2 Kings 9:37

REFLECTIONS

READER! what an awful view doth this chapter afford of the miserable end of Ahab's race! and how is the mind struck in the contemplation, that a family such as his was in all its branches, should sell themselves to work evil with greediness. It is hardly possible to go through the review of what is related in these histories of Ahab and Jezebel, and their house hold, without being again and again prompted, as we prosecute the history, to exclaim from whence arose such determined resolute impiety!

But we read the history of Ahab to very little profit if it doth not serve to lead the mind further than to the history of a single person or family, and not to behold in it the outlines of wicked and ungodly men in all ages. In the dreadful opposition Ahab made to the God of Israel and his prophets, do we not behold the representation of all the Ahabs of every age, in their avowed hatred and opposition of the blessed gospel of the Lord Jesus? Do not some of this description of men seem as if every faculty was in league against the Lord Jesus? Their hearts boiling with implacable bitterness; their ears resolutely stopped to all the grace of the gospel; their voices uniformly raised against it. Despisers of divine things, haters of God and of his Christ! Oh! my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly mine honor be not thou united.

But, Reader! how sweet to the view is Jesus after looking at human nature, and human wickedness, in such awful characters! and farther, how increasingly so is the view of Jesus under these considerations, when we are enabled to trace our preservation and upholding from such awful examples on ourselves! Yes! dearest, almighty Jesus! it is to thy preventing and restraining grace we cheerfully ascribe all the praise and the glory. Truly must I say (and, Reader, do you not the same?) by the grace of God I am what I am! that I have been, that I now am, and that I feel confidence for the future I shall be kept; on my bended knees, in transports of rejoicing, would I give the whole glory to the adorable Redeemer. It was Jesus who committed to his Father his church for this blessed purpose in the close of his ministry, and just before his death. And it is to this one source the preservation of his people must be everlastingly ascribed. Keep (said the gracious Redeemer as he placed his dearly purchased flock in the hands of the Lord) keep, Holy Father, through thine own name those whom thou hast given me. And hence under the unquestionable evidence of this great truth, would I cry out with the apostle, and say, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his abundant mercy hath be gotten to this lively hope all his people, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.