Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 305, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 December 1914 — A Thanksgiving Sermon [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A Thanksgiving Sermon

By REV. JAMES M. CRAY, D. D.

Dean of Moody Bibb ludtate Chicago

TEXT—We know that all things work together-for good to them that love God. —Romans 8:28.

This is one of the texts of Scripture that always comes into themind, around Thanks giving time. It han preached many a soul-inspiring sermon to the Lord’s meek and poor afflicted ones during these long nineteen hundred years. In many an hour of trouble it has been their t consolation, and in many a

happy moment their chief joy. (1) There is a kind of certainty about this text that gives it a peculiar value. “We know that all things work together for good.” It is not a surmise but a conviction; not a conclusion based merely upon the testimony of others, but a possession of our own experience. We know it from the word of God, apd we would rather trust that than our own understanding. We know it indeed from the very nature of the case, for given the existence of a God, holy, just, all-powerful and good, it must be as the text says.' To deny it is to deny God. We know it from the history of the world and of mankind whose pages are illuminated with its truth, but especially do we know It from the record of our own lives. , If we are true Christian men and women, we can look back over the past year in all its vicissitudes and set our seal to it as fact (2) There is a universality in the range of the text which gives it a peculiar value. “We know all things woiss together for good.” What a measureless compass there is in that declaration! In the mind of the inspired writer, the “all things” as indicated by the context, are very especially “the sufferings of this present time;” but there is no reason why we may not employ the language in the broadest and most comprehensive sense. Things Jinown and things unknown, defeats and victories, losses fend gains, the small and the large, all are working together for good to them that love God. It Is easy to believe this when all is prosperous and happy, but faith clings to it when the clouds lower and the storms rage. It is that which distinguishes th© Christian from the man of the worlq. (3) There is a sense of divine activity in the text. “All things work together for good.” God does not allow things to come to pass by chance, but has an arrangment in everything, a plan, a purpose bringing forth effects. He is continually subverting and conserving, scattering and bringing together, in order that he may find stones to polish for a temple into which he may enter and permanently abide. (4) Then think of the harmony expressed—“all things work together for good.” There is no discord or opposition in the heavenly epunseis, though we may not always perceive this with our eyes of flesh. Like Hannah More’s dialogue of the two weavers, we may sometimes think that— The good are troubled, and oppressed, And all the wicked are the blessed. But when we reach that world of light. And view these works of God aright. Then shall we see the whole design, And own the work is all divine. But finally, it is the particularity of this text that we need most to dwell upon. It is to “Them That Love God,” and to them only, that all things work together for good. But men in their natural state do not love God, nor can they love him. There must-be 7 created - within' them thp. clean heart and. renewed within tfiem the right spirit before they can love God. And this is God’s own work in them, which he does when they believe his testimony concerning hip son, Jesus dhrist. Have you done this? Have you yet by faith received Christ as your Savior and confessed him as your Lord? There was a time when Paul wh6 wrote these words, did not himself love God, though he was very religious and very active his religion. But one day he saw Christ in the glory and submitted himself to him, and all this was changed. He then loved God because he had come to know that God loved him and sent his son to be the propitiation for his sins. And so thia text gives us Paul’s own testimony. He had had a wonderful life especially after his remarkable conversion. Read his own description of It in Second Corinthians from Chapter 11, Verse 21 to Chapter 12, Verse 12, and see what it must have ifleant to him to utter such words as these. In everything had he seen the hand of God so yividly and the most unpromising circumstances redound to his own good, that no mathematical proposition r could have been mote clearly demonstrated to him than this. ‘ /