God, as when He spake to Moses out of the flaming fire out of the bush. And His appeal to them, we see, is based upon this very ground-" Hear, O My people," "I," Jehovah Jesus, Whom you rejected and crucified, "am God, even thy God," thy faithful covenant-keeping God.

"I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices or thy burntofferings, to have been continually before Me.” Israel imagines that God has forsaken them, because, having been cast out of their own land, they are unable to fulfil the requirements of the law of Moses. But this is not the ground of the Lord's controversy with them. "Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?" These offerings were typical representations of divine and heavenly things-shadows of that one great sacrifice, which Jehovah Jesus offered up for us and them upon the cross, when He offered up Himself. For it is not possible," says Paul, "that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins." No, this could only be accomplished through the shedding of the "precious blood" of Christ Himself; who by His "one offering hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." No, Israel's sin lay far, far deeper. It consisted in the rejecting and "treading under foot of the Son of God Himself;" and the "forbidding" of His apostles "to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved," which “filled up their sins," and brought "wrath upon them to the uttermost."4

But now "at" this "the second time," i.e., at this His second coming, this true "Joseph" is to be "made known to His brethren."5 "Offer unto God thanksgiving," He says, "and pay thy vows unto the Most High, and call upon Me"-ME, Jehovah Jesus, Whom you have rejected, (for "I will yet for this," He says, "be enquired of by the House of Israel, to do it for them ")—“ call upon Me in the day of trouble," in this your last and fiercest and most terrible trouble, to which there has been none like it, "I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me."

1 Heb. x. 4.

5 Acts vii. 13.

2 Heb. x. 14.
6 Ezek. xxxvi. 37.

3 Heb. x. 29.

1 Thes. ii. 16.

And we know from the prophetic Scriptures that this appeal of Jehovah Jesus to His brethren, at His second coming, will not be in vain. For as it was in the history of the antitype in Egypt long before, so will it be again. "And Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you. And they came near. And he said, I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt." "And his brethren could not answer him; for they were troubled" (the margin has it, "terrified") "at his presence." So also will it be with these. Ah! but when Joseph "kissed all his brethren, and wept upon them," AFTER THAT," it is said, "his brethren talked with him." And so again will it be here. They will be "made nigh by the blood of Christ." And then, "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you," saith He; "and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem."4

And then comes "the burden of the word of the Lord for Israel." "Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem." "In that day shall the Lord defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and he that is feeble among them at that day shall be as David; and the house of David shall be as God, as the angel of the Lord before them. And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications and they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn. In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadradrimmon in the valley of Megiddon. And the land shall mourn, every family apart; the family of the house of David apart, and their wives apart; the family of the house of Nathan apart, and their wives apart; the family of the

1 Genesis xlv. 3, 4.

2 Genesis xlv. 15. 4 Isaiah lxvi. 13.

3 Eph. ii. 13.

house of Levi apart, and their wives apart; the family of Shimei apart, and their wives apart; all the families that remain, every family apart, and their wives apart." "In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness." "And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the Lord, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein. And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on My name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is My people: and they shall say, The Lord is my God." For "this shall be the Covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.' "In those days, and in that time, saith the Lord, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for," (that is, by the great adversary of souls) "and there shall be none; and the sins of Judah,” (who crucified even the Lord of glory,)" and they shall not be found: for I will pardon them whom I reserve."5

13

And so "judgment" having "begun at the house of God," and having thence passed over to Israel, the Lord has now a word to the unbelieving professor of "the Gospel of the grace of God." He now deals with the professing Church at large. "But unto the wicked," or unconverted, "God saith, what hast thou to do to declare My statutes, or that thou shouldest take My covenant in thy mouth? Seeing thou hatest instruction, and castest My words behind thee."

These words are clearly addressed, not to the unconverted simply, but to the unconverted professor of the Gospel: for

1 Zech. xii. 1, 2, 8-14. 2 Zech. xiii. 1, 8, 9. 4 Zech. iii. 1-4.

3 Jer. xxxi. 33, 34.

5

Jer. 1. 20.

13 66

the person here addressed is one who has made a public declaration of his belief in God's statutes, and imagines himself to be interested in the Covenant of Grace. But that he is not interested in it is clear, because the Lord Himself, as the Judge, here tells him that he has nothing whatever to do with it. The Covenant has been in his mouth only, we see, and not in his heart. "With his mouth" he may have "shewn much love, but his heart," has followed "after his covetousness," as it follows. "The Covenant was confirmed before of God in Christ;" and is "an everlasting Covenant, ordered in all things, and sure sure to all the seed who are interested in it. These therefore have mistaken the Covenant altogether: and being unconverted, they have put it, as all the unconverted do, on the ground of works, and have turned grace itself even into law. Alas! how many thousands of professors are there, who believe that they have entered into this Covenant with God in their baptism, and that the conditions of it are, that if they will perform their part of it, God will perform His—thus coming before God in their own persons, and on the ground of works; and hence "abiding" under "wrath." But they who can rest under such a galling yoke as this, shew plainly that they are utterly ignorant of the spiritual character and requirements of the law of God; and that they have never therefore been truly convinced of sin by God the Holy Ghost; or they would have seen themselves to have been guilty before God, and would either have despaired of salvation by the law, or “have fled for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before" them in the Gospel.

"These are they, therefore, who "have a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof: from such," says the Apostle, "turn away."7

And this is what our Lord Jesus here says of them, nay He gives this as the evidential proof of their having no

1 Ezek. xxxiii. 31. $ John iii. 16.

2 Gal. iii. 17.
6 Heb. vi. 18.

32 Sam. xxiii. 5.
72 Tim. iii. 5.

4 Rom. iv. 16.

interest in the Covenant itself. It was not written in their hearts. "Seeing," He says, "thou hatest instruction, and castest My words behind thee." In the hearts of the Lord's people this Covenant is written: but these were "uncircumcised in heart and ears," which clearly proved that they were in a carnal unconverted state in God's sight; and that the enmity of their natural heart to God had not been removed. They hated God's instruction: and as this instruction is conveyed to men through the teaching of the blessed Spirit of God, by means of the Divine Word, convincing the soul of its sin, and then leading it to Jesus to be saved from its sin, they consequently resisted the Spirit, and rejected His testimony that salvation was to be found in Christ alone, and could only be had through a living faith in Him. And the reason, we see, why they rejected God's teaching as error, was because they had first received man's teaching as truth. Thus they came under the condemnation of our blessed Lord, who said, "in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men," and of the woe pronounced by the mouth of the prophet Isaiah, "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" And we here see how it came to pass that they fell under such a woe. For having first taken their own evil for good, when God's good was offered to them, they rejected it as evil; having first taken their own darkness for light, when God's light began to shine unto them, they turned away from it, and treated it as darkness; having first taken their own bitter for sweet, when God's sweet was presented to them, their vitiated taste caused them to reject it as bitter; having sought for a righteousness within them, through the law, and received this as a Divine truth, when the grace of God was preached to them, and they were pointed to the righteousness of Christ as their alone ground of justification before God, they stumbled at it, as “making void the law," and bringing in licentiousness;