Numbers 14

REFLECTIONS UPON CHAP. XIV.—The headstrong and unmortified passions hurrying them furiously on to their own roin: and such as are discontinued with God’s providence, and resolve to mend themselves, always make the war worse and worse. Unbelieving murmurers are prone to charge God himto with the most base and malicious designs, and to wish for misery under a source of care to avoid it. What an infinite advantage is God’s presence and hear! but if he leave us we become an easy prey to every invader. How much is it when the abused servants of Christ in meekness instruct them that the themselves, if God, peradventure, will give them repentance, to the overlapping of the truth! Though often they draw upon themselves barbatiment from such as they labour to save. But God tenderly remarks the of his faithful servants, and interferes for their relief in the critical moWhat a blessing to a nation are those who can effectually plead their at a throne of grace; wrestle for mercy and forgiveness; and fill their with arguments, from God’s own honour, power, declared mercy, and , and their own former experience thereof! God is ready graciously to hear and answer such intercessions, even when he will not forbear shewing his indignation at the sins which have provoked him! He keeps an exact account of men’s conduct, that he may reward or punish it in due time. Terribly offensive to him is the contempt and discrediting of his promises, and most effectual for provoking him to abandon the guilty to irretrievable and everlasting ruin! But ringleaders in guilt and presumptuous adventurers, in opposition to God’s express command, often fall under distinguished marks of his wrath, and are made pledges of the final destruction of those whom they have seduced to, or encouraged in, sin. Take heed, therefore, O my soul, lest I be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin; lest there be in me an evil heart of unbelief, departing from the living God: and fear, lest, a promise being left me of entering into his rest, I should seem to come short of it through unbelief! But let me be a man of another spirit than the world; and let me singly cleave to and fully follow after, the Lord. If for so doing men revile and persecute me, God will amply reward me with an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away