7. I will be glad and rejoice in thy mercy. For
mercy past he is grateful, and for mercy future, which he believingly
anticipates, he is joyful. In our most importunate intercessions, we must find
breathing time to bless the Lord: praise is never a hindrance to prayer, but
rather a lively refreshment therein. Those two words, glad and rejoice,
are an instructive reduplication: we need not stint ourselves in our holy
triumph; this wine we may drink in bowls without fear of excess. For thouhast considered my trouble. Thou hast seen it, weighed it, directed it,
fixed a bound to it, and in all ways made it a matter of tender consideration.
A man’s consideration means the full exercise of his mind; what must God’s
consideration be? Thou hast known my soul in adversities. God owns his
saints when others are ashamed to acknowledge them; he never refuses to know
his friends. Moreover, the Lord Jesus knows us in our pangs in a peculiar
sense, by having a deep sympathy towards us in them all; when no others can
enter into our griefs, from want of understanding them in experience, Jesus
dives into the lowest depths with us, comprehending the direst of our woes,
because he has felt the same. Jesus is a physician who knows every case;
nothing is new to him. When we are so bewildered as not to know our own state,
he knows us altogether. He has known us and will know us: O for grace to know
more of him! “Man, know thyself” is a
good philosophic precept, but “Man, thou
art known of God” is a superlative
consolation. Adversities is in the plural—“Many are the afflictions of the righteous.”
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