Israel’s Hope Encouraged

Let Israel hope in the Lord; for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption (Ps 130:7).

This psalm is said to be one of “the Psalms of Degrees,” which, if I am not mistaken, some say the priests and Levites used to sing as they went up the steps into the temple. But let that pass. It is a psalm that gives us an account of the writer’s praying frame of mind, and an exhortation to Israel to hope in God.

“Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord” (Ps 130:1); that is, out of deep or great afflictions. And he said, “Lord, hear my voice, let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications” (Ps 130:2). The latter words explain the former, as if he should say, “By my voice I mean the meaning and spirit of my prayer.” There are words in prayer, and there is spirit in prayer. By the spirit that is in prayer it is discerned whether the words are dead, lifeless and feigned, or warm, fervent and earnest. And God, who searches the heart, knows the meaning of the Spirit, because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God (Rom 8:27).

“If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?” (Ps 130:3). Here he confesses that all men must fall before God forever by the law, because they have broken it and cannot make amends for their transgression of it. But quickly bethinking himself of the mercy of God in Christ, he says, “But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared” (Ps 130:4). Then he returns, saying, “I wait for the Lord” (Ps 130:5), that is, in all his ordinances. Yes, he says it twice over: “My soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope.” By this repetition he suggests that many are content to give God their bodily presence in his ordinances while their hearts are roving to the ends of the earth; but for his part, he did not do so.

“My soul waiteth for the Lord, more than they that watch for the morning, I say, more than they that watch for the morning” (Ps 130:6). It is as if he should say, “Think of those who are tired of the night, whether because of the dark, or a wearisome journey, or a tedious sickness. To them the night is most doleful and comfortless, and they wait for the break of day. Just so do I wait for the Lord, that his presence may be with my soul. Yes, I say, I wait so and more too: ‘More than they that wait for the morning.’” Then he comes to the words I have chosen for my text, saying, “Let Israel hope in the Lord; for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption.”

In these words we have, first, an exhortation; second, a reason for that exhortation; and third, an amplification of that reason. “Let Israel hope in the Lord”: there is the exhortation. “For with the Lord there is mercy”: there is the reason for it. “And with him is plenteous redemption”: there is the amplification of that reason.

In the exhortation there are three things to be inquired into: first, the matter contained in it; second, the manner in which it is expressed; third, the inferences that naturally flow from it.

We will speak first to the matter contained in the text, and that presents itself to us under three heads: first, a duty; second, a direction for managing that duty well; third, the persons who are to manage it so.

First, then, to speak to the duty, and that is hope: “Let Israel hope.” By this word something is taken for granted beforehand, and something of great concern is implied.

What is taken for granted beforehand is faith. For when we speak properly of hope, and put others particularly to the duty of hoping, we conclude that they have faith already. No faith, no hope. To hope without faith is to see without eyes, or to expect without a ground. For “Faith is the substance of things hoped for” (Heb 11:1), as much with respect to the grace of faith as to the doctrine of faith. Does such a person believe? No. Does he hope? Yes. If the first answer is true, the second is a lie: he who never believed never hoped in the Lord. Therefore, when the psalmist says, “Let Israel hope in the Lord,” he presupposes faith and signifies that he is speaking to believers.

What is implied, and is of great concern, is that hope has in it an excellent quality to support Israel in all its troubles. Faith has its excellence in this, hope in that, and love in another thing. Faith will do what hope cannot do. Hope can do what faith does not do. And love can do things distinct from what either of them does. Faith marches in the front, hope in the main body, and love brings up the rear; and so “now abideth faith, hope,” and “charity” (1 Cor 13:13). Faith is the mother grace, for hope is born of her; but love flows from them both.

Now that we are on faith and hope as distinct from each other, let me show you a little of the difference.

1. Faith comes by hearing (Rom 10:17); hope by experience (Rom 5:3-4).

2. Faith comes by hearing the Word of God; hope by the credit that faith has given to it (Rom 4:18).

3. Faith believes the truth of the Word; hope waits for its fulfillment.

4. Faith lays hold of the end of the promise that is next to us, that is, the promise as it stands in the Bible. Hope lays hold of the end of the promise that is fastened to the mercy seat. For the promise is like a mighty cable that is fastened by one end to a ship and by the other to the anchor. The soul is the ship where faith is, and to it the near end of this cable is fastened. But hope is the anchor at the other end of the cable, which enters into that within the veil. So faith and hope, getting hold of both ends of the promise, carry it all away safely.

5. Faith looks to Christ as dead, buried and ascended (1 Cor 15:1-4); hope looks to his second coming. Faith looks to him for justification (Rom 4:1-8); hope for glory.

6. Faith fights for doctrine; hope for a reward (Acts 26:6-7). Faith fights for what is in the Bible; hope for what is in heaven (Col 1:3-5).

7. Faith purifies the heart from bad principles (1 John 5:4-5); hope purifies it from bad manners (2 Pet 3:11, 14; Eph 5:8; 1 John 3:3).

8. Faith sets hope to work; hope sets patience to work (Acts 28:20). Faith says to hope, “Look for what is promised.” Hope says to faith, “So I do, and I will wait for it too.”

9. Faith looks through the Word to God in Christ; hope looks through faith beyond the world to glory (Gal 5:5).

So faith saves, and so hope saves. Faith saves by laying hold of God by Christ (1 Pet 1:5). Hope saves by prevailing with the soul to suffer, for the sake of the world to come, all the troubles, afflictions and adversities it meets with between now and then (Rom 8:24).

Take the matter in this plain comparison. There was a king who adopted someone as his child. He clothed him in the robes worn by the king’s children, and promised him that if he would fight his father’s battles and walk in his father’s ways, he would at last share in his father’s kingdoms. He has received the adoption and the king’s robe, but not yet his part in the kingdom. But now the hope of a share in it will make him fight the king’s battles and also walk in the king’s paths. Yes, and though he should meet with many things that tend to deter him from doing so, yet thoughts of the share promised him in the kingdom, and the hope of enjoying it, will make him cut his way through those difficulties. So it will save him from the ruin those destructions would bring upon him, and in the end it will usher him into the personal possession and enjoyment of that inheritance.

Hope has a thick skin, and will endure many a blow. It will put on patience as a garment. It will wade through a sea of blood. It will endure all things, if it is of the right kind, for the joy that is set before it. This is why patience is called “patience of hope” (1 Thess 1:3): it is hope that makes the soul exercise patience and long-suffering under the cross until the time comes to enjoy the crown.

By this exhortation, therefore, the psalmist persuades those who have believed the truth to wait for its accomplishment, as he himself did by his own example: “I wait for the Lord,” “my soul doth wait,” “and in his word do I hope.” It is for want of hope that so many brisk professors of religion, who have boasted so much and made such brags of their faith, have not been able to stand the drum in the day of alarm and affliction. Their hope in Christ has reached no further than this life, and therefore they are of all men the most miserable.

So by exhorting us to this duty the psalmist puts us in mind of four things: first, that the best things are still ahead, held in reserve for the saints; second, that those who have believed will yet meet with difficulties before they come to them; third, that the grace of hope well exercised is the only way to overcome these difficulties; and fourth, that those who have hope, and exercise it as they should, shall therefore surely enjoy at last the hope that is laid up for them in heaven.

1. As for the first of these, that the best things are still ahead, held in reserve for believers, this is plain from the natural exercise of this grace. For “hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it” (Rom 8:24-25). Hope does not live by sight, as faith does. Rather, hope trusts faith, as faith trusts the Word, and so bears up the soul in patient expectation of enjoying at last what God has promised. But I say, the very natural work of this grace proves that the believer’s best things are still ahead, held in reserve.

You may ask me what those things are. I may tell you, first, in general: they are heavenly things, they are eternal things, they are the things that are where Christ sits at the right hand of God (John 3:12; 2 Cor 4:18; Col 3:1). Do you know them now? They are things that “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor that have entered into the heart of man to conceive of” (Isa 64:4; 1 Cor 2:9). Do you know them now? They are things reserved for the next world, for the saints when they come into the next world. They may be talked of now. Their real existence may be believed now. And by hope we may wait for them now, and it will be our wisdom to do so. But whoever says he knows what they are in their nature, or in the enjoyment of them, otherwise than by faith, is deceived. They are things too big as yet to enter into our hearts, and too big, if they were there, to come out again or be expressed by our mouths.

There is heaven itself, the imperial heaven: does anybody know what that is? There is Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, and the innumerable company of angels: does anybody know what all these are? There is immortality and eternal life: and who knows what they are? There are rewards for services, and for labor of love shown to God’s name here: and who knows what they will be? There are mansions, beds of glory, and places to walk in among the angels: and who knows what they are? There will be badges of honor, harps to make merry with, and heavenly songs of triumph: does anyone here know what they are?

There will then be a knowing, an enjoying and a solacing of ourselves with prophets, apostles, martyrs and all saints; but in what glorious manner, we are all ignorant. There we shall see and know, and be with forever, all our relations who have died in the faith, whether wife, husband, child, father, mother, brother or sister. But how gloriously they will look when we see them, and how gloriously we shall love when we are with them, is not for us to know in this world (1 Thess 4:16-17). There are thoughts, and words, and ways for us that we never dreamed of in this world. The law was only the shadow, the gospel the image; but who can understand what the substance will be that comes to us next, or rather that we shall go to (Heb 10:1)? We have never seen God, or Christ as glorified, or the Spirit of the Lord, or the bottom of the Bible, or even so much as one of the days of eternity; and yet we shall see and have all these things. If that is so, how can the things laid up for us, which should be the object of our hope, be understood by us in this world? Yet there are intimations given us of their goodness and greatness.

(1) Of their goodness.

[1] It appears in that the Holy Spirit scorns that the things here should ever be compared with them. That is why all things here are called vanities, nothings, less than nothings (Isa 40:15-17). Now, the things here, all the things here, are considered with such contempt when compared with the things to come hereafter. And yet these things are so great in the carnal man’s esteem that he is willing to venture life and soul and all to have them. What, then, are the things that God has prepared for those who wait, that is, who hope, for him?

[2] Their goodness also appears in this: whoever has had that understanding of them which is revealed in the Word, whether king or beggar, wise man or fool, has willingly cast this world behind him in contempt and scorn for the hope of them (Ps 73:25; Heb 11:24-26, 37-40).

[3] Their goodness has testimony even in the very consciences of those who hate them. Take the vilest man in the country, the man who is so wedded to his lusts that he would rather run the risk of a thousand hells than leave them. Ask this man his judgment of the things of the next world, and he will shake his head and say, “They are good; they are the best of all.”

[4] But the saints have the best grasp of their goodness, because the Lord sometimes drops some of their juice out of the Word into their hungry souls.

(2) But as they are good, so they are great. “O how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee; which thou hast wrought for them that trust” (that hope) “in thee before the sons of men!” (Ps 31:19).

[1] Their greatness appears in that they go beyond the Word, yes, beyond the word of the Holy Spirit. The Word of God does not yet show us to the full the greatness of what is prepared for God’s people. “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be” (1 John 3:2). It does not appear in the Word. There is a greatness in the things we are to hope for that could never be expressed: they are beyond word, beyond thought, beyond conceiving! When Paul had come down again out of paradise, into which he was caught up, he could not speak a word about the words he heard and the things he saw there. They were things and words which he saw and heard, “which it is not possible for a man to utter” (2 Cor 12:4).

[2] Their greatness is intimated by the word eternal. He who knows the bottom of that word will know what these things are. “The things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Cor 4:18). They are “incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away,” reserved in heaven for us (1 Pet 1:4).

[3] Their greatness is shown in that one right thought of them will fill the heart so full that both it and the eyes will run over together. Yes, it will fill the heart so full that the creature will not be able to stand up under the weight of glory that it lays upon the soul. Alas! all the things in this world will not fill one heart; and yet one right thought of the things that God has prepared and laid up in heaven for us will fill it, yes, and overfill it too.

[4] The greatness of the things of the next world appears in that when even one of the least of them is shown to us, we are not able to bear the sight of it without support from there. I count the angels among the things that are least in that world. And yet Scripture declares plainly enough what work the sight of just one of them would make in the hearts and minds of mortal men, back when such sights were in use (Judg 13:22).

[5] Their greatness is intimated in that we must, as it were, be made new again before we can be capable of enjoying them as we must enjoy them, that is, with comfort (Luke 20:36). And a great part of our happiness will lie in this: that we shall not only see them, but be made like them, like their King. For “when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). We shall see him, and therefore we must be like him, or else the sight of him would overcome and destroy us. But because we are to see him with comfort and everlasting joy, we must be like him in body and mind (Rev 1:17; Phil 3:20-21).

2. But to come to the second thing, namely, that those who have believed that there are such things as these will meet with difficulties before they come to them. This is so grand a truth that nothing can be said against it. Many are the afflictions of the righteous (Ps 34:19); and we must enter the kingdom of heaven through many tribulations (Acts 14:22). The causes from which these afflictions arise are known to be these.

(1) From ourselves. For sin, having got such a hold in our flesh, makes such opposition against our soul and its welfare that it keeps us continually in trouble. Fleshly lusts work against the soul, and so do worldly lusts too (1 Pet 2:11; Titus 2:12). Yes, they quench our graces, and make those that would live “ready to die” (Rev 3:2). Yes, because of these, such darkness, such guilt, such fear and such mistrust arise in us that, if we live any while, it is common for us to draw a thousand conclusions, twice over, that we shall never arrive with comfort at the gates of the kingdom of heaven. If we judge according to carnal reason, the natural tendency of every struggle of the least lust against grace is to make us question the truth of the work of grace in us, and our right to the world to come. This is what made Paul cry out, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?” (Rom 7:24). Only he had more wisdom than to follow the natural conclusions that carnal reason was apt to draw from it, and so he hoisted his soul up to hope.

(2) Sin, by its working in us, not only brings darkness, guilt, fear, mistrust and the like; it often, as it were, hamstrings us, and disables us from going to God by faith and prayer for pardon. It makes the heart hard, senseless, careless, lifeless and spiritless as to feeling in every Christian duty, and this is a grievous thing to a gracious soul. The other things will raise a doubt and drive it into the soul like a nail, up to the head; but these will go around to the other side and clinch it. Now all these things make hoping difficult.

(3) For by these things the judgment is not only clouded and the understanding greatly darkened; all the powers of the soul are made to fight against itself. They conceive, imagine, apprehend and conclude things that tend directly to root out and extinguish, if possible, the graces of God that are planted in the soul. Yes, they bring it to cry out, “I am cut off from before thine eyes!” (Ps 31:22).

(4) Add to these the hidings of God’s face from the soul. To the soul this is a thing more bitter than death; yet nothing is more common among those who hope in the Lord. He “hideth his face from the house of Jacob” (Isa 8:17). Nor is this done only in fatherly displeasure; by this means some graces are kept alive. Faith is kept alive by the Word, patience by hope, and hope by faith; but a spirit of prayer is often kept alive by the rod, by chastisement, and by the hiding of God’s face (Hos 5:14-15; Isa 26:16; Song 5:6). But I say, this hiding of that sweet face is bitter to the soul, and often puts both faith and hope into sad and most fearful straits. For at such a time it is with the soul as with a ship at sea that is overtaken by night and has no light, or like a man lost and bewildered on land. Only the text says, for the help and relief of such, “Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness and hath no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God” (Isa 50:10). Yet as it is with children, so it is with saints: we are a great deal more subject to fears in the night than in the day. That, therefore, which tends to help some graces will prove a hindrance to others, if great care is not taken.

(5) Nor is the ruler of the darkness of this world slow to apply himself and his engines, so that, if possible, he may make use of all these things to overthrow faith and to remove our hope from the Lord, as a tree is removed from its rooting in the ground (Job 19:10). Look! He can explain everything in such a way that it falls directly across the path of our believing. For example: we have sin, therefore we have no grace; sin struggles in us, therefore we do not fear God; something in us sides with sin, therefore we are wholly unregenerate; sin is in our best performances, therefore why should I hope? Thus, I say, he can afflict us in our pilgrimage and make hope difficult for us. Besides this, he can make the hiding of God’s face not only a cause of sorrow (for that indeed it should be) but a ground of despair, and of desperately concluding that God will never come again. How many good souls has he driven to these conclusions who afterward have been made to unsay it all again!

(6) And though spiritual desertions, darkness of soul and the guilt of sin are the most intolerable burdens, yet they are not all. For to all these must be added that common evil of persecution, another device invented to make our hope void. In this, I say, we are sure to be concerned, that is, if we are godly. For though the apostle does not say, “All that will live in Christ” (that is, in the common profession of him) shall suffer persecution, yet he does say, “All that will live godly in him shall” (2 Tim 3:12). Now this in itself is a terror to flesh and blood, and has in it a direct tendency to make hope difficult (1 Pet 3:6, 14). Hence men of a persecuting spirit, because of their greatness and of their teeth (the laws), are said to be a terror and to carry amazement in their doings. And God’s people are apt to be afraid of them, though they must die, and to forget God their Maker (Isa 51:12-13); and this makes hoping hard work.

(7) For besides the grimness that appears in the face of persecutors, Satan knows how to lessen, and make dwindle in our thinking, those truths to which our hearts have joined themselves before, and by which Christ our Lord has commanded us to stand. So they now appear to be only little, small, inconsiderable things: things not worth engaging for, things not worth running those hazards for that may lie staring us in the face in the hour of trial. Moreover, we shall not lack false friends in every hole, such as will continually be boring our ears with that saying, “Master, do good to yourself.” At such times also “stars” are apt to “fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken” (Matt 24). And so everything tends to weaken those who are commanded to hope in the Lord, or at least to lay stumbling blocks in their way.

(8) Again, as Satan can use his subtlety in this way to afflict and weaken the hands and hearts of those who hope in God, so he can add to these the dismalness of a suffering state. He can make the loss of goods ten times bigger in our imagination than it is in itself. He can make an informer a frightful creature, and a jail look like hell itself. He can make banishment and death utterly intolerable, things that must be shunned even at the hazard of our salvation. Thus he can enlarge and lessen, lessen and enlarge, to trouble our hearts and to hinder our hope.

(9) Add to all these that the things we suffer for were never seen by us, but are quite beyond our sight: things that indeed are said to be great and good, but we have only the Word and the Bible for it. And be sure of this: if he who labors night and day to devour us can help it, our faith shall be molested and perplexed at such a time, so that it may, if possible, be hard to do the commandment that the text here enjoins us to practice, that is, to hope in the Lord. And this brings me to the third particular.

3. That the grace of hope, well exercised, is the only way to overcome those difficulties. Abraham would never have laughed for joy had he not hoped when the angel brought him tidings of a son; yes, had he not hoped against everything that could have been said to discourage him (Gen 17:17). Hence it is said that “against hope” he “believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be” (Rom 4:18). There is hope against hope: hope grounded on faith, against hope grounded on reason. Hope grounded on reason would have made Abraham expect that the promise would surely prove ineffectual, because of the deadness of Abraham’s body and the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. But he hoped against the difficulty by a hope that sprang from faith, which trusted in the promise and power of God; and so he overcame the difficulty and indeed obtained the promise. Hope, therefore, well exercised, is the only way to overcome. Hence Peter bids those who are in a suffering condition, “Be sober, and hope to the end, for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 1:13). And that is why, as you heard before, we are said to be “saved by hope” (Rom 8:24).

Hope is excellent, first, against those discouragements that rise up from within us; second, it is excellent to embolden a man in the cause of God; third, it is excellent at helping one over the difficulties that men, by frights and terrors, may lay in our way.

(1) It is excellent to help us against those discouragements that arise from within ourselves (Rom 4). This is clear in the instance last mentioned about Abraham, who had nothing but discouragements arising from himself. But he had hope, and he exercised it too; therefore, after a little patient enduring, he overcame the difficulty and obtained the promise (Heb 6:13-18). The reason is that it is the nature of true hope to turn its ear away from opposing difficulties to the word and mouth of faith. And perceiving that faith has got hold of the promise, hope will expect, and so wait for, its fulfillment, in spite of the difficulties that do or may attempt to intercept it.

(2) Hope is excellent at emboldening a man in the cause of God. Hence the apostle says, “Hope maketh not ashamed”; for not to be ashamed there is to be emboldened (Rom 5:5). So again, when Paul speaks of the troubles he met with for the profession of the gospel, he says that they would turn to his salvation. “According,” he says, “to my earnest expectation, and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life or by death” (Phil 1:19-20). See here a man at the foot of the gallows ladder, now ready in will and mind to die for his profession. But how will he carry himself now? Why, with all brave and innocent boldness! But how will he do that? Oh! By the hope of the gospel that is in him; for by that he is fully persuaded that the cause he suffers for will bear him up in the day of God, and that he shall then be well rewarded for it.

(3) It is also excellent at helping one over those difficulties that men, by frights and terrors, may lay in our way. Hence when David was almost killed with the reproach and oppression of his enemies, and his soul was very sorely bowed down to the ground by it, he called on his soul to put the grace of hope into exercise, so that he might revive and get up again. He said, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God” (Ps 42:11). So again he says in the very next psalm, after he had complained of the oppression of the enemy, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance and my God” (Ps 43:5). Hope, therefore, is a soul-encouraging grace, a soul-emboldening grace and a soul-preserving grace. Hence it is called our helmet or headpiece, the helmet of salvation (Eph 6:17; 1 Thess 5:8). This is one piece of the armor with which the Son of God was clothed when he came into the world, and it is that against which nothing can prevail (Isa 59:17). For as long as I can hope for salvation, what can hurt me! This word, spoken in the blessed exercise of grace, I hope for salvation, drives down everything before it. The truth of God is the “shield and buckler” of the man who has made the Lord his hope (Ps 91:4).

And now, to encourage you, good man, to the exercise of this blessed grace of hope as the text bids, let me present you with what follows. First, God, to show how well he takes it at our hands when we hope in him, has called himself “the God of hope” (Rom 15:13). That is, he is not only the author of hope, but the God who takes pleasure in those who exercise it: “The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his mercy” (Ps 147:11). Second, he will be a shield, a defense, to those who hope in him. “Thou art my hiding-place and my shield,” says David, “I hope in thy word”; that is, he knew God would be so, for he hoped in his word (Ps 119:114). Third, he has promised us the life we hope for (Titus 1:2), to encourage us still to hope, and to endure all things in order to enjoy it: “That he that ploweth should plow in hope, and that he that thresheth in hope, should be partaker of his hope” (1 Cor 9:10).

Question. But you may say, What is it to exercise this grace rightly?

Answer. First, you must look well to your faith, that it may prosper; for as your faith is, so your hope will be. Hope is never sick when faith is well, nor strong if faith is weak. That is why Paul prays that the Romans might be filled “with all joy and peace in believing,” that they might “abound in hope” (Rom 15:13). When a man by faith believes to the point of joy and peace, then hope grows strong, and with assurance looks for a share in the world to come. Therefore look to your faith, and pray heartily that the God of hope will fill you with all joy and peace in believing.

Second, learn from Abraham not to faint, stumble or doubt at the sight of your own weakness. For if you do, hope will stay below, and creak in the wheels as it goes, because it will lack the oil of faith. But when you begin to faint and sink at the sight of these things, speak to your soul as David did to his in the places mentioned before.

Third, often call to mind what God has done for you in former times. Keep your experience as a precious thing (Rom 5:4). “Remember all the way the Lord led thee these forty years in the wilderness” (Deut 8:2). “O my God,” says David, “my soul is cast down within me, therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites from the hill Mizar” (Ps 42:6).

Fourth, be much in looking at the end of things, or rather at the end of this world and the beginning of the next. What we enjoy of God in this world may be a pledge of hope, or a token that the thing hoped for is to be ours at last; but the object of hope, in general, is the next world (Heb 11:1). We must therefore put a difference between the mother of hope, faith; the means of hope, the Word (Ps 119:49); the pledge of hope, Christ in us (Col 1:27); and the proper object of hope, namely, the world to come and its goodness.

If Christians do not have much here, their hope, so to speak, lies idle, like a grace out of work. For as faith cannot feed on patience, but on Christ, and as the grace of hungering and thirsting cannot live on self-fullness, but on the riches of the promise, so hope cannot make what is already enjoyed its object: “for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?” (Rom 8:24). But the proper object of hope is what we do not see. Let faith, then, be exercised on Christ crucified for my justification, and hope on the next world for my glorification. Let love show the truth of faith in Christ by acts of kindness to Christ and his people; and let patience show the truth of hope by quietly bearing and enduring whatever may now be laid on me for the sake of my sincere profession, until the hope that is laid up for us in heaven comes to us, or we are gathered to it. And then hope is in some measure in good order, and well exercised. But,

4. We now come to the last thing proposed to be spoken to, which is, Those who have hope and exercise it well shall assuredly at last enjoy the hope that is laid up for them in heaven. That is, those who regularly exercise the grace of hope shall at last enjoy its object, or the thing hoped for. This must of necessity be concluded, or else we overthrow the whole truth of God at once, and the expectation of the best of men. Yes, if this is not concluded, what follows but that atheism, unbelief and irreligion are most in the right, and profane and debauched persons are in the rightest way?

(1) But to proceed: this must be so, as is evident because the things hoped for are put under the very name of the grace that lives in expectation of them. They are called hope: “looking for that blessed hope” (Titus 2:13); “for the hope that is laid up for them in heaven” (Col 1:5). God has set that name upon them to signify that they belong to hope, and shall be the reward of hope. In this God does as your great traders do with the goods that their customers have either bought or spoken for: he sets their name or mark on them, and then says, This belongs to this grace, and this belongs to that; but the kingdom of heaven belongs to hope, for hope’s name is set upon it. This, therefore, is one thing that proves the thing hoped for shall be yours: God has marked it for you, nor can it be given to those who do not hope. That is to the same purpose as what you read: “That ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer” (2 Thess 1:5). Suffering flows from hope. He who does not hope for a house in heaven will not choose to suffer for it the loss of the pleasures and friendships of this world. But those who suffer for it (and all in whom this grace of hope is placed do suffer, one way or another), God counts worthy of it. Therefore he has marked it with their mark, hope, because it belongs to hope and shall be given to those who hope. That is the first.

(2) Those who exercise this grace of hope, as was said before, shall assuredly enjoy the hope that is laid up for them in heaven. This is evident also from this: as God has marked it and set it apart for them, so whatever he has done to and with our Lord and Head since his death, he has done to this very end, namely, to beget and maintain our hope in him concerning this thing. He “hath begotten us again unto a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Pet 1:3). The meaning is this: Christ undertook for us, and suffered death for us, that we might enjoy happiness and glory; and God, to show how willing he was that we should have this glory, raised Christ up again and delivered him from the sorrows of death. Therefore, considering this, Paul said that he rejoiced “in hope of the glory of God” (Rom 5:2), namely, of that glory which sin would certainly have made him come short of, had he not had Jesus to undertake for him (Rom 3:23). But again, God “raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory” too, and that to this very end, “that your faith and hope might be in God” (1 Pet 1:21). I say, he did it to this very end, that he might beget in you such a good opinion of him that you would hope in him to give you that good thing hoped for, namely, eternal life. He “gave him glory,” and put it into his hand for you, he who is your Head and Savior, so that you might see how willing God is to give you the hope you look for, “that your faith and hope might be in God.”

(3) That we who have hope and rightly exercise it might assuredly enjoy the hope that is laid up for us in heaven, God has promised it, and promised it to our Savior for us. Had he promised it to us, we might still have feared, because with our faults we give him continual cause of provocation. But since he has promised it to Christ, it must assuredly come to us by him, because Christ, to whom it is promised, never gave God occasion of provocation to take it back. And that it was promised to Christ is evident, because it was promised before the world began: “In hope of eternal life,” says Paul, “which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began” (Titus 1:2). And this is so that we might hope. Men commonly hope to enjoy money or an estate that faithful people have promised them and put into the hands of trustworthy persons for them. Why, this is the case here: God, who cannot lie, has promised it to those who hope, and has put it into the hand of the trustworthy Jesus for us. Therefore let us hope that in his own times we shall both see and enjoy the very thing we hope for.

(4) Yes, so that every ground of doubt and scruple about this might be removed out of the way: when Christ, who in respect of what was last said is our hope (1 Tim 1:1), shall come, he shall bring with him that grace and mercy which shall, even from before his judgment seat, remove all those things that might tend in any way to deprive us of our hope, or of the thing we hope for. Hence Peter bids us, “Be sober and hope to the end, for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 1:13). Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, also joins with him in this, saying, “Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life” (Jude 21). Here then you see that there is grace and mercy still held in reserve for us: grace and mercy to be brought to us at the revelation, or second coming, of Jesus Christ. How then can we be robbed of our hope? For transporting mercy will then be busy for those who indeed have the hope of eternal life here. “And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him” (Mal 3:17).

No one knows the mystery of God’s will in everything revealed in his Word. Therefore many texts are passed over, or laid aside, as texts whose key turns too hard; nor will I boast of any singular knowledge in any particular thing. Yet it seems to me that since grace and mercy were not only brought by Christ when he came into the world, but shall be brought again with him when he comes in his Father’s glory, it signifies this: as the first brought the beginning of eternal life to us while we were enemies, this second will bring the full enjoyment of it to us while we are saints, though still attended with many imperfections. And as by the first grace all unworthiness was pardoned and passed by, so by this second grace, the grace that is to be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ, all shortness in duties and failings in performances shall be spared also; and we shall be made possessors, by virtue of this grace and mercy, of the blessings hoped for, namely, the blessings of eternal life. But this is enough concerning the duty contained in the exhortation, namely, hoping.

I shall therefore come next to treat of how to manage this duty well with reference to its primary object, which is the Lord himself. “Let Israel hope in the Lord” (Ps 130:7). There is a general object of hope, and there is a particular object; there is a common object, and there is a special one. Of the general and common object, that is, heaven and happiness, I have said something already. So it remains that we now come and treat of this particular and special object of our hope: “Let Israel hope in the Lord.” The Lord, therefore, is to be the particular and special object of our hope: “Let Israel hope in the Lord.”

Now, here there is not only a duty urged on us, but also a direction for managing that duty better, pointing us to the particular and special object on which this duty should be exercised. That suggests how apt good men are, especially in times of trouble (which was Israel’s case at that time), to fix their hopes on other things rather than on the Lord. We have seen a great deal of this in our days. Our days indeed have been days of trouble, especially since the discovery of the Popish Plot. For then we began to fear having our throats cut, being burned in our beds, and seeing our children dashed in pieces before our faces. But looking about us, we found we had a gracious king, brave parliaments, a stout city, good lord mayors, honest sheriffs, and solid laws against the plotters. And these we made the object of our hope, quite forgetting the direction in this exhortation, “Let Israel hope in the Lord.”

For indeed the Lord ought to be our hope in temporal things as well as in spiritual and eternal things. That is why Israel of old were rebuked, on the supposition that they would place their hope for temporal things in men: “It is better to trust in the Lord, than to put confidence in man. It is better to trust in the Lord, than to put confidence in princes” (Ps 118:8-9). And again, “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help” (Ps 146:3). This implies that there is in us a tendency to forget God our hope and to put our confidence in something else. And to be sure, we shall find it all the harder to make the Lord our only hope when the things that are here offer us their help, though deceitfully.

But my purpose is to treat the object of hope only with reference to the next world. And as to that, we must take care that we set our hope in God: in God in the first place, and in nothing below him or besides him. It is to this end that he has given us his Word and appointed a law to Israel (Ps 78:5-7).

1. By his own grace he has become the special object of hope, having designed himself, in the most special sense, to be the portion of his people. “The Lord is my portion, saith my soul, therefore will I hope in him” (Lam 3:24). So we must look well to this, and take care that we do not miss this object (Ps 146:5). This is the special object, the ultimate object, the object we cannot be without. Short of this object we cannot be happy, as, God willing, I shall show more fully later (Jer 50:7). God is not only happiness in himself, but also the life of the soul, and the one who puts goodness into everything in the next world in which goodness shall be found (Jer 17:13).

And our Lord Jesus Christ himself affirms this when he says, “I am the way” (John 14:6), that is, the way to life and happiness. And yet he also says, I am the way to the Father, because it is he, the Father, who is the fountain and ocean of happiness and bliss.

So then, so that in the next world we might be heirs of the highest good, God has made us heirs of his own good self: “Heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ”; heirs of God through Christ (Rom 8:17; Gal 4:7). This God, this eternal God, must therefore of necessity be the object of our hope, because by grace he has become our hope. The church in heaven, which is called the body and temple of God, is to be a dwelling for himself when it is finished, to live in for ever and ever. This, then, is what we hope for: to be put in possession, at that day, of eternal life, eternal glory (1 Tim 6:12, 19). Now this eternal life and eternal glory is, through God, the hope of his people (1 Pet 5:10; 1 John 5:20). And it is for this end, and to this bliss, that we are called and born again in this world, “That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs, according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:7).

Nor can it be that heaven and happiness should ever be the portion of those who do not make God their hope, any more than a lady could hope to enjoy the estate of some lord when she does not first make the lord himself her husband. Heaven, heaven is the talk of the ignorant, while the God of heaven they cannot stand. But shall such people ever come to glory?

2. Further, God must be the special object of our hope, and it is he in particular who must be enjoyed by us in the next world, or nothing can make us happy. To illustrate this, let us suppose for now what is not to be supposed. For example:

(1) Suppose a man, when he dies, should go to heaven, that golden place. What good would this do him if he did not possess the God of it? As to sweetness, it would be nothing but a tasteless thing; as to lasting, nothing but an uncertain thing; as to company, a forlorn thing; and as to life, nothing but a place of death. All this is made plain by the angels that fell. For once they had fallen, what was heaven to them? Suppose they stayed there only a quarter of an hour after their fall before they were cast out. What sweetness did they find there, but guilt? What stability, but a continual sinking of heart and mind? What company, but to be abandoned by all? And what life, but death in its perfection? Yes, if it is true, as some think, that for the furthering of grace they are still admitted into that place to accuse the saints on earth, yet what do they find there but what is grievous to them?

It is the presence of God that makes heaven heaven in all its beauty. That is why David, when he speaks of heaven, says, “Whom have I in heaven but thee?” (Ps 73:25). As if to say, “What delight would heaven give me if I were there without my God?” It is the presence of God that will make heaven sweet to those who are his. And as it is his presence that makes the place, so it is having a share in him that makes the company, and the deeds that are done there, pleasant to the soul. What comfort could a man who is without God have with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the prophets and angels, even if he were in heaven? How could he join in their thanks and praises and blessings, for ever and ever, of the one in whose favor, mercy and grace he has no share?

(2) Suppose a man, when he dies, should be made to live for ever, but without the enjoyment of God. What good would his life do him? Why, it would be filled full of horror, darkness, desolation, sorrow, and everything that would tend to make it bitter to the soul. Witness those who live in hell, if it is proper to say that they live in hell. Suppose a man possessed all that heaven and life could give him, yet had no share in God. It would be no more possible for him to live happily than it would be for a man who has all the enjoyments of this world to live happily if the sun were taken from him out of the sky. Just as all things, whether heaven, angels, or heavenly pleasures and delights, have had their being from him, so their being is kept up by him and made sweet by him.

Now, for the right managing of our hope with reference to this special object of it, these things are to be considered. And now I speak to everyone. We must know him rightly, and we must come to him rightly.

(1) We must know him rightly. To know him rightly is essential to happiness, and so to making the God of heaven our hope (John 17:1-3). It is not every fancy or every imagination of God that you may have that will prove that you therefore know God as you should. In him there “is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (Jas 1:17). He is only what he is, whatever imaginations we have of him. We may set up idols and images of him in our minds as much as some do in their houses and their temples, and be as great idolaters as they are, though not such gross ones. Now if you want to know him, you must diligently feel your way after him in his works, in his Word and in his ways, if perhaps you may find the knowledge of him (Prov 2:1-5; Acts 17:27).

(2) When you have found him, be careful that you go to him by his Son, whom he has sanctified and sent into the world to be the way for sinners to go to God. And see that you keep to this path always, for outside of Christ, God is found to be unbearable, and a consuming fire.

(3) Busy yourself with all your might to gain a share in his Son, and he will willingly be your Savior. For he must become yours before his Father can be the object of your hope (John 3:36). Whoever has the Son has the Father; but on the other hand, whoever does not have him has neither (2 John 9).

(4) Do not settle down in some passing comforts, but stay restless until you see a union between you and this Blessed One; that is, that he is a root and you a branch, that he is the head and you a member. And you will know that this is the case between you and him when grace and his Spirit have made you lay the whole weight of your justification on him, and have subdued your heart and mind to be “one spirit” with him (Rom 4:4-5; 1 Cor 6:17).

(5) This done, hope in God, for he has become your hope, that is, its object. And to encourage you to do so, consider that he is able to hold up your heart, and has said he will do it, in this very matter, for all who hope in him this way. “Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart,” all you that hope in the Lord (Ps 31:24). It is plain, as was said before, that many difficulties lie in the way of hoping. But God will make those difficulties easy by strengthening the heart of the one who hopes, so that he can hope. He has a way of doing that which no creature can hinder: by the blessed work of his Holy Spirit. He can show us that he loves us, so that he may encourage our hope. And as he can work in us for our encouragement, so he himself can and will, as was said before, answer our hope in his own time by becoming our hope himself. “The Lord shall be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel” (Joel 3:16).

His faithfulness is also a great encouragement to his people to hope for the fulfillment of all that he has promised them. “Hath he said it, and shall he not make it good?” (Num 23:19). When he promised to bring Israel into the land of Canaan, he fulfilled it to the last detail. “There failed not aught of any good thing which the Lord had spoken unto the house of Israel; all came to pass” (Josh 21:45; Josh 23:14). Also, what he had promised David with his mouth, he fulfilled to Solomon with his hand, in the sight of all the thousands of Israel (1 Kgs 8:22-24; 2 Chr 6:7-10).

I will not mention again the encouragements spoken of before. I come now to the third thing specified in this part of the text: that is, to show more distinctly who, and what particular persons, are concerned in this exhortation to hope.

They are put, as you see, under this general term Israel: “Let Israel hope in the Lord.” And, “He shall save Israel from all his troubles.” In the Scripture, Israel is to be taken three ways: first, for those who are Israel after the flesh; second, for those who are Israel neither after the flesh nor after the Spirit, but only in their own fancies and carnal imaginations; third, for those who are Israel after God, or after the Spirit.

1. Israel is to be taken for those who are Israel after the flesh; that is, for those who sprang from the loins of Jacob, and are called “Israel after the flesh, the children of the flesh” (1 Cor 10:18). Now these, as such, are not the persons interested in this exhortation, for by the flesh comes no true spiritual and eternal grace (Rom 9:6-8). Men are not within the bounds of the promise of eternal life simply because they are the children of the flesh, whether in the more gross or the more refined sense (Phil 3:4-6). Jacob was as spiritual a father, I suppose, as any man who now professes the gospel. Yet his spirituality could not pass down that spirit and grace that causes sound conversion and salvation by Jesus Christ to his children, who were his children only after the flesh. This is why Paul counts it a carnal thing to glory in this. He tells us plainly that if he had once known Christ in that way, that is, as his brother or kinsman according to the flesh, or after that manner, he would from now on know him so “no more” (2 Cor 5:16-18). For though the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, yet not that multitude, but the remnant that the Lord has chosen and shall call, shall be saved (Rom 9:27; Joel 2:32). This, then, is like an arrow shot in the face of that false doctrine the Jews leaned on: that they were in the state of grace and the everlasting favor of God because they were the children and offspring of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

2. But Israel may be taken for those who are Israel neither after the flesh nor after the Spirit, but only in their own fancy and imagination. I take all those to be such whom you read of in Rev 2:9, who said “they were Jews, and were not,” “but did lie” (Rev 3:9).

I take these to be those carnal professors of the gospel who, coming from among the Gentiles, pretended to be Jews inwardly, whose circumcision is that of the heart in the spirit (Rom 2:28-29), when they were such only in their own fancies and conceits, and so showed their profession to be a lie. There are plenty of these in the world today: men who know neither the Father, nor the Son, nor anything of the way of the Spirit in the work of regeneration, and yet presume to say, “They are Jews”; that is, that they are truly and spiritually the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. “For” now, “he is not a Jew which is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew which is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart in the spirit, whose praise is not of men, but of God.”

And although it may please some now to say, as people of old said to those of the captivity, “We seek your God as ye do” (Ezra 4:2), yet in the end it will be found that such people, like them, have “no portion, nor right, nor memorial, in Jerusalem” (Neh 2:20). And from this I would caution everyone to beware of presuming to count themselves Jews unless they have a substantial ground for doing so. For to do this without a good foundation makes our whole profession a lie. And not only that, it keeps us from seeing that we lack an interest in Jesus Christ, without which we cannot be saved. Yes, such a person is the great self-deceiver, and so the worst deceiver of all. For he who deceives his own self, his own heart, is a deceiver in the worst sense (Jas 1:22, 26). Nor can any disappointment be like the one that casts away soul and body at once. O slender thread! That a man should think that because he fancies himself “an Israelite indeed,” he shall therefore pass for one in the day of judgment, or that he shall be able to cheat God with a pitiful say-so!

3. But the Israel under consideration in the text is Israel after God, or after the Spirit. That is why they are called “the Israel of God” (Gal 6:16): because they are made so by him, not by birth, nor by fancy, but by divine power. And this is how the first man to bear this name was made so: “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob but Israel” (Gen 32:28). This, then, is the man concerned in the text, “Let Israel hope in the Lord”: that is, Israel who is so by God’s making and by God’s allowance. For men are not barred from calling themselves by this most godly name, provided they are so indeed. All that is dangerous is when men think this privilege comes by fleshly descent, or that their fancying themselves to be such will carry them through in the day of judgment. Otherwise, if men become the true servants of God by Christ, they have, as I said, permission to sign themselves by that name. “One shall say, I am the Lord’s, and another shall call himself by the name of Jacob, and another shall subscribe with his hand unto the Lord, and surname himself by the name of Israel” (Isa 44:5).

But then, to describe such people further, they must be men of circumcised and tender hearts. They must be those “which worship God in the spirit, and that rejoice in Christ Jesus, and that have no confidence in the flesh” (Phil 3:3). For these are the Nathanaels, the Israelites indeed, in whom there is no guile (John 1:47). And these are the ones intended in the exhortation when he says, “Let Israel hope in the Lord.”

For these are formed for that very end, that they might hope in the Lord. Yes, the word and testament are given to them for this purpose (Ps 78:5-7). These are prisoners of hope all the time they are in the state of nature, just as the whole creation is subjected under hope all the time of its bondage, brought on by the sin and villainy of man. And in the dispensation of the fullness of time it shall be said to them, “Turn you to the strong hold, ye prisoners of hope” (Zech 9:12), as certainly as what is called the creature itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God (Rom 8:18-21). Only here, as I said before, let everyone take care in this matter. This is the pinnacle, the point. He who is right here is right in all that is necessary to salvation; but he who misses here can by no means be right anywhere, to his soul’s advantage, in the other world.

If I were to make a little use of the text where this title is first given to a man, and show the posture he was in when it was said to him, “Thy name shall be called Israel,” and also to discuss the cause or ground of that other phrase, “An Israelite indeed,” you who read it might not regret it. So here are a few words on each.

1. When Jacob received the name of Israel, he was found wrestling with the angel. Yes, and he was such a resolved wrestler that, now he had begun, he purposed not to give up without a blessing. “I will not let thee go,” he said, “except thou bless me” (Gen 32:26). While he wrestled with him, he had discouragements that could have made him leave off before he obtained his desire. For the angel told him to leave off: “Let me go,” he said. Jacob had wrestled all night and had not prevailed. And now the day broke upon him, so his discouragement was likely to be all the greater, because now the majesty and terribleness of the one he wrestled with would be seen more plainly. But this did not discourage him. Besides this, he lost the use of a limb as he wrestled with him; yet none of it could make this Israel quit. Pray he did, and pray he would, and nothing would make him leave off prayer until he had obtained. Therefore he was called Israel: “For as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed” (Gen 32:28, 30).

A wrestling spirit of prayer is a demonstration of an Israel of God. Jacob had this; he made use of it; and by it he obtained the name of Israel. A wrestling spirit of prayer in straits, difficulties, and distresses; a wrestling spirit of prayer when alone in private, in the night, when no eye sees but God’s; to be at it then, to lay hold of God then, to wrestle then, to hold fast and not to give over until the blessing is obtained: this is a sign of one who is an Israel of God.

2. “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile” (John 1:47). This was the testimony of the Lord Jesus concerning Nathanael. Nathanael was persuaded by Philip to come to Jesus (John 1:46), and as he was coming, Jesus said to the rest of the disciples concerning him, “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile.” Then Nathanael said to Jesus, “Whence knowest thou me?” “Jesus answered and said unto him, Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee” (John 1:48). Nathanael, like Jacob, was at prayer, at prayer alone under the fig tree, wrestling in prayer. For what, no one can certainly tell, but probably for the Messiah, or for the revelation of him. For the Jews who had eyes to see were convinced that the time of the promise had fully come, and all men were in expectation concerning John, whether he might not be the one (Luke 3:15). But Nathanael was under the fig tree, alone with God, to inquire of him, and that with great earnestness and sincerity. Otherwise the Lord Jesus would not have cleared him of hypocrisy in this way, and justified his action as he did. He concluded from what Nathanael did there that he was a true son of Jacob, and that, like Jacob, he ought to have his name changed from the one his parents gave him to this one given him by Christ: “An Israelite indeed.”

So from both these places it is plain that a wrestling spirit of prayer in private is one of the best signs that this or that man or woman is of Israel, and consequently is among those within the compass of the exhortation here, which says, “Let Israel hope in the Lord.” I say, it is this wrestling spirit of prayer with God alone. As for public prayer, though I will not condemn it, it gives no ground for this description, despite all the flourishes and excellencies that may appear in it. I am not unaware of how much pride, hypocrisy, pretense, and self-seeking of commendation and applause may be indulged by those who take part in or lead public prayers, and how little thought or savor of God there may be in all that is said. But this closet prayer, this night prayer, this prayer alone, is of another stamp. It is attended, at least so I judge, with a sense, desires, simplicity, and strugglings that public prayer is not attended with.

No, I truly think a man cannot give himself to these most solemn retirements without something of Jacob’s and Nathanael’s sense and sincerity, their wrestlings and restlessness for mercy. Therefore, setting all else aside, I will stand by this: the man who is as I have described here is not an Israelite of the flesh, nor one who is so only in his fancy or imagination, but one made so by God. He is one who is called a child of promise, and one to whom this exhortation belongs: “Let Israel hope in the Lord”; that is, those who serve God by prayer day and night (Luke 2:37; Acts 26:5-7). These, I say, are Israel, the Israel of God; and let these hope in the Lord from now, “henceforth, and for ever” (Ps 131:3).

Having thus briefly touched on the three things contained in the matter of the exhortation, I now come to say a word about the manner of expression in which the exhortation is presented to us: “Let Israel hope.” He does not say, Israel has hoped, Israel did hope, or Israel can hope, but “let Israel hope in the Lord.” “Let” is a word with a great many uses. Sometimes it signifies this and sometimes that, according to what the nature or reason of the thing under discussion, or the thing to be expressed, will bear with truth and profit. Let him hope.

1. Sometimes “let” amounts to a command. “Let every soul be subject to the higher powers” (Rom 13:1): this is a command. “Let all things be done decently and in order” (1 Cor 14:40): this also is a command. So here, “Let Israel hope”: this too is a command, and so it lays a duty on Israel. For why, since they seek mercy, should they not have it? Now a command lays a very strong obligation on a person to do this or that duty. “He commandeth all men every where to repent” (Acts 17:30), but he commands Israel alone to hope in his mercy. Now take the exhortation and turn it into a commandment, and it shows us the following.

(1) It shows how earnestly God offers his mercy to his Israel: he commands them to hope in him, as he is, and will be, merciful to them.

(2) It supposes an impediment in Israel as to the faculty of receiving mercy, or of hoping in God for mercy. We who would have God be merciful, we who cry and pray to him to show us mercy, still have such weakness and impediment in our faith that it greatly hinders us from hoping steadfastly in the Lord for mercy.

(3) It also suggests that Israel sins if he does not hope in God. God would not have everyone attempt to hope, because they have no faith; he would have them believe first, knowing it is vain to think of hoping until they have believed. But Israel has believed, and therefore God has commanded them to hope, and they sin if they do not obey him in this, as in all other duties. I say, since you have believed in his Son, he commands you to hope; that is, to expect to see his face in the next world with joy and comfort. This is hoping. This is your duty. This God commands you.

2. As this word “let” sometimes amounts to a command, so it is also used sometimes to show a grant, leave, or license to do a thing. Such are these that follow: “Let us come boldly to the throne of grace” (Heb 4:16); “Let us draw near with a true heart” (Heb 10:22); “Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering” (Heb 10:23). Here too this way of expressing the thing may be taken in the same sense, that is, to show that Israel has a grant, a leave, a license, to trust in the Lord. And oh, what a privilege this is! But who believes it? And yet, as truly as God has granted Jacob, has granted Israel, repentance unto life, and by that means has made him fly for refuge to lay hold of Christ set before him as a justifier, so truly has he granted him leave and license to trust in him forever, and to hope for his favor in the next world.

And if you take the word in this sense, that is, as a grant, leave, or license to hope in God, then the following is true.

(1) This shows how generous God is with himself and his things toward Israel. “Let Israel hope in me, trust in me, expect good things at my hand; I give him leave and license to do it. Let him live in full expectation of being with me, and with my Son, in glory; I give him leave to do so; he has license from me to do so.”

(2) Understand the word this way, and it shows us with what boldness and confidence God would have us hope in him. Those who have leave and license to do a thing may do it with confidence and boldness, without misgivings and reluctance of mind. This is our privilege. We may live in the full assurance of hope to the end; we may hope perfectly to the end; we have leave, license, and a grant to do it.

(3) Understand the word this way, and it also shows you how muddy and how dark those of Israel are, and how little they are acquainted with the goodness of their God, who stand shrinking at his door like beggars and dare not, in a godly way, be bold with his mercy. Why do you stand like this with your ifs and your oh-buts, you poor benighted Israelite? Why do you keep your hand tucked in your bosom, as if you were afraid to touch the hem of the Lord’s garment? You have a leave, a grant, a license to hope for good to come. Your Lord himself has given it to you, saying, “Let Israel hope in the Lord.”

3. This word “let” is also sometimes used by way of rebuke and check: “Let her alone, for her soul is vexed” (2 Kgs 4:27); “Let her alone, why trouble ye her?” (Mark 14:6); “Refrain from these men, and let them alone” (Acts 5:38). And it may be taken that way here as well. But if so, then it implies that God, in this exhortation, rebukes those evil instruments, those fallen angels, along with all others who attempt to hinder us in the exercise of this duty. It is as Boaz said to his servants when Ruth was to glean in his field: “let her glean even among the sheaves, and reproach her not” (Ruth 2:15-16). We do indeed have those who continually try to hinder us from living in the full assurance of hope as to being with God and with Christ in glory. But here is a rebuke for them: “Let Israel hope in the Lord.” And it shows us the following.

(1) Whatever suggestions come from Satan to make us who are Israelites doubt, they do not come for that end by virtue of any commission he has from God. God has rebuked him in the text, and you may see it elsewhere too (Zech 3:1-2). These temptations, therefore, are forged rather out of malice and spite against our faith and hope, and we should regard them that way.

(2) This also shows us that we should beware of believing what comes to us to hinder our hope in the Lord, lest we take Satan’s side while God is rebuking him, and give countenance to what fights against the grace of God in us.

(3) It also shows us that hope, like faith, cannot be maintained except with great difficulty, and that we should labor to maintain it, and hope through every difficulty.

4. This word “let” is sometimes used by way of request or entreaty: “I pray thee, let Tamar my sister come” (2 Sam 13:6); “Let it be granted to the Jews to do…” (Esth 9:13). And if it is to be taken that way here, or if this interpretation may here be admitted in its best sense, the thought of it is amazing. For then it is all one as if God, by the mouth of his servant who wrote this psalm, were entreating us to hope in him. And why this may not be implied here, as well as expressed elsewhere, I do not know: “God did beseech you by us; we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God” (2 Cor 5:20). Why should God beseech us to be reconciled to him, except that we might hope in him? And if it is taken this way here, it shows the following.

(1) It shows the great condescension of God, in that he not only holds out to us the advantages of hoping in God, but desires that we should hope, so that we might indeed share in those advantages.

(2) It also teaches us humility, and that in the acts of faith and hope we should always mix blushing and shame with our joy and rejoicing. Kiss the ground, sinner; put “thy mouth in the dust, if so be there may be hope” (Lam 3:29).

5. And lastly, this word is sometimes used by way of caution: “Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor 10:12); “Let us therefore fear lest a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it” (Heb 4:1). And if it should be taken that way here, then the following is true.

(1) This shows us the evil of despair, and that we are at times prone to it. Our daily weaknesses, our fresh guilt, our frequent decays, and our readiness to forget the goodness of God all tend directly toward this evil, and we should be aware of it. For it robs God of his glory and us of our comfort, and it gratifies no one but the devil and unbelief.

(2) It shows us that despair is a fall, a falling down from our liberty. Our liberty is to hope; it is our portion from God, for he has said that he himself will be the hope of his people. To do the contrary, therefore, is a falling from God, a departing from God through an evil heart of unbelief. It is the greatest folly in the world for an Israelite to despair. “Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God? Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not? There is no searching of his understanding. He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might, he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But they that wait upon” (that is, hope in) “the Lord, shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint” (Isa 40:27-31).

Now we come to the inferences that naturally flow from this exhortation, and there are four of them.

The first inference. Hope and the exercise of it are as necessary in their place as faith and the exercise of faith. Everyone will grant that there is need of a daily exercise of faith; and we are told to hope to the end, because hope is the grace that relieves the soul when it is dark and weary. Hope is like a flask of cordial to the faint and sinking spirit. Hope calls on the soul not to forget how far it has already come on its way toward heaven. Hope will point out the gate to it, far off, and show it; and that is why it is called the hope of salvation. Hope exercises itself upon God.

1. By the mistakes the soul has been guilty of in the past, in the judgment it has made of God and of his dealings with it. And this is an excellent virtue. “I said,” the church once says, that “my hope is perished from the Lord”; but I was deceived. “This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope” (Lam 3:18-21). That is: why, if I give way to such distrusting thoughts, may I not be wrong again? Therefore I will hope! This virtue belongs to this grace alone, for this, and this only, can turn unbelief and doubts to advantage. “I said in my haste,” said David, “I am cut off from before thine eyes.” Nevertheless I was mistaken: “thou heardest the voice of my supplications when I cried unto thee” (Ps 31:22). And what use does he make of this? Why, he exhorts all good men to hope, and to take occasion from those same mistakes to hope.

“I think I am cast off from God,” says the soul. “So you thought before,” says memory, “but you were mistaken then; and why not again?” “Therefore I will hope. When I had concluded that God would never come near me again, yet after that he came to me again; and as I was then, so I am now. Therefore I will hope.”

2. True hope, rightly exercised upon God, does not balk at weakness or darkness, but rather uses them to work the soul up to some firm support. This is how Abraham’s hope worked by his weakness (Rom 4). And so with Paul: When I am weak, then I am strong; I will most gladly therefore rejoice in mine infirmities (2 Cor 12). But this cannot be done where there is no hope, nor by anything but hope; for it is hope, and the exercise of it, that can say, “Now I expect God to bring good out of all this.” And as for the dark, that is hope’s element to act in: “But hope that is seen is not hope” (Rom 8:24). We must hope for what we do not see. So David says, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? hope thou in God” (Ps 42:5). Christians have no reason to mistrust the goodness of God because of their weakness and the like. “I had fainted unless I had believed to see” (Ps 27:13). By “believing” there he means hoping to see, as the exhortation drawn from it shows.

3. Hope will make use of our calling to support the soul, and by that calling help it exercise itself in expecting good from God. That is why the apostle prays for the Ephesians that they may be made to see what is “the hope of their calling” (Eph 1:17-18); that is, what good it is that their calling gives them ground to hope is laid up in heaven, to be brought to them at the appearing of Jesus Christ. For this is how the soul will reason about the matter by this grace of hope: God has called me; surely it is to a feast. God has called me to the fellowship of his Son; surely it is so that I may be with him in the next world. God has given me the spirit of faith and prayer; surely it is so that I might hope for what I believe is, and wait for what I pray for. God has given me some tastes already; surely it is to encourage me to hope that he means to bring me into the rich enjoyment of the whole.

4. Hope will exercise itself upon God by the very breakings with which he breaks his people for their sins. “The valley of Achor” must be given “for a door of hope” (Hos 2:15). The valley of Achor: what is that? Why, the place where Achan was stoned for his wickedness, and the place where all Israel was afflicted for the same sin (Josh 7). I say, hope can gather from this that God has a love for the soul. For when God hates a man, he does not chastise him for his trespasses. “If ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons” (Heb 12:8).

That is why Moses tells Israel that when the hand of God was on them for their sins, they should consider in their heart “that as a man chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee” (Deut 8:5). And why should they consider this, except that a door might be opened for hope to exercise itself upon God by it? This is also what Paul intends when he writes to the Corinthians, “When we are judged we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world” (1 Cor 11:32). Is there not a door of hope here? And why a door of hope, except that by it God’s people, when they are afflicted, should go out from despair by hope?

The second inference. It is also to be inferred that the exercise of hope upon God is very delightful to him. Otherwise he would not have commanded us to hope and granted us liberty to do it, nor rebuked those who would hinder it. “Behold, the eye of the Lord is upon them that fear him; upon them that hope in his mercy; to deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine” (Ps 33:18-19).

That God is greatly delighted in the exercise of this grace is plain from the provision he has made for this grace to exercise itself upon. “For whatsoever things were writ aforetime, were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope” (Rom 15:4). Notice: the whole history of the Bible, with its account of God’s wonderful works with his people from the beginning of the world, was written for this very purpose, that by considering and comparing them, and by the patience and comfort they give, we might have hope. The Bible is the scaffold, or stage, that God has built for hope to play its part on in this world. It is therefore a very delightful thing to God to see hope rightly given its proper color before him. That is why he is said “to laugh at the trial of the innocent” (Job 9:23). Why at his trial? Because his trial puts him to the exercise of hope; for there is work for hope indeed when trials press sharply upon us.

But why is God so delighted in the exercise of this grace of hope?

1. Because hope is a chief and governing grace. There are several lusts in the soul that cannot be mastered unless hope is at work, especially if the soul is in great and severe trials. There is peevishness and impatience; there is fear and despair; there is doubting and misreading of God’s present hand. All these become masters if hope is not stirring, and no other grace can put a stop to their tumultuous raging in the soul. But hope in God makes them all hush. It takes away the occasion of their working and lays the soul at the foot of God. “Surely,” says the psalmist, “I have behaved and quieted myself as a child that is weaned of his mother, my soul is even as a weaned child.” But how did he bring his soul into so good a temper? Why, that is gathered from the exhortation that follows: “Let Israel hope in the Lord from henceforth and for ever” (Ps 131:2-3). It was by hoping in the Lord that he quieted his soul and all its unruly, sinful passions.

2. As hope quashes and quiets sinful passions, so it puts into order some graces that cannot be put into order without it, such as patience, meekness, silence, long-suffering and the like. In a day of trial these are all out of place, out of order and out of exercise where hope holds back from working. I never saw a distrusting man who was a patient man, a quiet man, a silent man and a meek man under the hand of God, unless he was “dead in sin” at the time; and we are not talking about such people now. But let a man hope in the Lord, and he immediately concludes, “This affliction is for my good. It is a sign that God loves me, and it will work out for me a far more and exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” And so hope puts the graces of the soul into order. That is why patience, by which a man is told to possess or keep his soul under the cross (Luke 21:19), is called “the patience of hope” (1 Thess 1:3). So in another place, when the apostle wants the church to be patient in tribulation and to continue instant in prayer, he tells them to “rejoice in hope,” knowing that the others could not be done without it (Rom 12:12).

3. God takes great delight in the exercise of hope because it construes all of God’s present dealings with the soul for the best. “When he hath tried me I shall come forth like gold” (Job 23:10). This is the language of hope. “God,” says the soul, “is doing me good, making me better, refining my inner man.” Take a professing Christian who is without hope: either he bears affliction out of pride and for show, or else he picks a quarrel with God and throws everything up. For he thinks God is about to ruin him. But hope construes everything for the best and allows no such unruly passions to carry the man away.

4. Therefore hope makes a man keep close to the way and path of God, whatever the trials may be. “My foot,” said hoping Job, “hath held his steps, his way have I kept and not declined, neither have I gone back from the commandment of his lips” (Job 23:11-12). And again: “Our heart is not turned back, neither have our steps declined from thy way: though thou hast sore broken us in the place of dragons, and covered us with the shadow of death” (Ps 44:18-19). But how did they come to endure so patiently? Why, by hope they put patience and prayer into exercise. They knew that their God was, as it were, only asleep, and that in his own time he would arise to help them; and when he did arise, he would certainly deliver them. This is how Paul applies this psalm (Rom 8).

The third inference. It is also inferred from this exhortation that the hope of those who are not Israelites is not esteemed by God. “Let Israel hope.” The words are exclusive, shutting out the rest. He does not say, “Let Amalek hope,” or “Let Babylon, or the Babylonians, hope.” Rather, in and by this very exhortation he shuts out both the rest and their hope from his acceptance. This being settled, it follows that some may hope and be none the better for their hope. “The hypocrite’s hope shall perish” (Job 8:13); “their hope shall be as the giving up of the ghost” (Job 11:20). “For what is the hope of the hypocrite?” (Job 27:8). Again, “The hope of unjust men perisheth” (Prov 11:7). There is a hope that perishes, both it and the one who hoped with it together. The reasons are these:

1. Because it does not flow from faith and experience, but rather from conceit and presumption. Hope, as I have told you, if it is right, comes from faith and is brought forth by experience. But the hope now under consideration stands alone and has no right origin, and therefore it is not regarded. It is not the hope of God but the hope of man; that is, it is not the hope that God works, but the hope that rests on natural abilities. “Thou washest away the things which grow out of the dust of the earth, and thou destroyest the hope of man” (Job 14:19). Whatever in religious matters has only a fleshly and earthly existence must be washed away when the overflowing scourge passes over the world at the end (Isa 28:17-19).

2. Because the Lord’s mercy is not its object. The worldly man makes gold, or an arm of flesh, his hope, that is, the object of his hope, and so he despises God (Job 31:24; Jer 3:23). Or if he is a religious hypocrite, his hope ends in his own doings: he trusts, or hopes, in himself that he is righteous (Luke 18:9). All these things are abhorred by God. Nor can he, with honor to his name or in keeping with his own eternal designs, give any countenance to such a hope as this.

3. This hope has no good effect on the heart and mind of the one who has it. It does not purify the soul. It only holds fast a lie and keeps a man going around in a circle, at an infinite distance from waiting on God.

4. This hope busies all the powers of the soul about the things of the world, or about the false objects on which it is fixed, just as the spider works diligently in her web (to which this hope is also compared), and all in vain. This hope will bring the man who has it and exercises it to heaven when leviathan is pulled out of the sea with a hook, or when his jaw is bored through with a thorn (Job 41:1-9). But as the one who thinks to do that hopes in vain, so, even so, will the other’s hope prove just as unsuccessful. “So are the paths of all that forget God, and the hypocrite’s hope shall perish; whose hope shall be cut off, and whose trust shall be a spider’s web. He shall lean upon his house, but it shall not stand; he shall hold it fast, but it shall not endure” (Job 8:13-15). This is the hope that is not esteemed by God; nor are the persons who have it valued by him one whit above their own dung (Job 20:4-8).

The fourth inference. It is also inferred from these words that Israel himself is liable to swerve in his soul about the object of hope. For as this text is a command and a grant to him, so it is also an instruction, by which he is to be informed how and upon whom to set his hope. That Israel is apt to swerve concerning the object of his hope is evident from the great efforts the prophets make to keep him fixed on his God, and from the many laws and statutes made to direct him to set his hope in God (Ps 78:7). It is also evident from his own confession (Jer 3:23-25; Lam 4:17). The fears, the murmurings and the faintings that accompany the godly in this life also put the truth of this inference beyond doubt. It is true that the apostle said he had the sentence of death in himself, so that he might not trust or hope in himself, but in God who raises the dead. But this was a high pitch, and Israel is not always there. There are many things that hinder.

1. The imperfection of our graces. No grace is perfected in the godly. Now it is natural for things that are defective to fall short in their course. Faith is not perfect, and so the discerning Christian feels what follows; love is not perfect, and we see what follows; and so it is with hope and every other grace. Their imperfection makes them stagger.

2. Israel is not yet beyond temptations. A great deal besets him with temptations, and he has a soul so disabled by sin that he cannot always fix on the God who made him, but is apt to be turned aside to lying vanities, the very thing Jonah was ensnared by (Jonah 2:8).

3. The promising helps that seem to lie in other things are great hindrances to a steady fixing of our hope on God. There are good frames of heart, enlargements in duties and other things like them, which, through the darkness and legality of our spirits, have been great hindrances to Israel. It is not that their natural tendency is to turn us aside. But our corrupt reason gets the upper hand and carries the decisive sway in our judgment, and so turns our minds and consciences to drawing wrong conclusions from them.

4. Besides, just as the mind and conscience are often deluded by reason into drawing these wrong conclusions from our good frames of heart, so that our hope is removed from its right object to them, so by the same reasoning we are turned to the very same thing by unwholesome doctrines and a carnal understanding of the Word. “Cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water”: these Israel, even God’s own people, are apt to make for themselves, to the forsaking of their God (Jer 2:11-13).

Thus I have gone through the first part of the text, which consists of an exhortation to hope in the Lord. I have shown you (1) the matter contained in it, (2) something of the reason for the manner of the phrase, and (3), as you see, I have drawn some inferences from it.

I now come to the second part of the text, which is a reason urged to enforce the exhortation, “Let Israel hope in the Lord.” Why? “For with the Lord there is mercy.” There is the reason: let him hope, for there is mercy; let him hope in the Lord, for with him there is mercy. The reason is full and suitable. For what is the ground of despair but a notion that sin has shut the soul out of all share in happiness? And what is the reason for that but a persuasion that there is no help for him in God? Besides, even if God could do everything except show mercy, believing in that power would still not be reason enough to encourage the soul to hope in God. For the block, sin, which cannot be removed except by mercy, still lies in the way. The reason, therefore, is full and suitable, and it naturally carries in it a force that drives the exhortation home. And,

First, I will touch on the reason in a general way, and then come to it more particularly. “Let Israel hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy”: mercy to be bestowed, mercy designed to be bestowed.

1. Mercy to be bestowed. This must be the meaning. What if a man has ever so much gold or silver, or food, or clothing, and yet has none to give away? What better off are the distressed, or those in need? What if there is mercy with God, and yet he has none to bestow? What force is there then in the exhortation, or what will Israel be the better for hoping? But God has mercy to bestow, to give: “He saith on this wise, I will give you the sure mercies of David” (Acts 13:34). And again, “The Lord give mercy unto the house of Onesiphorus” (2 Tim 1:16). Here, then, lies the encouragement. The Lord has mercy to give. He has not given away all his mercy; his mercy is not clean gone forever (Ps 77:8). He still has mercy to give away, still has mercy to bestow on his Israel. “Let Israel hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy.”

2. As there is mercy with God to be bestowed, so there is mercy designed to be bestowed, or given, to Israel. Some people set aside what they mean to give away and put it in a bag by itself, saying, “This I intend to give away; this I plan to bestow on the poor.” So it is with God: he designs mercy for his people (Ps 9:4). That is why the mercy that God’s Israel are said to share in is a mercy kept for them. And “thou, O God, hast prepared of thy goodness for the poor” (Ps 68:10), and laid it up for them. This is excellent, and it is true: “Let Israel hope in the Lord, for there is with him mercy,” kept, prepared, and laid up for them (Ps 61:7)! When God designs to bestow mercy, we may well hope to share in it (Ps 31:19). The poor will go merrily to weddings and funerals, hoping for alms all the way there, once they come to understand that so much is kept, prepared, and laid up for them by the bridegroom and the rest. But “He keepeth mercy for thousands!” (Exod 34:7).

3. As God has mercies to bestow, and has designed to bestow them, so those mercies are no scraps or leftovers from others. They are mercies full and complete, able to do for you whatever you lack, would have, or can desire. If I may put it this way, God has his bags that were never yet untied, never yet opened, but laid up by him through a thousand generations for those whom he commands to hope in his mercy. As Samuel kept the shoulder for Saul (1 Sam 9:23-24), and as God broke up that decreed place for the sea (Job 38:10), so he has set apart his mercy for his people and will break it open for them. The mercy and grace that he gave us before we had any being is the mercy designed for Israel (2 Tim 1:9). Whole mercies are allotted to us; at the very least, sufficient mercy. But to be a little more precise:

I find that God’s goodness to his people is expressed in various ways in his Word: sometimes by the word grace, sometimes by the word love, and sometimes by the word mercy, just as our badness against him is called iniquity, transgression, and sin. When it is expressed by the word “grace,” it is to show that what he does comes from his princely will, his royal bounty, and his sovereign pleasure. When it is expressed by the word “love,” it is to show us that his affection was and is in what he does, and that he does what he does for us with pleasure and delight. But when it is set before us under the idea of “mercy,” it declares that we are in a state both wretched and miserable, and that his heart and compassions yearn over us in this fearful plight of ours.

Now, as it seems, the Holy Spirit chooses in this place to present to us the goodness that is in God’s heart toward us under the term mercy rather than any other. For, as I said before, this word sets before us our misery along with his pity and compassion; and it pleases us best when we see God in Christ as one who has the love of compassion and pity for us. That is why God’s goodness to us is so often set before us, to make us hope, under the name of pity and compassion. “In his pity he redeemed them” (Isa 63:9), and “like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him” (Ps 103:13). “The Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy” (Jas 5:11); he is also gracious and “full of compassion” (Ps 78:38). “Thou, O Lord, art a God full of compassion” (Ps 86:15; Ps 111:4), and your “compassions fail not” (Lam 3:22).

Having touched briefly on the words, I will now treat two things. First, I will show you more distinctly what kind of mercy is with the Lord, as a reason to encourage Israel to hope. Second, I will then show what is to be inferred from this reason: “Let Israel hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy.”

The Kind of Mercy Israel Is to Hope For

1. With him there is tender mercy, and therefore let Israel hope (Ps 25:6; Ps 103:4; Ps 119:156). Tender mercy is mercy within mercy. Israel of old held it in high esteem, cried much for it, and chose that God would deal with their souls by it. “Withhold not thou thy tender mercies from me,” said David (Ps 40:11), and “according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions” (Ps 51:1). And again, “Let thy tender mercies come unto me, that I may live” (Ps 119:77). Now God has a great many mercies of this sort, a multitude of them to bestow on his people. And the Word mentions them in this way to make us hope in him. Is this not alluring? Is this not enticing to the Israel of God to hope, when the object of their hope is a God “very pitiful, and of tender mercy”? Yes, a God whose tender mercies are great and many.

There are two things that this phrase tender mercy implies. First, that sin will put a believer into a very miserable condition if he gives way to it. Second, that God would have his people hope that, though sin may have brought any of them into this condition, the Lord will restore them with much pity and compassion. “Let Israel hope in the Lord,” for with the Lord there is mercy, tender mercy.

(1) For the first of these: sin will put a believer into a very miserable condition if he gives way to it, and that on two counts. First, it will bring him into fears of damnation. Second, it will make his soul greatly pained under those fears.

We will pass over the first and come to the second. No one knows the pains that guilt causes when it wounds the conscience except those to whom sin is applied by the Spirit of God in the law. Yet all may read of it in the experience of the godly, where this pain is compared to a wound in the flesh, to fire in the bones, to bones put out of joint, and to bones broken apart (Ps 38:3, 5, 7, 8; Ps 102:3; Ps 22:14; Lam 1:13; Lam 3:4). Whoever knows what wounds and broken bones are knows them to be painful things. And whoever knows what misery sin will bring the soul into with its guilt will conclude that the one comes not a bit short of the other.

But now take the man who has these wounds, and these broken bones too. The very thought of a man who can cure him, of a bonesetter, will make him afraid, yes, make him quake with fear, especially if he knows that though the man has skill, he has a hard heart and fingers like iron. Whoever handles a wound needs fingers like feathers or down; the patient certainly wishes he had! Tenderness is a thing of great worth to such sufferers. Tender men are much sought after by them; yes, their tenderness is an invitation to such sufferers to seek them out. And the same is true in spiritual things (Isa 42:3). That is why David cried, as I said before, “Have mercy upon me, O God! according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions” (Ps 51:1). Oh, handle me tenderly, Lord, handle me tenderly, cried David. Oh, cure me, I beg you, and do it with your tender mercy.

Now, answering to this, the Lord is set forth to Israel as one with whom there is mercy, and so tender mercy. Let Israel hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is tender mercy. God, therefore, would have the wounded and bruised, and those whose pains may be compared to the pains and pangs of broken bones, hope that he will restore them with much pity and compassion, or, as you had it before, in pity and tender mercy. See how he promises to do it by the prophet: “A bruised reed shall he not break; and the smoking flax shall he not quench” (Isa 42:3). See how tender he is in the action: “When he saw him, he had compassion on him, and went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him” (Luke 10:33-35). Every circumstance is full of tenderness and compassion.

See also how angry he makes himself with those of his servants who handle the wounded or diseased without this tenderness, and how he snatches them out of their hands, intending to deal more gently with them himself. “The diseased,” he says, “have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick; neither have ye bound up that which was broken; neither have ye brought again that which was driven away; neither have ye sought that which was lost; but with force and with cruelty have ye ruled them; therefore, ye shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: I will feed my flock, and I will cause them to lie down, saith the Lord God. I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick” (Ezek 34:4, 7, 15, 16). Here is encouragement to hope, according to the very reason urged: “Let Israel hope in the Lord; for with the Lord there is mercy,” tender mercy.

2. As there is tender mercy with him, so there is with him mercy that is great, for with him is great mercy: “The Lord is long-suffering, and of great mercy” (Num 14:18). When tenderness goes along with lack of skill, the defect is great; but when tenderness and great skill meet together, such a surgeon is a fine, accomplished man. Besides, some are more plagued with a sense of the greatness of their sins than others are, the devil having placed or fixed his great sting there. These are driven by the greatness of sin into despairing thoughts hotter than fire. These have the greatness of their sin standing between God and them like a great mountain; yes, their sins are like a cloud that darkens the sun and the air. This man stands under Cain’s gallows and, to his own thinking, has Judas’s noose fastened around his neck.

And now he cries, “Great mercy or no mercy, for little mercy will do me no good!” Such a poor creature pleads the case with God like this: “Wilt thou show wonders to the dead? Shall the dead arise and praise thee?” (Ps 88:10). “Lord, I have destroyed myself; can I live? My sins are more than the sands; can I live? Lord, every one of them is a sin of the first rank, of the biggest size, of the blackest sort; can I live?”

I never read that kind of plea but once in the whole Bible: “For thy name’s sake, O Lord, pardon mine iniquity, for it is great” (Ps 25:11). Not that there was only one man in Israel who had committed great iniquities, but because men who have done so have been more inclined to despair than to an argument so against the wind. If he had said, “Pardon, for they are little,” his reasoning would have had reason in it; but when he says, “Pardon, for they are great,” he seems to stand like a man alone. This is the common language: “if our transgressions be upon us, and we pine away in them, how should we then live?” (Ezek 33:10). Or this: “Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost, and we are cut off for our parts” (Ezek 37:11).

Therefore, to such as these, good wishes, tender fingers, and compassion can do nothing without great mercy. But look, O man of Israel: you talk of great sins, and answering to this, the Scripture speaks of great mercy. And your great sins are only the sins of a man, but these great mercies are the mercies of a God. Yes, and you are exhorted, precisely because there is mercy with him, to trust your soul with him: “let Israel trust in the Lord; for with the Lord there is mercy,” great mercy. This, therefore, is a truth of singular comfort: that mercy is with the Lord, that tender mercy is with him, that great mercy is with him, both tender and great. What more could anyone want? But,

3. As great mercy is with the Lord to encourage us to hope, so this mercy that is great is rich. “God is rich in mercy” (Eph 2:4). There are riches of goodness and riches of grace with him (Rom 2:4; Eph 1:7). Things may be great in quantity and little in value, but the mercy of God is not like that. We commonly prize small things when great worth is in them; even a diamond as small as a pea is preferred to a pebble, though the pebble were as big as a camel. Why, here is rich mercy, sinner; here is mercy that is rich and full of power! A drop of it will cure a kingdom. “Ah, but how much of it is there?” says the sinner. Oh, abundance, abundance! For so the text says: “Let us fall now into the hand of the Lord, for his” rich “mercies are great” (2 Sam 24:14). Some things are so rich and of such power that if they only touch a person, if they only come near him, if he only looks at them, they have an immediate effect on him. But the very mention of mercy, yes, the very thought of it, has sometimes had such power in it as to cure a sin-sick soul. Here is powerful mercy!

Indeed, mercy, even the best of mercies, is worth little to a self-righteous man, or to a sinner fast asleep. We must not, therefore, value mercy according to the judgment of the careless and heedless man, but according to the verdict of the Word. The awakened sinner, who roars for mercy all day long because of the disquiet of his heart, is the likeliest of all sinful flesh, or as likely as any, to set a fitting value on mercy. Yet even his verdict is not always to stand in this matter. None can know the riches of mercy to the full except one who perfectly knows the evil of sin, the justice of God, all the errors of man, the torments of hell, and the sorrows that the Lord Jesus underwent when mercy made him a reconciler of sinners to God. But this can be known by none but the God whose mercy it is. This is the pearl of great price.

The richness of mercy is seen in several things. It can save from sin, from great sin, from all sin (Titus 3:5). It can save a soul from the devil, from all devils (Matt 15:22, 28; Matt 17:15, 18). It can save a soul from hell, from all hells (Ps 116:3, 5, 6). It can hold us up in the midst of all weaknesses (Ps 94:18). It can deliver from eternal judgment (Rom 9:23). Yes, what is there that we have, or shall need, that this powerful mercy cannot do for us? “Let Israel hope in the Lord,” for with the Lord is rich mercy, mercy full of power, that can do great things.

4. As the mercies that are with the Lord are tender, great, and rich, so there is a multitude of them, and they are called “manifold.” There is a multitude of these rich and powerful mercies (Ps 69:13; Neh 9:19). By multitude I understand mercies of every sort or kind: mercies for this malady and mercies for that, mercies for every sickness, a salve for every sore. Some things that are rich and very full of power still have an excellence that reaches only to one, or two, or three things for help; and this is their leanness in the midst of their excellences. But it is not so with the mercy of God. Some things that are rich and powerful are so only at certain seasons, for there are times when they can do nothing. But it is not so with this tender, great, and rich mercy of God. There are some things, though rich, that are used only sparingly. But it is not so with this mercy of God. There is a multitude of them, so if one will not serve, another will. There is a multitude of them, so one or another of them is always in season. There is a multitude of them, and therefore no one must suppose that God is stingy in handing them out.

As they are called a multitude, so they are called manifold mercies. There is no single flower in God’s gospel garden; they are all double and treble. There is a wheel within a wheel, a blessing within a blessing, in all the mercies of God. Manifold: a man cannot receive one without receiving many, many folded up one within another. For instance:

(1) If a man receives Christ, who is called God’s tender mercy, why, he will find in him all the promises, pardons, justifications, righteousnesses, and redemptions that are needed to make him stand clear of sin before the justice of the law, in the sight of God (Luke 1:76-79; 1 Cor 1:30; Eph 4:32; 2 Cor 1:20).

(2) If a man receives the Spirit, he will have many, very many mercies folded up in that, for this is the first mercy unfolding itself (Ezek 1:4). He will have the graces, the teachings, the sanctifications, the comforts, and the supports of the Spirit. When he says in one place, He will give the Spirit, he calls it in another place “the good things” of God (Luke 11:13; Matt 7:11).

(3) If a man receives the mercy of the resurrection of the body (and God’s people will certainly receive that in its time), what a bundle of mercies will be received, wrapped up in that! He will receive perfection, immortality, heaven, and glory; and who can tell what is folded up in these things?

I name only these three, though many more might be added, to show you the plenty as well as the power of the tender, great, and rich mercy of God. A multitude! There is converting mercy, there is preserving mercy, there is glorifying mercy; and how many mercies are folded up in each of these, none but God can tell. A multitude! There are mercies for the faithful followers of Christ, for those of his who backslide from him, and also for those who suffer for him; and what mercies these will find folded up in their mercies, they will know better when they come to heaven. With God there is a multitude of preventing mercies, in afflictions, in disappointments, in crossing providences; and what mercies are folded up in these afflicting mercies, in these disappointing mercies, and in these merciful crossing providences must rest in the heart of him who alone is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working, to be revealed by him.

A multitude of common mercies! There are every day’s mercies, every night’s mercies, mercies in our relationships, mercies in food and clothing, and mercies in the lack of these things too; and who can number them? David said that he was daily loaded with God’s benefits (Ps 68:19). And I believe that if we were to give God thanks at all times for every particular mercy, one by one, as we are bound to do, it would be an intolerable burden and would kill us outright! And all this is written so that Israel might hope in the Lord: “Let Israel hope in the Lord; for with the Lord there is mercy.”

5. As the mercies that are with the Lord are tender, great, rich, a multitude, and manifold, so they are mercies that do not diminish in the using, but rather increase as they are exercised. That is why it is said that grace abounds, and has abounded to many, and that God is able to make all grace abound toward us (Rom 5:15; 2 Cor 9:8; Eph 1:7-8). I mean the grace of forgiveness, in which he has abounded toward us. Now, to abound is to flow, to multiply, to increase, to grow greater, to be more and more; and the mercy that is with the Lord is of this nature, mercy that will abound and increase in the using. That is why he is said to pardon abundantly, to pardon and multiply to pardon, and again, to exercise lovingkindness: to exercise it, that is, to draw it out to its full length, to make the best advantage and improvement of every grain and quality of it (Isa 55:7; Jer 9:24). “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth” (Exod 34:6).

To a man under guilt and the fear of hellfire, mercy seems a little, shrunken, shriveled thing; there appears to be no quantity in it. There is mercy, said Cain, but there is not enough; and he died under that notion (Gen 4:13). Nor is it often much better with the Israel of God, as far as their judgment and thoughts go. But look: when God sets mercy to work, it is like the cloud that at first was no bigger than a man’s hand; it increases until it has covered the face of heaven (1 Kgs 18:41-44). Many have found it so; yes, they have found it so in their distress. Paul has this expression: “The grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant,” that is, increased toward me exceedingly (1 Tim 1:13-15). And this is the cause of that change of thoughts which is worked at last in the hearts of the tempted. At first they doubt, at last they hope; at first they despair, at last they rejoice; at first they quake, while they imagine how great their sins are and how little the grace of God is. But at last they see such greatness, such largeness, such an abundance of increase in this multiplying mercy of God, that with gladness of heart they call themselves fools for their first thoughts, and venture their souls, the next world, and their interest in it on this mercy of God.

I tell you, sirs, you must not trust your own understanding or judgment with the mercy of God. You do not know how he can make it abound. What seems short and shrunken to you, he can draw out and make abound exceedingly. There is a breadth and length and depth and height in it, when God is pleased to open it, that for its infiniteness can swallow up not only all your sins but all your thoughts and imaginations, and that can also drown you at last. “Now unto him that is able” (as to mercy) “to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen!” (Eph 3:20-21). This, therefore, is a wonderful thing, and it will be wondered at to all eternity: that the river of mercy, which at first seemed to be only ankle-deep, should so rise, and rise, and rise, that at last it became “waters to swim in, a river that could not be passed over!” (Ezek 47:3-5). Now all this is written so that Israel might hope: “Let Israel hope in the Lord; for with the Lord there is mercy.”

6. As there are with God mercies tender, great, rich, a multitude, and mercy that abounds, so, to encourage us to trust in him, there is mercy to compass us round about. “Many sorrows shall be to the wicked, but he that trusteth in the Lord, mercy shall compass him about” (Ps 32:10). This, therefore, is the lot of the Israel of God: as they trust in their God, they will be compassed round about with mercy. This is mercy to do for us in this world, so that we may arrive safely in the world to come. Another text says, “For thou, Lord, wilt bless the righteous; with favour wilt thou compass him as with a shield” (Ps 5:12). As with a shield. This compassing of them, therefore, is to the end that they may be defended and guarded from those who seek to hurt them. When Elisha was in danger because of the army of the Syrians, “behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire, round about him,” to deliver him (2 Kgs 6:15-17). Round about, on every side; or, as David has it, “Thou shalt increase my greatness, and comfort me on every side” (Ps 71:21). “I will encamp about mine house,” says God, “because of the army, because of him that passeth by, and him that returneth” (Zech 9:8).

This, then, is the reason why, in spite of all our weaknesses and the rage of Satan as well, we are kept and preserved in a wicked world: we are surrounded on every side. That is why, when God asked Satan about holy Job, Satan answered, “Hast thou not made a hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side?” (Job 1:10). As if to say, “I cannot get at him; you surround him and keep me out.” By this, then, that scripture is opened: “Thou art my hiding place, thou shalt preserve me from trouble, thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance” (Ps 32:7). And indeed it would be fitting if we, instead of doubting and despairing, sang in the ways of the Lord. Do we not have cause to do so, when the Lord is round about us with sword and shield, keeping watch for us against the enemy, so that he may deliver us from their hand (Jer 31:12)?

This is also the reason why nothing can get at us except in a way that will do us good. If the mercy of God is round about us, about us on every side, then no evil thing can by any means reach us without coming through this mercy. So it must be seasoned with mercy, and must have its deadly poison taken away by it. That is why Paul, understanding this, says, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God” (Rom 8:28). But how could that be, if these things did not come to us through the very sides of mercy? And how could they come to us that way, since Satan pries about to wound us mortally in every place, or in some hidden place, unless mercy surrounded us round about, round about as with a shield? He went round about Job to see through what hog-hole he might get at him, so that he might strike him under the fifth rib. But behold, he found he was hedged out all the way round. So he could not get at Job except through the sides of mercy, and therefore whatever he did to him had to be for good.

In just the same way it will be in the end with all the wrath of our enemies: when they have done what they can, by the mercy of God we shall be made to stand. “Why boastest thou thyself in mischief,” said David, “O mighty man? the goodness of God endureth continually” (Ps 52:1). As if he said, “And that goodness will sanctify to me whatever you do against me!” This, then, is another remarkable encouragement for Israel to hope in the Lord: that with him there is mercy to surround us on every side.

Here, I say, is room for hope, and for exercising it, when we feel ourselves assaulted in the worst way. “Wherefore should I fear,” said David, “in the day of evil, when the iniquity of my heels shall compass me about?” (Ps 49:5). “Why?” someone answers. “Why, now there is all the reason in the world to fear! The day of evil has come upon you, and the iniquity of your heels surrounds you. The hand of God is upon you, and your sins, which are the cause of it, stand round about you to give evidence against you; and therefore you must fear.” “No,” says David, “that is not a sufficient reason: he that trusteth in the Lord, mercy shall compass him about” (Ps 32:10). Here also is ground to pray in faith, as David did, saying, “Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings, from the wicked that oppress me, from my deadly enemies, who compass me about” (Ps 17:8-9).

7. As all this tender, great, rich, much-abounding mercy surrounds us, so, that we may hope in the God of our mercy, it is said that this mercy is to follow us: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever” (Ps 23:6). It shall follow me, go with me, and be near me in all the way that I go (Ps 32:8). There are six things to be gathered from this text for the further support of our hope.

(1) It shall follow us to guide us in the way. “I will guide thee with mine eye,” says God; that is, in the way that you shall go. Man’s way to the next world is like the way from Egypt to Canaan: a way no one can find through except by the pillar of a cloud by day and a flame of fire by night, that is, by the Word and the Spirit. “Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory” (Ps 73:24). You shall guide me from the first step to the last that I take in this pilgrimage of mine: goodness and mercy shall follow me.

(2) As God in mercy will guide us, so by the same mercy he will hold up our goings in his paths. We are weak; so even if the path we walk in were ever so plain, we are still apt to stumble and fall. But “when I said my foot slippeth, thy mercy, O Lord, held me up” (Ps 94:18). Therefore we should always turn our hope into prayer, and say, Lord, “hold up my goings in thy paths, that my footsteps slip not” (Ps 17:5); let me not be moved; let mercy follow me.

(3) As the God of our mercy has mercy to guide us and hold us up, so by the same mercy he will instruct us when we are at a loss, at a standstill. “I led Israel about,” says God, “I instructed him, and kept him as the apple of mine eye” (Deut 32:10). I say we are often at a loss. David, after all his brave sayings in the hundred and nineteenth psalm, said, “I have gone astray like a lost sheep: seek thy servant” (Ps 119:176). Indeed, a Christian is not so often out of the way as he is at a standstill in it, not knowing what to do. But here also is his mercy for that: “Thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left” (Isa 30:21). Mercy follows us for this.

(4) Mercy shall follow to carry you when you are faint. We have many fainting and sinking fits as we go. “He shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom” (Isa 40:11), or upon eagles’ wings. He made Israel ride on the high places of the earth, and made him suck honey out of the rock (Deut 32:13).

(5) Mercy shall follow us to pick us up when we have fallen, and to heal us of the wounds we have received by our falls. “The Lord upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all those that be bowed down” (Ps 145:14). And again: “The Lord openeth the eyes of the blind; the Lord raiseth them that are bowed down; the Lord loveth the righteous” (Ps 146:8). Or, as we have it in another place, “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord; and he delighteth in his way. Though he fall he shall not be utterly cast down; for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand” (Ps 37:23-24). Here is mercy for a hoping Israelite; and yet this is not all.

(6) Mercy shall follow us to pardon our sins as they are committed. For though by the act of justification we are forever secured from a state of condemnation, yet as we are children we need forgiveness daily, and need to pray, “Our Father, forgive us our trespasses.” Now, so that we may have daily forgiveness for our daily sins and trespasses, mercy and goodness must follow us. Or, as Moses has it, “And he said, If now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord! let my Lord, I pray thee, go amongst us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance” (Exod 34:9).

Join to this that prayer of his which you find in Numbers: “Now I beseech thee let the power of my Lord be great, according as thou hast spoken, saying, The Lord is long-suffering and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity, and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of thy mercy, and as thou hast forgiven this people from Egypt even until now,” or hitherto (Num 14:17-19). How many times, do you think, did Israel need pardon between leaving Egypt and coming to Canaan? You will need pardon just as many times, from the day of your conversion to the day of your death. And to that day God will follow Israel, so that he may dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

8. As all this tender, great, rich, abounding, encompassing mercy shall follow Israel to do him good, so it will do him every good turn, delivering him with rejoicing from every judgment to which he has made himself liable by sin. For “mercy rejoiceth against judgment” (Jas 2:13). That is, applying it to the mercy of God toward his own, it rejoices in delivering us from the judgments we have deserved; yes, it delivers us from all our woes with rejoicing. In the margin it reads “glorieth”: it glories in doing this great thing for us. Considering how often I have brought judgments and destructions on myself, I have thought that God would grow weary of pardoning, or else that he would pardon grudgingly. But the Word says, “He fainteth not nor is weary” (Isa 40:28). “I will rejoice over them to do them good, … with my whole heart, and with my whole soul” (Jer 32:41).

This doing us good with rejoicing, this saving us from deserved judgments with rejoicing, this winning the victory over our destructions for us with rejoicing: oh, it is a marvelous thing! “O sing unto the Lord a new song, for he hath done marvelous things: his right hand, and his holy arm hath gotten him the victory”: the victory for us (Ps 98:1). And as Paul said, “We are more than conquerors through him” (Rom 8:37); and this he did with triumph and rejoicing (Col 2:15).

The heart is often seen more in the manner than in the act that is done; more in the manner of doing than in the doing of the thing. The wickedness of the heart of Moab was seen more in the manner of his action than in the words he spoke against Israel: “For since thou spakest against him thou skippedst for joy” (Jer 48:27). So Edom rejoiced at the calamity of his brother. He looked on it and rejoiced, and in his rejoicing appeared the badness of his heart and the great spite he had against his brother Jacob (Obad 10-14).

Now, my brothers, I beg you to consider that God has not only shown you mercy but has done it with rejoicing. Mercy does not only follow you; it follows you with rejoicing. Yes, it does not only prevent the ruin your repeated transgressions have brought on you, but it does it with rejoicing. Here the very heart of mercy is seen, in that it rejoices against judgment. Like this is that passage in Zephaniah: “The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty: he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy, he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing” (Zeph 3:17-18).

There are many things that show with what a heart God extends mercy, as described above, to Israel for his salvation. But this one, that mercy acts with rejoicing, saves with rejoicing, and gets the victory over judgment with rejoicing, is a wonderful one, and one that Israel should take notice of, to encourage him to hope. “Let Israel hope in the Lord, for with him there is mercy”: tender, great, rich, multiplying mercy; mercy that surrounds us; mercy that goes with us all the way; and mercy that rejoices to overcome every judgment that seeks our destruction, as we go toward our Father’s house and kingdom!

It is said in the Word that God delights in mercy: “Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? he retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delighteth in mercy” (Mic 7:18). Here, then, is a reason for mercy’s rejoicing against judgment. Why, mercy is God’s delight; or, as another renders it, “Mercy pleaseth thee.” What a man delights in, he will set on foot; he will seek to manage it, he will promote it, and he will glory in its success and prosperity. Why, the text says God delights in mercy. Nor do I believe, however odious the comparison may seem, that any man ever delighted more in sin than God has delighted in showing mercy.

Has man given himself away for sin? God has given his Son for us, that he might show us mercy (John 3:16). Has man lain in wait for opportunities to sin? God has waited to be gracious, that he might have mercy on us (Isa 30:18). Has man, that he might enjoy his sin, brought himself down to a morsel of bread? Why, Christ, Lord of all, made himself the poorest man, that he might make room for mercy (Luke 9:58; 2 Cor 8:9). Has man, once he has found his sin, pursued it with all his heart? Why, God, when he sets about showing mercy, shows it with rejoicing, for he delights in mercy.

Here also you may see the reason why all God’s paths are mercy and truth to his own (Ps 25:10). I have observed that whatever a man loves he will make a habit of, whether it is fishing, hunting, or the like. These are his ways, his course, the paths in which he spends his life; and so he is seldom found out of one or another of them. “Now,” says David, “all the paths of the Lord are mercy” (Ps 25:10). He is never out of them: for wherever he is, he is still coming toward his Israel in one or another of these paths, stepping steps of mercy. Hence again you find that at the end of every judgment there is mercy, and that God in the midst of judgment remembers mercy (Hab 3:2). Yes, judgment is in mercy; and were it not for that, judgment would never overtake his people (1 Cor 11:32). Therefore let Israel hope in the Lord, seeing that with him is all this mercy.

9. Besides all this, the mercy that is with God, and that encourages Israel to hope in him, is everlasting: “The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him” (Ps 103:17). From everlasting to everlasting: that is more, more than I have said.

(1) Well, then, from everlasting: that is, from before the world began. So then, things that are, and things that are to be hereafter, are to be managed according to the measures that God in mercy took for his people then. That is why it is said that he has blessed us according as he chose us in Christ before the world began; that is, according to the measures and grants that were allotted to us by mercy then (Eph 1:4). This agrees with that other saying, “according to his mercy he saved us” (Titus 3:5); that is, according to what mercy had allotted for us before the world began. “According to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ before the world began” (2 Tim 1:9). This is mercy from everlasting, and it is the ground and bottom of all the dealings that have come, are coming, or are yet to come to his people.

And now, though it would be too great a step aside to treat all the mercies that will of necessity be found to stand on what is called mercy from everlasting, yet it will serve our purpose, and agree with our method, to conclude that mercy to everlasting stands on it; just as calling, justification, preservation, and glorification stand on our being chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world (Rom 8:29-30). Here, then, is the mercy that is with God and that should encourage Israel to hope: the mercy that has concerned itself with them is mercy from everlasting.

Nor may anyone think that a few quarrels from some brain-sick fellows will push God into taking new measures for his people. The foundation that was laid for his own before he laid the foundation of the world shall stand, because it was laid in Christ by virtue of mercy, that is, from everlasting (Rom 9:11). The old laws, which are the Magna Carta, the sole basis of the government of a kingdom, may not be thrown away because every petty gentleman gets in a huff about them. We do indeed have some professing Christians who are in a great huff against that foundation of salvation which the mercy that is from everlasting has laid. But the kingdom, government, and glory of Christ are wrapped up in it, and the calling, justification, perseverance, and glorification of his elect, who are called his body and fullness, are wrapped up in it too. Therefore it may not be laid aside, or despised, or quarreled against by anyone, without danger of damnation.

Here, then, is the mercy with which Israel is concerned, and which is with God as an encouragement to those who should hope, to hope in him. It is mercy from everlasting; it is mercy of ancient date; it is mercy at the root of the thing. For it is from this mercy, this mercy from everlasting, that all the mercies, and all the sorts of mercies, that we have discussed before flow. It is from this that Christ the Savior flows. This is the source from which that tender mercy, that great mercy, that rich mercy, and that mercy that abounds toward us flow; and so with all the rest. Kind brings forth its kind. Know the tree by its fruit, and God by his mercy in Christ; yes, and know what God was doing before he made the world by what he has been doing ever since. And what has God been doing for and to his church from the beginning of the world but extending and exercising loving-kindness and mercy toward them? Therefore he laid a foundation for this in mercy from everlasting.

(2) But mercy from everlasting is only the beginning, and we have already discussed the mercies we have found within it. So now a word about that which is to everlasting as well: “From everlasting to everlasting.” Nothing can go beyond “to everlasting”; so this “to everlasting” will see an end of all. The devil will tempt us, sin will assault us, men will persecute us; but can they do it to everlasting? If not, then there is mercy to come to God’s people at last, even when all evils have done to us what they can.

After the prophet had spoken of the inconceivable blessedness that God has prepared for those who wait for him, he drops down to present wrath and the sin of God’s people in this life. This done, he mounts up again to the first and says, “in those is continuance”; that is, the things laid up for us are everlasting, and therefore “we shall be saved” (Isa 64:4-5).

How many things since the beginning have assaulted the world to destroy it, such as wars, famines, plagues, earthquakes, and the like; and yet to this day it abides. But what is the reason for that? Why, God lives, upon whose word and by whose decree it abides. “He hath established the earth, and it abideth” (Ps 119:90); it stands fast and “cannot be moved” (Ps 93:1; Ps 96:10). Why, my brothers, mercy lives, mercy is everlasting: “His mercy endureth for ever!” (Ps 136). And therefore the church of God lives; and when all her enemies have done their all, this is the song that the church shall sing over them: “They are brought down and fallen, but we are risen, and stand upright!” (Ps 20:8). Everlasting mercy, with everlasting arms, is underneath (Deut 33:27).

And as this shows the cause of the church’s life, in spite of her spiritual and bodily enemies, so it shows the cause of her deliverance from her repeated sins. As God said of leviathan, “I will not conceal his parts …” (Job 41:12), so it is very unbecoming for God’s people to conceal their sins and failings, for that diminishes this mercy of God. Therefore let sin be acknowledged and confessed, and not hidden or disguised. It is to the glory of mercy that we confess to God and to one another what we are, always remembering this: but mercy is everlasting!

As this shows the reason for our life, and for its continuance in spite of our repeated sins, so it shows the cause of the recovering of our graces from so many decays and sicknesses. For this mercy will live, last, and outlast all things that are corruptible and hurtful to Israel. Therefore “let Israel hope in the Lord,” for this reason, “for with the Lord there is mercy”: first, tender mercy for us; second, great mercy for us; third, rich mercy; fourth, manifold mercy; fifth, abounding mercy toward us; sixth, encompassing mercy, with which we are surrounded; seventh, mercy to follow us wherever we go; eighth, mercy that rejoices against judgment; and ninth, mercy that is from everlasting to everlasting. All these mercies are with God, to allure, to encourage, and to uphold Israel in hope.

I come now to the second thing, which is to show what is to be inferred from this reason. And:

1. This, to be sure, is to be inferred: that Israel, as the child of God, is a pitiful thing in himself. He is full of weaknesses, infirmities and defects, to say nothing of his transgressions. Anyone who must be attended by so many mercies, and absolutely necessary mercies at that (for there is not one among them that can be spared), must be a poor, needy creature in himself. If you saw a child attended by as many devices to make him walk as the child of God is attended by mercies to make him stand, you would say, “What an infirm, decrepit, helpless thing this is!” Alas! I have counted up nine mercies here. If I had counted up nine hundred and ninety-nine, it would all have been the same, for the child of God would not have one to spare. The text says, “The earth, O Lord, is full of thy mercy” (Ps 119:64), and all of it is little enough to preserve his Israel. Indeed, the mercies I have set before the reader are the chief heads of mercies, the head-mercies from which many others flow. But even if they were only single mercies, they would show our deficiency with great evidence; being double, they show it much more.

Suppose it were said that a certain lord has a son, a poor, decrepit thing. He is forced to wear braces to strengthen his ankles, braces to strengthen his knees, braces to strengthen his loins, braces to hold up his bowels, braces to strengthen his shoulders, his neck, his hands, his fingers. Yes, he cannot speak except by the help of a device, nor chew his food except by the help of a device. What would you say? What would you think? Would you not say that such a one is not worth the keeping? That his father cannot look for anything from him, except that he will be a heavy charge and expense as long as he lives? Besides all the trouble such a one is likely to be to others? Why, this is the case. Israel is such a one, no, worse. He cannot live without tender mercy, without great mercy, without rich mercy, without manifold mercy, and unless mercy abounds toward him. He cannot stand unless mercy surrounds him on every side, nor walk unless mercy follows him. Yes, if mercy that rejoices against judgment does not continually flutter over him, the very moth will eat him up, and rust will consume him (Job 4:19). Therefore, to make Israel live and flourish, it is necessary that everlasting mercy should be over his head and everlasting mercy under his feet, with all the mercies mentioned before, and more, contained within it.

But I say, does this not show clearly enough, if we only had eyes to see it, what a sad and pitiable creature the child of God is in himself? Oh, this is not believed or considered as it should be! Vain man would be wise; sinful man would be holy; and poor, lame, infirm, helpless man would be strong, and would gladly persuade others that he is sufficient in himself. But I say, if that is so, what need is there for all this mercy? If you can walk vigorously, what are your crutches for? No, no. Israel, God’s Israel, when he is awake, stands astonished at being surrounded with mercies, and cries out, “I am not worthy of the least (I am less than the least) of all thy mercies, and of all the truth, which thou hast showed unto thy servant” (Gen 32:10).

2. This also shows how fiercely the enemies of Israel are bent on seeking his destruction. The devil is, above all others, called the enemy of God’s people: “The devil, your adversary” (1 Pet 5:8). And the fact that so many mercies are employed about us, all to bring us to the place God has appointed for us, demonstrates it. If you saw a man who could not go from door to door unless he was dressed in a coat of mail, with a helmet of brass on his head, and with no fewer than a thousand men waiting on him as his bodyguard, would you not say, “Surely this man has plenty of enemies close at hand; surely this man goes continually in danger of his life”? Why, this is the case. Enemies lie in wait for poor Israel in every hole. He cannot eat, drink, wake, sleep, work, sit still, talk, be silent, or worship his God in public or in private, without being in danger of being stabbed or destroyed. Hence, as was said before, he is surrounded with mercy as with a shield (Ps 5:12). And again it is said concerning these, “God’s truth” (that is, his mercy) “shall be thy shield and buckler” (Ps 91:4). And again, “He is a buckler to all them that trust in him” (2 Sam 22:31). Yes, David, being a man aware of his own weakness and of the rage and power of his enemies, cries out to his God to take hold of shield and buckler and to stand up for his help (Ps 35:2). But why should these things need to be asserted, promised or prayed for, if Israel had no enemies, or none but such as he could, as we say, hold his own against? Alas, their cries, their tears, sighs, watchings and outcries at various times make this a truth beyond all show of doubt.

If Solomon used to have no fewer than sixty of the most valiant men of Israel about his bed, holding swords and expert in war, every one with his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night (Song 3:7-8), and yet these fears concerned only men, what guard and safeguard do God’s poor people need, who are continually roared at, night and day, by the merciless fallen angels of hell! I will add this. If it is duly considered how narrowly this people escape being destroyed forever, in spite of all this guard and safeguard by mercy, and how many of them, with broken hearts and broken loins, get to the gates of heaven only with great difficulty, it will easily be concluded that their enemies are swifter than eagles and stronger than lions, and that they often overtake them in the narrow places.

To say nothing of the many thousands who dare not so much as once think of true religion because of the power of the enemy they see, when, alas, they see nobody but the very scarecrows the devil has set up! (For I count the persecutor of God’s people as nothing but the devil’s scarecrow; the old one himself lies low out of sight.) Yet, I say, how frightened they are! How amazed they are! What a great many enemies of religion these folks have seen today! Yes, they would just as soon venture to risk hellfire as be engaged by these enemies in this way. Why, God’s people have to go through them all, and yet they are no more able than the others to do it by themselves. Therefore they are girded, surrounded and defended by this mercy, which is indeed the true cause of their godly perseverance.

3. A third thing I infer from these words is this: what a loving God Israel has! “Truly God is good to Israel” (Ps 73:1). “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so” (Ps 107:2). A loving God, who would take this care of him and bestow so many mercies on him! Mercies of all sorts, for all cases, for every kind of relief and help against every kind of peril. What is man, that God should so tirelessly attend to him and visit him every moment? Is he a second God? Is he God’s equal? Is he of the highest order of the angels? Or what is he? Oh, he is a flea, a worm, a dead dog, sinful dust and ashes (1 Sam 26:20; Job 25:6). He comes up like a flower and is cut down, and what a thing it is that God should so much as open his eyes on such a one (Job 14:2-3)! But then, what a thing it is that God should magnify him, and that he should set his heart on him (Job 7:17)! Yes, that he should take him into acquaintance with himself, and give his angels to be ministering spirits for him! Yes, that he should engage his mercy for him, his tender, great, manifold and everlasting mercy, to surround him with it as with a shield, so that nothing might work his ruin forever and ever!

It may well be said, “God is love!” (1 John 4:16). Man may well say so: “O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy” (Ps 107:1-3). If it is love for a fellow creature to give a bit of bread, a coat, or a cup of cold water, what shall we call this? God, the great God, the maker of all things, not only gives alms, alms to an enemy, but rises up, takes shield and buckler, and becomes a guard, a protection and a deliverer from all evil until we come into his heavenly kingdom! This love is such as is not found on earth, nor can it be paralleled among the creatures. No one hopes for this but one who is good. Nor does anyone believe as he should that God loves as these things declare he does. Our heart staggers at the greatness of the thing. And who is there that has any reason left in him, and knows anything of what a wretched thing sin has made him, who can so much as hear of all this mercy without being startled! But:

4. Another thing I infer from these words is this: what ground there is here for Israel to hope in the Lord! The Lord is not that broken reed of Egypt, which, if a man leans on it, will go into his hand and pierce it. God’s word is steadfast forever, even the word by which we are here exhorted to hope. Nor will we have cause to doubt the reason given for the exhortation to such a soul-quieting duty, for mercy is with the Lord: “Let Israel rejoice in him that made him; let the children of Zion be joyful in their king” (Ps 149:2). For with the Lord there is mercy with which to beautify the meek with salvation.

What do you say, child of God? Has sin wounded and bruised your soul, and broken your bones? Why, with the Lord there is tender mercy. Are you a sinner of the first rank, of the biggest size? Why, with the Lord there is great mercy for you. Have your sins corrupted your wounds, and made them fester and stink? Why, with the Lord there is rich mercy for you, that is, potent mercy. Are your sins of many different sorts? Why, here is a multitude of manifold mercies for you. Do you see yourself surrounded with enemies? Why, with the Lord there is mercy to surround you with. Is the way you must go dangerous? Surely goodness and mercy shall follow you all the days of your life. Does iniquity prevail against you? The mercy of this Lord abounds toward you. Do judgments for your failings overtake you? With your Lord there is mercy that rejoices to deliver you from those judgments. What more shall I say? There is mercy from everlasting to everlasting upon you. What more would you have? There is mercy underneath, mercy above, and mercy for you on every side. Therefore, “let Israel hope in the Lord!”

I will add this: in spite of all this, to doubt this mercy is the greatest unkindness you can return to the Lord. Why, what will you make of God? Is there no truth in him, and no trust to be put in him, after all that he has said? Oh, the depravity of man’s nature! Because he speaks the truth, therefore we do not believe him (John 8:45)! By this the hatefulness of unbelief is made plain, yes, and its unreasonableness too. God is true, and his Word is true; and to help us hope in him, how many times has he fulfilled it to others, and that before our eyes? Hope, then; it is good that a man should hope. Hope, then; it pleases God that you should hope. Hope, then, to the end, for the grace that is to be brought to you will surely come, with Christ your Savior.

Men who have given themselves up to their sins hope to enjoy some benefit from them, though the curse of God and his wrath is revealed from heaven against them for it (Rom 1:18). And yet you, who have given yourself to God by Christ, are afraid to hope in his mercy! For shame! Hope, and do not dishonor your God like this, wound your own soul, and set so bad an example to others. I know you have your objections ready to throw in my way. If they were made against a doctrine, reason would require that some notice be taken of them. But since they are made against a duty, a duty urged from and grounded on a word that is steadfast forever, you deserve to be blamed, and to be told that of all the sins you ever committed, you are now carrying on the vilest. For you are giving way to unbelief and mistrust, and fortifying them, against this exhortation to hope and against the reason given to encourage you in the duty.

But I shall pass from this to the third thing found in the text, and that is the amplification of the reason. I told you that there were these three things in the text. First, an exhortation to the children of God to hope in the Lord: “Let Israel hope in the Lord.” Second, a reason to enforce that exhortation: “For with the Lord there is mercy.” Third, an amplification of that reason: “And with him is plenteous redemption.” I have gone through the first two, and shall now come to this last.

In these last words, which I call the amplification of the reason, we have two things. First, a more particular account of the nature of the mercy that is set before Israel to encourage them to hope. Second, an account of its sufficiency. The nature of the mercy set before them is expressed by that word “redemption.” Its sufficiency is expressed by that word “plenteous.” “Let Israel hope in the Lord; for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption” (Ps 130:7).

Redemption may be taken in various ways, as will be shown further on. But since the term is mentioned here without qualification, without naming this or that particular part of redemption, I shall speak to it in general, at least with respect to its main heads.

To redeem is to fetch back, by sufficient and suitable means, those who are at present in an enslaved, captive, or imprisoned condition. And there are two sorts of this redemption: first, redemption by purchase; second, redemption by power. Redemption by purchase is from the cause of captivity. Redemption by power is from its effects.

First, if we speak of redemption by purchase, then three things present themselves for our consideration: the person redeeming; the nature of the price paid to redeem with; and the thing or state from which this Redeemer redeems with this price.

1. The subject of this redemption, or the person redeemed, is Israel, of whom we have spoken before. As for the person redeeming, it is Jesus of Nazareth: Jesus who was born at Bethlehem, at the time and in the manner the Scriptures relate (Matt 1; Luke 2). Now, with reference to his person, we have two things to inquire into: what this person was, and how he set himself to this work.

(1) This Jesus was and is the natural and eternal Son of God Almighty, without beginning or end, from everlasting, the Creator and Upholder of the world (Prov 8; John 1; Heb 1).

(2) As for how he set himself to the work of redeeming, take it as follows. He became true man. For he was conceived through the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of a virgin, and in the fullness of time he was brought forth from her a true, real, natural man; natural, I say, though not in the worst sense, yet in the best (Luke 1:31-35). Being brought forth in this way, without spot or blemish, he began to set himself to the work: first, by preparatory works, and then, second, by the act itself.

[1] The preparatory works were as follows. He prepared for himself a priestly robe, which was the righteousness of his own obedience. For without these holy garments he might not venture to come into the presence of God to offer his gift (Rom 5:19; Exod 28:40; Exod 40:13).

Before he offered his gift for the people, he was himself to be sanctified to his office, and that by blood, and by prayers and tears (1 Pet 1:19). First, by blood. For before Aaron was to offer his sacrifice for the people, he himself had to be sprinkled with blood (Exod 29:19-22). And because Jesus could not be sprinkled with the blood of beasts, he was sprinkled with his own. Not as Aaron was, on the tip of his ear and on the tip of his toe, but from top to toe, from head to foot: his sweat was blood (Luke 22:44). So from his agony in the garden to the place where he was to lay down the price of our redemption, he went as one consecrated in his own blood. Second, he also offered his sacrifice of strong crying and tears as his drink offering to God. This was a preparatory sacrifice, not a propitiatory one, offered in pursuit of his office, not to purge his person (Heb 5:5-8). This is the person redeeming, and this was his preparation for the work.

[2] Now redemption is often ascribed particularly to his blood. Yet in general, the act of his redeeming us must be reckoned, either more remotely or more nearly, from his whole suffering for us in the flesh. That suffering I take to have begun at his agony and to have been finished when he was raised again from the dead. By his flesh I understand his whole human nature, as distinguished from his divine nature; and so that word includes his soul as well as his body, as appears from Isaiah 53. His soul suffered in the way proper to a soul, and his body in the way proper to a body.

2. His sufferings began in his soul some time before his body was touched, and it was by virtue of these that the bloody sweat came in his body. The sorrows of his soul began with his apprehension of what was coming upon him from God for our sakes; but the bloody sweat of his body came from the union it had with such a soul. His sufferings were from the hand of God, not of man; not by constraint, but of his own will (Lev 1:3; John 10:18).

And his sufferings differ from ours in these six things. First, his sufferings were by the rigor of the law; ours are according to the tenor of the gospel (Gal 3:13; Heb 12:10). Second, his sufferings were from God’s hand immediately; ours come by and through a Mediator (Isa 53:6; Heb 9:22). Third, God delighted himself in every stroke he gave him; but he does not willingly grieve or afflict his people (Isa 53; Ps 103; Lam 3:33). Fourth, he suffered as a common or public person; we suffer for our own private offenses (1 Cor 15:3; Lam 3:39). Fifth, he suffered to make amends to justice for the breach of a holy law; we suffer to receive some small correction, and to be taught to amend our lives (Heb 9:26; Rom 10:3-4; Deut 8:5; 2 Chr 6:27). Sixth, he was delivered from his kind of suffering by the merit of his own person and sufferings; we are delivered from ours by the mercy of God through Christ (Acts 2:24; Eph 4:32; Eph 5:2). Redemption by a price, then, was this: the blood of Christ, which he willingly allowed to be spilled on the cross, before the face of God.

3. The cause of this price was our sins, by which we were justly delivered up to the curse, the devil, death, and hell. And we would have remained so everlastingly, had this price of redemption not been paid for us. Hence it is said that Christ died for us; that Christ died for our sins; that Christ gave himself for our sins; that we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins; and that we are bought with this price. Now, in all this Christ had regard to the holiness of the law and to the worth of our souls, giving full satisfaction to the one, out of the love that he bore to the other. And this has redeemed his people from sin and the curse, the cause of our captivity.

Second, besides this, there is redemption by power, and that concerns the thing or things to which we did not become legally indebted by our transgression. There was that to which we did become legally indebted, and that was the justice and holiness of the law (Gen 2:17). Now from this there could be no deliverance (because God had said it, and his Word made it so) except by a reverent and due regard for its command and demand, and an answer to every bit of what it would require. For not one tittle, not one jot or tittle, of the law could fail (Matt 5:18). Therefore Jesus Christ, with respect to the law, paid a full and sufficient price of redemption, that he might redeem us. But as for those things that hold us captive, not for any injury we have done to them, but by power, tyranny, or the like, from them he redeemed us by power.

Hence, when he had made satisfaction or amends for us to the law, he is said to “lead captivity captive” (Eph 4), “to spoil principalities and powers, and to make a show of them openly” (Col 2). But to take captive and to spoil must be understood of what he did, not to the law, but to those other enemies of ours from which we were to be redeemed, not by price but by power. And this second part of redemption is to be considered under two heads: first, that these enemies were overcome personally, in and by himself, for us; second, that they shall also be overcome in and by his church, through the power of his Spirit.

1. As for the first, these enemies were overcome personally, in and by himself, for us; that is, at his resurrection from the dead. For as by his death he made amends for our breach of the law, so by his resurrection he spoiled those other enemies, namely, death, the devil, the grave, and the rest. We had been subjected to these, not for any offense we had committed against them, but for our sin against the law; and when men have answered to the justice of the law, they are delivered from the prison by law and by power. Christ therefore, by power, by his glorious power, overcame the devil, hell, sin, and death at the time when he arose and revived from his grave; and so he won the victory over them, in and by himself, for us. For since he engaged for us as a common or public person, what he did both in his death and in his resurrection, he did on our behalf. So then, as he died for us, he rose for us; and as by his death he redeemed us from some of our enemies, so by his resurrection he redeemed us from others.

Only it must be considered that this redemption, as to its fullness, as yet resides in his own person only. It is given out to his church as she has need of it, and that in due order too: first, that part of it which concerns our redemption from the law, and then that part of it which concerns our redemption from those other things. We are made partakers in this life of redemption from the curse of the law, so far as to be justified from it. We also receive here a down payment, the pledge that we shall be wholly possessed of the glory of the next world hereafter. And yet we neither are, nor shall be, redeemed from all those things over which our Head has, as Head, won a complete and eternal victory, until just before he delivers up the kingdom to the Father, that God may be all in all.

For “the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” (1 Cor 15:26). That is, death as it has hold on us. For death as it had hold on our Head was destroyed when he rose from the dead; but death as we are subject to it shall not be destroyed until we all, every one of us, attain to the resurrection from the dead. We have a pledge of this in our spiritual resurrection from a state of nature to a state of grace (Col 3:1-4). We have a promise of it in the word of the truth of the gospel, and we have an assurance of it by the resurrection of Christ from the dead (1 Pet 1:3; Luke 20:35; Acts 17:30-31). Therefore let us hope!

Now, as to redemption from the law, and from those other things from which we are, and are yet to be, redeemed by power: just consider the different language the Holy Spirit uses with reference to our redemption from each.

When he speaks of our redemption from the just curse of the law, which we have fully deserved, it is said to be done, not by destroying the law, but by fulfilling it. “Think not,” says Christ, “that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” (Matt 5:17-18). For it was fitting for him, as our Redeemer, to fulfill all righteousness, and every kind of righteousness, by doing and suffering what should justly have been done or borne by us (Rom 8:3-5; Gal 3:13-14).

But when our redemption from those other things is mentioned, the language changes. For then we read that, so that we might be delivered from them, Christ was to destroy and abolish them (2 Tim 1:10): “that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil,” and so deliver (Heb 2:14). And again: “O death, I will be thy plagues! O grave, I will be thy destruction!” (Hos 13:14). And again: “that the body of sin might be destroyed” (Rom 6:6); and, “I have the keys of hell and of death” (Rev 1:18). In this way the Holy Spirit has sufficiently declared that their power is destroyed as far as Israel is concerned, for they are the people concerned in this redemption.

2. Now, as was hinted before, the redemption has already been obtained, and that completely, by the person of Christ for us (Heb 9:24), as it is written, “Having obtained eternal redemption for us” (Heb 9:12). Yet these enemies, sin, death, the devil, hell, and the grave, are not so under the feet of his people as he will put them, and as they shall be in the end under the feet of Christ (Heb 2:8-9). I say they are not. Therefore, as the text also concludes, this redemption is with the Lord, and under our feet they shall be, by the power of God toward us (2 Cor 13:4). And for this let Israel hope.

The sum, then, is this: God’s people have with the Lord redemption, and redemption in reversion; redemption, and redemption to come. All of it is in the hand of the Lord for us, and we shall possess all of it in his time. This is what is called plenteous redemption: “For with him is plenteous redemption.”

To touch a little, therefore, on the redemption that we have in reversion, that is, the redemption yet to come:

(1) There is still much sin, and there are many imperfections, that cleave to our persons and to our performances. Though we are not yet delivered from these in the fullest sense, yet this redemption is with our Lord, and we shall have it in his time. And in the meantime it is said that sin shall not have dominion over us: “Sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under the law, but under grace” (Rom 6:14). By what Christ has done, we are taken out from under the law, the curse; and by what Christ will do, we must be delivered from the very being of sin. “He gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity”; that he might present us to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that we should be without blemish (Titus 2:13-14; Eph 5:25, 27). That we are already free from the being of sin, none but fools and madmen will assert; and that we shall never be delivered from it, none but such men will affirm either. It remains, then, that there is a redemption in reversion for Israel, and that from the being of sin. And it is of this that the text also speaks, and for this let the godly hope.

(2) We are not yet quite free from Satan’s assaults on us, though our Head, by himself, and that for us, has won a complete conquest over him. But the time is coming (and Satan himself knows that it is only a little while away) when he shall be bruised under our feet forever. Be wise unto that which is good, and simple concerning evil, and the God of peace shall bruise, tread down, Satan under your feet shortly (Rom 16:20). Some may think that this text will have its fulfillment in the ruin and downfall of Antichrist; and so it may. But it will never be wholly fulfilled as long as Satan has anything to do with even one of the children of God. There is therefore a redemption in reversion for the children of God from Satan, which they are to hope for, because this redemption is with the Lord their Head, and it is his to manage and bring about for them. For he will bruise Satan under their feet in his time.

(3) There is also still belonging to the church of God a redemption from what remains of Antichrist, although as yet he is stronger than we are. This too I call a redemption in reversion, because it is yet to come, and it shall not be accomplished until the appointed time. In this redemption not only saints but truths will have a share; yes, and many also of the men who do not belong to the kingdom of Christ and of God. God’s people are also to hope for this redemption, for it is with their Lord, and he has promised it to them, as the Scripture plentifully declares.

(4) There is yet a redemption to come which is called the redemption of our body (Rom 8:23). Of this redemption we have both the down payment and the seal, namely, the Spirit of God (Eph 1:14; Eph 4:30). And because the time until it comes is long, we are to wait for it. And because it will be the day on which all our blessedness will be let out to us, and we also let into it, we should be comforted at all the signs of its near approach. “Then,” says Christ, “look up and lift up your heads” (Luke 21:28).

The bodies of saints are called the purchased possession. They are a possession because all who shall be saved, taken together, shall be a temple or house for God to dwell in, in the heavens. They are a purchased possession because the body, as well as the soul, is bought with the price of blood (1 Cor 6:14-20). But what, then, is meant by the redemption of this purchased possession? I answer, it means raising it up from the dead: “I will ransom them from the power of the grave, I will redeem them from death” (Hos 13:14). And then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, “Death is swallowed up in victory”; that saying, that is, both this one and the one in Isaiah, for they both speak the very same thing (1 Cor 15; Isa 25:8).

And this was signified by Moses where he speaks of the year of jubilee, and of the redemption of the house that was sold in Israel, how in that year it was to return to its owner (Lev 25). Our bodies by right are God’s, but sin still dwells in them. We have also sold and forfeited them to death and the grave, and so they will remain. But at the judgment day, that blessed jubilee, God will take our body, which is originally his, and will deliver it from the bondage of corruption to which it has been subjected by our souls, through sin. He will take it, I say, because it is his, both by creation and by redemption, and he will bring it into that perfect freedom which is to be found only in immortality and eternal life. And for this Israel should hope!

From what has been said on this first thing, it appears that the mercy that is with God for his people is, in general, what has been described before; but it is also redeeming mercy, or mercy that has the power of redemption in it. Of the advantages of this mercy we will speak further by and by. But now we will look into the second thing that was proposed to be spoken to from this amplification of the reason.

Here is an account of the sufficiency of this redemption: “Let Israel hope in the Lord; for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption” (Ps 130:7). The sufficiency, or plenteousness, of it may be spoken of in two ways. We may consider it with respect to the many difficulties and dangers that we have brought ourselves into by sin. Or we may consider it with respect to the superabundant worth that is found in it, whatever the dangers that attend us may be, even though we may not know half, or a hundredth part, of them.

To speak of it with respect to those particular difficulties and dangers that we have brought ourselves into by sin, I will do it, first, by showing its suitableness; and second, by showing the sufficiency of its suitableness.

1. The suitableness of it lies in how fitly it applies to every part of our slavery and bondage. Have we sinned? Christ had our sins laid on his back; yes, God made him, that is, counted him, sin for us (Isa 53; 2 Cor 5:21). Were we under the curse of the law because of sin? Christ was made under the law, and bore its curse to redeem us (Gal 4:4; Gal 3:13; Rom 3:24). Had sin set us at a measureless distance from God? Christ, by the price of his redeeming blood, has become the one who reconciles man to God again (Col 1:20). Were we subject to death by sin? Christ died that death to set us free from it (Rom 6:23). Had our sins betrayed us into and under Satan’s slavery? Christ has plundered and destroyed this work, and made us free citizens of heaven (Acts 26:18; 2 Tim 2:26; Heb 2:14; Eph 2:19). So, as to those things, our Redeemer was made a fitting rescuer, taking in everything and missing nothing that stood in the way of our happiness. This agrees with the words a little below the text, “And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities” (Ps 130:8), that is, from them together with their evil fruits.

2. Now as to the sufficiency that was in this suitableness, it is declared by his resurrection, by his ascension, and by his exaltation to the right hand of God. It is also declared by God’s putting all things under his feet, and by his giving him to be head over all things for the sake of his redeemed. It is further declared in that God now threatens none but those who refuse to take Jesus for their Savior, and in that he is resolved to make his foes his footstool. What consequences could flow more naturally from anything than this: that by these things the sufficiency of the suitableness of redemption by Christ is proved? For all these things followed Christ for, or because, he humbled himself to the death of the cross so that he might become a Redeemer. Therefore God raised him up, took him to his throne, and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope might be in God through him (Phil 2).

But alas! What need is there for us to stand here proving that the sun is light, the fire hot, the water wet? What was done by him was done by God, for he was true God. And what comparison can there be between God and the creature, between the worth of God’s acts and the merit of poor man’s sin! And can death, or sin, or the grave hold us when God says, “Give up” (Isa 43:6)? Yes, where is the thing, or the person, that will call into question the superabounding sufficiency that is in the merit of Christ, when God goes on, day by day, yes, hourly and every moment, discharging sinners from their sin, and death, and hell, for the sake of the redemption that Christ has obtained for us?

God be thanked, here is plenty, and no want of anything! Enough and to spare! It will be with the merit of Christ, even at the end of the world, as it was with the five loaves and two fishes after the five thousand men, besides women and children, had eaten their fill of them. At the last, in the sight of everyone, there was more than had appeared at first. At first there were only five loaves and two fishes, which a lad carried. At the last there were twelve baskets full, and I suppose not even the strongest man could have carried away their weight. No, I am persuaded that at the end of the world, when the damned see what a sufficiency of merit is left in Christ, besides what was bestowed on those who were saved by him, they will run mad with anguish of heart to think what fools they were not to come to him and trust in him so that they might be saved, as their fellow sinners did. But this is revealed so that Israel, that is, the godly, may hope and expect. Let Israel therefore hope in the Lord, for with him is plenteous redemption.

This last clause, as I have called it, amplifies the reason that goes before it. In the same way, it yields amplifying reasons of its own, as a conclusion of the whole. For:

1. Add redemption to mercy, and things are heightened still further and made greater. And it must be so, because the text adds it, and because the nature of God, the holiness of his law, and the present state of the sinner who is to be saved all require it. God is justice as well as mercy. The law is holy and just. The man who is to be saved is not only a sinner but polluted. Now then, if mercy and justice are to meet and kiss in the salvation of the sinner, there must be a redemption. If the sinner is to be saved and the law is to keep its sanction and authority, there must be a redemption. If the sinner is to be purged as well as pardoned, there must be a redemption. And, I say, as there must be, so there is: “For with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption.” Mercy is the origin, the cause, and the manager of our redemption. Redemption is the manifestation and the completing of that mercy. If there had been no mercy, there would have been no redemption. And mercy without redemption would have been defective as far as we are concerned, or else it would have had to do violence to the law and justice of God, and save us contrary to that word, “In the day thou eatest thou shalt die” (Gen 2:17), and “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them” (Gal 3:10). But now, with redemption coming in by mercy, the sin is done away and the sinner is saved in a way of righteousness.

2. The sinner is saved, then, by law as well as by grace; that is, in a way of justice as well as in a way of mercy. That is why it says we are “justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom 3:24). It is through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, and so to show the world the fairness of his dealings with sinners in the saving of their souls. It is as if God should say to all those who stumble at the salvation of sinners by grace: “Look, I act according to law and justice. For I save them by grace through a redemption, and so I am faithful and just to my law as well as free and generous with my mercy. In this way I declare that I am righteous, faithful, and just in passing over or forgiving sin. No, the matter now stands so between me and the sinful world that I could not be just if I did not justify the one who has faith in the blood of Jesus, since by that blood my justice is appeased for all that this or that sinner has done against my law!”

This is a way that neither God nor any child of his need be ashamed of before anyone who calls into question the legality and justice of this procedure. For why may God not be merciful, and why may God not be just? And since he can be both merciful and just in the salvation of sinners, why may he not also save them from death and hell? Christ is God’s salvation. And to show that he is not ashamed of him, God has presented him, and the way of redemption by him, before the face of all people (Luke 2:30-32). Nor is the Son, who has become the author of eternal salvation by the act of redemption, ashamed of these doings of his. “I gave my back to the smiters,” he says, “and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair; I hid not my face from shame and smiting” (Isa 50:6). He says this to show some of the sufferings he met with when he engaged in the work of our redemption, and how heartily he bore them and went through them. “For,” he says, “the Lord God will help me,” that is, justify me in it, “therefore shall I not be confounded, therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed” (Isa 50:7). And if God and his Son Jesus Christ are neither of them ashamed to own this way of salvation, why should the sinners concerned in it be afraid to venture their souls on it? I know, he says, “I shall not be ashamed.” I shall not, that is, when all things come to light and everything appears aboveboard. When the heart and soul of this undertaking of mine is proclaimed on the housetops, I know I shall not be ashamed.

It was also on this account that Paul said he was not ashamed of the gospel (Rom 1). For he knew that it was a declaration of the highest act of wisdom that God ever spread before the face of the sons of men. And of what wisdom is the gospel a declaration, if not of the wisdom of the forgiveness of sins by grace, through the redemption that is by the blood of Jesus Christ? “In whom we have redemption through his blood,” even “the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace, wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence” (Eph 1:7-8).

And as Paul speaks here as a minister, so he speaks in the same way as a believer too, saying, “I am not ashamed” of this gospel, “for I know whom I have believed,” or trusted with my soul, “and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day” (2 Tim 1:11-12). So, seeing that mercy is not presented to us alone or by itself, but as accompanying and working together with redemption, it is plain enough that mercy does not stand above redemption, and consequently that it saves no one except in, by, and through a Redeemer. The one who does not believe in Christ shall be damned. But what need is there for that, if mercy could save the soul without the redemption that is by him?

If anyone says, “Christ is the mercy of God to us,” that is true, if you count him a Redeemer, one who worked out a redemption for us by his death and blood on the cross. But otherwise he is not; I mean, if you make him a lawgiver, and a Savior only in that he has set us an example of how to get to heaven by keeping commandments, or by following in his steps. Yes, even though you say that his commandment is that we believe in him. For take out of his hand the work of redeeming us from the curse by his blood, and then what is left about him for me to believe, except, as was said before, that he is a lawgiver, and as such, at best, nothing but a pattern for us to follow to heaven, as in the case put here? And whoever counts him as such is so far from counting Christ the mercy of God to us that they make him a contradictor of mercy, both in the fountain and in all its streams.

For to propose eternal life to us through the keeping of laws is to set before us something that contradicts grace and mercy, let the work be what it will. Nor will it help at all to say that those who do the law of Christ, or who take him for their law and example, shall be sure of mercy to pass by their falling short of the perfection that is set before them. For all this might have been done without one drop of blood being spilled for the redemption of man. Besides, this makes Christ’s death as a Redeemer an act undertaken unadvisedly. For what need was there for him to die, if his teaching and example, through what they call mercy, had been enough to bring the soul to glory? “If righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain” (Gal 2:21).

I will add this: put man’s righteousness, God’s mercy, and Christ’s redemption all together, and they will not save a man, though the last two alone will do it sufficiently. But this third, man’s righteousness, is a patch that, when it is put to the other two, makes the tear worse instead of mending it. Besides, man’s righteousness cannot be joined with God’s mercy and Christ’s redemption in justification except through disbelief in their sufficiency. So if it were admitted as a cause of justification, even the least cause, what would follow but that the cursed sin of unbelief would be made a good inventor and a necessary worker in the way a sinner is justified? For, I say, unbelief is the cause of this hodgepodge in anyone, and its effects are shown at the end of the ninth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans (Rom 9:31-33).

And there are three things that follow from the opinion that denies the absolute necessity of the shedding of the blood of Christ for the redemption of man, so that mercy might be let out to him.

(1) It follows from it that there is no such attribute in God as absolute justice, a justice that stands by his word and vindicates every tittle of his law. For grant only this, and then either the death of Christ must be brought in, or justice must still keep the floodgate of mercy shut against sinful man, or else God must have mercy on man by breaking his Word.

(2) It also follows from these premises that Christ’s death was of pleasure only, and not of necessity as well. This is contrary to the Scripture, which makes his death the effect of both. It was of pleasure, to show how willing God the Father was that Christ should die for man; and of necessity, to show that man could not be saved without it. It was of pleasure, to show how justice dealt with him for our sin; and of necessity, to show that mercy could not be communicated to us without it (Isa 53:10; Matt 26:39; Acts 17:3).

(3) It also follows from it that by the blood of Christ we do not have redemption from law and justice as to the condemning part of both. Rather, the title of redemption is given to his blood only for honor and glory, to dignify it, just as the name of God is also given to him only to dignify him. For those who affirm the one are bold to affirm the other. As they conclude that there is no necessity why the blood of Christ should be counted the absolutely necessary price of our redemption from the curse of the law and the severity of justice, so they conclude that it is not necessary to hold that Christ the Redeemer is God by nature and co-eternally, as the Father is. But “let Israel hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption.”

3. Must redemption by blood be added to mercy if the soul is to be saved? This shows us what a horrible thing the sin of man is. Sin, in its nature, is little known in the world. Oh, it sticks so fast to us that all the mercy of God cannot sever it from us, if you only leave out redemption by the blood of Christ! I will say it over again. All the mercy of God cannot save a sinner without regard to redemption from the curse of the law by the death and blood of Christ. “Without shedding of blood is no remission” (Heb 9:22). Without it there is no remission, no pardon, no passing by of the least transgression. Tears? Christ’s tears will not do it. Prayers? Christ’s prayers will not do it. A holy life? The holy life that Christ lived will not do it, as severed from his death and blood.

The word redemption, therefore, must be well understood and stuck to closely. It must not be allowed as properly spoken when we talk of deliverance from sin, the law, and God’s curse, unless it is applied particularly to the death and blood of Christ. “We have redemption through his blood” (Eph 1:7; Rev 1:5). “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree” (Gal 3:13). He has redeemed us to God by his blood: “For thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood” (Rev 5:9). This is the redemption that is joined with mercy; yes, it is the fruit of mercy. And it is that without which sin cannot be removed out of the sight of God.

Moses was a better preacher of the law, and of the sufficiency of its righteousness, than anyone now can pretend to be. Yet he declared full well by all his bloody sacrifices that the blood and death of Jesus Christ is of absolute necessity for the redemption of the soul. Besides, he tells us that the man who fled to the city of refuge from the avenger of blood was not to be at liberty from the law unless he kept himself close in that city until the death of the high priest. Mark the words: “Ye shall take no satisfaction for him that is fled to the city of his refuge, that he should come again to dwell in the land, until the death of the” high “priest” (Num 35:32). So then, Christian, know your sin in its nature, and be persuaded that its removal from before the face of God is by no less means than the death and blood of Christ.

But it is a poor shift the enemies of the truth are put to when, to defend their errors, they are forced to diminish sin, to enlarge the borders of their fig-leaf garments, and to deny or cast away, as much as lies in them, one of God’s attributes, his justice. Indeed, they will say that they abhor doing this, and all who are in error will put the best face they can on their bad business. But the natural consequences of things amount to it, and when men stick close to their sides, they cannot avoid the charge.

4. Here, then, you see the reason for that free course that mercy has among the sons of men, and why it does what it does, as has been shown before. Why? Because justice is content. Blood has answered the demand of justice. The law has nothing to object against the salvation of the one who believes in Jesus Christ. Blood has set the door open, for us to go to God for mercy with boldness, and for God to come to us with his abundant grace. We have “boldness, brethren, to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say, his flesh” (Heb 10:19-20).

This is the way that Moses desired to find when God spoke to him so largely of his mercy. “Thou hast said,” says Moses to God, “I know thee by name, and thou hast also found grace in my sight. Now, therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, show me now thy way that I may know thee…” (Exod 33:12-13). What if it should be applied this way? “You now talk of mercy, but in your words to us from the Mount you spoke fire and justice. And since you have delivered us so holy a law, and are resolved that the least tittle of it shall by no means fall to the ground, by what means is mercy to come to us?” “Well,” says God, “I will show you my way. I will put you in a cleft of the rock.” That rock was a figure of Christ, for Christ says, “I am the way” (John 14:6). This done, God proclaimed his name (Exod 34), showed Moses how he could be gracious, and gave him the sign of his being merciful: a promise that his presence would go with him.

The breaking of the body of Jesus, then, was the rending of the veil, that out of which came blood, so that the way to God might be living, and not death, or sword, or flame, to the poor children of men. From here, therefore, there bubbles up continually the tender mercy, the great mercy, the rich mercy, the abundant mercy, the multiplying mercy, and every other mercy of God to us, for our present and everlasting good.

Not that God was sparing of his mercy and would not part with it unless he was paid for it. For this way of redemption by blood was his own contrivance, the fruit of his wisdom (Eph 1:8). So then, God was big with mercy for a sinful world. But how to keep on extending mercy, since sin and justice, because of the sanction of the law, lay in the way like a turning, flaming sword (Gen 3:24)? There lay the work. So it was concluded that, so that mercy might be let out to sinners in a way of justice, Christ, the Son of God, should die for the sin of man. By this means the outcries of the law and justice against us for our sins ceased, and mercy flowed from heaven like the waters of Noah, until it became a sea (Mic 7:18-19).

Redemption by blood, therefore, explains this great mystery: that a just God can save the man who has broken that law, on whom God has said he will inflict the penalty for breaking it, and yet do his justice no wrong. And it explains it not by relaxing the punishment, as the doltish wisdom of this world imagines, but by inflicting the most exact justice on that nature that has offended. If the question is asked, “How can a just God save from death the man who has put himself under its sentence by sin?” any fool can answer, “By a pardon.” And if it is asked, “But what will become of the threatening with which he threatened the offender?” someone who knows no mysteries can say, “Why, man must repent of his sin, and God of his threatening.” But suppose it is asked how God can carry out his threatening to the utmost, and yet by his mercy deliver from it the sinner who has deserved it, and still be just to his law, faithful to his law, and one who will stand by every tittle of his law. To explain this is too high for a fool. That is why these men are for despising mysteries, and for counting the mysteries of the gospel follies.

But this key of heaven is nowhere but in the Word of the Spirit. It is not seen in the law, nor in the reason or righteousness of the world. To punish “the just for the unjust” (1 Pet 3:18), and to make him “to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor 5:21), seems unreasonable; so contrary to the wisdom of man are the wards of this lock. That is why, usually, when they come to this doctrine, they belch out their jeers, their taunts, their scoffs, and their scorns against it. And in opposition to it they commend, exalt, cry up, and set on high Socinianism, Islam, man’s ragged righteousness, or anything at all. But we will pass over these things.

5. The knowledge of redemption and faith in redemption is the only means of settling, composing, and upholding the soul of the thoroughly awakened in the hope of enjoying a portion in mercy forever. What senseless, careless, besotted, and deluded men conclude about themselves and about the means of future happiness is one thing. What the thoroughly awakened soul concludes is another. And I say that one who is thoroughly awakened about the nature of God, the nature of sin, and the worth of the soul will find little ease of mind, for all his notions of mercy, until he comes to see that he must be saved by mercy and justice both. And to be sure, he will never see that until he is taught that by the blood of Christ the law, as to the curse that is in it against the sinner, is taken out of the way (Col 2).

These things, sin and justice, are too great to be played with by the one who sees them in the light of the law and feels them in their terror on a trembling conscience. But when the soul sees that a propitiation has been made to justice by blood, then, and not till then, it sees sin taken away. And when by this means it sees sin taken away, then it can bring itself to hope in the mercy of God. Yes, and it will be as hard to wrench the one who is settled here away from this belief to another as it would be to persuade a man who stands on sound ground to venture his life on a shaking, bottomless bog.

Oh, it is a pleasant thing for the wounded conscience to taste the sweetness of redeeming blood (John 6:51-56)! This is like the best wine, which goes down sweetly; this carries in its last drops the very taste of eternal life! And know that dead works, or works of death, will stay in the conscience, in spite of all talk and notions of mercy, until it is purged with blood applied to it by the Spirit and faith (Heb 9:14). The blood is one of the three that remain to bear witness on earth that “God hath given us eternal life, and that this life is in his Son,” because he died for us and rose again (1 John 5:8-11).

This, therefore, is what will establish a man in a peace that will not be shaken, because by it he sees that the justice of God is quieted. For peace is made by the blood of the cross; peace with God for sinners (Col 1:20). Yes, God himself has made it by the blood of the cross, so that by him, Christ, he might reconcile all things to himself, whether they are things on earth or things in heaven. Nor will a man who is truly spiritually wise rest until he comes to where God rests toward man. But that can be only where such means are offered for the taking away of sin as are of a sweet-smelling savor to God. Now, this is the offering that Christ offered, namely, himself. For Christ loved us and has given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor (Eph 5:2). Therefore it is by this, the body of his flesh, through death, that we are presented holy, unblamable, and unreprovable in his sight (Col 1:22).

So what was said before must be true, namely, that the knowledge of redemption and faith in redemption is the only means of settling, composing, and upholding the soul of the thoroughly awakened in the hope of enjoying a portion in mercy forever. Whoever has the Son of God has the Father and has life, because with him are the means of peace with the Father, and so of eternal life (1 John 2:23). But then, to have the Son is to believe on him, and on the Father through him (1 John 5:10-12). It is to believe on him, that he is the Savior by his blood; and on the Father through him, believing that the Father, for his Son’s sufferings, is pacified with us, and of his grace has forgiven us all our trespasses through him (2 John 9; Eph 4:32).

6. The knowledge of this redemption and faith in it fortify the Christian against temptations. We who believe know what it is to be assaulted by the devil and to have knotty objections thrown into our minds by him. We also know what an advantage the vile sin of unbelief will gain over us if our knowledge of this redemption and our faith in it are in the least defective, falling below the common faith of the saints. If we talk of mercy, he can talk of justice; if we talk of grace, he can talk of the law. And when God permits it, we shall find all his words as sharp, and as apt to stick in our minds, as barbed arrows are to stick in flesh. Besides, he can and does, and that often, work such notions of God into our fancies and imaginations that God seems to us to be one who cannot bear us, one who hates us and lies in wait to destroy us.

And now, if anybody speaks to us of mercy, we think we might hope in that, if we had nothing to trouble us but the guilt of actual sins. But we see our nature as full of the filth of sin as an egg is full of its meat, or a toad of poison. And this filth vilely recoils against the commandments, flies in the face of God, and scorns all his judgments. The sinner feels this and sees this, and cannot help it; nor can he be brought to consider the matter so as to say, “It is no more I” (Rom 7).

Now, what shall this man do? Shall he look to the commandment? There is death! Shall he look to God? There is justice! Shall he look to himself? There is sin beyond measure! Let him look, then, to one dying, to the “Lamb as it had been slain” (Rev 5:6). And there let him see himself, in this Lamb, as cursed and dying a cursed death for this sin that so frightens and so distresses the soul. Then let him turn again and behold this Lamb alive and well, and highly exalted by this God who just before laid the curse of the law upon him. But let him be sure to reckon that he himself has died for his sins in the person of Christ, and it will follow that this man is now acquitted, because Christ is still alive.

Do I say these things as a man? Does not the gospel say the very same? First, as to Christ’s dying for us, and also that we are dead to the law by the body of Christ (Rom 6:6; Rom 7). Second, that we should reckon accordingly in this matter, because God has transferred our sin from us to him.

(1) Did not Christ die for us? And since he died for us, have we not become dead to the law by the death of his body? Or will the law slay both him and us, and that for the same transgression (Rom 7:1-2)? If this is concluded in the affirmative, what follows but that Christ, though he undertook for us, came short in doing it? But he was raised up from the dead, and believing marries us to him as risen, and that stops the mouth of all. I am crucified with Christ; our old man was crucified with him; and we have become dead to the law by the body of Christ (Gal 2:20; Rom 6:6; Rom 7:4). What then?

(2) Why, “reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ” (Rom 6:11). “But,” says the soul, “how can I reckon this way, when sin is still strong in me?”

Answer. Read the words again. He does not say, “Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin in yourselves,” but dead unto it “through Jesus Christ”; not alive unto God in yourselves, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ. For Christ in his death and resurrection represents me. As I died by him, I rose again by him, and I live by him in the presence of God through the faith of the gospel. This must first of all be granted and believed, or no true peace can come near the soul, nor can the soul be prepared to meet the assaults of the adversary. Therefore, O you faint-hearted Christian, if you want to be a warrior, let your faith be well instructed in this! Then your faith will do you a twofold kindness. First, it will conform you to the death and resurrection of Christ. And second, it will give you the advantage, when you see sin strong in yourself, still to conclude that by Christ you are dead to it, and by him alive from it.

Only two objections can be made against this. The first questions whether any are said to die and rise by the death and resurrection of Christ. The second asks, even if that may be said, whether you are one of them. To the first, the Scripture is full. To the second, your faith must be strong, for let go of faith here and everything falls flat to the ground; I mean, as to comfort and consolation. Christ died for us, or in our stead; therefore, by the word of God, I am allowed to reckon so. Christ rose and revived, he who died for me; therefore I rose and revived by Christ. That follows, unless anyone holds that though he died in a common capacity, he rose again only in a single capacity.

Now, then, if Satan comes and tells me of my sins, I answer, “Christ has taken them upon himself.” If he comes and tells me of the death that is due to me for sin by the curse of the holy law, I answer that I have already undergone that by Christ. If he asks me how I know that the law will not lay hold of me also, I answer, because Christ is risen from the dead. If he asks me by what authority I take it upon myself to reason this way, I tell him: by the authority and allowance of the holy and most blessed gospel, which says that he “was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification” (Rom 4).

And to encourage you to believe this way, and to hold fast this way, when you are in an hour of temptation: this is the way to see mercy stand and smile upon you, for mercy will smile upon the one who believes this way (2 Cor 3:16-18). This is the way to put both faith and hope to work against the devil, and to do this is very pleasing to God. This is the way to make that hellhound retreat and leave off his assault (Jas 4:7; 1 Pet 5:9). And this is the way to find an answer to many scriptures with which you would otherwise not know what to do, such as many of the types and shadows; yes, and the moral law itself.

Besides, believing this way sets your soul against the fear of death and of judgment to come. For if Christ, who died for our sins, has been raised from the dead; and if Christ, who died for our sins, has entered into glory; I say again, if Christ, who died for our sins, has purchased us to himself, and purposes that the fruit of this his purchase shall be that we may behold his face in glory; then cast off slavish fear of death and judgment! For “Christ being raised from the dead, dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him” (Rom 6:9)!

7. The knowledge and faith of this redemption prepare a man for a holy life. By a holy life I mean a life according to the moral law, flowing from a spirit of thankfulness to God for giving his Son to be my Redeemer. I call this a holy life because it is according to the rule of holiness, the law. And I call this a holy life because it flows from such a principle as gives God the heart and the life in return for the gift bestowed on us. Whatever pretenses to holiness there may be, if it does not flow from thankfulness for mercy received, it flows from a wrong principle, and so cannot be good. Hence men of old were required to serve the Lord with joyfulness “for the abundance of all things,” and were threatened, if they did not, that “they should serve their enemies in hunger and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in the want of all things” (Deut 28:47-48).

But then, though there are many mercies that lay an obligation upon men to be holy, yet the one who lacks the obligation that is begotten by faith in redeeming mercy lacks the main principle of true holiness. No other obligation will be found sufficient to sanctify the heart so as to make it produce such a life; nor can any holiness without it be accepted, because it does not come forth in the name of Christ. What bound David was forgiving and redeeming mercy (Ps 103:1-5); and what bound Paul was the love that Christ showed him in dying for his sins and in rising from the dead (2 Cor 5:14-15). Paul also beseeches the Romans, by the redeeming, justifying, preserving and electing mercy of God, that they present their body “a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God; which is,” he says, “your reasonable service” (Rom 12:1). For we must be holy and without blame before him in love (Eph 1:4).

Hence, all along, those who are exhorted to holiness in the New Testament are exhorted to it on the supposition of the benefit of redemption that they have received by Jesus Christ. “Walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us” (Eph 5:2). “If there be any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, fulfil ye my joy, that ye be like minded, having the same love…” (Phil 2:1-2). “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth…” (Col 3:1-5). “Wherefore laying aside all malice and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil-speakings, as new-born babes desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby, if so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious” (1 Pet 2:1-3).

I will conclude this with what Peter says to those to whom he wrote concerning this very thing. Be “obedient children,” he says, “not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance; but as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation: because it is written, ‘Be ye holy, for I am holy.’ And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man’s work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear. Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Pet 1:14-19).

From all this it appears that from mercy by Christ, or from the benefit of redemption by the precious blood of Christ (I say, from faith in that), flows what is holiness indeed. And I believe that the very men who are pleased to mock this kind of inference would condemn a man who was laid under such obligations in the things of this life and yet carried himself as one not touched by them. Let us take an example. Suppose a Socinian, by running up a great debt, were forced to rot in prison unless he were redeemed with silver and gold. And suppose a man to whom this Socinian was an enemy should lay down the whole debt to the creditor, so that this Socinian might be at liberty, might trade, and might live comfortably in this world. If after this the Socinian should mock those who told him that he is bound to this redeemer, and ought to love and respect this redeemer, what would they say but that this Socinian who was a debtor is a thoughtless and senseless rascal?

Why, this is the case. Paul was a debtor to the law and justice of God. Jesus Christ, God’s Son, so that Paul might not perish forever, paid for him a price of redemption, namely, his most precious blood. But what! Now that Paul has been redeemed from perpetual imprisonment in hell, shall he behave as one who was never beholden to Jesus Christ, or, if others say he was, mock them for saying so? No, he scorns it. Though the love of Christ in dying to pay a price of redemption will not bind a Socinian, yet it will bind a true Christian to think and believe that he ought to live to Jesus, who died for him and rose again.

I know it will be objected that the Satisfactionists, as the Quaker Penn is pleased to call them, show the world but little of this. For their pride, covetousness, false dealing and the like (even though they profess what I have said) show them to be every bit as unaffected as the Socinian we have been considering. I answer: it must be that the name of Christ is brought into scandal through some who profess him, and they must answer for it at the tribunal of the great Judge. Yet what I have said stands fast, like a rock that cannot be moved.

8. The knowledge and faith of redemption are a very great encouragement to prayer. It is a great encouragement for a poor man to go even to a prince for what he lacks, when he considers that what he goes to him for has been paid for by the price of redemption. All things that we lack we must ask of the Father in the name of Christ (John 15:16); we must ask them of him for the sake of his redeeming blood, for the sake of the merit of his passion. This is what David means when he says, “For thy name’s sake” do it (Ps 25:11), and what Daniel means when he says, “For the Lord’s sake” (Dan 9:17). For Jesus Christ is God’s great name, and to do a thing for his sake is to do it for the worthiness that is in him.

Unworthiness! The thought of unworthiness is a great stumbling block to the tempted when he goes to seek the Lord. But now, to remember the worthiness of Christ, and that he is now at the right hand of God on purpose to plead that worthiness on behalf of the petitioner: this is great encouragement. The Jews, by God’s ordinance, when they went morning and evening by their priest to speak with God, were to offer a lamb for a burnt offering, and it had to be so continually (Exod 29:38-46). Now this lamb was a figure of the sacrificing of the body of Christ, which was to be offered for them in time to come. And since it was to be repeated continually like this, morning and evening, what does it signify but that we should remember, when we go to God, to go in the name and faith of the merits of Jesus Christ for what we stand in need of? This will support us, and this will encourage us, for now we see that the thing we desire, so long as it is according to his will, is obtained for us by the sacrificing of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

When Israel begged Samuel not to cease crying to the Lord their God for them, it is said that he took a sucking lamb and offered it for a burnt offering wholly unto the Lord; and Samuel cried unto the Lord for Israel, and the Lord heard him (1 Sam 7:8-9). But why did he take a sucking lamb, and why did he offer it, and that wholly to the Lord, as he cried, unless it was to show Israel that he was not heard for his own sake or for his righteousness’ sake, but for the sake of Christ, whose merits were prefigured by Samuel’s burning of the lamb?

Also, when David spoke for himself to Saul, he rested his case on this: “If,” he says, “the Lord hath stirred thee up against me, let him accept an offering” (1 Sam 26:19), that is, a smell, a sweet-smelling sacrifice, a figure of how fully the sufferings of Jesus Christ satisfy. What is the meaning of all these passages, if not to show that when we go to pray to God, we should turn our face away from everything of our own and look to God only by the price of redemption paid for us by Jesus Christ? We should plead that alone with him as the great prevailing argument, that by which and for the sake of which he gives pardon, and grace to help in time of need. So then, would you be a praying man, a man who would pray and prevail? Why, pray to God in the faith of the merits of Christ, and prosper.

9. For this is the very reason why this is added in the text, namely, the plenteousness of redemption: it is, I say, so that men should hope to partake by it of the goodness and mercy of God. “Let Israel hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption” (Ps 130:7). Mercy and redemption, mercy through a Redeemer: therefore “let Israel hope!” It must also be noted that this word redemption is, as it were, the explanatory part of the text, to help Israel to hope. It is as if he should say, “As there is mercy with God, so there is with him a way to his mercy, and that way is redemption, or a price paid for your sins. And so that you should not be discouraged by the greatness of your sins, I tell you there is plenty of this redemption with God, or a price paid to the full, and over and above.” It is also as if he had said, “Do not forget this, for this is the key to all the rest, and the great support of the saints in prayer, or while they wait upon God in any of his appointments, to encourage them to hope.”

10. And lastly, this should also teach the saints that when they sing or praise the Lord, they should not sing of mercy only, but of mercy and judgment too: “I will sing of mercy and judgment; unto thee, O Lord, will I sing” (Ps 101:1). They should sing of mercy and of judgment, or justice, as it shows itself smiling upon our forgiveness. When Hannah sang of and rejoiced in God’s salvation, she sang aloud of holiness, saying, “There is none holy as the Lord” (1 Sam 2:1-2): holy in keeping his word, though it cost the blood of his Son. This also is what is called his helping his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy, and performing the mercy promised, even the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, that he would grant unto us that we, being delivered out of the hands of our enemies (by a Redeemer), might serve him without fear (Luke 1:49, 54; Luke 1:72-74).

So when you praise, remember Christ and his blood, and how justice and judgment took hold on him so that they might not take hold on you; yes, how by taking hold on him they left a way for you to escape. Isaac would have been sacrificed if the Lord had not provided a ram; and you yourself would have been damned if the Lord had not provided a lamb (Gen 22; Rev 5). Hence Christ is called the “Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), who takes sins away by the sacrifice of himself. Sing, therefore, in your praises to God and to the Lamb!

I would now speak one short word of application to the whole. And,

1. This shows still more and more what a sad state God’s people have brought themselves into by sin. I told you before that the revelation of so much mercy as the first part of the text presents to us sufficiently declared our state to be miserable by sin. But what shall we say when, on top of that, there must be added the heart blood of the Son of God, and all to make our salvation complete? For although mercy is essential to our salvation, and is that without which there can be no salvation, yet it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul. It is the blood that propitiates, and so makes us capable of enjoying mercy. It was mercy and love, as I said before, that sent one to shed his blood for us; and it is the blood of him who was sent that puts us into the enjoyment of mercy.

Oh! I have sometimes thought, what bloody creatures sin has made us! The beasts of the field had to be slain by thousands before Christ came, to signify to us that we would have a Savior. And after that, he had to come himself and die a worse death than those beasts died, before the work of saving could be finished. Oh, redemption, redemption by blood, is the heart-endearing consideration! This is what will make the water stand in our eyes, what will break a heart of flint, and what will make a person do as those do who are “in bitterness for their first-born” (Zech 12:10).

Sinner, would you have mercy? Would you be saved? Then go to the blood of the cross, as it is set forth in the word of the truth of the gospel, and there you will find the mercy you need first. For there is a mercy that may be called a first mercy, and that is the mercy that gives admittance into, and an interest in, all the rest. Now the mercy that does this is the mercy that reconciles us to God; and other things cannot do that if we stand off from the blood of the cross. That is why we are said to be reconciled to God by the death of his Son: “For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son; much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life” (Rom 5:10). This agrees with that other saying, “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” (Rom 8:32).

In both these places the Son of God and our Redeemer is set forth to us, in the first place, as the only one who reconciles the sinner to God by the blood of his cross. Therefore the sinner must come first to this Christ, as crucified, because nothing else can reconcile anyone to God (Col 1:20). And if you are not reconciled to God, what are you but an enemy to him, whatever mercy you may partake of?

Go to him, did I say? Receive him into the arms of your faith. Hold him fast, for he is a Savior. Yes, carry him as the gospel sets him forth, dying for you, and pray God for his sake to bestow on you all those mercies that will compass you about as with a shield and follow you all your days, until you enter in at the doors of eternity. This is the way to succeed! For he who has the Son has life in its beginning, and he who holds fast the Son shall have life in its consummation. I touch on this matter the more often because this Christ is the door, and whoever enters in by it shall be saved; but he who climbs up some other way shall be judged as a thief and a robber (John 10:1).

2. But is Christ, as crucified, the way and door to all spiritual and eternal mercy? And does God come to the sinner, and the sinner in turn go to God, in a saving way by him, and by him only? And is there no other way to the Father but by his blood, and through the veil, that is to say, his flesh (Heb 10:19-20)? Then this shows the danger, under whatever pretense, of casting off the daily sacrifice and setting up in its place the abomination that makes desolate. I mean the danger of casting away a crucified Christ and setting up the vanity of moral obedience as the more substantial and most acceptable thing with God. I do not call a crucified Christ the daily sacrifice as if I thought he had often suffered for sin since the foundation of the world. I call him so because the virtue of that one offering is that, and only that, by which we daily draw near to God; and because the power of that one sacrifice will remain forever beneficial, to the world’s end, to those who come to God by him.

But I say, into what a miserable plight have such people put themselves who have given up coming to God by Christ as he is the propitiation for their sins, and who seek to come another way? They have lapsed back into Gentilism, into Paganism, into Heathenism. Nor will it help them at all to say that they rely on the mercy and goodness of God. For no spiritual and eternal mercy can come from God to anyone who does not come to him by Christ. The Turks, if I am not mistaken, have this at the beginning of every chapter of their Qur’an: “The Lord God, gracious and merciful.” Yet they are counted unbelievers, and truly they are, for they have not received the faith of Christ. The Lord God, gracious and merciful, will not save them, no, not by grace and mercy, unless they repent of their presuming on mercy without a bloody sacrifice and come to him by his Son (Acts 4:12).

Men, therefore, who have laid aside the necessity of reconciliation to God by the precious blood of Christ are in a damned state. Nor will it help them at all to say that they do indeed believe in him. I am not so void of reason as to think that those who have cast away Christ as a propitiatory sacrifice with God for sin would also cast his name out of their mouths. No, his name is too honorable, and the profession of it too glorious, for them to do such a thing. But while they keep his name, and the notion of him as a Savior, they still cast him off, and that in the very things in which the essential part of his sacrifice, its merit, and his everlasting priesthood consist. And in this lies the mystery of their iniquity.

They will have him to be a Savior, but it must not be by fulfilling the law for us. It must not be by putting upon us his glorious righteousness, which he performed by subjecting himself to the law on our behalf. It must not be by washing us from our sins in his own blood. No, it must be by his kingly and prophetical offices. Yet as for his kingly and prophetical offices, he puts under their government those people whom he has first made to stand justified before God, from the curse of the law, by his priesthood. Nor do they dare altogether deny that Christ saves his people as a priest; but then their art is to confound these offices by pleading that they are in effect one and the selfsame thing. And then, with a noise of morality and government, they jostle the merit of his blood and the perfection of his justifying righteousness out of doors. And so, keeping the name of Christ in their mouths, they trample under foot those things of Christ that they do not like; and those who do not have faith in these things must not, and cannot, see the kingdom of God.

The term mercy is but a general sound, like an arrow shot at random, unless the blood and death of the Son of God are set before us as the mark, or means, by which our spirits are to be directed to it. What profit will a man have, and what shelter or help will he find, in hearing the most exact account of the strength of the most impregnable castle in the world, unless he knows the door and enters in by it into that place of strength when the enemy pursues him? Why, this is the case: we hear a noise of mercy, and of being at peace with God; what a good God God is, and what a blessed thing it is to be a child of God; how many privileges the children of God have, and what their exaltation and glory will be in the next world! And all the while, those who tell us these things conceal from us the way to it, which is Christ: not in the naming of him, but in the right administration of his gospel to us.

Christ, and faith in him as a Savior, not in name only but in the true sense of it, is the mark, as I have said; and if any swerve from it, they err from the saving way, and so come nowhere near the mercy that can save them. That is why Christ is called a standard, an ensign (Isa 5:26). “And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek, and his rest shall be glorious” (Isa 11:10). And again, “Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles; and set up my standard to the people” (Isa 49:22). “Go through, go through the gates, prepare ye the way of the people … gather out the stones, lift up a standard for the people. Behold the Lord hath proclaimed to the end of the world; say ye to the daughter of Zion, behold thy salvation cometh. Behold his reward is with him, and his work before him” (Isa 62:10-11). That is also why he is called the captain, the chieftain, of our salvation, the one without whom there neither is nor can be any salvation.

But now the men of this confederacy, rather than submit themselves to the righteousness of God, will heap odium and slander on those who preach that they should (Rom 10:3-4). Oh no, if you will believe them, they are highly in favor of the righteousness of God, so long as it is what they count to be so. But then, to be sure, it shall never be the personal performances of Christ, by which those who believe in him are justified from all things. It must be what they call “first principles,” “dictates of human nature,” “obedience to a moral precept,” followed and done as they have Christ for an example. They do not understand that Christ, in his own doings, is the end of all these things to everyone who believes.

But if it is urged that Gentiles and pagans have those very principles, only they have not got the art, as our men have, of covering them with the name of Christ and the principles of Christianity, then they fall to commending the heathens and their philosophers, and the natural motives and principles by which they were moved. They prefer these far above what others call the graces of the Spirit, and the principles on which the doctrine of the free grace and mercy of God by Christ is grounded. But, as I said, all the good that such preachers can do as to the next world is to draw the people away from their ensign and their standard, and so lead them among the Gentiles and infidels, to seek by their rules the way to this unspeakable mercy of God. Therefore, since their state is so deplorable and their spirits so incorrigible, they must be pitied, and left, and fled from, if we would live.

3. Is Christ Jesus the redemption, and as such the very door and entrance into all God’s mercies? Christian, look well to yourself, that you go nowhere and do nothing (I mean in any part of religious worship and the like) except as you are in him (2 Cor 12:18-19). Walk in him, speak in him, grow in him, for he is all (Col 2:6-7). And though others do not care to “hold the head, from which all the body by joints and bands have nourishment ministered” (Eph 4:15; Col 2:19), yet see that you take care! This is he who is your life and the length of your days, and without whom no true happiness can be had.

There are many who count this but a low thing. They desire to soar aloft, to fly into new notions, and to be broaching new opinions, not counting themselves happy unless they can throw out some newfangled thing to be applauded for among their novelty-loving hearers. But as for you, fly to Christ for life. And so that you may do so, remember well your sins and the judgment and wrath of God; and know also that he is merciful, but that no one can come at mercy except through the cursed death Christ underwent.

And although some of the frivolous professing Christians of our age may blame you for poring so much over your sins and the pollution of your nature, yet know that there is an advantage in it. There are some alive in the world who, though they count the nature and commission of sin the very evil of evils, can still say that the remembrance of how vile they are, and of what evils they have committed, has been to them a soul-humbling, a Christ-advancing, and a creature-emptying consideration. Though sin made death bitter to Christ, yet sin makes Christ sweet to his own. And though no one should sin that grace may abound, yet where sin has abounded, grace much more abounds, not only as an act of God but also in the eye of faith.

A sight of the filth, and a sense of the guilt, of sin makes a pardon more than an empty notion to such a soul, and makes the means through which the pardon comes more to be desired than either life or limb. This is what makes the soul that feels its sin prize the Lord Jesus, while the self-righteous man laughs him to scorn. This is what makes the awakened sinner cast away his own righteousness, while the self-conceited one makes it his advocate with the Father.

Some, indeed, count their own doings the only darling of their soul, while others cast theirs to the dogs. And why should a man burden himself with what is his own, when the good of all that is in Christ is laid out, and is to be laid out, for him? Not that a believer gives up doing good. He knows that whatever good thing is done in faith and love is acceptable to God and profitable to his neighbor. But this is the point: he does not set his good deeds against the judgment of God; he does not come in his own goodness. When he comes to God for forgiveness of sins, he sees nothing, knows nothing, and mentions nothing as righteousness but what Christ worked out in the days of his flesh, and that only. But how, then, is what he does accepted by God? Truly, as the duty of a son, and as the work of one who is justified.

We must therefore conclude that there is acceptance and acceptance: acceptance of the person, and acceptance of his performance. Acceptance of the person may be considered with respect to justification from the curse; and in that sense there can be no acceptance except through the one offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. The acceptance of a duty done by such a person is also by virtue of that selfsame offering, the person being considered as standing just before God through Christ. And the reason a justified person must have his duties accepted the same way as his person is this: justifying righteousness does not set the person free from sin except in the sight of God and of conscience. He still remains weak in himself, and still stands in need of the fresh and continual application of the merits of the Lord Jesus, which the soul also receives by virtue of Christ’s intercession. I speak now of acceptance with reference to the justice of the law, and to God’s judgment on a person or a work according to that same law. For both must be accepted through the same Mediator, or they cannot be accepted at all. Nor is it a thing to be wondered at that a man should stand just in the sight of God while he is polluted and defiled in his own sight. He stands just before God in the justice of his Son, on whom God looks, and for whose sake he accepts him.

May not a scabbed, mangy man, a man overrun with sores and blotches, still be made beautiful to the eye of anyone who sees him, through a silken, silver, golden garment that may be put on him and may cover all his flesh? Why, the righteousness of Christ is not only to but upon all who believe (Rom 3:22). And whoever considers the parable of the wretched infant will find that before it was washed with water, it was wrapped up or covered, just as it was found in its blood, in and with the skirt of the garment of the one who found it in its filth. And then he washed it with water, and then he sanctified it with the anointing oil of the Spirit of God (Ezek 16:8-9).

I speak this way to you, Christian reader, partly because your life lies in believing these things, and partly because I would still press the exhortation on you with its reason and the amplification of it. That is, I would urge you to trust in the Lord through the encouragement you have in redeeming mercy to do so.

Some may say, “Will God see what is not there? And will he judge a man just who is a sinner?” But I answer: the one who had the rainbow around his head was to look on, or to be looked upon, as he shone like a jasper and a sardius stone (Rev 4:3). The blood of the Passover lamb was to be looked upon by him who came to destroy the land of Egypt in their firstborn (Exod 12:13). I add that the rainbow God gave to Noah, as a token that he would no more destroy the earth with the waters of the flood, was to be looked upon, so that God might remember to show mercy to his people (Gen 9:8-17).

Now all these meet in the man Christ Jesus, who is the only one for whose sake the sinner who believes in him stands acquitted in the sight of God. His is the blood, and he is the prince who is more than the token of the covenant. Nor do all the colors in the rainbow appear as beautiful in the eyes of man as the garment of Christ does in the eyes of the God of heaven, that garment which is from his loins even upward, and from his loins even downward (Ezek 1:27-28). And will you say these are things that are not?

Also, he can lawfully judge a man just who is a sinner. Only grant that a man may be considered in two different ways, and God will consider in that way the sinner whom he justifies, in spite of all the teeth in your proud mouth! “He justifieth the ungodly” (Rom 4:5). Not those who once were ungodly, but those who are ungodly now, as they stand in the judgment and verdict of the law, if it were to deal with them in their own persons as men (Rom 5:5-10). God, then, will consider them in his Son: in, and under, the skirt of his Son. He will consider them as washed in the blood of his Son, and will also consider “that in him is no sin,” and so he will deal with them. “We know that he was manifested to take away our sins, and in him is no sin” (1 John 3:5).

What if I have gone broke owing my creditor a thousand pounds? Yet if another man will freely pay off the whole debt, what has the law to do with me as far as that debt goes? Or what if all my days I can do nothing but live by spending? Yet if my friend will always supply my need, and through his generosity keep me from writ, bailiff, or jail, is it not well with me? Indeed, what if whatever I can get is laid up for me for later, and my friend, as long as there is death or danger in the way, will himself keep me safe and pay my expenses to the world’s end? May I not accept this, and be thankful?

Blessed be God for Jesus Christ! I believe he is more than all this to me. “In the Lord shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory” (Isa 45:25). I know comparisons will not hold in everything. But we who believe are set free from the curse of the law by another man’s obedience. For “by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous” (Rom 5:19). Then let the believer, as was said, study and pray and read God’s Word continually for the sake of the glory of this truth, so that it may be made more his own, and so that his conscience may be more and more settled in its power and glory.

4. As the Christian should labor most of all to get into the power and glory of this doctrine, so let him see that he holds it fast. This doctrine is foreign to flesh and blood; it is not earthly, but from heaven (Matt 16:17). It is with many who begin with this doctrine as it is with boys who go to the Latin school: they learn until they have learned the basics of their grammar, and then they go home and forget it all. How many there are who, one would think, had been well taught in the basics of the Christian religion! Yet because they did not pay such attention to it as they should, they have let it all slip. Their hearts have been filled with the world again, or else they have drunk in some opinion diametrically opposed to what they professed of the truth before (Heb 2:1-4). So do you have anything of the truth of Christ in your heart? “Hold that fast, that no man take thy crown” (Rev 3:11). Yes, “grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Pet 3:18).

Whoever would keep and hold fast the doctrine of redemption, and so through faith have by it an inlet into all the abounding mercy of God, must not handle God’s matters with a slack hand. It is not enough for those who would do this to be content with sermons, family duties, and the other public assemblies for worship. There must also be a continual exercise of the mind about these matters, and a labor of the soul to keep them in their glory and sweetness. Otherwise they will slip from the heart and be gone, first as to their excellence, and then as to the very idea of them (Heb 2:1-3). Not that there is any treachery or deceit in these things; the deceit lies in the heart that deals with them. He who would keep water in a sieve must use more than ordinary diligence. Our heart is the leaking vessel, and “therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip” (Heb 2:1).

For this doctrine to remain with us, we must also put our carnal reason to death, for it rises up against the truth of this doctrine. And what else can foolishness do? The wisdom of this world, which is carnal reason at its most refined, is foolishness with God (1 Cor 1:20-25). It is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be. It judges this doctrine we have been speaking of to be foolishness. Therefore it must be avoided, opposed and put to death, and the word of faith must be all the more carefully submitted to. “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding” (Prov 3:5).

See here that trusting in the Lord and leaning on our own understanding are opposites. So either they must be reconciled, or one must be wholly held to by putting the other to death. Now the safest course in this matter is to keep a continual guard on our carnal powers, and to give ourselves up to the guidance of our God, and in all our ways to acknowledge him, so that he, not we ourselves, may direct our paths (Prov 3:6). It is a great thing for a man, when the Word and his reason clash, to hold to the Word then and let his reason fall to the ground. And this indeed is Christianity in its practical part. The Spirit of Christ in the Word is to be listened to above all things (2 Cor 10:3-5).

There must also be a continual war kept up against all the lusts of the flesh, so that they do not draw the heart away from the study and delight, the love and faith, of the things that are hidden in Christ (Isa 28:9). This, I say, must be done, or else the heart cannot be free to wait on the Lord without distraction for the further communications of himself in his Son, according to his blessed gospel to us. Many Christians are lean in their faith and too barren in their lives, and all for lack of being diligent here. So then, having faith in this blessed Lord Jesus Christ, as has been discussed before, next, “giving all diligence, add to your faith, virtue; and to virtue, knowledge; and to knowledge, temperance; and to temperance, patience; and to patience, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, charity. For if these things be in you and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord” and Saviour “Jesus Christ” (2 Pet 1:5-8).

There is a method the Holy Spirit has prescribed in the Word for those who have faith to observe. Without observing it, though they may indeed be among those who will be saved, they will not have much, nor do much, for Christ and his name in this world. Now those who are unskilled in the word of righteousness find this method, and not discerning to whom it belongs, they immediately apply it to everyone. Forgetting that faith must go first, they press these things as duties that prepare for faith, or else they call that faith which is not faith. And so, the blind leading the blind, both fall into the ditch and are smothered.

But you, child of God, make the distinction. Keep faith and duty far apart where the justification of your person in the sight of God is concerned. Also be sure to let faith go first and always be with your Savior. But add to your faith virtue and the rest. Do this not as though your faith could not lay hold of Christ unless these went with it, but to show that your faith is of the right kind, and also to embolden you to a holy endeavor to press still further into his everlasting kingdom and his Word. For he who lacks these things is blind, and cannot see far off, and has forgotten that he was purged from his old sins (2 Pet 1:9).

5. So that you may keep steadfast to this doctrine, take care not to be offended or to stumble at the Word because of the offensive lives and conduct of some who profess it. There will be offenses, and it is necessary that there should be; yes, scandals and heresies too, so that those who are approved of God “may be made manifest among you” (1 Cor 11:19). There are many causes of the offensive lives of those who profess this faith, some of which I will touch on here.

(1) Many who hold to and profess this gospel fall short of the power and glory of the things they profess. Now the word, the word only, will not bring those who profess it into conformity to it, that is, into a conformity in heart and life (1 Cor 4:18-20). Therefore those who know it only in word live scandalous lives, to the reproach of the faith, the emboldening of its enemies, the stumbling of the ignorant, and the grief of the godly who are truly godly. And such people must bear their judgment in the next world.

(2) This also comes from the wisdom of hell. The devil knows that the faith of the gospel, rightly professed, is not only saving to those who have it, but also attractive to those who see it. Therefore, to block its beautiful luster, he sows his tares among God’s wheat and goes his way, so that those who stumble may not see what he has done, or whose the tares really are. Now by these tares the sunshine of the faith of the true professors of the blessed gospel is clouded. Yes, and the world is made to believe that the best are just like the worst: that there is not a barrel of better herring among them, but the whole lot of them are, in truth, a pack of knaves. Now the devil has gained the point he aimed at, and has caused many to fall. But look now at the fine reward these tares will have on the day of reward for their doings. “As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth” (Matt 13:37-42).

(3) It also happens sometimes, through the anger and judgment of God against sinners, that some who are truly gracious fall, as David, Peter and others did. This is a great trial to the godly, a wound to those who have fallen, and a judgment of God on the world. For since the world would not be converted or made to turn to God by the convincing glory that has accompanied these believers’ faith, joined as it was to a holy and blameless life, God has allowed them to fall, so that the world too might stumble and fall, and be dashed to pieces by their vices.

But you, Christian, do not be offended at any of these things. Look to Jesus; look to his Word; live by faith, and think much about your latter end. Be low in your own eyes; be humble and tender, and pray to God always. Add to your faith virtue, and to virtue whatever else is mentioned there; and “give diligence to make thy calling and election sure; for if thou dost these things thou shalt never fall: for so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly, into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Pet 1:10-11).

6. If it is so, that there is so much mercy in the heart of God for his people, and that Jesus his Son has by his blood made such a living way for us to enjoy it and its benefit forever, “then let Israel hope.” For this goodness is revealed to that end: “Let Israel hope in the Lord: for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption.” Hope! Who would not hope to enjoy eternal life, if he has an inheritance in the God of Israel? “Happy art thou, O Israel, who is like unto thee, O people saved by the Lord, the shield of thy help, and who is the sword of thy excellency?” (Deut 33:29).

If only the people of God saw what they are born to, and how true the God of truth will be to what his Word has taught them to look for at his hands, they would always be living above. They would be weary of life, of property, of family ties; they would groan earnestly, in the midst of all they enjoy, to be with him who is their life, their portion and their glory forever. But we profess, and yet do not care to die; we profess, and yet do not long for the coming of the day of God; we profess the faith, and yet by our whole life show those who can see how small a measure of it we have in our hearts. May the Lord lead us further into the power of these things! Then the virtues of him who has saved us and called us out of darkness into his marvelous light, and the fragrance of his good knowledge, will be made known to others far otherwise than they are now. Amen.

7. And lastly, sinner, does not all this discourse make your heart flutter after the mercy that is with God, and after the way to it that is made by this plenteous redemption? I think it should. Indeed, you could not do otherwise, if only you saw your condition. Look behind you; take a view of the path you have trodden these many years. Do you think the way you are on will lead you to the strait gate, sinner? Ponder the path of your feet with the greatest seriousness, for your life depends on it. What do you think? But give no answer until night, until you are in the night watches. “Commune with your own heart upon your bed” (Ps 4:4), and then say what you think about where you are going.

Oh, that you were serious! Is it not a thing to be lamented, that madness and folly should be in your heart while you live, and after that you should go to the dead (Eccl 9:3), when so much life stands before you, and light to see the way to it? Surely men who are without grace and possessed of carnal minds must think either that sin is nothing, that hell is easy, and that eternity is short; or else that whatever God has said about punishing sinners, he will never do as he has said; or that there is no sin, no God, no heaven, no hell, and so no good or bad hereafter. Otherwise they could not live as they do.

But perhaps you presume on this and say, “I shall have peace, even though I live such a sinful life.” Sinner, if this wicked thought is in your heart, tell me again: do you really think this in earnest? Can you imagine that on the day of account you will outface God, or make him believe you were what you were not? Or that when the gate of mercy is shut in wrath, he will open it again to you at your pleasure, reversing his own counsel? Why should your deceived heart turn you aside, so that you cannot deliver your soul, “nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?” (Isa 44:20).