"For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us." — 2 Cor. 1:20.

Thr words "in him" refer to Christ; all God's promises are in Christ; and in Christ they are all " yea " and in Christ they are all "Amen," for in Christ God gets the glory of them, and in Christ He gets the glory by us. We live on promises. To say that we can't accept promises, that we can't trust in a bare promise, can't depend on it, can't transact business on it, is to go in the face of universal experience. A promise implies the coming of some good to us, that we are not just in possession of. A promise does not refer to anything evil coming to us; that is a threat. It is a statement we take for the time being of what we are hoping for, — something good we are hoping for. It is the basis upon which rests all governmental, business, and domestic life, and all the affairs of this life are carried on on nothing but promises. Marriage and currency are promises; treaties of peace between nations; a check is a promise; and all the business and affairs of this world are carried on by promise. The world lived four thousand years on the promised Messiah, so that from the Fall until the day Jesus was born was a great arc of promise, and on that arc the world hung. The promises extend from the beginning until the present, and from the present to the future; and when the Lord calls on us to get saved on a promise, we simply do what we do on every other thing on business principles.

God's promise is a projection from Himself, that we may take hold of; we can't take hold of the abstract Deity." An infant can take hold of the moon as easily as a man's mind can grasp the infinite God. Now, how can souls be brought in contact with the divine nature? Why, God lets down these promises, and by believing on them we are brought up into fellowship with the divine nature. A promise is like a rope thrown to a man overboard, by which he can be drawn up to the vessel; so by promises we are brought up, by the Divine Spirit, into fellowship with the divine nature.

God unbosoms Himself to us in His promises. We only live a minute at a time, but God lives in eternity, the eternal past and future. "He inhabiteth eternity." Now, inasmuch as you live only a minute at a time, God says, I will give you a promise that extends into to-morrow, so that by taking hold of God's promise you get the substance of what will come to-morrow. When I believe God's Word I get the benefit of what took place two thousand years ago, and will get the benefit of what is to come; and I virtually spread myself over the whole duration of ages by simply believing God's promises. There are, it is said, over thirty-two thousand promises in God's Book, and they touch every phase of human experience. Promises of pardon that will forgive you this moment; for cleansing from all sin; for keeping, correcting, guiding, healing, perplexity, business life, time and eternity; for the young, middle-aged, old, fatherless, and widows; war and peace; for home and abroad, poverty and wealth, sickness and health, death; for daily bread and raiment; for homes on earth and mansions in the skies. God has floored the earth with promises and roofed the skies with promises. We are born on a promise and God meets us with a promise: "When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up." And when we lay us down to die, we will lay our head on a pillow of promise like this: "Be thou faithful . . . and I will give thee a crown of life"; and as we soar to God's throne, we are accompanied by a promise of a resurrection in the first resurrection. They touch life at every pore. Now God, if He can, has exhausted Himself in promises to us. All these promises are in Christ — not one out of Christ and not one fulfilled out of Christ. Jesus is the depository and repository; every gift of God is in Christ Jesus. God's promises are God's government bonds. The government has issued bonds to pay the national debt, and people buy these bonds, and these bonds are held, and the very existence of the government upholds these bonds; and all God's promises are bonds, all paid for. They have coupons, and every time you cut off a coupon you get a blessing; and the coupons never exhaust. Jesus stands hack of these promises; they are all given through Him. God does not recognize any prayer that is not offered through Jesus, and in His name. The heathen pray through Christ; though they do not know His name, they do not reject Him, they do not ignore Him. But for a proud, self-righteous, Unitarian Pharisee to pretend that he prays to the Great All-Father! — People think that God hears prayers, and can do wonders out of Christ. Every prayer where open Bibles are, out of Christ, is an abomination to the Father. He neither hears nor answers such prayer. He would as leave hear the devil pray. "He that despiseth the Son despiseth the Father"; and you cannot insult God more than by rejecting the bleeding, loving Son of His bosom! And every one who proposes to offer prayer except through the blessed Son of God is an insult to Heaven. God saves no man who has heard of His dear Son who prays not through Him. When we pray we take these promises to God the Father, and plead them in the name of Jesus, and they are cashed by the Holy Ghost. They are God's checks. Jesus signs them with His blood, and the Holy Ghost honors and answers them with power. Joseph suffered. Joseph's wisdom secured the corn; and Joseph who suffered to provide the corn was the one to distribute it"; and, in like manner, God sends all to Jesus. He carries the keys; all sinners, angels, and saints go to Jesus, and in Jesus we receive the promise. So when you want pardon or cleansing or help, fly to your knees, take the promise and plead the name and birth and death of Jesus, and give God no rest day nor night until He considers your case for the sake of His Son. They are all " yea "; that word means "yes," all yes promises, and yes means "true"; they are all true " in him "; absolutely true, divinely true, eternally true. The word " yea " means they are so true that they need no amendment, no revision, no enlarging nor paring down. They come from the mind and nature of God, and express the veracity of God, and the little promise is just as great in God's eye as the big promise. We talk about big and small promises, — they are just as true the one as the other; the dewdrop contains the same attributes as a great lake, and what you call a little promise contains the attributes of God as a whole volume of them. His veracity is involved in every little promise: " Heaven and earth shall pass away, but not a jot fail." Now, what is a "jot"? It is the name of a little Hebrew letter, "yod" the smallest in the whole alphabet, and "tittle" means a punctuation point; now, Jesus said, God has put so much of His eternal veracity in His promises, that not one letter or punctuation point shall fail. Your faith or doubt has nothing to do with the truth of God's promises; it will effect your experience. You may say that a ten dollar bill is a counterfeit; your faith does not make it true, nor does your doubt make it a counterfeit. So you may reject God's promises, but they are true whether you believe them or not.

When Luther began preaching on justification by faith, men doubted, but that did not change the truth. Doubting does not change the veracity at all. The very day that Eve ate the forbidden fruit, God revealed provision for justification through the promised seed. Justification was true in the eternal past, when the world was not made; so that the doctrine was as true as God is true before angels were made. Your faith does not change the truth. Some get the notion that if they believe in sanctification it is true, and if they don't it isn't. They think they have been in the Church a long while, and do not need to believe everything; "of course not!" They do not feel called on to believe everything taught in the Bible. Jesus, on His way to Emmaus, said, "O fools, and slow of heart to believe all, etc." They believed nine tenths of the Bible. They believed in the divinity of Jesus, but not in the resurrection. So they get the notion that sanctification is a doctrine "I can believe if I want, and needn't if I don't want to." Your faith has no more to do with the veracity of the doctrine than the gleaming of a star. It is true, whether you believe or not. A drunken fellow saw cars going by electricity, and he said, " This thing that don't run by horse or steam or anything else, I am going to upset it! " The consequence was, he was nearly killed, and the lightning thing went right on. Now heaven and hell are true as God is true, and they go right on whether we believe or do not believe; and if we get in their way they will grind us to powder; and if we get on the heavenly train it will carry us to glory.

The next word is "Amen." This means to be fulfilled, accomplished, brought to pass, so let it be, that is, fulfilled. The "yea" promise is a basis for faith, the "Amen" is a basis for experience; "Amen" means that the promise has passed into experience; the thing has come to pass. When Eve got the promise it was a "yea," and when Mary held the Babe in her arms it was an "Amen" promise. So when you lay your head on the "yea" promise the "Amen" promise passes into your own experience. It is a promise for knowledge. When you go to a distant city, you get a simple piece of paper; you think it doesn't look like a trip to New York. It is a "yea" promise, just as responsible for your trip as the Pennsylvania Railroad is. All the capital of the railroad company is at the back of that bit of paper, and if they do not fulfill that, promise you can burst the business. As you go on your ride, the conductor punches your ticket; when you get to New York it is an "Amen " ticket. So you start on the journey to heaven; you start on a promise of pardon, and then promise for purity and guiding; and as you pass the various stations on the road to glory, God will cash the promises until all are cashed. Caleb said, " There hath not failed one good thing." Where Abraham went it was a strange land, but God gave him a great bundle of His promises; he invested a handful and laid down to die without owning any land. He died without owning any, and he laid in Machpelah for centuries on a handful of God's promises; and Joshua came and got the "Amen." You wonder how God can convert you. You take a promise, — "Dear God, you promised to save sinners," — you take hold and hang on to it, — "Lord, I believe you bled and died for me," — and if you expire, on your dying bed, like Abraham, with your handful of God's promises, and if you believe, the Holy Ghost will soon give you the "Amen." And if you will take the promise, "I will, be thou clean," you will get the "Amen." Do you know that if you try to make yourself happy you will be miserable? You cannot breathe naturally nor easily if you try; that instant you can't breathe at all naturally. So when you try to make the Lord save you, you fail. You leave the promise to God and the "Amen" to God. You must not say, " Lord, I will believe as soon as I feel." When you take hold of the wire of a galvanic battery, and break your connection with what goes against the electric current, you will feel the shock. God's promise is the wire; His hand has hold of one end of the promise; you take hold of the other and you will feel the shock. You have nothing to do with making yourself feel happy. Happy or not, believe God, and if He wants to let His promise fail, "Amen," let Him do it. If He wants to disappoint a poor sinner like you, let Him do it. Get your check, get your ticket; have you got your money? Yes, here it is in a check. So you take the Lord's promises; you take a promise and say, "Thank you, Lord, I have got deliverance." Bunyan took a promise and unlocked his prison with it. God's promises are "Amen " if you comply with the conditions, and God gets the glory of every promise. Every time a promise is fulfilled it glorifies the Promiser, it advertises His veracity and throws a new luster over His name.

Suppose a strange man comes and makes a promise to you, and gets you to make a business meeting with him, and you begin to transact business with him; for every promise kept his character comes out more and more, until after twenty years, having never deceived you, you say, " That man is glorious." A man that keeps his promise brings out his gloriousness. Now, when God makes promises and keeps them, — century after century He has never been known to fail or not keep time, — that brings out His glory. And He has covered the earth with promises; Palestine is filled with kept promises. So when you plead in anguish, from the very answer of your prayer the luster is on the face of Jesus. But God could not make a promise unless He had some one to make it to; and so when God makes us a promise and keeps it, God gets the glory, but He gets it by us, that is, we give God a chance to show Himself. If it hadn't been for saving sinners we would never have known what God was. They show what He is by letting people see that He can save them. We would not hear a sound except for the auditorial nerve. Here is a man playing on a musical instrument; he is simply striking the air, and that shakes the nerve, and I hear beautiful music; so he gets the glory of the music. But were there no such nerve, nobody could ever hear it; but he gets the glory by me. If there were no clouds you would never see the glorious sunset and the gorgeous sunbeams; the black cloud is there, and the sun throws his ray on the cloud and makes it glorious, — the black cloud catches it. The sun gets the glory, but it gets it by the black cloud. A man drops a piece of carbon on a stream of electricity, that has no life, no wisdom, nor sense; nothing but a burnt stick. But there goes a current of electricity, and the current is caught by the stick, and oh, what glory! and as you stand there you are praising the electricity, and it gets all the glory, but it would never have gotten it but for the poor burnt stick. Now, we are poor burnt sticks, and God's Word is a wire through which goes a current of Holy Ghost fire, and nobody sees it; but here comes a poor soul, needy and sinful, and becomes adjusted to the promise, and like that stick, falls on the current, and the Holy Ghost transforms him, and all the neighborhood sees the light. What is that man? Nothing but a poor burnt stick set on fire of the Holy Ghost; and we see the glory, and we magnify the Lord. He gets the glory, but He gets it by that poor burnt stick. God will cash your check here. Open a bank account; now just present your promise, and the Holy Ghost will cash the promise and send you away with the "Amen" in your soul. Just let the Lord save you. Pick out your promise, and plead the promise you want.