Pulpit Messages Christianity and Life

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22665, 16 June 1948, Page 3

Pulpit Messages Christianity and Life

(Contributed by Ministers’ Association.) i

TEXT “The Lord is my light and my Salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?" Gospel View of Evil The Rev. J. K. Fairbairn. at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, included this quotation in his sermon: “ ‘The lions were chained but they saw not their chains.’—John Bunyan. It is difficult for us to believe that it is evil which is in chains in our world. We are tempted to put it the other way and to say that evil is rampant and all that is good is restricted and frustrated: that evil is unleashed and out of control. This is not the Gospel view. The Gospel of the Cross and the Resurrection of Christ declares to us that tliis judgment of ours is deceived. Evil has no real future.'lts doom is certain, however much it may seem to have been ‘given its head.’ It is under control- Loke a raging destruction, it may be doing immense harm; but it is no longer out of hand. “That faith, given us in the Gospel, is never easy to hold in our minds. It is always mysterious to us that God should apparently have to allow evil to go as far as it does—until we come to the evil in ourselves. When we come there we gladly accept the forebearance and restraint of God’s judgment and the wideness of His Mercy. We even wrongly take it for granted. That is a warning to us that we are apt to wish for ourselves what we are not willing that others should have. “Yet, if we consider it without complacency. we may let ourselves be fully gripped by this tremendous faith that the evil in our lives is never wholly ‘out of hand’; it is always within the control of God.” Do We Labour in Vain?

Preaching at Knox Presbyterian Church recently, the Rev. H. Dyson said: “One of the things that disappoint and discourage is to feel that our labour has been in vain. What a number of faithful souls there are who toil at some task, year after year, without seeing any satisfactory results for their labours!

"There is always a gladness and a satisfaction, no matter how difficult, if It is attended by some measure of success. There is always a courage for tomorrow in the recognition of a profitable today; but where one has to toil without visible signs of results, when we have ‘toiled all night and caught nothing,’ we are tempted to day: ‘I have laboured in vain and spent my strength for naught.’ and probably, in nothing.’ we are tempted to say: ‘I our religious and spiritual work, for we are often tempted to ■ question whether preaching and pleading are a waste of time.

“St- Paul tells us that our labour in the Lord is not in vain and he gives to us an assurance which rests on the ’’ope of personal immortality, for he r oes on to say: ‘lf in this life only we ave hope in Christ, then we are of all men most miserable.’ Why should we worry whether our labour is in vain t not if all is over when we reach he grave? But if death be only a somentnry break in a life that is sternal, then no labour for the Lord "an ever be in vain, for he can transform even the seeming failures of today into the triumphs of tomorrow, and when the dawn of the cloudless morning breaks above us we shall awaken to find, flint he who has loved us with an everlasting love hath done all things well, and that no labour rendered for him has been rendered in vain.”

News and Notes The monthly meeting of the Gisborne Ministers’ Association was held on. Tuesday at the Presbyterian Church, Matawhero. The Rev. I. Cameron conducted devotions, after which the president, the Rev. J. Talbot, guided the association throughout the business. This monthly meeting is an eagerly-awaited event on the part of the ministers of the town and district, affording as it does the opportunity of personal contact and discussion on matters of mutual interest.