1. Praise God for his grace. Admiration is all the glory you can give to
he is not able to finish it. God considered, before he began with you, what charge you would stand him in, both of merit in Christ and grace in you; so the grace he has given you is not only a mercy to you, but an obligation on himself, since his credit is engaged to complete it. You have more unanswerable arguments to plead before him than you had, namely his Son, his truth, his promise, his grace, his name, wherein you had not the least interest. To what purpose has God called and marked you if he does not intend to supply you with as much grace as shall bring you to glory? To what purpose should a creditor forgive part of a debt and lay the debtor in prison for the other part? Has God given you Christ, and will he detain anything else? Supplies of wants, grants of anything you desire, are but as a few grains of pepper that the grocer puts in as an overplus to many pounds.
3. Strength against corruptions. Can small obstacles stand against him who has levelled mountains? Can a few clouds withstand the melting force of the sun, which has dissolved those black mists that covered the sky? Similarly, the remains of your corruption cannot stand up against his power, which has thrown down the great hills of the sins of your natural condition and has dissolved the thick fogs of your unregeneracy. You cannot doubt his strength or his love; love delights in doing the greatest things, and he has already done the greatest, so will he not also do the least? When Moses killed the Egyptian, it is said that he 'supposed his brethren would have understood that God intended by his hand to deliver them,' Acts
7:25. Moses was a type of Christ: if Christ overthrew a whole army of Egyptians that not only pursued you but also kept you in slavery, and he overturned them all in the Red Sea, would you not take notice that he intends to be your deliverer from the scattered troops of them?
Thirdly, Exhortation. 1. To those that God has dealt with in this way.
1. Praise God for his grace. Admiration is all the glory you can give to God for his grace, seeing you can add nothing to his essential glory.
Christ will come at the last day to be admired; I pray send your
admirations beforehand to attend him at his coming. Who made you thus to differ from another? Was it not God? Let him, then, have the glory. If he made you to differ from others in the enjoyment of his mercy, you should also differ from others in the sounding of his praise. If you have an angel's state, it is fitting you should have an angel's note. If David, when he considered the glorious heavens God had made for man, cried out so affectionately, 'What is man, that you are mindful of him!' Ps. 8:4; surely when you consider that work of grace which God has wrought in you, you may with astonishment cry out, Oh, what is man that you are mindful of him! What is such a vile creature, that you should take him into your bosom? For there is not a grace in you but is more glorious than the sun with all its regiments of stars, and is more like to God than the great fountain of light with all its amazing splendour. It is something of that heaven which is more glorious than all the rest of the heavens, and is above the reach of the natural eye. Oh what is man, that you are thus mindful of him, to make him, who is a hell by sin, to become heaven by grace! Pardon of but one act of sin makes us forever debtors to God; because one sin renders us obnoxious to eternal torments, and every sin includes a hatred of God. What, then, is it to remit such vast sums, if to pardon one be a miracle? To pardon many committed against a suffering Christ who has invited us, and repeats his invitations, after they have been rejected, is a miracle of the greatest magnitude, something above a miracle!
How should you think Jacob's expression in temporal mercies, a few sheep, too mean, 'I am less than the least of all thy mercies,' Gen.
32:10. Oh I am less, less, less than the least of all this mercy. A great sinner, when converted, should sing a note somewhat above David's
'What shall I render?' Ps. 116:12; and should say, I can render nothing, nothing; but I will render praise, blessing, amazement, astonishment; that is all I can render, and I cannot render enough of that. Had you chosen God first, it would have been some ingenuity in God to answer that affection; but God chose you first, and that when there was nothing lovely in you, when he saw you the most deformed creatures in the world. There was no likeness between God and thee.