Unbounded Patience From Thoughts
of God by John McDuff 1864 How precious are your thoughts unto
me, O God! O how can I give you up, Israel? How can I let you go? How can
I destroy you like Adma or demolish you like Zeboiim? My heart is
torn within me, and my compassion overflows. No, I will not execute
the fierceness of my anger. I will not completely destroy
Israel. For I am God and not a mere mortal. I am the Holy One living among
you, and I will not come to destroy. Hosea 11, verses 8 and 9. What a tender unfolding of the
heart of God is here! It is a yearning thought of the
fondest of fathers over a nation of wayward prodigals. How grievous
had been their ingratitude! He speaks in the beginning of
the chapter of his loving thoughts to Israel when a child, and of
his specially gentle upbringing of them. I myself taught Israel
how to walk, leading him along by the hand, but he doesn't know
or even care that it was I who took care of him. I led them
with cords of human kindness, with ties of love. Yet, what
is the requital for all this endearing tenderness? My people
are bent to backsliding from me. Surely the next entry in
the divine record will be the sentence of righteous retribution.
Ephraim is joined to his idols. Let him alone. No. It is a burst
of fond parental love, such as at times is dimly pictured on
earth, when we see a mother with breaking heart and eyes dim with
weeping. Locking in her embrace the prodigal
boy who has wounded her, embittered her existence, and scorned her
tears. Listen to the tender apostrophe.
Oh, how can I give you up, Israel? How can I let you go? Give you
over, that is, to the vengeance of the enemy. He remembers the
cry of Sodom and Gomorrah of a former age and their sin, which
was very grievous. The iniquity of Israel can be
compared in turpitude only to that of these inhabitants of
the plain, on whom the Lord rained fire and brimstone from out of
heaven. Adma and Zeboiim were two adjoining
cities in the Valley of Sodom, which were involved in this terrible
overthrow. How, says he, how can I destroy
you like Adma or demolish you like Zeboiim? And then, when
he sums up with a declaration, I will not completely destroy
Israel, he gives as the reason, for I am God and not a mere mortal. Yes, truly your thoughts, O God,
are not as man's thoughts. Your ways are not as man's ways. Had they been so, long before
now how many of us would have been given up, and had executed
against us the guilty cumbers doom. the God we have so often
grieved and provoked by our obstinacy and rebellion, swearing in His
wrath that we should never enter into His rest. But for all this
His anger is turned away from us, His hand of mercy is outstretched
still. Well may we say with the stricken
monarch of Israel, let us fall now into the hand of the Lord,
for His mercies are great, and let me not fall into the hand
of man. Backslider, return. Though you may have tried the
patience of your god by years of provocation, Yet he still
keeps silence. He waits to be gracious. He is
not willing that any should perish. Let his goodness and patience,
his tenderness and long-suffering, lead you to repentance. Trembling
penitent, bow down under a sense of your base ingratitude, your
prolonged alienation. fearful lest a guilty past may
have cut you off from the hope of pardoning mercy. Return. You are saying, perhaps, in the
bitter reproach of self-abandonment and despair, I am given up. I am delivered over to the tyranny
of my spiritual enemies. The Lord has cast me off forever.
He can be favorable no more. No, hear his wondrous precious
thoughts, the musings of that infinite heart which you have
wounded. How shall I give you up? Man would crush his enemy,
but I am God and not man. I will not destroy, I will save
you. Behold, he says in another place,
You have spoken and done as many evil things as you could, yet
return unto me. My wayward children, says the
Lord, come back to me and I will heal your wayward hearts.