Deuteronomy 32

REFLECTIONS UPON CHAP. XXXII.—In the most serious and solemn manner, ought ministers to deliver the truths of God to their people: and terrible will be the judgment of despisers of them when both heaven and earth shall witness against them. How great, how unalterable, how faithful, holy, and just, is God! and how perfect, wise, and righteous, are all his works! But how ungrateful, disobedient, and apostatizing, are many of his professed children! It is necessary therefore to ponder both the character of God and our own to prevent our sinning, to draw instructions from ancient records, and that children should receive information from their fathers, who are more acquainted with them. But while I behold God preparing a country for the Israelites as his peculiar people, marvellously conducting them to it through the Arabian deserts, subduing the land before them, and enriching them with the product of it, let me think of the great wonder of redemption, of God’s preparing it for men, and bringing them now to the begun and hereafter to the full enjoyment of it. But surely most vile is the ingratitude of men who render him hatred for his love, cursing for his blessing! Yet much more aggravated is the wickedness of professors, and especially saints, than that of mere heathens. The Lord highly abominates all sin. And righteous are all his judgments of desertion, sword, famine, or pestilence, nay, of utter and everlasting destruction. But his mercy waits long; he is unwilling to inflict judgments on his people, and to give his enemies any cause of triumph over them, even when they have provoked him to the most shocking degree. And earnestly he wills that their serious consideration should prevent their ruin. Seasonable, gracious, and wonderful, have, and shall be, God’s deliverances of his ancient people from the nations which harrassed, murd red, or carried them captive: and terrible his judgments on their destroyers, particularly the Assyrians, Chaldeans, Greeks, Romans, Antichristians, and others. But how much more remarkable the new covenant deliverances of the saints, and terrible the destruction of their implacable enemies! How remarkable the joy of their souls, whether they be Jews or Gentiles, when they behold it! Happy is it when ministers, young and old, fully harmonize in the work of the Lord; and when they are so intent upon commending Jesus and his ways, that they must be as it were half forced from it, even into the joy of their Lord! But God finds it frequently necessary to remind his people of their sins, and warn them of their death, while he assures them of his reconciliation to their souls