40. How often did they provoke him in the wilderness. Times enough did they rebel: they were as constant in provocation as he
was in his patience. In our own case, who can count their own errors? In what
book could all our perverse rebellions be recorded? The wilderness was a place
of manifest dependence, where the tribes were helpless without divine supplies;
yet they wounded the hand which fed them while it was in the act of feeding
them. Is there no likeness between us and them? And grieve him in the desert.
Their provocations had an effect; God was not insensible to them; he is said to
have been grieved. His holiness could not find pleasure in their sin, his
justice in their unjust treatment, or his truth in their falsehood. What must
it be to grieve the Lord of love! Yet we also have vexed the Holy Spirit, and
he would long ago have withdrawn himself from us, were it not that he is God
and not man. We are in the desert where we need our God; let us not make it a
wilderness of sin by grieving him.
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