[Doctrinal observations on them]
And in the consolation and supportment which I have received thereby, I am waiting for a full participation of the fruits of his love.
Let me therefore prevail with you, who are in the like condition, to steer the same course with me. Only let your expectations be fixed on mercy and sovereign grace, without any regard unto any privilege or worth in yourselves. Rest in the plenteous redemption, those stores of grace which are with Jehovah; and according to his faithfulness in his promises he will deliver you out of all perplexing troubles."
Having thus opened the words, I shall now only name the doctrinal observations that are tendered from them, and so put a close to these discourses; as,— Obs. 1. The Lord Jehovah is the only hope for sin-distressed souls:
"Hope in the LORD." This hath been sufficiently discovered and confirmed on sundry passages in the psalm.
Obs. 2. The ground of all hope and expectation of relief in sinners is mere grace, mercy, and redemption: "Hope in the LORD: for with the LORD there is mercy." All other grounds of hope are false and deceiving.
Obs. 3. Inexhaustible stores of mercy and redemption are needful for the encouragement of sinners to rest and wait on God: "With him is plenteous redemption." Such is your misery, so pressing are your fears and disconsolations, that nothing less than boundless grace can relieve or support you; there are, therefore, such treasures and stores in God as are suited hereunto. "With him is plenteous redemption."
Obs. 4. The ground of all the dispensation of mercy, goodness, grace, and forgiveness, which is in God to sinners, is laid in the blood of Christ; hence it is here called "Redemption." Unto this also we have spoken at large before.
Obs. 5. All that wait on God on the account of mercy and grace shall have an undoubted issue of peace: "He shall redeem Israel." "Let him," saith God, "lay hold on my arm, that he may have peace, and he shall have peace," Isa. 27:5.
Obs. 6. Mercy given to them that wait on God, shall, in the close and issue, be every way full and satisfying: "He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities."
And these propositions do arise from the words as absolutely considered, and in themselves. If we mind their relation unto the peculiar condition of the soul represented in this psalm, they will yet afford us the ensuing observations:— Obs. 1. They who out of depths have, by faith and waiting, obtained mercy, or are supported in waiting from a sense of believed mercy and forgiveness, are fitted, and only they are fitted, to preach and declare grace and mercy unto others. This was the case with the psalmist. Upon his emerging out of his own depths and straits, he declares the mercy and redemption whereby he was delivered unto the whole Israel of God.
Obs. 2. A saving participation of grace and forgiveness leaves a deep impression of its fulness and excellency on the soul of a sinner. So was it here with the psalmist. Having himself obtained forgiveness, he knows no bounds or measure, as it were, in the extolling of it:
"There is with God, mercy, redemption, plenteous redemption, redeeming from all iniquity; I have found it so, and so will every one do that shall believe it."
Now, these observations might all of them, especially the two last, receive a useful improvement; but whereas what I principally intended from this psalm hath been at large insisted on upon the
first verses of it, I shall not here farther draw forth any meditations upon them, but content myself with the exposition that hath been given of the design of the psalmist and sense of his words in these last verses.
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