serve the younger. Jacob was the father of the patriarchs, the head of the tribes of Israel; and every object of God's election, every subject of his free grace, and unchanging love, is denominated a son of Jacob. Let us pause and enquire, are we of this number? They are not all Israel that are of Israel. The children of the promise are counted for the seed. † Have you chosen God for your God? Have you valued the birthright with Jacob? Have you been willing to lay hold on God's covenant? Have you declared yourself on the Lord's side? Have you been born of God-have you overcome the world? Do you follow Christ? Then are ye the sons of Jacob:-then, because Jehovah changes not, ye are not consumed. say 1. Ye are not consumed with eternal destruction. The sons of Jacob come into the world like others deserving wrath and eternal damnation. Their original corruption renders them subject to death and hell; their actual transgressions prove them individually guilty, and obnoxious to divine wrath; and it is only the unchangeableness of God that has rescued them from deserved judgments. O Christians! feel this truth, and adore that grace, in consequence of which ye are out of hell. Look back on your past course-consider your present conduct-contemplate the future! What were you doing before you knew God? Corrupt and abominable, ye committed iniquity with greediness, though perhaps with a fair shew in the flesh. But with what uncleanness were you not stained? Look at the long black catalogue of crimes which have been perpetrated by the lost in hell, and of which you were innocent? Methinks I hear you say, guilty, guilty; unclean, unclean; yet, you are not consumed. Trace your conduct since you returned to him, from whom you had deeply revolted: had not your heart gone back again? have you not said, I will go after my lovers who gave me my corn, and my wine, and my flax, and my wool? You have presumed on God's electing love, on his mercy, on his forbearance, on his long-suffering; and this broken staff, has, perhaps, been bound round with a negative, or positive righteousness of your own vain imagination, so that your aggravations since you have known him, have been greater than they were before you knew him. And leaning on some broken reed of Egypt not merely your hand but your soul was pierced. | Think of yourself now: your daily forgetfulness, your continual short comings, your misimprovement of talents, your perpetual variableness in all your affections towards God. One hour your heart flames with love to Christ; the next 'tis cold as death. Now you are full of holy desires after Christ, grace, his glory; and can say, The desire of my soul is to the remembrance of thy name; § but soon there is not one holy his Gen. xxv: 23. † Rom. ix: 8. ‡ Hos. ii: 5. || Isa. xxxvi: 6. § Isa. xxvi: 8. 4-Vol. 3. breathing in you. To day you delight in God's ways, and have the Holy Spirit within you, leading you to say, Oh how I love thy law; * but to-morrow, and you find no sweetness in one, and no pleasure in the other; you drive on heavily; every duty becomes a burden; and every thought of God oppresses. Now you dread to sin; anon you forget that God seeth you. One moment you buckle on the armour for the heavenly warfare; but the first temptation carries you away, and you start aside like a broken bow. How frequently do you fall from love to coldness; from faith to unbelief; from holy fear to carnal security; from obedience to rebellion; from delight in God, to neglect of him! And what shall we say of the future? Will it be better with you in future, than it has been in times past? Will you be stronger, holier, more watchful and prayerful, in times to come? Alas! if your salvation depend on this, you are lost for ever. I am the Lord, I change not. This is the cause, and shall ever be the only cause why you are not consumed. 2. Ye are not consumed in temporal ruin, nor under present trials. God's love to his saints is the great security both to the Church and to the world. Many a nation hath been delivered for the sake of the righteous that were therein; and so with smaller communities, God said to Abraham, If there be ten righteous in Sodom, I will spare the city for their sake. ‡ And though judgments come upon a people, and all feel the scourge yet the command of the Lord is, Say ye to the righteous, it shall be well with him: || not one hair of their head shall perish. § 3. The sons of Jacob are not consumed with fear, that God should take away his love from them; for he changeth not. Doth God always act towards his people according to a settled rule? He often changes in his dispensations, but never in his disposition. His love is some times vailed, but it does not vary; it is sometimes clouded, but never changed. Love under a cloud is still love. The material sun may be eclipsed for a season, but it is still the sun; and though it may be hidden from us many successive days, it does not lose a beam of its light, or a ray of its splendor when the interposing obstacle is removed, it shines as cheeringly and gloriously as ever. God's anger endureth but a moment; in his favor is life; weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. Who that feels this will not join with the Psalmist, and say, How excellent is thy loving-kindness, O God, therefore shall the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings.** This loving-kindness is better than life. † it is to be preferred before many worlds of creature comforts. God's love is all good, all comfort, all happiness; in its fountain, fulness and purity, it is an eternal, never-failing spring *Ps. exix: 97. + Hos. vii: 16. TPs. xxx: 5. Gen. xviii: 32. **Ps. xxxvi: 7. Isa. iii: 10. tt Ps. lxiii: 3. Ι of sweetness; an unvariable fountain of delight: in it there is grace, all grace; peace, all peace; joy, all joy; satisfaction, all satisfaction; rest and solace, all rest and solace. O believer! look upon the love of God to you; look upon it, and in it you will find unsearchable riches, unmeasurable fulness, unfathomable depths; and, which crowns all, eternal unchangeableness. Friends change, comforts change, I myself change, but God's love to me changes not; the believer is for ever in his heart, nor can men or devils cast him out. He sometimes afflicts his children, but never ceases to love them; he sometimes breaks them with breach upon breach; but yet he loves them. Notwithstanding my sins, which he hates, he loves me; and after a while, in the best time, because his time, I shall bathe in the fountain of his love, and never sin again. Oh! who would not long for this love! He loves his own unchangeably, he pardons, he purifies he makes perfectly holy. A little while, and, however feeble, yet if a child of God, you shall be brought into his presence, and lodged in his bosom. III. We are to make some reflections which seem naturally to arise from the subject. 1. Believers may rest in his love. God hath made it over to them, in consideration of what Christ hath done, when he was aware they never had deserved it, and never could. Nay, he says, I knew thou wouldest deal very treacherously, and wast called a transgressor from the womb; nevertheless, for mine own sake have I done it; for how should my holy name be blasphemed. † They may rest in his love, because they have chosen him to be their God. They have joined with Jesus in his covenant, and laid hold on him, and said, We have trusted in thee, O Lord; and in thy word thou hast caused us to hope: ‡ and then he assures them, that he will never turn away from them to do them good. || They rest in his love, because he rests on them. The Lord hath chosen Zion, he hath desired it for his habitation; this is my rest for ever, here will I dwell for I have desired it. § Oh with what confidence may the soul repose in God, when it sees that God delights in his people for Christ's sake! They stand complete in him; in his beauty, in his righteousness, in his completeness: and as he views his own handy-works he says, Behold thou art all fair, my love, there is no spot in thee. T 2. We may feel a calm security in that love. Sometimes unbelief may suggest, What though God changes not, I may change from my present purpose; and my interest in him may change. That cannot be. This God is our God for ever and ever. "The chief good," says Austin, "which is God, is ** *Job xvi: 14. + 1sa xlviii: 8, 11. + Ps. cxix: 49. § Ps. cxxxii: 13-14. ¶ Cant. iv: 7. Jer. xxxii: 40. **Ps: xlviii: 14. neither given to such as are unwilling to have him, nor taken away from such as are unwilling to part with him:" and again, "No man does or can lose thee, O God, unless that he is willing to lose thee, and go without thee." O my soul, as long as thou art willing to have God thine, so long he will be thine; yea, more; thine interest in him depends not upon thy willingness of it, but upon his unchangeable love and covenant: and his love and covenant both must change, before thy willingness to cleave to him, and thine interest in him can change. 3. Christians should aim to be followers of God, and to be as steadily fixed in their love towards him, as he is in his love towards them. ye Be ye Be followers of God as dear children.* imitators of him. Is he unchangeable? Labor after a holy unchangeableness in your spirits, and walkings before him. Christians, whereto ye have already attained, walk by the same rule, and mind the same things. † Seek after, and pray for more fixedness and evenness in your spiritual temper; more consistency and uniformity in all grace and holiness, in all heavenly-mindedness and spiritual obedienee; and more uniform perseverance in all acts of duty, and walking with God. It is a great thing to be established, strengthened and settled in God. Do you begin every day with the enquiry, where is my master Jesus? where is Christ my beloved one? Commence nothing without him. Go not into the world without him as thy companion. Never be seen separate from him! The Father says to Christ, Lift up thine eyes round about, and behold: all these gather themselves together and come to thee: as I live saith the Lord, thou shalt surely clothe thee with them all, as with an ornament, and bind them on thee as a bride doth. | Be thou, Christian, to him as a girdle; then thou shalt partake of his Spirit, and have communion with him for thine abiding consolation. We 4. We should be humbled for our changeableness. We live, it is to be feared, more upon the creature than upon God; hence our perpetual changes. We are often happy as we are happy in the creature, and sorrowful, as comfort fails in the creature. know that every thing but God is empty; that we may take the finger and write vanity of vanities, upon every creature comfort. § We know that God is the only good, and yet we commit two evils, we forsake the fountain of living waters, and hew out to ourselves broken cisterns, that can hold no water. Alas! we drink impure water from many a cistern, when we might have the wine of life dropping from the precious cluster. Let us be humbled for these things, and praise God again for his immutability, who supplies all our need, according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. T * Eph. v: 1. + Phil: iii: 16. Isa. xlix: 18. 5. We may infer from God's unchangeableness, the absolute necessity of a change in sinners. Man is by nature so unlike God, that if he be saved at all, and made eternally happy, there must be a change either in God, or in him. But there can be no change in God; therefore it must be in man. The word of God declares, that Jesus came to save his people from their sins: * that the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the people that forget God; that into heaven nothing can enter that defiles: that without holiness no man shall see the Lord. So all the Scriptures must be falsified, if man can be eternally happy without a change of heart. The nature of God forbids it. He hath no pleasure in sin. It is what he hates. What fellowship hath light with darkness? The foolish shall not stand in his sight; he hates all workers of iniquity. § God can as soon cease to exist as cease to be holy; so an unchanged sinner can no more enter heaven than God be absent from it, or cease to exist. His whole scheme of salvation requires it. Whom he did foreknow, he did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son; and without this, the soul is not justified, cannot be glorified. To enter heaven the soul must be changed; must be justified freely by grace through the redemption that is in Christ; and must be renewed by the Holy Ghost. Sinner you have not this change. Hitherto you have sought peace where peace cannot be found. You have sought the living among the dead. †† O seek to God for this divine change; and then being changed into his image, thou shalt enjoy his favor, and see him as he is. ‡‡ 6. Lastly, we infer from hence, God's unchangeableness in his punishment of incorrigible sinners, those who reject the only Savior. The unchangeable promises, and the unchangeable threatenings, both come from the lips of him that cannot lie. His love is not more sweet than his wrath is bitter. His love is not more to be desired than his wrath is to be dreaded: and what must be your condition, sinner, if you fall under it? You are now often afraid of the wrath of man; but, who art thou, that thou shoudest be afraid of a man, that shall die, and the son of man which shall be made as grass and forgettest the Lord thy Maker? §§ A little while and man's wrath shall die, but the wrath of God abideth for ever. Foolish creature that despisest God's wrath, as if it were but an inconsiderable thing: hence thy wilful, daily provokings of his anger, and thy unconcern at the tokens of his wrath: hence thy neglect of Christ and his salvation; thy contempt, both of his hatred and of his love. You will; sigh and groan upon a dying bed, though surrounded by friends' * Mark i: 21. + Ps. ix: 17. Rev. xxi: 27. || Heb. xii: 14. § Ps. v: 4, 5. T Rom. viii: 29. **Rom.iii: 24. ++ Luk. xxiv: 5. # 1 John. iii: 2. I Tit. i: 2. §§ Isa. li: 12, 13. |