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SERMON XXII.

THE PATIENT CONFIDENCE OF A CHRISTIAN.

HEB. X. 35-37.

"CAST NOT AWAY THEREFORE YOUR confidenCE, WHICH HATH GREAT RECOMPENSE OF REWARD. FOR YE HAVE NEED OF PATIENCE, THAT AFTER YE HAVE DONE THE WILL OF GOD, Ye MIGHT RECEIVE THE PROMISE. FOR YET A LITTLE WHILE, AND HE THAT SHALL COME WILL COME, AND WILL NOT TARRY."

THE change made in the condition of a true believer is momentous and decisive. Before he believed on Christ, he was exposed to the wrath of God; to all the dreadful penalties of his violated law. His heart proud and earthly, however refined and cultivated his understanding" was enmity against God, not being subjected to the law of God." But by faith in Christ he has passed from wrath to favour, from danger to safety, from agitation to peace. He is no longer an outcast from his Father's family, but "a fellow-citizen with the saints, and of the household of God." He approaches God

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by that new and living way" which God himself has consecrated, and he enters thereby with sacred boldness within the veil. He knows his relations with God to be those of peace and amity; for Christ has borne the chastisement of his peace, and by his stripes has his soul been healed. And while the hypocrite and the formalist alike make ultimate shipwreck of their faith, his confidence endures, for he knows whom he has believed. He stands firm amidst the waves by which others are wrecked; he is prepared to make the full sacrifice which God in his providence may require. "Ye took joyfully," says the apostle, in the preceding verses, "ye took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that you have in heaven a better and more enduring substance." But as no trial is in itself joyous, but grievous; and as the spirit, though willing, is lodged in a weak and fragile tenement, the apostle was anxious to cheer and to encourage the Christians to whom he wrote, to hold "fast the beginning of their confidence stedfast unto the end." "Cast not away your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward. For ye have need of patience, that after ye have done the will of God, ye should inherit the promise. For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, he will not tarry." Let us consider,

I. THE APOSTLE'S EXHORTATION.

And

II. THE GROUNDS ON WHICH IT IS ENFORCED.

I. Let us notice, in the first place, THE APOSTLE'S EXHORTATION. "Cast not away

therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward." Now to explain this expression, let us recall another saying of the apostle : "We walk by faith, and not by sight."

A real Christian has heard and has received the testimony of God, respecting himself and the world. He finds himself to be depraved, and the world, together with himself, to be under the curse of the divine law; but he has heard and has received other testimonies of God, respecting the free and full redemption wrought for his soul by Jesus Christ his Saviour. "These testimonies he has taken as his heritage for ever, for they are the rejoicing of his heart." The promises of God refer, however, chiefly to things yet distant and unseen. They are not referred to the judgment of sense. "The eye hath not seen, nor the ear heard them; but God hath Spirit," to the soul. taken of the glorious things of Christ, and has showed them to his view, with a light and evidence known to those alone "whose faith stands not in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God." This faith in the promises

revealed them by his

The Holy Ghost has

In the Scrip

of God produces confidence. tures, faith does not simply mean the assent of the mind to some testimony of God, but such an assent as carries the heart on to confidence in its worth and reality. Faith in Christ is not simply the belief that he is the Son of God, the Saviour; but the confident belief that as such he is actually the deliverer of the soul which trusts in him. Faith in Christ cannot be separated from this confidence. And this confidence belongs likewise to the belief of every other promise connected with the felicity of the eternal world. "Ye took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing that you have in yourselves a better and more enduring substance." It is this confidence which gains the incessant victory. The simple belief of the proposition, that Jesus is the Son of God, might still leave the heart a prey to the worst passions; but the belief which is accompanied by confidence in him as made "unto the soul, wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption," bears such a soul upwards in all its tendencies, while it throws the splendour of this lower world into obscurity.

The apostle then directs the Christian not to cast away his confidence. He is ever prone to cast it away. He is habituated to judge by sense; and hence to keep his confidence firm, is the work of God upon his soul; while it re

quires incessant watchfulness on his own part. When Peter descended from the vessel into the sea, at his Master's command, he confided in the power of him who had issued that command. His belief that it was the command of Christ, was accompanied by confidence in him who had given it. But when the waves began to swell, the winds to howl, and his feet to sink, he began to judge of his situation by the standard of sense, and he lost the hold of his confidence. He feared that he should perish. His Lord rebuked him: "Oh thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?" Had he not cast away his confidence, he would have walked on amidst the swellings of the deep, and would have smiled in the security of his condition.

The Christian therefore is directed never to cast from him this confidence, but to retain it carefully; to guard against the ever rising spirit of unbelief, which as far as it prevails, will infallibly deaden his moral energies, augment his difficulties, and destroy his peace.

This

confidence has indeed great recompense of reward. He who confides is happy. How sublime were the emotions of Moses as he stood by the waves of the Red Sea, at the "Stand still and

head of the hosts of Israel:

see the salvation of God." Similar was the

confidence of those three men who in the view

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