The History in the Scriptures needs but little comment.. it shows its own message and purpose. The history of the Patriarchs unfolds, with the greatest simplicity, the blessings of individuals blessed upon those very principles that the gospel has-by facts proved to be the principles, and the only principles, upon which God does bless. They sought blessings by ways of their own, and failed to get them.
The Human Heart When the Claims of God Are Pressed Upon It.
The history of a nation is given, and that history is complete. It begins by God claiming the people as His, and taking them to be His people. But though every advantage is given, every way tried to see if it were possible they could front their hearts own God's claims and give Him His due, they prove that with, man that is impossible, because of what he is and what his heart is. Under trial of need, there is grumbling and resentment towards Him. Under blessing in the Land, they forsake Him, and every man does that which is right in his own eyes. But What cannot be denied is, that in the history of Israel we have the test of what man is when God's claims are brought home to him. They were not left to themselves, but they were proved. Their desire was to be let alone, to go their own way. Were they alone in this?
But He took them as His people. God Himself they quickly reject for a molten calf' and they are given a mediator. And the mediator they grumble at rather than trust. With the Captain given of God they enter the promised land, and under blessing. quickly sink to the level of servants, from which bondage they had been redeemed. Judges are raised up, but they themselves sink, in a great measure, morally to the level of all around. And the end is found in each man doing what was right in his own eyes—a moral condition in which it might be erected that the word of God would be “scarce " or "precious," but grace still them, and His word is given by the prophet. But glory and position in the world is desired. His word is not their joy; they desire a king, like other nations. The king is given and taken away in wrath, and then in grace the Lord Himself establishes the royal line. But their resource, when this turns out contrary to their desires, is not in God but in. their own will. And from that time their history records the grace of God that sent message after message by the prophets. Under the kings the history presents the same picture,—man still puts his own interests before God's claims. The people are religious—too religious,—but their service is as they like it, where they like it. God's way and place they resent.
Sequence in the national record can hardly be denied. It is so obvious as to have once afforded a pretext to the critic's fertile brain for impugning its historical basis!
We see what man is when God's claims are pressed upon him, and the result is a perfect and complete picture of his ruin. But accord with divine truth cannot be denied. God does concern Himself with the people lie takes up, and makes Himself known to them by His prophets. The people choose their own way, and though willing to be religious, their religion has to be that which is popular and in accord with the spirit of the age.
Thus each the history of the nation with whom God had to do, Is it possible to say it is not complete in proving that man ever resents God's claims being pressed upon him, as if they would interfere with his happiness?
His history proves him to be a total ruin before God. This ' is human; but what, may be asked, are the grace and forbearance shown to man as such? Is this human, or divine?
The Human Heart When the Grace of God Is Presented to It.
A final test was put, after man was proved to resent the claims of God, to see what his heart was to God when trespasses were not imputed to him, but only God revealed to him in His love and light: There is no demand of rights. The Son of God offers Himself as a gift. But man who had begun his course by resenting divine authority, ends it by declaring his preference for a robber and murderer to be let loose again in his midst rather than Him who had revealed God in this world.
The answer to God's grace is the same as to His claims.. He is rejected, His gifts despised, His claims hated.
In the present dispensation the heart of man is tested still further by the gospel of God. “Now is the day of salvation," now is the clay of grace. It announces to man salvation and beseeches for reconciliation in Christ's name. In the present day man rejects not only God's claims, not only His offer of Christ, but of Christ with the depth of His love revealed, whether to a miserable robber who in his dying hours had been reviling Him, or to a proud hater of His name on the way to persecute His people on earth. Man, in his rejection of Christ now, rejects Him whose love led Him to finish the work the sinner needed, so that God's own love might be commended to all. Rom. 5:88But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8).