Genesis 49:19

Genesis 49:19

Consider:

I. Faith triumphant in doubt. The Gospel is a revelation. It is the telling of a secret. There is not one mystery either about man or about God which has been either caused or aggravated by the Gospel. Doubtless there are matters not yet revealed. There are unexplained, perhaps inexplicable difficulties, as regards God's will and man's future, which the Gospel leaves where it found them. Faith triumphs in and over doubting; and when Christ asks, " Will ye also go away?"is content to answer, " Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life."

II. Faith triumphs in disappointment. Faith triumphs amidst and over baffled hopes and wasted toils. To be willing to wait, even for encouragement, much more for victory, is an essential part of his character who has seen the promise afar off, and been persuaded of it, and embraced it, and who now lives day by day in the calm, humble looking-for of a light that shall arise and a rest that is reserved in heaven for God's people.

III. Faith conquers sin. That is our most urgent want, and that is Faith's most solemn office. Faith conquering is, above all things, Faith conquering sin, Faith looking upwards to a loving Saviour, and drawing down from Him the desire and the effort and the grace to be holy.

IV. Faith conquers Death. If Death is not dreadful to the Christian, he owes the difference simply to the fact that in that other world, as we vaguely term it, there is already for him a Father and a Saviour and a Comforter One whom it has been the joy of his soul to commune with here, and the strength of his life to find real, to find near, and to find all love and strength and grace.

C. J. Vaughan, Voices of the Prophets,p. 114 (also Good Words,1866, p. 826).

References: Genesis 49:19; Genesis 49:21. F. Whitfield, The Blessing of the Tribes,pp. 149, 173, 185.Genesis 49:19. R. S. Candlish, The Book of Genesis,vol. ii., p. 300. Genesis 49:22. F. Whitfield, The Blessing of the Tribes,p. 195.