Here we find God in government, meeting, in long-suffering mercy, the very earliest and faintest breathings of a broken and penitent spirit. The history of the judges and of the kings presents many instances of the exercise of this blessed attribute of the divine government. Again and again the soul of Jehovah was grieved for Israel (Judges x. 16.), and He sent them one deliverer after another, until at length there remained no hope, and the righteous claims of His throne demanded their expulsion from that land which they were wholly incompetent to keep.
All this is _government_. But by and by, Israel will be brought into possession of the land of Canaan on the ground of unqualified and unchangeable _grace_--grace exercised in divine righteousness, through the blood of the cross. It will not be by works of law, nor yet by the institutions of an evanescent economy, but by that grace which "reigns through righteousness, by Jesus Christ our Lord." Wherefore, they shall never again be driven forth from their possession. No enemy shall ever molest them. They shall enjoy undisturbed repose behind the shield of Jehovah's favor. Their tenure of the land will be according to the eternal stability of divine grace and the efficacy of the blood of the everlasting covenant. "They shall be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation."
May the Spirit of God lead us into more enlarged apprehensions of divine truth, and endow us with a greater capacity to try the things that differ, and rightly to divide the word of truth.