First, The almighty power of God is engaged for the saints' defence : God brought Israel out of Egypt with a high hand ; but did he set them down on the other side the Red Sea, to find and force their way to Canaan, by their own policy or power ? When he had opened the iron gate of their house of bondage, and brought them into the open fields, did he vanish as the angel from Peter, when out of prison? No, as a man carries his son, so the Lord bare them in all the way they went, Deut. i. 31. This doth lively set forth the saints' march to heaven : God brings a soul out of spiritual Egypt by his converting grace ; that is, the day of his power, wherein he makes the soul willing to come out of Satan's clutches. Now when the saint is upon his march, all the country riseth upon him. How shall this poor creature pass the pikes, and get safely by all his enemies' borders ? God himself enfolds him in the arm of his everlasting strength : ' We are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.' 1 Pet. i. 5. The power of God is that ' shoulder,' on which Christ carries his sheep home, rejoicing all the way he goes, Luke xv. 5. These everlasting arms of his strength are those eagles' wings, upon which the saints are botli tenderly and securely conveyed to glory, Exod. xix. 4. There is a fivefold tie or engagement that lies upon God's power, to be the saints' life-guard.
First, The near relation he hath to his saints : they are his own dear children ; every one takes care of his own ; the silly hen, how doth she bustle and bestir hei'self to gather her brood under her wing when the kite appears ! No care like that which nature teacheth. How much more will God, who is the Father of such dispositions in his creatures, stir up his whole strength to defend his children! 'He said. They are my people; so he became their Saviour,' Isa. xxxiii. 8. As if God had said. Shall I sit still with my hand in my bosom, while my own people are thus misused before my face ? I cannot bear it. The mother, as she sits in her house, hears one shriek, and knows the voice, cries out, O it is my child ! Away she throws all, and runs to him. Thus God takes the alarm of his children's cry : 'I heard Ephraim bemoaning himself,' saith the Lord ; his cry pierced his ear, and his ear affected his bowels, and his bowels called up his power to the rescue of him.
Secondly, The dear love he beareth to his saints engageth his power. He that hath God's heart cannot want his arm. Love in the creature commands all the other affections, sets all the powers of the whole man on work ; thus in God, love sets all his other attributes on work ; when God once pitched his thoughts on doing good to lost man, then wisdom fell on projecting the way ; almighty power, that undertook to raise the fabric according to wisdom's model. All are ready to effect what God saith he likes. Now the believing soul is an object of God's choicest love, even the same with which he loves his Son, John xvii. 26.
First, God loves the believer as the birth of his everlasting counsel ; when a soul believes, then God's eternal purpose and counsel concerning him, whom he chose in Christ before the foundation of the world, and with whom his thoughts went so long big, brings forth. And how must God needs love that creatin-e, whom he carried so long in the womb of his eternal purpose ! This goodly fabric of heaven and earth hath not been built, but as a stage whereon he would in time act what he decreed in heaven of old, concerning the saving of thee, and a few more of his elect; and therefore according to the same rate of delight with which God pleased and entertained himself in the thoughts of this before the world was, must he needs rejoice over the sold now believing with love and complacency unconceivable ; and God having brought his counsel thus far towards its issue, surely will raise all the power he hath, rather than be disappointed of his glory within a few steps of home; I mean, his whole design in the believer's salvation; the Lord who hath chosen his saints (as Christ prays for Joshua their representative) will rebuke Satan and all their enemies, Zech. iii.
Secondly, God loves his saints as the purchase of his Son's blood : they cost him dear ; and that which is so hardly got shall not be easily lost. He that was
IQ AND IN THE POWER OF HIS MIGHT.
willing to expend his Son's blood to gain them, will not deny his power to keep them.
Thirdly, God loves the saints for their likeness to himself; so that if he loves himself, he cannot but love himself appearing in them ; and as he loves himself in them, so he defends himself in defending them. What is it in a saint that enrageth hell, but the image of God, without which the war woidd soon be at an end ? It is the hatred the panther hath to man that makes him fly at his pic- ture ; ' for thy sake are we slain all the day long:' and if the quarrel be God's, surely the saint shall not go forth to war at his own cost.