Epistle Sermons Volume III Part 32

7. Christians should certainly expect this and comfort themselves in the confidence that G.o.d will not permit the wrongs of his people to continue unpunished and unavenged. We might think he had forgotten were we to judge from the facts that G.o.dly Abel was shamefully murdered by his brother, that G.o.d's prophets and martyrs--John the Baptist, Jeremiah, Paul and others--suffered death at the hands of bloodhounds like the Herods, Neros and other shameless, sanguinary tyrants of the sort, and this when G.o.d had, even in this life, given glorious testimony to their being his beloved children. A judgment must be forthcoming that tyrants may suffer pains and punishments, and that the G.o.dly, delivered from sufferings, may have eternal rest and joy. Let all the world know G.o.d does not forget, even after death.

8. This is the consolation the future judgment at the resurrection of the dead holds, that, as G.o.d's righteousness requires, the saints shall receive for their sufferings a supremely rich and glorious recompense. Paul seems to present as the princ.i.p.al reason why G.o.d must punish the world with everlasting pain, the fact that the world has inflicted tribulations on Christians. Apparently his words imply that the perpetrations of the devil and the world--their supreme contempt and hatred of G.o.d's name and Word, their blasphemies of these, their wickedness and disobedience in other respects, whereby they bring upon themselves everlasting pain and d.a.m.nation--that for these sins against himself G.o.d is not so ready to punish as for their persecution and torment of his poor, believing Christians. This truth is indicated where we read that Christ on the last day shall say: "Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels ... inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these least, ye did it not unto me." Mt 25, 41 and 45.

9. Paul's further observations, concerning the manner of the judgment to come and the painful punishment of the unG.o.dly, is sufficiently clear as rendered, and is also explained in the sermon on the Gospel text. Further explanation here is unnecessary.

_Twenty Seventh Sunday After Trinity_

Text: 2 Peter 3, 3-7.

TO THE READER.

When the year has twenty-seven Sundays after Trinity, which seldom occurs, subst.i.tute the text of 2 Peter 3, 3-7 for the twenty-sixth Sunday and use the text of the twenty-sixth Sunday for the twenty-seventh Sunday.