Jeremiah 29:32

REFLECTIONS

READER! after that you have made, under divine teaching, your most serious contemplations on the different subjects proposed, from true and false prophets brought before you in this Chapter; there is a train of thoughts opened to your view, in a portion of the contents of it, to which I would beg to direct more immediately, both your meditation and my own. I mean, in that unequalled grace and goodness manifested by the Lord, in the midst of all his people's rebellion and sin, as set forth in this Chapter. After seventy years, saith the Lord, be accomplished, I will visit you, and perform my good word towards you. Reader! is not this the constant tenor and precious words of the whole charter of grace? What is God's good word towards his people, but the word of God in Christ Jesus? What is the performance of Jehovah's promise, but the promise of redemption in Christ, which he purposed in himself before the world began? And what is the whole coming of Jesus, to deliver from worse than Babylonish captivity, even from sin, death and hell; but to perform the mercy promised to our forefathers, and to remember his holy Covenant? Oh! what a thought is it, amidst all my rebellious ways, and after all my unworthy views of divine goodness, that his thoughts are not our thoughts, nor his ways our ways. Jesus saith, and God the Father saith, and let me never forget the gracious declarations: I know the thoughts that I think towards you, saith the Lord: thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end! Do Lord! I would say, as thou hast said. Help my soul to pray to thee, and to seek for thee, as for hidden treasure, with my whole heart, and with my whole soul. And do thou Lord, gather thy Church, thy redeemed, thy people, from all places whither they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day; yea Lord, bring them all home to thy flock, and manifest that thou art their God, and that they are thy people, and the sheep of thy pasture. Amen.