Application —
Let us hearken to the advice given us in the text:
1. Let us, both for our humiliation and comfort, review the dispensations of God's providence and grace towards us . . .
2. Let us, under our heaviest trials, look forward to the season when God's promises shall receive their final accomplishment . . .
Isai. li. 7, 8. Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law : Fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye afraid of their revilings : for the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool ; but my righteousness shall be for ever, and my salvation from generation to generation.
OUR heavenly Father, anxious that we should attend to his word in every thing, uses various means to impress it on our minds : sometimes he issues his commands with authority, and enforces them with threatenings of his displeasure : at other times he exhorts with more than parental tenderness, and per- suades us with the most encouraging considerations. Thus, in the chapter before us, he says no less than three times, " Hearken to me, O my people3!" In that spirit we would now address you. It is in Jeho- vah's name that we speak, yea, and in his very place and stead b : and we entreat you to listen with an obedient ear, whilst we guard you against one of the most dangerous snares in which Satan ever entangles the souls of men. We invite your attention then to the words of our text, and beg you to consider,
I. The fact here supposed —
The supposition does certainly at first sight appear strange —
a ver. 1, 4, 7. h 2 Cor. v. 20.