What do you expect from God?
How do you expect to relate to him?
Love?
Can we believe in a God of love when we see so much suffering in the world? Can we believe in a God of love when terrorists take over hotels and mercilessly murder scores of people? Is this a world which is in the power of a benevolent God?
Or bring it closer to home: can you believe in a God of love given the week, or the month or the year, or the life that you have had?
Are there times when it is very hard for you to believe that God is a God of love?
The very problem of evil is not really a problem for anyone who doesn’t believe that there is a loving God. If you are and atheist or an agnostic, you are most welcome to be here... but I wonder if you have realised that the fact that you are perplexed by evil in the world is in fact a sign that you maybe instinctively believe in God more than you realise. If there is no loving God then there should be no surprise if evil seems to triumph.
What do you expect from God?
The 19th century German journalist Heinriche Heine met with a priest on his deathbed; when the priest ased him if he thought that God would forgive him, he replied, “Of course he will forgive me; that’s his job!”
Is that the kind of idea of God that you have. More of a heavenly grandfather than a heavenly father, who smiles down on the world with a benevolent grin, and who, despite it all has nothing but feelings of affection for all human beings, even those who turn their machine guns on innocent bystanders?
When we say that God is love, what kind of love do we mean?
Does God love everyone in the same way, or to the same degree?
How can we experience that love?
How should we expect to enjoy that love?
How do you expect to know that you are loved by God? How do expect to experience that love? A warm feeling? An overwhelming sense of security? Physical blessings?
What is your love language? How do you expect to be loved? Do you expect God to love you in THAT way...?
The Five Love Languages
Do we expect that God will be ultimately interested in loving us the way that we most like to be loved... or does our creator actually know us rather better than that?
Malachi, the last book in the Old Testament is a book that challenges us about our rather presumptuous expectations concerning God.
We find his name only once in the whole bible, in Malachi 1:1. It’s possible that Malachi isn’t even his name: Malachi just means “my messenger” so that might describe his role as a prophet of God rather than his name.
It is clear from the content of the book that Malachi is writing some time after the return of the people from exile in Babylon, after the Persian Empire overthrew the Babylonian empire and king cyrus allowed the exiles to return home.
That had been a remarkable event in the history of Israel, a sign that God indeed was watching over his people. But by the time that Malachi prophecies, perhaps around 30 years later in about 450 BC, life seemed to be back to normal.
Perhaps like Britain in the mid seventies, the great deliverance of the nation 30 years earlier seems rather less sweet, particularly as the reshaping of a broken society ws taking longer than might have been hoped.
Though by now the wall of Jerususalem had been rebuilt under Nehemiah and the temple under Ezra & Haggai, Jerusalem was certainly not the place it had been in the golden days before the exile.
Things had been worse. But things had been better. Everything seemed, well, just mundane.
It was a unique time in the history of Israel, but certainly not a unique experience in the life of believers...
My brothers and Sisters, are there times when your Christian life seems mundane. The love f God is something you can affirm with your lips, but is it the driving force of your lives?
Why do we sometimes feel that God is distant; rela, but almost irrelevant. His love in the background rather than almost tangible in our lives?
For this, and other questions we are going to turn today to Malachi.
Through this book we are going to look at four expectations we might have of God, and Malachi is going to help us to see whether our expectations are biblical, and whether we have really grasped the full significance of truly biblical expectation.
What do you expect from God.
This morning we’re looking at love... do you expect God to love you? In what way? What difference should it make.
Next week, dv, we’ll look at fatherhood: Do you expect God to be your Father? In what way? What difference does it make
The following week we’re looking at justice: in what way can we expect God’s justice to prevail: what difference will that make?
And finally we’re looking at whether we expect healing? In what way: what difference will it make?
So, to look at the issue of our expectations to love, let’s turn to Malachi 1 p. 968 in the church bibles.
Malachi 1
Jacob Loved, Esau Hated
2 "I have loved you," says the LORD.
"But you ask, 'How have you loved us?'
"Was not Esau Jacob's brother?" the LORD says. "Yet I have loved Jacob, 3 but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his mountains into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals."
4 Edom may say, "Though we have been crushed, we will rebuild the ruins." "But you ask, 'How have you loved us?'
"Was not Esau Jacob's brother?" the LORD says. "Yet I have loved Jacob, 3 but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his mountains into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals."
But this is what the LORD Almighty says: "They may build, but I will demolish. They will be called the Wicked Land, a people always under the wrath of the LORD. 5 You will see it with your own eyes and say, 'Great is the LORD -even beyond the borders of Israel!'
Blemished Sacrifices
6 "A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If I am a father, where is the honor due me? If I am a master, where is the respect due me?" says the LORD Almighty. "It is you, O priests, who show contempt for my name.
"But you ask, 'How have we shown contempt for your name?'
7 "You place defiled food on my altar. "But you ask, 'How have we shown contempt for your name?'
"But you ask, 'How have we defiled you?'
"By saying that the LORD's table is contemptible. 8 When you bring blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice crippled or diseased animals, is that not wrong? Try offering them to your governor! Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you?" says the LORD Almighty.
9 "Now implore God to be gracious to us. With such offerings from your hands, will he accept you?"-says the LORD Almighty.
10 "Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not light useless fires on my altar! I am not pleased with you," says the LORD Almighty, "and I will accept no offering from your hands. 11 My name will be great among the nations, from the rising to the setting of the sun. In every place incense and pure offerings will be brought to my name, because my name will be great among the nations," says the LORD Almighty.
12 "But you profane it by saying of the Lord's table, 'It is defiled,' and of its food, 'It is contemptible.' 13 And you say, 'What a burden!' and you sniff at it contemptuously," says the LORD Almighty.
"When you bring injured, crippled or diseased animals and offer them as sacrifices, should I accept them from your hands?" says the LORD. 14 "Cursed is the cheat who has an acceptable male in his flock and vows to give it, but then sacrifices a blemished animal to the Lord. For I am a great king," says the LORD Almighty, "and my name is to be feared among the nations.
As we look today at this question of God’s love... I’m going to ask you a personal question that I think will get to the heart of our expectations of God’s love.
Why do we sometimes feel that God’s love is not enough?
It is significant that in a book which is largely a rebuke for breaking the covenant that there was between God and his people, the starting point is love.
When we struggle with indifference towards God, we are not called to grit our teeth and see if we can motivate ourselves to be a little more fervent.
We are not called to the locker room experience where, before the match we rev one another up to do our best in the match ahead by causing the adrenaline to flow through some exstatic experience.
No, we are to love him because he first loved us.
If our love for him is growing cold, it is because we are losing sight of his love for us.
And so, Malachi calls the people of Israel to recognise the depth of the love of God, and to recognise ways in which it has fallen out of the people’s sight.
I pray that as we study malachi over the next four weeks the Lord would be opening our eyes to his great love for us; challenging our wrong assumptions, and shaping us to be a people motivated by his committed love to us.
We forget how God loves us...
says the LORD.(B) But you say, "How have you loved us?" "Is not Esau(C) Jacob’s brother?" declares the LORD. "Yet(D) I have loved Jacob 3but Esau I have hated.
One of the many terrible things that Holywood has done in painting a shallow picture of love are those romantic comedies where love is all about spontaneous acts of extravagance. Love is when we feel so comfortable with someone that we can get a silly thought in our head and go right ahead and do it... like leaning dangerously far over the front of a steamship, or two people riding a bicycle made for one through the streets of a busy city. Love is thought of as being able to be spontaneously carefree with someone else.
Certainly in the biblical pictures of love there is the intimacy and lack of shame in one anothers presence that such care-free moments encapsulate. But such intimacy is not what makes the love. It is one of the rewards of the love; the deeply hardworking, planning, self-sacrificing love.
This is the kind of love that God points them to here...
It is the love that keeps a promise made 1500 years earlier.
Back in Genesis 12 God had made a great promise to a man called Abraham, who before that promise was a pagan from the area near Babylon.
God had made a promise to Abraham that he was intent in keeping.
He then passed on that promise in the most unusual way; he didn’t choose the firstborn son to be the primary focus of that promise for 3 generations. It was Isaac, not Ishmael, Jacob, not Esau;
Jacob was given a new name by the Lord, “Israel” and his offspring were made into the people of God.
Then within Israel, the line that ended up being the kingly line was not as expected either.
The king came from Judah, not Reuben; Perez, not Zerah.
It is the love, that despite the incredible rebellion of his people continued to work to bring about the fulfilment of that promise.
God love is a love of commitment and promise.
Notice how the covenant name of God “the Lord” saturates not just this chapter, but also the whole book.
This is the kind of love that God has for his people: a covenant, where he makes promises to be the king who will bless his people, and calls his people to honour him as king in response.
But the striking thing about the covenants that God makes is that he is always the one who initiates him.
Too often we think of God as desperately hanging around hoping against all hope that someone will show him a bit of interest. Perhaps we think that he is lucky to have us here in church this morning, when we could be having a well earned rest.
No! If we are God’s people it is not because we have diligently sought him out. He has done the seeking. He has initiated the covenant. The story of Jacob and Esau makes this abundantly clear: God decided that he was going to initiate a relationship with Jacob over and above Esau when they were both still in the womb, before either of them could take any kind of initiative towards him.
And in the New covenant, his initiative is even more striking. As Paul writes in Romans 5
6For(J) while we were still weak, at the right time(K) Christ died for the ungodly. 7For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8but(L) God shows his love for us in that(M) while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Do you feel God’s love is distant?
Look at how he has loved you, if you are in Christ. He knew that you would be a sinner in desperate need of someone to bear your guilt; and nearly 2000 years before you were even born he sent his son to bear every sin that you so deliberately and carelessly commit.
The covenant we have is written in the blood of Christ.
His love is not carefree; it is costly, it is deliberate; it is planned before we even existed. In fact, we read in the new testament that it was planned even before the world existed.
The costly sacrifice of Jesus is described as the blood of the eternal covenant; it was always God’s plan, in love, to rescue his people through the death of his son. It was always the Son’s plan to take our flesh, take our sin, take our punishment. It was always the Spirit’s plan to apply the work of Christ to the hearts of his people.
Do you feel that God’s love is distant? It can only be that you have wandered away from the cross.
Non Christian: this is the love that is being held out to you in the cross of Christ. You have experienced much of God’s love already, just by being one of his creatures. But unless you have bowed the knee to Christ, you don’t know this deep, committed, covenantal love that is offered to you in Christ.
But recognise also that there is a warning as well as an encouragement here: God is a God of love; but he is not just love... that is, he does not love everyone in the same way; and his natural inclination towards sinful human beings is love and hatred...
This bring us to our second point:
We forget what we deserve.
2(A) "I have loved you," says the LORD.(B) But you say, "How have you loved us?" "Is not Esau(C) Jacob’s brother?" declares the LORD. "Yet(D) I have loved Jacob 3but Esau I have hated.(E) I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert." 4If Edom says, "We are shattered but we will rebuild the ruins," the LORD of hosts says, "They may build, but I will tear down, and they will be called 'the wicked country,' and 'the people with whom the LORD is angry forever.'" 5(F) Your own eyes shall see this, and you shall say, "Great is the LORD beyond the border of Israel!
The love that God has for Israel was displayed as being even more stark precisely because of what he did with Israel’s brother Esau.
This leads us to one of the hardest doctrines of the bible to accept. In one sense it is easy to understand, and it is taught very clearly both hear and elsewhere: we read another very clear passage in Romans 9, that quotes this very verse, Malachi 1:2 – Dean will have the responsibility of preaching of that verse from Romans this evening.
Wayne Grudem has some helpful words on how to approach passages like this that are not hard to understand, but hard to accept:
“In spite of the fact that we recoil against this doctrine, we must be careful of our attitude towards God and toward these passages of scripture. We must never begin to wish that the Bible was written in another way, or that it did not contain these verses.”
The idea that God has an initiating love that brings some people into a covenant relationship with him raises a difficult question: what about those with whom he doesn’t initiate like that. If Israel is loved, what about Esau, who is hated.
The good news of election has the corresponding bad news of reprobation: that is, those whom God does not elect to salvation.
The way that this truth is consistently applied in the bible is not to cause some strange paradox between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility and expect us to solve it.
No, it is to humble us, and to cause us to praise God for his kindness.
When Israel was to look at Esau’s descendents, Edom, and see a nation that didn’t have that special relationship with God, they were not to look at them and just say – oh, but of course God would love us and not them!
No! They were to say, v2, “Is not Esau Jacob’s brother”
There is no difference between them; Jacob was no better than Esau; Esau might have sold his birthright for a single meal, but Jacob tricked his father, cheated his uncle and manipulated his brother. God doesn’t choose the good over the bad.
He takes two evil brothers, blesses both in many ways; both receive abundant blessings from the Lord. But of those two sinful brothers God initiates a covenant relationship with only one.
And the other is to show the one all the more his blessings.
If you are a Christian, do you have brothers and sisters who are not? You know that God didn’t save you because you were better than them.
And so the nation of Edom, Esau’s descendents were to be a contrast to Israel: this is what you too would be if I had not initiated my covenant love with you, says the Lord.
All your plans would come to nothing. All would end up hopeless for you. But because I have loved you, you can know for certain that there are promises I have made that stretch out before you into eternity and will never be revoked.
What do you do living in a nation that has turned its back on much of the Christian heritage that it once had. Do you tutt? Do you look down on others? Or do you ask, “why has the Lord in his mercy seen fit to love me, when I don’t deserve it.”
No, we are no better than them; we are probably worse. But we have good news that we can share with them.
If we feel that the love of the Lord is distant, not only have we wandered away from the initiative that God took in sending his son to the cross; we have taken our eyes of the penalty that we deserved and he took.
We all deserve to be in hell yesterday.
You’ll notice, that when people ask me how i am, I often use the reply that CJ Mahaney taught me, “I’m better than I deserve.” Start using it, and meditating upon it.
Pray the Lord enables you to have good conversation with others because of it.
I was in the supermarket this week; the man at the checkout asked me how I was. I replied, “Better than I deserve.” He looked surprised, and said, “What are you then, a tax man?” No, far worse than that, i said. Well what are you, “I’m a church pastor” I said. He looked confused.
And you know, at that moment I felt pretty good about myself, and I thought, I can’t really tell this man that I deserve hell can I? And I didn’t. I don’t think I had spent enough time that day confessing my sin and thanking God for his incredible underserved love in my life. If I had, I’d have been delighted to have expanded more upon the fact that I deserved to have my life be a wasteland. I deserved to have every plan I’d made torn down, for I had dared to build to my own glory in defiance of he God who made me. I deserve to have a sign placed above my head that reads, “the wicked man”. I deserve to be have everyone who meets me shout in my face, “the person with whom the Lord is angry for ever.”
This is not because I have low self esteem that I understand this about myself.
It is because I stand before a holy God and know that I fall far short of His glory.
It is because I know that God would have been entirely justified in choosing to save nobody.
He would have brought glory to his name in pronouncing those words not just on the sons of Edom, but on the sons of Adam – the whole human race.
When we begin to understand the goodness and holiness of God who cannot stand in the presence of evil, as we read in Psalm 5, the most shocking truth is not “Esau I hated”. It is “Jacob I loved”
As tom Schreiner writes, “Most of us instinctively feel that God ius obliged to save people. When we remember that God could justly condemn all to hell, then we realise that it is merciful that he saves any at all. Rights have become so prominent that it is tempting to think that we have a right to be saved. Such a conception minimises sin and is human idolatry at its worst. Scripture clearly asserts that those who are destined for hell" deserve to be sent there. Hell testified to the infinite heinousness of sinning against God’s glory. Any sin against God is of infinite proportions because of His infinite majesty.”
God grieves the loss of those who god to hell. Jesus seeps tears over the destruction of Jerusalme. But God is unembarrassed about hell. It will bring him glory in displaying his justice. It is not a sign of his failure, but of his justice.
There is a little cliché that people have often said that is a dangerous half truth.
God hates the sin, but he loves the sinner.
I mean, its true. God hates all sin. God loves all sinners. But he also hates sinners. Did you hear that in Psalm 5 that we read together earlier:
4For you are not a God who delights in wickedness;
evil may not dwell with you.
5The(F) boastful shall not(G) stand before your eyes;
you(H) hate all evildoers.
6You destroy those who speak(I) lies;
the LORD abhors(J) the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.
evil may not dwell with you.
5The(F) boastful shall not(G) stand before your eyes;
you(H) hate all evildoers.
6You destroy those who speak(I) lies;
the LORD abhors(J) the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.
He hates wickedness; but he also hates evildoers.
Evil may not stand before him, but neither and boastful people.
We cannot so easily separate out sin from the sinner. Sin is not just something that I have; it is something that I do, and more than that it is something that I AM.
If God hates sin, then there is a whole lot of me that God hates.
There is a whole lot of you that God hates too.
He loves all human beings because he made us all, he knows us all better than we know ourlseves, and he knows that we are made to be able ot have a relationship with him.
But, isn’t this a sermon about love Mike, I hear you saying. We started by talking about how we sometimes don’t feel that God loves us, and now we had a good few minutes thinking about God’s hatred... how can that help us!!!?!?!?
It is; but we will realise all the more how incredible God’s love is when we realise that it is his enemies; it is those he naturally hates, that he loves in Christ.
And he hates us in Christ. In the cross all his judicial hatred of sin was focussed upon the one who bore that sin. Upon Christ.
And so, Christ becomes the one who has a sign placed above his head with a criminal charge. It is Christ whom people publically mock. It is Christ who is declared the one with whom the Lord is angry.
How does this help us?
Because when God’s hatred of our sin is poured out upon Christ, we are released to know only his love. The Christian doesn’t need to fear God’s hatred. The Christian can be confident of god’s love.
If you trust Christ yet fear that God may have some residual hatred for you, look to the cross. Would he have sent his beloved son to die if even that were not enough to enable his people to receive his love?
“I have loved you!” says the Lord to his people... when we see the cross, we know the answer to the question “how have you loved us...” by sending his only Son, so that whoever believes in him SHALL NOT PERISH BUT HAVE ETERNAL LIFE.
‘Why should I gain from his reward. I cannot give an answer. But this I know with all my heart. His wounds have paid my ransom.
Do you know this love?
You will only find it at the cross.
How can you tell if you know it?
Do you love God?
It was clear that the people pf Israel in Malachi’s day hadn’t really grasped God’s love by the way in which they were so slapdash in their love for God.
We forget who loves us.
Those of us who profess to be Christians would rarely be so bold or brazen as to declare our hatred for God. No, we stand up on Sunday morning and sing to him “Worthy are you Lord to be thanked and praised and worshipped and adored.”
But what about our lives... do they declare that we honour his name or despise it?
The priests in the recently rebuilt temple seemed to think that they were slaving away pretty hard for the Lord: the work was so hard it was a burden: (v13)... but the long hours in the temple were not hours of delight at the privilege of serving the Lord, but hours of carelessness. They thought that so long as they were serving the Lord, it didn’t matter how they were serving the Lord. Their attitude was like that of the elder son in the parable of the sower: I’ve been slaving away and you’ve given me nothing!
Do you sometimes feel like that about the Lord... that you serve him, but you feel nothing of his love.
That will lead to a slap-dash service that betrays a lack of appreciation for who the Lord really is. For them it meant that they paid little attention to his word, and exactly how their priestly duties of offering sacrifices were to be performed. They were happy with blemished sacrifices.
They did not know that there was a reason why the animals must be perfect: they were pointing towards the perfect sacrifice of the Lord Jesus to come. They didn’t know why, and so they didn’t trust that the Lord knew why.
Is your service ever like that. When things seem burdensome, will you trust that the Lord knows why even if you don’t, and he is worth serving?
They had not merely forgotten how the Lord loved them, but who he was. As priests they would often have the Lord’s name on their lips, as they taught and prayed – we’ll see more about that in chapter 2 next week.
Do we forget this in our service of him?
Do we complain to him that serving him in the roles he has given us is mundane, or dreary or burdensome?
Work can certainly be hard and frustrating; but when we see it all as a gracious opportunity that the Lord has given us to serve him, the great king it is transformed. The most mundane service becomes to us service of the great king.
I’m reminded of a house that had a sign over the kitchen sink: “Divine service performed here 3 times daily.” If our king would see fit to give us the task of washing dishes, or changing nappies, or tudying our bedrooms, or taking orders from a harsh employer, or trying to love a difficult spouse, then we should rejoice that this is another opportunity to bring glory to him. In fact, the less appealing the service is in worldly terms, the more we are able to show that we are not ultimately serving an earthly master.
6-7
"A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am(H) a father, where is my honor? And if I am(I) a master, where is my fear? says the LORD of hosts to you, O priests, who despise my name.(J) But you say, 'How have we despised your name?'
Perhaps sometimes when we don’t feel that God’s love is very real to us, it is because we are trying to relate to him in the wrong kind of way. Though he loves us in incredibly gentle and personal ways, his love is not defined by our predetermined love languages. He loves us not in the way that we would most want, but in the way that would most open our eyes to who he is. It is the best possible way in which he loves us, not the most comfortable possible way.
We know this even from the times that earthly fathers have loved, don’t we. The love of the father that sometimes says, “No, you may not have that second candy floss; no, you may not go to THAT party; No, you will not speak to your mother like that; yes, you will write to thank your grandmother for that present you really didn’t like very much; yes, you will come to church this morning.”
Do you trust that he is both Father and Master? As Father he knows how to love his children best. As Master, he is able to see what is best and to bring about the most loving results i or life possible.
That love is most enjoyed when we stop complaining about how he wants us to serve, and start enjoying him and trusting his wisdom in our service.
The very fact that we may serve him is an incredible honour. We will care more about this than the fact that we can serve him.
If you are a member of this church: how do you decide in what way you will serve? DO you think that God has given you particular gifts, and so you must serve in those ways that most express those gifts... that seems very self-centered to me: instead see what are the particular needs of this congregation, and go serve in those ways... the important thing is that you wholeheartedly serve the Lord, not that you serve in the way that you most want to serve.
... building a cathedral...
Are we building a cathedral of praise to the :Lord?
We forget why he loves us.
Did you notice God’s preoccupation with his own name and honour through this passage.
v. 5
v6
v11
v14
This is why god loves us. It is why we serve him. Everything exists ultimately for his glory.
Perhaps you think it unattractively selfish that God should create us not to delight in ourselves but to delight in him. I that is so, you have not realised who he is. It would be selfish of him to encourage us to live for anything less than his glory, when his glory is the greatest good in existence.
Jonathan Edwards says that it would be like the sun, in humility deciding to hide its rays from us, lest we would become too preoccupie with its radiance. But if we are cut off from the rays of the Sun, we are cut off from life! It is right that the warmth and light of the sun should be enjoyed. How much more is it right that the Lord should present himself as the one in whom we will find all our joy, and purpose; for he alone can give it to us.
Perhaps we sometimes don’t feel God’s love, for we don’t realise that he loves us enough to take away other things that we might live for, so that we might live alone for his glory and his fame, and know that everything else pales into insignificance compared to the radiant light of his glory.
Is that why you get out of bed each morning? Is it so that the Lord might be glorified even as you serve him in ways that the world might seem crazy. And when people ask you, “Why would you do that?” “Why haven’t you given up!!” do you reply, “Because he has loved me!”. My Lord for whose glory all things exist has loved me, though I deserve only his hatred.
David Brainerd was a missionary to Native Americans in the North Eastern States of the United States in the first half of the 18th century. He was a frail man, who eventually succumbed to tuberculosis at the age of 29.
But his journal shows that he was a man gripped by the glory of God in all his service, whatever the apparent fruit, whatever personal trials he was undergoing.
Let me conclude by reading a few entries from his journal.
Monday, January 6. 1745. Being very weak in body, I rode for my health. While riding, my thoughts were sweetly engaged for a time upon "the stone cut out of the mountain without hands, which brake in pieces" ed all before it, and waxed great, and "became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth" ed: And I longed that Jesus should take to himself his "great power" ed, and reign "to the ends of the earth" ed. And oh, how sweet were the moments wherein I felt my soul warm with hopes of the enlargement of the Redeemer's kingdom! I wanted nothing else but that Christ should reign, to the glory of his blessed name.
Thursday, January 9. Was still very weak and much exercised with vapory disorders. In the evening, enjoyed some enlargement and spirituality in prayer. Oh, that I could always spend my time profitably, both in health and weakness!
Friday, May 23 1746. In the morning, was in the same frame of mind as in the evening before. The glory of Christ's kingdom so much outshone the pleasure of earthly accommodations and enjoyments, that they appeared comparatively nothing, though in themselves good and desirable. My soul was melted in secret meditation and prayer, and I found myself divorced from any part in this world; so that in those affairs that seemed of the greatest importance to me, in respect of the present life, and those wherein the tender powers of the mind are most sensibly touched, I could only say, "The will of the Lord be done"
Monday, July 7. My spirits were considerably refreshed and raised in the morning. There is no comfort, I find, in any enjoyment without enjoying God and being engaged in his service. In the evening, had the most agreeable conversation that ever I remember in all my life,5 upon God's being "all in all" ed, and all enjoyments being just that to us which God makes them, and no more. 'Tis good to begin and end with God. Oh, how does a sweet solemnity lay a foundation for true pleasure and happiness!
The last entry was one week before his death,
Friday, October 2 1747. My soul was this day, at turns, sweetly set on God: I longed to be "with him" that I might "behold his glory" ed; I felt sweetly disposed to commit all to him, even my dearest friends, my dearest flock, and my absent brother, and all my concerns for time and eternity. Oh, that his kingdom might come in the world; that they might all love and glorify him for what he is in himself; and that the blessed Redeemer might "see of the travail of his soul, and be satisfied" ed. Oh, "come, Lord Jesus, come quickly! Amen" ed.8
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