The children of thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be established before thee." In an apprehension of the mutable con dition of himself and all things wherein he was concerned, he be takes himself unto an interest in the immutability of God. There is nothing firm, stable, unchangeable, but God himself: " But thou art the same/' There is nothing else the same ; we are not the same the following moment as the moment before ; nothing is the same, but only God : " Thou art the same." What advantage will ensue hereon ? c In the midst of all these changes, " The children of thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be established before thee." ' Where there is an interest in the immutable God, in the midst of all changes whereunto we are obnoxious there is stability and eternal continuance for us and for our seed.
The other place also gives the same direction : Isa. xl. 7, 8, " The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the LORD bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth." What shall we do, then ? " But the word of our God shall stand for ever/' saith he ; that is, as the apostle Pete** ex plains it, 1 Pet. i. 25, " The word of the gospel which is preached unto you." In this fading condition of all things, if you would come to any thing of stability, it must be in the stability of the word of God, that abides for ever. That contains the whole of what I have been speaking unto you, — that there is a destructive dissolution waits for every thing, but only the kingdom and gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Lord keep us from needing that reproof which the psalmist uses to some hereon : " I said unto the fools, Deal not foolishly." But can there be any thing more foolish for us than to fix and set our hearts and minds upon that which God hath told us is grass? Your estates, your parts, your wisdom, your wives and children, are grass ; they all wither away, decay, and die. Yourselves are grass: "Surely," saith he, " the people is grass." Let us not be so foolish as to set our hearts upon those things that are withering and decaying ; let us not please ourselves. We have security in nothing, when we return to our habitations, but this one thing, " The word of our God shall stand for ever." Wives, children, husbands, may be dead, our houses may be fired and all consumed. There is only this, the word of God, that abides for ever ; the promises of God fail not ; every thing else is obnox ious to dissolution, please yourselves with them as much as you will. Men are apt to have strange contrivances to satisfy themselves in other things, Ps. xlix. The men the psalmist there speaks of, he gives this account of them: "They see wise men die, likewise the fool and the brutish person perish, and leave their wealth to others." They have convictions upon them, that as to their own persons, all their interest in present things is but perishing : for they see wise
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men and fools all die ; there is no man but dies, be he of what con dition he will. But they have contrivances to secure themselves another way; and this overpowers them, that they dare not speak one word that there is a happiness to be had in those outward, earthly things. But "their inward thought is" (they have a reserve yet), "their inward thought is, that their houses shall continue for ever, and their dwelling-places to all generations; they call their lands after their own names/' verse 11. Though they cannot continue those things to themselves, yet they will continue them in their posterity : ' Pos terity from generation to generation, they shall enjoy all my wealth, and all I have laboured for, hoarded up, and preserved. What if I do die, seeing all must die, the wise man and the fool alike, yet pos terity of generations to come shall enjoy it/ That is their "inward thought;" that is it wherewith they relieve themselves against the open convictions they have that all things here are uncertain and not worth the setting the mind upon. What judgment doth the Holy Ghost make of it, verse 17? Alas, poor man! he is little con cerned in all that comes after him, for " When he dieth he shall carry nothing away ; his glory shall not descend after him/' The meaning is this, he hath no manner of concernment in all that is above ground. If he could carry his riches and his glory with him, it were something ; but as for all that he leaves behind, he is no more concerned in it than any common man that lives upon the face of the earth : " He shall go to the generation of his fathers ; they shall never see light/'
This should teach us, — and it were a good lesson if we could learn it this day, — to secure an interest in unchangeable things; about which you need not be careful or solicitous, as you are about all things you enjoy. I know you are so; — don't deny it. There are none of you so negligent, careless, and stupid, but you may take a prospect of such near-approaching dissolutions as must make you solicitous about all your enjoyments. It were better, then, we should lay out the whole of our concernment in those things that cannot be shaken or moved, — that never are obnoxious to a destructive dissolution. "The word of our God shall stand for ever;" the things of the king dom of Christ are unshaken things. Mercy coming from an ever lasting covenant to his children and their seed shall be blessed salvation. Though " all these things shall be dissolved/' God is " the same/' That is for the first observation.