Expectation.
Have you never observed that everyone's character is determined by what he is living up to? Why is the Mohammedan an idle and self-indulgent man? Because he lives up to a corporeal and indolent and sensuous heaven. Why is the Brahmin a man of apathy? Because, after all his transmigrations, he has nothing to expect, according to his creed, but annihilation, absolute annihilation. Why does the believer grow holy and loving, but because he is always realising in his mind the heaven of holiness and love to which he is going? Certainly expectation is a duty.
I. But God has done with this faculty of expectation what He has done with all the natural powers and habits of the human mind He has sanctified it and elevated it. And this is the way God has done it. He has thrown into it first truth, then affection, and then great delight, so He has made it hope. What is it? Expectation with desire from the beginning, hope has been the great principle of God's moral government of the world. The moment that man fell, and the present became unhappy, the antidote was hope: "I will put enmity;" "the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head." Observe, at once, the mind was sent off into the future for its comfort. It was the same with Abraham; he had nothing, he was to have everything. The Jews lived by their prophecies. All sacrifice speaks the same language. And now what is the aim, the consolation, the theme, the life of the whole Church, but the coming back of her dear Lord? And when He comes, there may be another future to look forward to still, and probably another and another and another.
II. Notice in this long line of expectation that the next thing in the succession is always greater and better than that which preceded it. The series is always rising every prophecy has its range of fulfilment; first an early and historical one, then an inward and spiritual one, then an evangelical one in the life and death of Jesus Christ, then an ultimate one in yet future glories. If you could read it so, whenever anything happy comes to you an answered prayer, a gift of God you may always hear it saying, "I am only a pledge of something else; there is something better than I am behind." All along, at every stage, the principle is the same, and the words of the Baptist have their echo and their counterpart everywhere: "One mightier than I cometh."
J. Vaughan, Sermons,1871, p. 170.
References: Luke 3:16. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xviii., No. 1044; Homiletic Magazine,vol. i., p. 99.