' We have waited for him ; he will save us.' Experience of God's per- formance stirs them up still to wait for him, and rejoice in his salvation. Experience stirs up hope. The beginning of a Christian, and midst, is to hope for the end ; and surely our jjeginning should help the latter end ! All a Christian's life should help the end. All foimer things should come ki and help his latter.
Beloved, we are too backward that way to treasure up the benefit of ex- perience. There be few of years but might make stories of God's gracious dealings with them, if all w^ere kept ; the comforts past, and for time to come, and all little enough. It was David's course, * Thou art my God from my mother's womb, and upon thee have I hanged ever since I was born ; fail me not when I am old,' Ps. xxii. 10. Go along with God's favours, and use them as arguments of future blessings. As former victories are helps to get the second victory, every former favour helpeth to strengthen our faith.
In the next, God is an inexhausted fountain, and when we have to deal with an infinite God, the more we take of him the more we ofier him. It is no good plea to say, you have done courtesies, therefore do them still. But we cannot honour God more than from former experience to look for great things from the great God.
* We have waited for him, he will save us ; we have waited for him, and we will rejoice in his salvation.' That which a child of God gives thanks for and rejoices in, and labours for, is more and more experience of his salvation. * We will rejoice in his salvation.' There is not a stronger word in all the Scrip tui-e, not in nature. He doth not say rejoicing in this or that benefit, but in his salvation, that is, in deliverance from all evil. We will rejoice in his preservation, when he hath delivered us, we will re- joice in his advancement of us, and we will rejoice in his salvation. And therefore, when the wisdom of heaven would include all in one word, he
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useth the word Jesus, all happiness in that word, that pregnant, full word, a Saviour.
So that God's carriage towards his children is salvation. He is the God of salvation, or a saving God. And God sent his name fi-om heaven, and the angels brought it, the name of Jesus. Therefore look to the full sense of it. We have a Saviour that will answer his name ; as he is Jesus, so he will save his people from their sins. Mat. i. 21. And therefore we will rejoice in his salvation. God dealt with us like a God, when he delivered us fi'om aU misery, fi-om all sins, and advanced us to all happiness that nature is capable of. As he said before, he will wipe away all tears from all faces, and take away the rebukes of all people. He will punish the wicked with eternal destruction. And if he advanceth a people he wiU be salvation, than which he can say no more.
And this sheweththat the children of God rejoice, more than in anything else, in salvation, because it is the salvation of God, and because God is salvation itself. Heaven were not heaven, if Jesus and God in our nature were not there. And therefore the apostle saith, ' I desire to depart,' not to be dissolved, ' and to be with Christ, for that is better.' The sight of God, specially in our nature, God the second person taking our nature, that we might be happy, will make us happy for ever. In loving God, and joying in God, and enjoying God, makes fall happiness ; but that is not the cause of joy in heaven, but the cause of all is God's influence into us. Here in the world happiness is mediate, in God's reveahug of himself to us by his Holy Spirit, in the use of means, in his dealings and deliverances, letting us see him by his grace, to sec him, and joy and delight in him for ever. It is no good love that resteth in any blessings of God for them- selves. It is an harlotry affection to love the gift more than the giver. So the saints of God they do aU desire to see him as they may, and to joy in God, and enjoy God himself, and to see God in our nature, and to be with him for ever. Before he spake of a feast, and if the feast-maker be not there, what is aU ? In a funeral feast there is much cheer, but the feast-maker is gone. In heaven there is joy, but where is God, where is Christ, he that hath done so much, suffered so much for us, that hath taken posses- sion of heaven, and keepeth a place for us there ? 'V\Tiat is heaven without him ? Salvation, severed from him, is nothing.
We shall say when we are there, Lo, here is David, Abraham, St John, here the martyrs ! Aye, but here is Christ, here is God, here is our Sa- viour, the cause of all, and the seeing of him in them, that he wiU be glo- rious in his saints, that maketh us rejoice. We shall see all our friends in heaven. There we shall see the excellency of the happiness of Christ, his love, his gi-ace, his mercy.