Therefore let us comfort ourselves with the performance of this promise, for the performance of the grand pi'omisc of the resurrection. Indeed, the grand promise of the resurrection is the ground of the performance of all other promises. As you have it in Ezekiel, concerning the dry bones : saith God, ' I will clothe these dead bones with flesh and skin,' &c., * there- fore I will restore you again,'- Ezek. xxxvii. 1, seq. God that will restore our dust and bring our bodies together, that were scattered here and there, he will restore us out of our sickness and trouble, if it stand with his glory and our good.
Now, after the argument that ho uscth to persuade God from his word of threatening and promise, he comes to the argument from their relation.
* These are thy servants.'
Though sinful servants, yet they are thy servants. ' These are thy people.' Thou hast no other people in the world but those, and ' thou art their God.' He pleads from former favours. ' Thou hast redeemed them by thy great power and strong hand.'
It is a good argument to plead with God for former favours : because ' there is no shadow of change in him,' James i. 17 ; he is always like himself; ho is never drawn dry. And it is a groat honour to go to him for new favours upon former, because he hath an infinite supply. We may draw so much from men as they have not afterwards to make good, but we cannot honour God more than to go to him with a large faith, to fetch
AT THE THRONE OF GRACE. 95
large favours from bim. The more he gives, the more he can give, and the more he is willing to give. ' To him that hath shall be given,' Mat. xiii. 12. We cannot honour God more than to go to him upon former favours and with enlarged desires. ' Thou hast redeemed us, and been gracious to us before,' Ps. cvii. 2.
We may much more take this argument in our mouths, and press the majesty of God. ' Thou hast redeemed us,' not out of Egypt or Babylon, the land of the north, but ' with the blood of thy Son,' from hell and dam- nation ; and therefore thou canst redeem us from this petty misery, from these enemies. We may allege that grand favour to all other petty redemp- tions, whatsoever they are. He that hath given us Christ, that ' hath not spared his own Son, but gave bim to death for us all, how shall he not with him give us all things else ? Eom. viii. 32. He that hath been so large and bountiful as to give us his own Son, that gift to admiration* — - ' So God loved the world,' John iii. IG — how cannot we plead with him for all other favours whatsoever, whether they concern the life of grace or glory, or our present condition while we live in this world ? We may plead it much more I say, ' Thou hast redeemed us.' But these things I will not press further now.
In the eleventh verse he comes to press it still, and repeats that which he had said before, ' Lord, I beseech thee, let thine ear be attentive to the praj'er of thy servant, and of thy servants that desire to fear thy name.'
' Let thine ear be attentive to the prayer of thy servants.' It is a prayer ; and thou art ' a God hearing prayer.' They be thy servants, and thou regardest thy servants. Here are but a few petitions in this large request : ' remember,' ' be attentive,' and ' give me favour.' The most of the prayer is spent in a preparative considering the attributes of God, and in confession and strong reasons from the word, of promises and threatenings, and from their relation ; and then he makes good the relation, ' We are thy servants, because we desire to fear thy name.'
To shew that indeed :
It is an excellent skill and art in i^rmjer, to have strong arguments.
Then the suit comes off easily, as in Ps. xc. It is a prayer of Moses, the man of God ; and yet the least part of the psalm is prayer : ' Teach us to number our days,' &c., ver. 12. That is all the petition. Though the petition be short, yet it is efficacious, w^hen the heart is warmed and strengthened with strong reasons before ; when the heart is elevated and raised with the consideration of the majesty and the truth of God ; and when the heart is strengthened with strong convincing reasons, that God will hear when we press him with his word ; I say, when the heart is thus raised and warmed, all the petitions come easily off.
Therefore, it is an excellent thing, beloved, to study the Scriptures, and to study all the arguments whereby holy men have prevailed with God in Scripture ; and to see in what case those arguments were used. They are of use and force to prevail with God.
It is a pitiful thing now, for Christians under the glorious light of the gospel, to come to God only with bare, naked petitions (if they come from a true heart, they have their force that God should regard them), and have not reasons to press God out of his own word. They cannot bind God with his own promise, nor with arguments that he bath been bound with before. Let a child but cry to the father or mother, there is relief pre- * That is, 'wonder.' — G.