of men and women: “Thus far shalt thou go and no farther.” But God’s mercy he compared to the gentle rain which comes down from higher up, even than the mountains, and causes the dry and rocky slopes to blossom as a garden.

And in the cross of Jesus Christ, John Mackay held these two seemingly irreconcilable aspects of God’s concern: his care about man’s being righteous as even God is righteous, and his care about showing mercy to man, are met in sweet, sad union. For in the atoning death of the Savior upon the cross, God opens up a new way for sinful people who have failed and fallen short of fulfilling God’s demands for perfect righteousness, nevertheless still may enter into loving fellowship with Him through the mercy He has shown in Christ.

Oh, the wonders of the infinite reach of the Divine Care! Our human nature is such that when others let us down, and we are outraged in our loves and our hopes — we come finally to an “acceptance” of that condition and proceed to build our future, truncated life upon the fact of that rejected love or blasted hope. If we did not accept these as facts, we would remain in our frustrations — we would lose our sanity.

But God? Why, the nature of the Omnipotent Love is such that God refuses ever to accept us at our rebellious worst, or even at our reluctant second best. God always holds us in His great heart at the peak of our supreme best, not as we are, but as we can become, by divine grace; and He never lets go that image of what we may become in Christ.

This is the teaching of Jesus in the parables of the lost coin, the lost sheep, and the lost son. God never accepts as final the fact of our lostness, whatever form it may take. He continues to care — to care about righteousness and mercy, even for inveterate sinners like you and me. Oh, how far above our thoughts are His ways: how incomparable to our best love, His love, which is “broader than the measure of man’s mind, for the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind!”

Now next, let us notice a second remarkable agreement in the Old Testament and the New Testament accounts of what men and women must do in every emergency when the rescue and salvation of God are earnestly desired.

Both scriptures are emphatic in emphasizing that salvation is of God alone. Abraham has no thought of anything else in the hush before the holocaust but to get down on his knees and plead for God’s mercy that the impending doom may be averted. And when the Storm on Galilee sends waves over the side of the ship and the boat is about to sink, the frightened disciples turn only to Jesus.

In this directional pointer to the source of our human salvation, these biblical passages are solidly with the whole of scripture. In Isaiah the message rings: “Cease from man, whose breath is in his nostrils. I, and I only, am thy Savior, saith the Lord. Look unto me, all the ends of the earth, and be saved.”

Does this then fix the role of God’s people in every threatening catastrophe as that of complete passivity — quietly waiting on the Lord to save them and those for whom they intercede, just how and when God will? Is this the watchword?

Sit down, O men of God.

His Kingdom He will bring

Whenever it shall suit Himself.

You cannot do a thing.

Oh, no! The words of our great hymn resound:

Rise up! O men of God!

Have done with lesser things.

Give heart and soul and mind and strength

To serve the King of Kings!

The divine order of life with its rescue and salvation is a partnership between God and His people — a very unequal partnership — to be sure, one in which God is always the giver and we are always the receivers, but a partnership for all that. As our God cares, so also we must care.

The account of Abraham’s intercessory prayer is an eloquent exposition of the divine doctrine of the vicarious saving power of a righteous remnant. As the pinch of salt will preserve the portion of meat from putrefaction, so in the moral and spiritual realm, our care for righteousness and mercy born of God’s care and released through us has power to stay destructive evil and save.

General Booth said that he founded the Salvation Army on the conviction that no person could ever sink so low in any state of society, or in that person’s own estimate of himself or herself: be that one a murderer, or thief, or pervert — but what that one could be reclaimed and redeemed, if only he or she could be genuinely persuaded that just one other living soul cared whether he went up or down, sank or swam, in the stream of life.

Well, Jesus Christ founded His whole church on that conviction. And the church continues to exist only for the purpose of incarnating, voicing, placarding, conveying in genuine fashion this amazing, unlimited care of God for righteousness and mercy for every living soul.

And how does the church go about accomplishing this urgent task? The Christian message is not good advice urging people to achieve something. Rather it is the invitation to everyone to receive something God has done for all. But God needs our caring concern for others — our voices, our faith, and obedience in getting that saving message to the perishing.

And when this is done, by us — weak and threatened — yes, and even sinful men and women, (for there are no other kind on earth) — then because of and through our care, our trust and obedience to Christ — the drama of God’s salvation, moves uninterruptedly, triumphantly on.