Cofiant y diweddar Barch Robert Everett/Notes of a Sermon

Cofiant y diweddar Barch Robert Everett

gan David Davies (Dewi Emlyn)

NOTES OF A SERMON.

TAKEN BY HIS DAUGHTER CYNTHIA, SABBATH MORNING, DEC. 29, 1867

Job 13: 15.-"Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him; but I will maintain mine own ways before him." (In Welsh, "Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.")

Here we have an example of the experience of a Christian in deep affliction, of one who retained his confidence in God in the midst of all his afflictions. It is a part of Job's answer to Zophar the Naamathite.

1st. A few remarks touching the nature of hope, and the nature of the objects of hope. Hope is more than longing desire. It has a firm foundation of expectation.

The nature of the objects of a Christian's hope. They are things unseen. "For what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?" Great things. Redemption from all affliction, and from the cause of all affliction. Inheritance of eternal blessedness. Things to come. "It doth not yet appear," &c. The Christian is now in possession and enjoyment of many things, but the objects of his hope have not been realized, they are still in the future.

The grace of hope to continue after death. As God has prepared infinite fullness to be unfolded, age after age, as the soul shall be expanded, it seems proper to infer that the redeemed shall ever exercise hope for objects yet to come.

2d. A few considerations which tend to enable the Christian to exercise confidence in God in great tribulation. Consciousness of God's mercy and love. "I have loved thee with an everlasting love." "Behold what manner of love," &c. God's love shown in many ways. His providence, bestowment of temporal blessings, &c.; but all these are crowned by the gift of his Son. "Greater love hath no man than this." "God commended his love to us," &c.

This great love and mercy continues the same, though we are afflicted. Earthly parents do not love their children less when they see reproof and correction are needed. God declares that he chasteneth every son whom he loveth, and because he loveth him. We know that God's chastening is always in wisdom. "With judgment," that is, wisdom, with good design.

The memory of God's former dealings, what he has done for us and been to us. When God would rescue his people from their sufferings in Egypt, he inspired confidence by declaring through Moses, that, "I am that I am" had come to redeem them. I am all that I have been to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I, who have shown such great love in the past, I am that I am speaketh to you. So with the Christian in affliction, He "who hath redeemed him chasteneth him," and he cries, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in HIM."

God's precious promises. "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee." "He who spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, shall he not with him freely give us all things?" With him, that is, to those who have embraced him, who are brought nigh by his blood, made "one in him."

Consciousness of freedom from hypocrisy. This is one of the strongest grounds of the brightest Christian hope. Job stood firm in the consciousness of his own sincerity "But I will maintain mine own ways before him." In another place he says, "The root of the `matter shall be found in me;" and again, "O that my words were now written, that they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever! for I know that my Redeemer liveth." The Christian assurance 'may not always be very strong, but the true Christian, the weakest, may always be assured of some things. He knows, Oh yes, he knows that he loves some things he once hated, and he hates some things he once loved. He knows he loves the ordinances, the house of prayer, and that he loves the brethren, and "He that loveth his brother hath passed from death unto life."

To the Christian, there is wonderful import in that little word yet. Habakkuk, after enumerating an accumulation of distresses, cries out, "Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation; and in the last words of David we find, "Although my house be not so with God, yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant," &c.