Nehemiah 9

REFLECTIONS UPON CHAP. IX.—It is a great mercy when God’s word burdens men’s consciences with a sense of their sins; and when reformation from sin and fasting for it go hand in hand. Those fasts are most profitable in which men’s souls are afflicted for their sins, the bands of wickedness are loosed, intimate fellowship with God enjoyed, and in which God’s goodness leads to repentance. O what multitudes of mercies to us, and to our fathers, may a diligent observer of providence discover! What gracious calls and covenants! What deliverance, direction, provision, and establishment! What giving of the law and of the promises! What warnings against, and pardons of, our sins! What amazing patience and long suffering! What well timed and well-adjusted corrections! And it is necessary to confess our father’s iniquities as well as our own, or we make ourselves heirs to them, and shall share in the punishment of them. We must likewise search out the aggravations of our sins, and seek not to exculpate ourselves, but to justify God. O what a root of wickedness and woe is the pride of men’s heart! Often by it we revolt from the free and honourable service of God into the basest slavery. But God’s infinite mercy, and his constant adherence to his new covenant with Christ, and in him with us, ought to encourage us to return to him under the deepest sense of our provocations. And solemn evangelical covenanting with God is peculiarly proper when we have notoriously departed from him, are sharply corrected by him, and earnestly desire to return to him