Genesis 49:18 I have waited for your salvation, O LORD. I. How BELIEVERS LIVE. They live waiting for the salvation of the Lord. This comprehends many important particulars both in doctrine and experience. 1. A conviction of the need of salvation. The sick man only needs healing; the man in danger only needs rescuing: to offer to one that is not sick a remedy, and to one that is not lost, salvation, would only be mockery. And this teaches us the reason of a fact which is awful: the whole, in their own estimation, refuse a physician; those who are unconscious that they are lost, ruined, and undone, neglect the great salvation. 2. A knowledge of the method by which salvation is to be obtained. Waiting for a thing implies a sense of its value and importance. 3. Diligence in the use of those means with which the salvation of the soul is connected. Faith and hope do not lie dormant in the heart; they are active principles, always in exercise. The more diligent and devout your attendance on the means which God has appointed in dependence on the influences of the Spirit, the more clear will be your vision, the more fervent your desires, the more full your foretastes of salvation. Waiting on the Lord, you shall renew your strength, and go on in the beauty of holiness, till you appear perfect before God in Zion. 4. That the hope of salvation is the grand support of the believer, and the only source of his consolations under all the sufferings to which he is exposed. He "endures, as seeing Him that is invisible," and "in hope rejoices against hope." II. How BELIEVERS DIE. The reigning temper of his heart is still the same. He lived, and now he dies, "waiting for the salvation of the Lord." "The ruling passion" is "strong in death." The last emotion, when nature sinks, and all is feebleness and decay, is a desire for the salvation of God. And this implies that the believer considers death — 1. As an entrance on immortality. Surely when he says, "I have waited for Thy salvation, O Lord!" it does not imply that he wishes his being to become extinct. David knew that he should live in the presence of God. Jacob knew that when "the earthly house of his tabernacle was dissolved," he had "a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." 2. As the termination of his sufferings. His temptations and sorrows can follow him no further. At the gate of death he lays down his burden: he is to sigh and suffer no more for ever. His warfare is accomplished. His long, tedious, painful struggles are at an end. Death, which is to some the beginning of sorrows and of sufferings, is to him the end of both. 3. As the harvest, when all the graces of the spirit would be ripened, and matured, and gathered, it is said that the good man shall come to his grave, "like as a shock of corn cometh in his season." Observe this figure: The fallow ground is first broke up, the seed is sown, and it remains unseen. But the process of vegetation is going forward; the germ is expanding; ere long the green blade appears. The frosts pass over it, and it withers; but the sun shines, and it recovers. At length, after it has experienced a few storms, and been impeded in its growth by noxious weeds, in consequence of fruitful showers and genial sunshine, it is fully ripe and fit for the harvest. So the fallow ground of the heart is broken up; the good seed of the kingdom, the incipient principles of grace are implanted. They are hidden for a season, but they proceed; there is the principle of vitality; and we see "first the blade, then the ear, and after that the full corn in the ear." All the graces of the Spirit are then ripened and perfected; faith into vision, hope into fruition, and love is made perfect so as to cast out all fear. Then the believer shall see God without an interposing cloud, love Him with a perfect heart, and serve Him without weariness. 4. An assurance of a glorious resurrection. When Jacob was dying, he took an oath of his son that he would bury him in the land of Canaan. And Joseph also "gave commandment concerning his bones." What should make these holy men so anxious about the place of their interment? The world is lost to a dead man; and what matters it whether he lies in Egypt or in Canaan? What could it he for, but to express their faith in the promise of God; their belief that death would not cut them off from His favour. The place of their burial, therefore, will remain as a monument of their faith to the latest period of time: and when the angels gather up their fragments, where are they to look for them but in that land where they are laid, and where Christ appeared, and will appear again?From the whole let us — 1. Learn the vast importance of that salvation which has been an object of desire to the saints of God in all ages. The word signifies deliverance — deliverance from all evil, and introduction to all good. 2. Behold the perfect man, and mark the upright; for the end of that man is peace. If his life is honourable to religion, his death is a confirmation of all that he professed. (W. Thorpe.) Parallel Verses KJV: I have waited for thy salvation, O LORD. |
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