Our text is a very appropriate one, very comforting and helpful. It begins with "And," thus implying a connection between what precedes and what follows. In verse 27 we are told that God knows something, that he searches all hearts and he knows the mind of the spirit. God does not judge according to the outward appearance, and glad we are that that is so, if it were otherwise we could not stand.

He knows the mind or intention of our spirit.

We would be misjudging God if we judged Him by outward appearance, the evil and trouble we now see on every side. We should judge of Him by His intentions, and these we find expressed in His word. "The Lord will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto His servants, the Prophets." (Amos 3:7.) Many believe that if God really loved us there would be no evil and sorrow about us. On the contrary it is one of the greatest proofs that he does love us. We have three great proofs of His love: 1, He have his Son for us. 2, He allows all the evil and sorrow that we have. 3, He will give us wonderful blessings in the future.

God does not cause the evil. He has power to prevent it if He would.

He could stop all sin in an instant, and since He has the power and yet does not use it, then He permits it for some reason. God does nothing without a good and sufficient cause (Eze. 14:23), and these reasons will redound to man's blessing, and to God's glory. Therefore it is not because God is indifferent, or does not care, that all this evil has come upon us. To Adam, God said, "Cursed is the ground for thy sake," that is, the rest of the earth (outside Eden) was left in that barren, cursed condition for man's own good. How awful would it have been for the race in its fallen, sinful condition, if it had been allowed to be in idleness! "Behold, this was the iniquity of Sodom; pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her." (Eze. 16:49.) Therefore God took them away as He saw good. [PE36]

A man does not realize the value of a home, until he loses it. Adam appreciated Eden most after he lost it. If he had been allowed to return he would have valued it highly. We do not rightly value our health, happiness, homes and sight until we have lost them. The evil and suffering and sorrow seem awful while we are passing through them (Heb. 12:11), just as a child feels that its parent is cruel and hard hearted, and the punishment more than is needed, while it is being punished. But in after years he looks back and rejoices for those corrections, by the parent, for they kept his feet in the right path, and taught him to do right.

How much of all the sorrow and pain and suffering that is in the world did you ever see? Only the small portion about your own home, or if you traveled, then it was only a small portion. While we know so little and see so little, God sees it all. His eyes are over the evil and the good. He knows what pain and anguish burdens that heart, he knows what caused that terrible accident in which so many lives were lost, and so many homes robbed of their dear ones, he knows what caused that little one to die and broke the mother's heart..It is said that every heart knows its own bitterness, but God knows the bitterness of every heart.

How much grief does sin cause you, how much pain does an untruth give you? You have heard them so often that it does not hurt much.

How many tears did you shed for the troubles and sorrows in Europe?

Very few, for none of your loved ones were there, none of the sufferers were near and dear to you. We have become selfish and hard hearted through the fall, and it is only when these evils strike near us that we sorrow and are pained much. But God feels them. It was His loved one who sinned, it was His dear one who was killed, or whose heart was broken. While our heart is hardened and our views and sympathies narrow, God's heart is not hard. He who is the source of all that is good has a heart infinitely more tender and sympathetic than ours. He feels every ache and pain and woe of us all. He knows all the sorrow and sin.

Every untruth, every sin is terrible to God; He suffers grief and pain for it all. At the time just before the flood, God did not repent that He had made man in the sense that we use the word now. He was grieved, displeased that man had become so corrupt, and determined to give the race a new start, and in love to permit man's sin to go no farther. Sin is more awful to God than to us. We suffer for only a few years, thirty or forty, or three score and ten, but he has suffered for six thousand years. We get used to it, He never can get used to it. He sees the awful sights and sounds, he hears the children cry for bread, he sees the tears which are shed, all the woe and grief and misery.

Not a sparrow falls to the ground but He knows it. (Matt. 10:29-31; Luke 12:6,7.) [PE37] Yet, in His great love, He says: "If enduring this will help my dear ones the better to enjoy the blessings of eternity, then I will go through it, I will endure it." It costs him nothing to give blessings, but it is infinitely harder to withhold them. If you saw your child longing for a Christmas present, and you had the means to give it, which would cost you the most, to give or to withhold it? Sin now costs God, for the past six thousand years, more than it will cost him to shower blessings to all eternity. Who, then, has suffered the most, who has endured the most anguish?

"We know" only a certain class knows, the wheat class. This may sound very egotistical, but it is actually the reverse. It requires humility to believe that we can know. To state the opposite is egotistical, to say that we do not know even when God says so, is putting your own judgment before God's word. We know some of the things we read about in the newspaper, we did not see them happen, . yet we believe that they did happen. How much more should we credit the word of God! We know also by evidence and experience.

"We know that all things, etc." We do not know all things, nor all of the Bible, but we know this special fact.

"We know that all things work, etc." Not merely religious things, but all our woes, our sickness, our health, our poverty, wealth, enemies, persecutions, etc., all. How much easier this would be to endure if we only knew thoroughly that all these work for our good! We often have much trouble and sorrow because we do not know. Let us watch and study that we may know.

"All things work." There is no idleness, to the class mentioned they work for good.

"All things work together." In the world things work out of harmony.

Not so with Christians, these things never work contrary to them, but all together. No matter how they may seem to work, we should have fait h that it is for out good. To many God's work seems confusion, they cannot understand it, but bye and bye we all shall know and understand, and know as we are known. God never causes a needless tear. Now we see as through a glass dimly.

All things work together not to make our path smooth and easy, but for our good. To our health, bodily comfort? No! We remember that Solomon, because of this choice of wisdom, received everything else with it. What would we wish most for? Our greatest desire is to see God occupy that place in the hearts of His creatures which he deserves to have, our greatest desire is to see Him glorified. What would we desire for ourselves? A character like that of Jesus, as gentle, as loving, as merciful, as good to enemies as his character; that is most to be desired. [PE38]

When we first entered the race the prize appeared to take up all our hopes, we wanted to win that prize. We did not discern the goal as clearly then as now. But as we progressed in the race, we saw the goal more clearly, saw its beauty, and its inestimable value; and then we began to strive to reach the goal for its own sake, as we saw how much to be desired it was, what a blessing it would be to have a character like Jesus; and we left the prize to the Father, knowing that His promises are sure, and that if we reached the mark the prize would be ours. Who would not want to reach that goal of perfect love? In Rom. 2:7 we see that the glory (character of Jesus) and the Honor (commendation of Jehovah) are placed first, and the prize, immortality, is put last; the other two must be attained first, before the prize can be given. Our Father loves this spirit, and we should strive to have it; we can leave the prize to his care, for he is Just.

Rom. 5:3. "We glory in tribulation," not as fanatics, but because it works out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, making us more like Jesus. Tribulation worketh patience, while we long for the end of our course and this dark night to be ended, enables us to patiently wait God's due time. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness, who long for it. Such are willing to pay a good price to get it. Many want righteousness, but there are few who hunger and thirst after it. The Lord does not give righteousness to those who regard the cost. We must be willing to endure anything, sickness or loss of property, etc., in order to obtain it, saying: "Lord, let the trials come, I must have the character at any price."

The word does not say that all things are good. Sickness, disease, troubles are not good; but they work for our good if we love God and are called according to His purpose. How can we love our enemies if we never have any enemies? How can we learn patience, if our patience is never tried? Those who love wealth think that to gain wealth is good; those who love power think that to be powerful is good. Those who know God and who love Him will want to be like Him, that will be for their good, and our good. But knowing God and knowing about Him are quite different from each other.

We look at one another through our eyes, but we look at God through our hearts, and so our view of Him will depend upon the condition of our heart. It is like looking at the world through a colored glass. If you use a red glass, everything looks red, the trees, the flowers, sky, houses, people. If we use a blue glass all these things will look blue.

Likewise if we look at God through a hard, selfish heart, we will not see a kind, loving God. Take for example the case of a father who is always harsh and cruel to his children, who punishes them severely [PE39] for little things, so that they fear him rather than love him. They dare not make any noise when he is around. So he has lived his life, and when he is on his death bed he fears to die, fear of the recompense beyond the grave, fear that God will deal out severe punishment for his sins, and will show no mercy, makes him terribly afraid. Why?

Because he looks at God through a harsh, cruel heart, and hence sees only a stern, unrelenting God. It has been truly said that a man's character or disposition is shown by the way he speaks of others.

Suppose a brother who always takes one of the front seats in every meeting is viewed from the standpoints of two other brethren. The first one, who has a natural tendency to put himself forward, and finds hard work in overcoming it may say: "Look at that brother, he always takes a front seat so everyone will see him. He wants people to notice him. I think he is proud." The other one who is more meek and humble and generous minded may say: "What an earnest brother that is. He is always so attentive and takes a front seat so he will not miss anything the speaker says." Hear then are two opposite views of the same action of one person; the heart of the first brother was evidently affected with pride not yet conquered. While the heart of the meeker brother was measurably free from pride. Thus the condition of our heart influences all our judgment. "Unto the pure all things are pure." (Titus 1:15.) If our heart is clear and failings of others to something else than to bad intentions. Therefore it much behooves us to look at the world through a clear glass that we may see things in their true colors; to get a pure, clear heart, that we may know God aright, and may view our fellow men generously, justly, knowing that we ourselves are imperfect and blemished. If we look at God through such a heart, which is in harmony with the Word, how glorious and beautiful He appears. We think that the stable in which Jesus was born was too dirty a place for Him who was to be King of Kings and Lords of Lords. And so it was, but the hearts of many of us, when He found us, were far dirtier than that stable. "He that hath this hope in him, purifieth himself, even as He is pure."

Jesus said: "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." He was a photograph of the Father; so we want to be copies, photographs of Jesus, and thus be likeness of the Father. We cannot say that we are now, but we hope to grow. We want to be better likeness of Jesus every day, changed from glory to glory. (2 Cor. 3:18.) The likeness will be exact in the resurrection, we will be satisfied then. (Psa. 17:15). The photographer puts the photo in a bath of chemicals, to bring out the likeness of the original, sharply and clearly. So God puts us in a bath of troubles, trials, testings, difficulties and persecutions, to bring us more [PE40] and more into the likeness of Jesus, and we should be able to see our growth.

Christians should be blessing gatherers, to gather blessings from sickness, persecutions, troubles, etc., continually building up our characters according to the grand pattern. Bees gather honey only from certain flowers, but we may gather from all sources. Men are like nuts, some are easy to break and to get the meat from, others require much hammering to crack and the meat is hard to get out. We need these experiences, for from some we gather patience, from others meekness, faith, etc. We will need patience in the next age, for it will require a great deal of it to give the incorrigible their full hundred years of trial. It does not matter how the blessings come, as long as we get them. A man does not squabble over the looks of the messenger who brings important papers for which he has anxiously waited. He is only too glad to get them..There is no room for murmuring or rebellion. Let us cast the word "disappointed" out of our vocabulary, for all things work together for our good.