Turn, now, to the other thought that is here, the promise and pledge
of victory in the name, the God of peace. I have already referred to
two similar designations of God in the previous chapter, and if we
take them in union with this one in our text, what a wonderfully
beautiful and strengthening threefold view of that divine nature do
we get! 'The God of patience and consolation' is the first of the
linked three. It heads the list, and blessed is it that it does,
because, after all, sorrow makes up a very large proportion of the
experience of us all, and what most men seem to themselves to need
most is a God that will bear their sorrows with them and help them to
bear, and a God that will comfort them. But, supposing that He has
been made known thus as the source of endurance and the God of all
consolation, He becomes 'the God of hope,' for a dark background
flings up a light foreground, and a comforted sorrow patiently
endured is mighty to produce a radiant hope. The rising of the muddy
waters of the Nile makes the heavy crops of 'corn in Egypt.' So the
name 'the God of hope' fitly follows the name 'the God of patience
and consolation.'
Then we come to the name in my text, built perhaps on the other two,
or at least reminiscent of them, and recalling them, 'the God of
peace,' who, through patience and consolation, through hope, and
through many another gift, breathes the benediction of His own great
tranquillity and unruffled calm over our agitated, distracted, sinful
hearts. In connection with one of those previous designations to
which I have referred, the Apostle has a prayer very different in
form from this, but identical in substance, when he says 'the God of
hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing.' Is not that
closely allied to the promise of my text, 'The God of peace shall
bruise Satan under your feet shortly'? Is there any surer way of
'bruising Satan' under a man's feet than filling him 'with joy and
peace in believing'? What can the Devil do to that man? If his soul
is saturated, and his capacities filled, with that pure honey of
divine joy, will he have any taste for the coarse dainties, the leeks
and the garlic, that the Devil offers him? Is there any surer way of
delivering a man from the temptations of his own baser nature, and
the solicitations of this busy intrusive world round about him, than
to make him satisfied with the goodness of the Lord, and conscious in
his daily experience of 'all joy and peace'? Fill the vessel with
wine, and there is no room for baser liquors or for poison. I suppose
that the way by which you and I, dear friends, will most effectually
conquer any temptations, is by falling back on the superior sweetness
of divine joys. When we live upon manna we do not crave onions. So He
'will bruise Satan under your feet' by giving that which will arm
your hearts against all his temptations and all his weapons. Blessed
be God for the way of conquest, which is the possession of a supremer
good!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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