Forgiveness generating fear.
God's mercy is, with striking truth to nature, made a ground for godly fear. "In the sense of his mercy we know best the exceeding 'sinfulness of sin; ' so far as we feel that sin is still clinging to us, we must fear with godly fear; so far as we feel its chains are broken, 'fear is cast out by love.' Thus the cross is to us at once the secret of penitence and of faith." These three points may be opened, illustrated, and enforced.
I. GOD'S FORGIVENESS REVEALS OUR SIN. Here a distinction can be made. God's denunciations, punishments, and judgments, which we may hear about or observe, bring us what may be called, and what are primarily, intellectual apprehensions of the evil of sin. Very many, indeed, only know sin through the teaching of its consequences. But it is certain that sin cannot be really or worthily known in that way. Its root is not in the intelligence, but in the will; and the atmosphere in which it thrives is not knowledge, but feeling. It is a moral matter, and it is revealed in moral actions. God's forgiveness touches feeling, and feeling throws its own special light on that which is forgiven. The wrong of it comes to feeling; the peril of it comes to intelligence. No man knows the hatefulness of his sin until he realizes that it is divinely forgiven.
II. GOD'S FORGIVENESS PRODUCES A WORTHY FEAR. That kind of fear which makes us anxiously watchful lest we should prove unworthy of such forgiveness, and even need that forgiveness again. The sense of forgiveness binds us to God in such thankfulness and love that we fear to grieve him. And the forgiveness makes us so sensible of our own infirmities that we can but walk watchfully, as those who fear to fall. And we can never be quite sure that the sin forgiven was not rooted in a weakness which we still retain, and which is still to us a source of peril. So we fear for ourselves.
III. GOD'S FORGIVENESS REMOVES OUR FEAR. Because a forgiveness declares and guarantees an interest in us. God's forgiveness pledges continuous help and blessing. It reveals God to us so that we are able to cherish an absolute confidence in him. And while it puts us upon every endeavor not to sin, it keeps us from all despairing fear by assuring us that, even if we should be overcome by our frailties, "there is forgiveness with him." His forgivings do not exhaust his mercy, but pledge it for days to come.—R.T.
Our waiting is a watching.
"In the year 1830, on the night preceding the first of August, the day the slaves in our West Indian colonies were to come into possession of the freedom promised them, many of them, we are told, never went to bed at all. Thousands and tens of thousands of them assembled in their places of worship, engaging in devotional duties and singing praises to God, waiting for the first streak of the light of the morning of that day on which they were to be made free. Some of their number were sent w the hills, from which they might obtain the first view of the coming day, and by a signal intimate to their brethren down in the valley the very first moment of breaking dawn." They "watched for the morning." The kind of watching that comes home to us is the anxious watching by the sick-beds of loved friends. Night-work is especially trying. Sentinel-watching may be also in mind.
I. A WAITING THAT IS A WEARY COMPULSION. We do not want to wait. We are made to wait. And the watching for the end of the waiting-time is simply a prolonged agony. Man often deals with his fellow-man thus; and God sometimes finds it needful to put his people into this hard discipline. Whether we like it or not, we must wait. Active man who would do something—must do nothing. Illust.: waiting for openings in life.
II. A WAITING THAT IS A HOPELESS ENDURANCE. The kind of waiting that belongs to times of uncertainty. We watch vainly, at last almost hopelessly, for the daily post. Tennyson pictures this condition in his 'Mariana'—
"She only said, 'My life is dreary:
He cometh not,' she said;
She said, 'I'm aweary, aweary;
I would that I were dead!'"
Even at such times the hopelessness would pass, though the enduring had to remain, if only the watching had its uplook as well as its onlook. Its calm resting in the infinite wisdom and love that permits, as well as its peering away into the distant east for the first glimpse of morning.
III. A WAITING THAT IS A LOVING EXPECTANCY. And that our waiting may always be if we see it to be our Father-God's call to wait. There is his thought in it, his purpose in it. We may be sure of the "end of the Lord." It is well altogether to dismiss from our minds all such ideas of Divine sovereignty as even suggest that he ever "afflicts willingly." We seem to be waiting for some change in our earthly circumstances, but we are really waiting for God to change our circumstances; and we may wait with the calm, and even joyous, expectancy that he will.—R.T.