12 JUNE
Hope and quietly wait
‘It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD.’ Lamentations 3:26
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Lamentations 3:25–33
This observation is recorded for the use of the church and has been confirmed by the experience of the Lord’s people. I shall endeavour to show the meaning of the need. I would not have any go away with a mistake and say, ‘If so, I am right enough; to be sure I hope to be saved, and I am quietly waiting for it.’ But enquire whether you have any ground for your hope, whether you know what the salvation is, and what it is quietly to wait. Salvation is a deliverance from sin and a renewal of heart, and the having or obtaining this salvation is to arrive at well grounded persuasion that it is thus with us, that our sins are forgiven, that we have the spirit of adoption which is the earnest of the full inheritance. The hope here spoken of implies a sense of the worth of this salvation and a regard to the promise of God. It is suited to the case of a convinced soul. If you see you have deserved to perish and believe there is forgiveness with God, it is good and right for you to hope that though at present you cannot feel an interest in this salvation so as to call it your own, yet in the Lord’s due time it shall be yours. Quietly to wait for it is not to sit down easy and careless about it. This is not good, but dangerous, and, if persisted, destructive. Neither is it possible when once the evil and bitterness of sin is known. To wait signifies a careful and diligent attendance on the means of grace, as it is expressed in Proverbs 8:34, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. And the word quietly expresses the temper in which it becomes a sinner to wait—without complaining or repining—to be content to wait on, whatever delays or seeming disappointments we may meet with.
FOR MEDITATION: Surely, O Lord, the word that thou hast spoken concerning thy creature and upon which thou hast enabled me beyond hope to believe in hope shall not be spoken in vain. I trust that thou who hast said it art also fully able to perform all thy good promises in me and that as thou never yet didst finally cast out any poor wretch that came to thee for mercy, thou wilt not suffer me to be the first.
Diary, 1 July 1752
SERMON: LAMENTATIONS 3:26 [1/3]
Milo 