Ezekiel 16:63

REFLECTIONS

READER! let us not dismiss this most beautiful and interesting chapter until that, under the teaching of God the Holy Ghost, we have gathered some of the many blessed instructions it contains for our Improvement, both in humblings and consolations.

Behold what a complete representation the Lord here makes of every sinner as brought into perishing circumstances by the fall! What are we, what is any man, yea, every man, by nature and by practice, but like this poor, helpless, and unconscious infant thrown out to perish in the open field! We are not only exposed to endless ruin, and unable in ourselves, like the new-born babe in nature, to put forth a helping hand to our own recovery; but we are, like the babe, unconscious of our danger, and not sensible of our wretched state.

Hath Jesus passed by and bid us live? Hath He, notwithstanding all our vileness, when loathsome to angels and to all the creation of God, beheld us and loved us in our low estate, married our nature, united us to Himself, washed us, clothed us, fed us, sustained us, and, even in the midst of all our after back-slidings and departures from Him, still, from His covenant love, kept us by His almighty power through faith unto salvation? Oh! what shall recompense, or, since all recompense fails, what shall testify a sense of His grace and our undeservings? Precious, precious Jesus! do Thou, by Thy blessed Spirit, work in us both to will and to do, of Thy good pleasure. Oh! make us to know indeed and in truth, as Thou hast said, that Thou art the Lord; for surely none but the long-suffering and patience of Jehovah could hold out against the continual provocations and whorish heart of Thy people. Lord! I do pray Thee, that, as a sweet and precious testimony of our being still within the rich covenant mercies, both the heart of him that writes and him that reads may have those blessed properties of grace here recorded. That we may, indeed, remember and be confounded, and never open our mouth anymore in a way of self-justification or self-delight, because of our shame when thou art pacified towards us for all that we have done, O Lord God. Amen.