EU 25:17-25:19{The Apostle Peter closes his First Epistle with the following:- "But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus after that ye have suffered awhile, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you." "Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivereth him out of them all" (Psa. 34:10). " But God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able" (1 Cor. 10:13). There is something wonderfully endearing in the appellation of "the God of all grace."
That which we daily need He as bountifully supplies. He fills all things; in Him we live and move, and have our being. So in His character as the God of all grace, He meets our every necessity; but not only so, He anticipates our wants: and further, under trials permitted in His sovereign wisdom to fall upon His saints, He considers every aggravation of them circumstantially and providentially; and whilst the heart is bowed down with the fetters of affliction and iron, yet, as the God of all grace, He sympathizes with our sorrows, bears with our weakness under them, would find excuses for our halting in the difficulties of the way. His bowels yearn to His saints. His anger is kindled against their enemy. " And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly" (Rom. 16:20). He who had the heart to find a Shepherd in Ezek. 34, had first His sympathies awakened by the need of His flock (ver. 21): " Therefore thus saith the Lord God, because you have thrust with side and with shoulder, and pushed all the diseased with your horns, till ye have scattered them abroad; therefore will I save my flock, and they shall be no more a prey." "The gifts and calling of God are without repentance," and most blessed that it is so. He knew what His people were when He gave them over to Jesus; and He gave them to Jesus because He knew what they were. All things were before Him. The past, present, and future, are as one with God. The womb of time gives birth to nothing but God foresaw it. That which is thus brought forth, gives rise to nothing but God foreknew it. O blessed resting place, the consciousness of the omniscience of God. To us revealed the God of all grace. Sin put away in the Person of Christ. Wrath fell upon him to the uttermost; grace abounds unto us. We are launched into His presence by virtue of His work and worth; with the knowledge, too, of our need of it all. Yet assured by the Holy Ghost which is given to us, that His grace has met all our need. We are there by virtue of His blood, and in virtue of our necessity. We are redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, and are passing through the wilderness to our place in the heavenlies; with the pillar of cloud by day, and the pillar of fire by night. We have recorded in scripture the trials of His people Israel in their journey from Egypt; and though in many instances they provoked God to chastisement, yet it must never be forgotten, that they excited His sympathy. Yes, blessed be God, the God of all grace, our trials have His sympathy.
" There's not a pang His members bear,
But He the living Head doth share."
But our unbelieving hearts are slow to appreciate the touching tenderness of God's love. Not only the kindness, but the manner of displaying it, as a gift, is doubly precious when graciously bestowed. Our sins provoke God's anger oftentimes; and in judgment our enemy is permitted to assail us, and to gain advantage over us; yet, when conscience is awakened and sin put away, how soon is the kindness of God manifested. A father may be angry with his child, and deservedly so; the child, in its folly, may peril its safety; yet, when awakened to penitence, the suffering of the child kindles afresh the love of the father. There will be tears on the part of the child, but the parent's hand is wiping them away. There will be upbraidings of conscience, but unfeigned parental affection softens their poignancy. The folly of the prodigal son served to reveal the heart of a loving father. We have light into the character of the one by that which was dark in the character of the other. We read in the second chapter of Exodus, "The children of Israel sighed by reason of bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of their bondage. And God heard their groaning, and remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." And again, in the third chapter, in His interview with Moses, God is pleased to announce, "I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey." And God kept His word, and that by signs and wonders and mighty deeds. Pharaoh and his host were drowned in the Red Sea! For forty years he has borne with their manners in the wilderness, and now they are about to " go over Jordan and possess the land." Faith is the substance of things hoped for. Faith accredits God's power to accomplish His purpose. God ever in scripture acts in the consciousness of that power. The book of Deuteronomy is a code of laws for their guidance in the land to which. God would bring them. He had revealed His purpose, and His purpose and its accomplishment are one. He would place His people in blessing yet. He would also remember their past sufferings. He had made their cause His own, and He entered into their trials as one that shared them. And He dealt with their enemies as His own, too. Indeed, because He had called forth His people whom He had redeemed, therefore Amalek hated them, and sought their injury. And their call of God, and because He had called them, exposed them to trial. Even as it is at this day. " All that will live godly in Christ Jesus, shall suffer persecution." And what is godly living, but seeking after God revealed in His word and by His ordinances. And trials that arise from this are only laurel wreaths-family marks, as one has before designated them, by which His people may be recognized. But they call forth God's sympathy, and are the occasion of it. They secure His protection. Our object is good, when we seek to follow after holiness and walk worthy of Him who has called us. Our pursuit of this object may be more or less earnest, our watchfulness more or less vigilant. Supineness may occasion us trial. Rash energy, also. But, whether from sloth or impetuosity we are brought into it, God in His mercy remembers we are in it, and undertakes on our behalf. " The righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance." Moreover, forgetfulness of God will bring into trial; and easily, also, we can forget the occasion of it. But the love of our God to His people is from everlasting to everlasting; and His remembrance of those who have thwarted the object of that love, is everlasting also. He not only has to remind of those we should love, but also of those we should avoid. "My soul, come not thou into their secrets. Unto their assembly, mine honor, be not thou united." And these principles are developed in the portion of His word under notice-" Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way, when ye were come forth out of Egypt. How he met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of them, even all that were feeble behind thee, when thou vast faint and weary: and he feared not God." Could anything be more beautiful than that which is here displayed of the watchful eye of God over His people? Could motives for sympathy be more happily condensed, or ground for protection be more ably advanced? Was ever the unfortunate victim of undeserved calumny more skillfully defended? Did eloquence ever plead as God here pleads on behalf of His people? Whatever in weakness might provoke to pity is brought to the surface. Whatever increased the odium of insolent audacity is displayed to the advantage of the feeble. May His people not say, in holy exultation, " If God be for us, who can be against us?" Could power be more maliciously exercised than in attacking the hindmost, even those who through very feebleness could not keep pace with the van, faint and weary as well; dropping one by one into the jaws of Leviathan, forgotten by their comrades in the hurry of self-preservation, yet remembered by God; and their enemy ere long to be visited with just retribution? He oppressed God's people, and he feared not their God I
" Therefore it shall be, when the Lord thy God hath given thee rest from all thine enemies round about in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it, that thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt not forget it." And is it not written (1 Cor. 10:11), " Now all these things happened unto them for types [margin], and are written for our admonition." Surely the God of all grace is our God and Father in Jesus. Alas 1 how little progress we make in the understanding of His grace, thus testified to us in the records of His dealings with His people of old, and still more fully in the light of His only-begotten Son. " 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.)