Fears Realized and Hopes Fulfilled

‘The fear of the wicked, it shall come upon him: but the desire of the righteous shall bo granted. As the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no more: but the righteous is an everlasting foundation.”- x. 24, 25.

IE must not understand from this verse that the wicked experience only fear, and the righteous only desire or hope: the wicked have hope as well as fear, and the righteous have fear as well as hope. Both characters experience both emotions. In this respect, one thing happens to all. The dread of evil and the desire of good tumultuate and struggle for the mastery in a human breast all through this present life, whether the person be a child of God or a servant of sin. The difference between the righteous and the wicked lies, not in the existence of these emotions within them now, but in their issue at last. In both, the same two emotions operate now; in each, at the final reckoning, one of these emotions will be realized and the other disappointed. The wicked in life both hoped and feared: at the issue of all things, his fear will be embodied in fact, and his hope will go out like a lamp when its oil is done. The righteous in life both hoped and feared: at the issue of all things, his hope will be satisfied, and his fear will vanish as imaginary spectres that terrified the benighted traveller disappear with the day. Fear and hope were common to the two in time: at the border of eternity the one will be relieved from all his fear, the other will be deprived of all his hope. The wicked will get what he feared, and miss what he hoped; the righteous will get what he hoped, and miss what he feared. Ah, how deep this difference is! One has his hopes all realized, and his fears all disappointed; the other has his fears all fulfilled, and his hopes quenched in despair.

It is not very difficult to ascertain what are the chief fears and desires of a wicked man. Cleaving to his sins, he is in enmity against God. The terrors of the Lord glance from time to time like lightning in his conscience, and he trembles at every quiver of the light, lest it be a bolt of wrath sent to strike him through. When one flash has passed and not smitten him, he gathers breath again, and is glad he has escaped; but ere he is aware, he is wincing beneath another. The wrath of God and the punishment of sin, — this is his fear; but what does he desire or hope? His desire for time is the indulgence of his appetites; his desire for eternity is that there should be no God, or, at least, that he should not be just to mark iniquity. This desire shall not be gratified; for God is, and is the rewarder of them that seek Him. It is a desperate throw to risk your soul and its eternity on the expectation that God will turn out to be untrue, and that the wicked shall not be cast away. This is the desire of every unrenewed, unreconciled man, whether he confess it to himself or not; and this desire must be disappointed. The hope of the sinner will perish when Christ shall come in the clouds of heaven and sit upon the throne of judgment; but the fear of the wicked — what did he fear? In spite of all his hopes, he feared death, and judgment, and eternity. His fear shall come upon him. All that a sinner feared shall come upon the sinner — all that he feared, and more. The fruits of good and of evil are equal as they are opposite. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the terrible things which God hath prepared for them that hate Him. The men who heard Noah preaching righteousness, and refused to repent, would nevertheless sometimes be conscious of fear under the patriarch’s denunciations; but even those of them who feared the most had no conception of such a flood as that which came and covered them. The terrors of wrath that sometimes work in a sinner’s conscience are only drops from an ocean infinite. The fear of the wicked, when it comes, will be greater than all that the wicked feared — greater by the difference between time and eternity. The expectation of the wicked shall perish. If the master of a ship at sea should, through carelessness or wilfulness, in spite of warnings, deviate from his course and hold on, with all sail set, by a false reckoning; and if he should expect and say, when told of his error that he would escape — that there would turn out to be no rock to strike upon — that he would no doubt get safe into the desired haven — what would become of his expectation1? It would perish when his ship struck on a stormy shore.

In the voyage over life to eternity there is, indeed, one difference; no one has gone over the voyage and returned to tell that the rocks are really there, and if men persist in refusing to believe whatever they cannot see, they must even be left to themselves. But a message has been sent out to us: we can make only one voyage over this sea, and the Lord of that better land has sent out directions and a chart to guide us in. Most certain it is, it heaven and hell, if sin and salvation, be real, the expectation of the wicked shall perish.

The desire of the righteous shall be granted; what, then, shall become of his fears? What becomes of the darkness when the daylight shines 1 It is gone. Such are the fears that agitate the bosoms of God’s dear children here in the body: when Christ comes, His coming shall be like the morning. But, meantime, let it be carefully noted that the saints are subject to fears. The promise to believers is not that they shall never fear; it is that the thing feared shall never come upon them. What are their fears? They fear sometimes that God’s anger will lie upon them yet; and sometimes they fear that, in time of temptation, they may fall away: but though these terrors disturb them, the thing they dread can never come. “There is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus;” and “they are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed.” Their desire shall be granted; and what is their desire? It is twofold: that they may be pardoned through the blood of Christ, and renewed after his image. When these are the desires of our souls, how safe we are! If these desires were left unfulfilled, God our Saviour would be disappointed in His plan, and stripped of His glory. These desires are the desires of the Almighty Redeemer of men, and He will do all His pleasure. When I fear what He hates, my fears will be driven away like smoke before the wind; when I desire what He loves, all my desires will be gratified, even to the whole of the kingdom. Behold the golden chain on which a disciple’s hope hangs down from heaven, — “All things are yours; and ye are Christs; and Christ is God’s” (1 Cor. iii. 22,23).

The course of the wicked through time is like the passage of a whirlwind over a continent. Life moves quickly, like the wind: when seen from eternity it is as nothing. A wicked life is like the wind in the violence and eccentricity of its movements, The soul that has no hope in Jesus is driven up and down like chaff in a tempest: it is dashed from side to side a while, and at last thrown into the sea or the flames. The righteous is an everlasting foundation: he cannot be moved. Though the mountains should be cast into the sea, the righteous man’s standing remains unshaken, untouched: the heavens and the earth shall pass away, but he who has made the Eternal God his refuge will never be removed. “Neither death nor life, neither things present nor tilings to come,” neither men nor devils, can ever drive or draw the feeblest disciple from his confidence. The Lord will “lay a sure foundation;” and “he that believeth shall not make haste” (Isa. xxviii. 16). These two promises lie together in the Scripture. When your heart’s hope is fixed on that precious corner-stone, you need not be thrown into a flutter by the fiercest onset of the world and its manifold temptations.

Ofetttess of f ittle Cjmtgs.