grace. "For my name's sake," &c. Finding a motive in His own glory which was bound up in the existence of Israel, and would have been compromised by their destruction, He turned unto them in love and kindness; Cyrus wrote the decree of emancipation, the Israelites came back to the land, and once again they sat every man under his own vine and fig-tree, and ate the good of the land. So far we give the historical meaning of the passage. We shall now use the text as an illustration of Divine love in other cases, for from one deed of grace we may learn all. As God dealt with His people Israel after the flesh, in the same manner He dealeth with His people Israel after the spirit; and His mercies towards His saints are to be seen as in a mirror in His wondrous loving-kindness towards the seed of Abraham. I shall take the text to illustrate

I. THE CONVERSION OF THE SINNER. 1. God finds him so utterly ruined and depraved, that in him there is no argument for mercy, no plea for grace. You have been obstinate in sin; impudent in your dealing with God; your brow has been brass. You have behaved very treacherously towards God. You have broken your vows of repentance, &c.

2. God Himself finds the reason for His mercy. Here is the drift of the thought the Lord is a patient God, and determines to make His patience glorious. God also would illustrate in the salvation of a sinner, not only His patience, but His sovereign and abundant mercy towards sinners. God can, by saving such a one as thou art, not only glorify His patience and grace, but display His power. It is evident that it is not an easy task to conquer thee. But now, it may be that a soul here present is saying, "Well, I can see that God can thus find a motive for mercy in Himself, when there is none in the sinner, but why is it that the Lord is chastening me as He is ?" Possibly you are sick in body, have been brought low in estate, and are grievously depressed in mind. God

now, in our text, goes on to explain

3. His dealings with you, that you may not have one hard thought of Him. It is true He has been smiting you, but it has been with a purpose and in measure. "I have refined thee, but not with silver." You have been put into the furnace of affliction, but not-note the "but,"-"but not with silver." Now, when silver is refined it requires the most vehement heat of all metals. God has not brought upon you the severest troubles. You have been chastised, but not as you might have been, nor as you deserved to have been.

4. The Lord declares that the time of trial is the chosen season for revealing His love to you: "I have chosen thee," &c. God seeth the things that thall be as though they were; everything is now with Him.

5. Lest the soul should forget it, the Lord repeats again the point He began with, and unveils the motives of His grace once more. What is the 11th verse but the echo of the 9th God cannot save you, sinner, for your own sake; you are not worth the saving. Yet the Lord declares that He will refrain from wrath. He will have mercy upon you, O broken heart, for His own sake. Plead the merits of Christ, &c. If you will go to Him in Christ Jesus, though you be all but damned already, and feel that your death-warrant is signed; He will not, He cannot, reject you. Throw yourself at the cross-foot, and say, "Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief;" and God will never tarnish His name by thy destruction. And then He adds, "And I will not give my glory unto another." But if a soul should perish while trusting in the blood of Christ, the glory of God would go over to Satan.

II. THE RECLAIMING OF THE BACKSLIDER.

1. Backsliding professor, your case is more evidently meant in the text even than that of the sinner, for God was speaking to His own people Israel in these remarkable words. Now your

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crime, if anything, is a more censurable one than that of the sinner. see no more reason why God should have mercy upon you than upon the ungodly; indeed, I see more reason for punishing you, for you have made a profession and belied it. How great your guilt! You see there is no reason for God's grace that can be found in your person or in your character, but it is found in the divine heart.

2. Observe, that God, having thus declared the reason of His love to the backslider, goes on to tell him that the present sufferings, which he is now enduring as the result of his backslidings, should be mitigated. "I have refined thee, but not with silver," &c.

3. Then comes His next word: "I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction." Though you are not open backsliders, perhaps you may be worse than those who are.

CONCLUSION.-Let us go one and all, whether we be unsaved sinners or backsliders, or may suspect ourselves to be either the one or the other-let us go to the dear fountain of His blood, whose open veins are the gates of healing to us; and together let us rejoice that He for His mercy's sake can save us, and magnify Himself by the deed of mercy.-C. H. Spurgeon: Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, No. 1041.

No one can read the history of God's ancient people without perceiving the wonderful compassion of God. Their numerous transgressions frequently call for the exercise of His justice; but He spared them in mercy. Sometimes He exercised them with heavy trials, placing them in the furnace of affliction; and it appears from the context that a consignment to such an ordeal has been salutary in its influence. A furnace is a fireplace or crucible for melting and refining gold or other metals (Prov. xvii. 3, xxvii. 21). Sometimes it is the emblem of cruel bondage (Deut. iv. 20, Jer. ix. 4). Also of judgments and severe and grievous afflictions, by which God punishes the rebellious (Ezek. xxii. 18-20). By the furnace of affliction He also tries and proves His people, as in the text.

I. This furnace is afflictive. It is composed of numerous severe trials. 1. The scantiness of temporal things. 2. Bodily afflictions. 3. Bereavements. 3. Bereavements. 4. Domestic trials of various kinds from ungodly relatives-refractory and disobedient children, &c. &c. Thousands

of God's people have been in this furnace. Even Jesus was a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.

II. This furnace is divinely ap

pointed. Afflictions are not the result of chance (Job v. 6); not to be traced to mere natural causes; not the works of our enemies merely. They imply the moral government of God, and the wise and gracious arrangement of His providence. Every event is either His appointment, or has His all-wise permission (see Isa. xlv. 7; Job ii. 10, xxxiv. 29). Such views of the subject have reconciled and supported the minds of the godly under their various afflictions (Job xxiii. 14; Ps. xxxi. 15; Lam. iii. 27). What a blessing that all is arranged by infinite wisdom and love! (H. E. I. 143, 179-188, 3675, 3676).

III. For God's people this furnace is not vindictive, but gracious. Divine chastisement may be a kind of punishment for sin committed. It frequently supposes some fault, which it is intended to correct. But sometimes men are persecuted "for righteousness' sake" (Matt. v. 10). God will suffer affliction to befall us when we are cold and indifferent in His cause. But such punishment is not like that inflicted on the wicked. Punishment may be vindictive or corrective. The one is in wrath, the other in love; the one is for the good of society, the other for the good of the

individual, to recover from the evil which affliction is intended to correct. God may be angry with His child, and not hate him. He may chastise him with His rod, yet love him with His whole heart (Heb. xii. 5-11; H. E. I. 56-74, 116, 189-196).

IV. This furnace is proportionate. That is, God will regulate its heat according to the circumstances of His people who may be placed there (Mal. iii. 3; 1 Cor. x. 13; Isa. xliii. 2; Zech. iii. 9; Heb. iv. 15; H. E. I. 198, 3677). The paternal relation He bears to His people will not permit Him to deal with them after the manner of the "fathers of our flesh." There can be no caprice, no unwise or intemperate anger in Him; He treats them tenderly (Ps. ciii. 8, 9, 13, 14). Compassion is mixed with the severest dispensations, and a wise distinction made between the different members of His family.

V. The tendency of this furnace is beneficial. "I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction." A more proper translation would have been, "I have tried thee," &c. [Delitsch: "I have proved thee"]. By affliction of various kinds I have proved thy faith, hope, patience, and love (H. E. I. 75–84). Observe, God has nevertheless chosen some in the furnace of affliction. He has met them there, and by His Spirit has subdued them, and brought them to repentance, faith, and consecration to Himself. The furnace of affliction has been instrumental in their conversion. The design of a position in this furnace is to purify the Christian from sin, to wean from the world, &c. The believer emanates from this furnace improved, refined (James i. 2, 3; 1 Peter i. 6, 7, &c.; H. E. I. 85-90, 204– 212, 3696-3702). Afflictions exercise the graces of the Christian (Rom. v. 3-5). They preserve from sin. They assimilate the soul to Christ, who was 66 a man of sorrows." They show the frailty of human life, and the vanity of the world. They teach sympathy with others (H. E. I. 135, 136). They make very humble, and break the haughty mind, and bring down the lofty thought (ch. xxxviii. 15). They

induce a spirit of prayer (Ps. lxxvii. 2, &c.) In short, God, by placing His people in the furnace of affliction, is educating them for heaven (H. E. I. 112-115, 215).

APPLICATION.-1. Let the sublime design of this furnace induce patience and submission. 2. Remember the time of trial is but short. Called the day of adversity-the hour of affliction -but for a moment (H. E. I. 217, 218, 3705, 3706). Helps for the Pulpit, 1st series, pp. 175-178.

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Affliction as a furnace (a):

1. A furnace is prepared for gold (Prov. xvii. 3). So afflictions are appointed for the saints, who are compared to gold.

2. A furnace refines gold, and makes it much purer than before; so afflictions refine and make more holy (Job xxiii. 10).

3. A furnace is made sometimes very hot, according to the kind and condition of the metal; so are afflictions, sometimes, very grievous, heavy, and trying, as the case requires. (8)

4. A furnace melts the gold, and makes it soft before it is refined; so afflictions those whom they are meant to purify.

5. A furnace will destroy tin, lead, &c., and also the drossy part of gold; so afflictions burn up the loose and hypocritical, and purge from His people all their corruptions.

6. The metal, when it comes forth from the furnace, is more prepared for its proper use; so are the people of God when they come forth from affliction. Therefore, let us be cheerful and hopeful while we are in the furnace.— B. Keach.

(a) See also outline: "The Fiery Ordeal of the Church," vol. i. p. 347.

(8) It requires an excessive heat to purify silver, and to consume all its dross. Were God to keep His people in the furnace till all their dross, sin, and corruption were removed they would be utterly consumed. His chastisements are, therefore, not fierce, but gradual; in mercy, and not in rigid justice.-Dr. Gill.

Having called on the Jews in Babylon to attend to what He was now about to say by His servant the Prophet, God begins by asserting that He is the same, the true and only God, who existed before all things, and therefore was able to accomplish all His purposes and promises of deliverance. The text introduces us to a subject of tremendous importGod's unchangeableness throughout eternity. "The eternity and immutability of God are in their own nature inseparable, and are so generally united in the Holy Scriptures, that the passages which declare the one, declare or imply the other

also."

I. GOD IS ETERNAL.

1. Reason itself claims this attribute for God. Nor was it unknown even to the heathens. Proclus, a follower of Plato, proved God to be eternal, because He exists of Himself. Thales

defined God to be a being that is without beginning and end; before all things; and who was never born (H. E. I. 2253; P. D. 1492, 2536).

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2. What reason teaches, the Scriptures assert. They represent God's eternity to be (1.) An nity of duration, "I am He; I am the first, I also am the last" (Ps. xc. 2). Not merely everlasting, but eternal! He had no beginning, even as He shall have no end. This is the difference between the eternity of God and that of the angels and of "the spirits of just men made perfect." They are, by the will of God, never to end; but, by His will also, they came into being. But to His being there was no beginning! (2.) An eternity of perfection. There has been in Him no development of excellence, as in Him there will be no diminution of it. "From everlasting to everlasting, Thou art GOD!" All that is involved in that great name

He always was, and always will be! (See pp. 187, 188, and outlines on ch. lvii. 15).

II. GOD IS UNCHANGEABLE-eternally unchangeable. nally unchangeable. "I am He,"the same yesterday, to-day, and for

ever.

1. Unchangeableness is an essential perfection of God. If He were subject to "variableness or the shadow of turning," He would not be a perfect and eternal being, &c. When, therefore, it is said that God repents or alters His purpose, it must not be. supposed that His nature changes, but that the Holy Spirit accommodates His language to the general comprehensions of men, &c. (H. E. I. 22542256). He continues always the same-(1.) In His existence He cannot cease to be (Ps. cii. 27). (2.) In His nature or essence He cannot cease to be what He is in every perfection. (3.) In His purposes (Isa. xlvi. 10, xiv. 24). (4.) In His promises to His people; in His threatenings against the wicked; and in all His predictions (Num. xxiii. 19).

2. All these declarations are in harmony with the teachings of Scripture and the conclusions of Reason. (1.) Scripture (Mal. iii. 6; Ps. xxxiii. 11; Isa. xliv. 10; James i. 17), &c. (2.) Reason. As God is self-existentcaused by none, so He can be changed by none. As He preceded all and caused all, so His sovereign will determined the relations which all things are permitted to sustain to Him. As He is infinite in duration, He cannot know succession or change. As He is infinite in all perfection of knowledge, &c., therefore He cannot change; for nothing can be added to or taken from the infinite-any change would make Him less than infinite before or after.

The unchangeableness of God is confirmed (1.) by the stability of His