“The stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of your land, O Immanuel.” Isaiah 8:8
THE people of God were at this time in very great tribulation. Apostate Israel had united with Syria, their neighboring nation, and in that confederacy they proposed to go against Jerusalem and vex it, and make a breach therein, and to set up for a king the son of Tabeal; the word Tabeal means “the good god,” the son of the good god; and the true God, as represented by his truth, never has been good yet in the eyes of the world; the holy prophets were not good in the eyes of the world, the Lord Jesus Christ was not good in the eyes of the world, and the truth and people of God are not good now in the eyes of the world. Therefore, they proposed to set up Tabeal, the son of the good god, a god very different from that that is represented by the truth of God. Is it any wonder that the Savior should say that “if it were possible, they should deceive the very elect!” However, the Lord did then as he always will do; he encouraged his few and solitary ones and told them not to be afraid of these two smoking firebrands, namely, the king of Syria and the king of Israel; and so, they were swallowed up very soon. Now Isaiah was to have a son, and he was to call his name Maher-shalalhash-baz; and, before the child could know good from evil, this land should be forsaken of both her kings; that is, that the king of Syria and the king of Israel should very soon be overcome; all tending to show what a blessed thing it is to cleave to the Lord, and to stand out decided for him. And, while this Immanuel literally was the son of Isaiah the prophet, yet you see in Matthew 1 that the same word is applied to the Lord Jesus Christ, showing that it has a mystical, spiritual, and ultimate meaning; therefore, for I shall give in some measure an accommodative meaning to the text this morning. I shall notice what Immanuel’s land is by nature. “The stretching out of his wings”, we will take this to be the wings of the enemy, “shall fill the breadth of your land, O Immanuel.” Secondly, we will take the text circumstantially, expressive of tribulation; and thirdly we will take it in the ultimate glory that is here meant, that there is another kind of scene of things that shall fill the breadth of Immanuel’s land.
We notice, then, first, what Immanuel’s land is by nature. Now it is said in Jeremiah 51:5, “For Israel has not been forsaken, nor Judah of his God, of the Lord of hosts, though their land was filled with sin against the Holy One of Israel.” Thus, we have our first point, Immanuel’s land is filled with sin against himself. This is our state by nature, filled with sin; and we shall have specially to notice the point that that is directed “against the Holy One of Israel.” So that the adversary, in stretching out his wings and stretching out his power, has thus engulphed the whole human race. It is one of the greatest mercies that can be bestowed upon us to make us see and feel that by nature we are full of sin and have nothing but sin to call our own; that, when tested by the law of God, we are obliged to come to the conclusion that the word of God itself comes to. When tested by that law that is divinely spiritual, holy, just, and good, we find that in the flesh dwells no good thing; that the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. This is the state we are in by nature. I will not here meddle with some of the mysteries that we are obliged to leave. There are several mysteries in and connected with our existence that it is of no avail to try to explain. There are curious inquirers that want us to explain certain mysteries; but we must accept the facts of things and must leave the reasons. That evil was permitted to throw angels into remediless woe is a fact; but the reason of its being permitted we cannot explain. Why the whole human race is dead in sin, and all became children of wrath by the fall of Adam; why the Lord permitted this there is nothing, in my opinion, fully to explain. I do not think that even the eternal salvation of some at all explains the reason why God permitted the whole human race to become what they are; and that a part of the human race shall wither to endless ages in unalterable agonies is another mystery we cannot explain. These are the tremendous facts, and they are the testimonies of the self-existent and infinitely wise God; and our wisdom is to admit the facts, but not attempt to explain the reasons, for we know not the reason; secret things belong unto the Lord; those that are revealed belong unto us. The questions to which I have referred works sometimes in the minds even of the children of God, and very well might stagger them; for there are many things through life that are very opposite to what we request and seek of the Lord, and many of those things we cannot well explain; and, were not our God infinite and too wise to err, we should indeed be at sea without a rudder or compass; but we have this blessed word to assure us that he works all things after the counsel of his own will; and it is not needful to our welfare that we should be able to explain what he himself has not explained. Our business, then, is to know that sin is infinitely hateful to God; that we by nature all full of sin, and therefore infinitely loathsome to the pure nature of the most high God, and that we by nature are children of wrath, even as others. So that sin has indeed filled the whole breadth of Immanuel’s land; and when the apostle has pointed out what we are by nature, he then says of those who are distinguished from others, the whole election of grace, “Are we better than they? In no way.” There is, therefore, by nature no difference; “who, then makes you to differ?” But we must come again to that scripture, “filled with sin against the Holy One of Israel.” Now, why is the Lord Jesus Christ called the Holy One of Israel? The general interpretation is that he is called the Holy One of Israel because he is holy, but for the life of me I never could feel satisfied with that view of the matter. But if I take the high priest under the law as a type of Christ in that character of the Holy One of Israel, then I can understand it; that as the priest ceremonially put away the sin of the people, and the priest met by the sacrifice the fire that might have fallen upon the people, and as the priest went into the holy of holies and represented the people, and did ceremonially sanctify the people and consecrate them to God, and bore on his mitre the beautiful inscription, “Holiness unto the Lord;” so I can understand why Jesus Christ is called the Holy One of Israel, because it is by him that we are freed from sin, by his atonement, that it is by his righteousness that we are righteous, by his goodness that we are good, by his salvation that we are saved. Notice the language, that “the land was filled with sin against the Holy One of Israel.” There is not anything, in any age of the world, against which the carnal mind has so show them so much enmity as against Christ as the Holy One of Israel. Why, say they, do you hold that doctrine, that you are to be made holy by the holiness of another, that you are to be made righteous by the righteousness of another, that you are to be made good by the goodness of another, that you are to be made heavenly by the heavenliness of another, that you are to be made pleasing to God by the goodness of another who was pleasing to God? Why, say the pious world to this day, such a doctrine as this is most dreadfully detrimental to the morality of the world. Why, it is a doctrine that calls for no good works or anything else. It is all very well, say they, to hold the doctrine of Christ saving sinners; but to hold that you are entirely free from sin, sinless by believing in him, and that you are really justified from all things by simply receiving his righteousness; and everlastingly dwelling upon this: say they, Why, it is really very detrimental to the morality of the world. Hence the greater part of the preaching in the present day is little else than a succession of moral lectures; it is true, they do it in the name of Jesus Christ, but there is no delighting in him as the Holy One of Israel. And what is the reason for this? Why, because men are not convinced of their depravity in in their hearts; all their goodness lies outwardly; if you keep the outside of the cup and platter clean, you are the most pious man in the world, you are the best Christian alive; when at the same time the heart heaves with enmity against the liberty of the gospel, against what Jesus Christ really is to a poor, lost, perishing sinner. So, all of us by nature are full of blind enmity against Christ. Take Saul of Tarsus as a kind of sample of the whole, was there any one thing against which he felt such enmity as against the Lord Jesus Christ, against the idea of a substitute, against the idea of our being forgiven entirely by the riches of God’s grace, and saved entirely by the one offering and substitution of the Lord Jesus Christ? Here, then, all our enmity is directed. So, the stretching out of the adversary’s wings has filled Immanuel’s land with sin, with sin against Christ Jesus the Lord. But I ought, in this part, to say a word or two about the cure. Now the Lord convinces all his people, all his own, all that he intends to save, of their internal depravity; he convinces them of what he convinced Saul of Tarsus, that he had nothing in him but all manner of concupiscence. Ah, how he could truly and most emphatically, after that conviction of his sin, say,
“Black, I to the Fountain fly, Wash me, Savior, or I die.”
But let us look at this Holy One of Israel, let us see what is said of him in his substitutional work, and then let us see what is said of the people whose sins he has put away, or did put away. Now the Lord says, “Behold, the stone that I have laid before Joshua;” that, of course, is Christ: he was the foundation laid in God’s counsel before the world was as John expresses it, “the lamb slain from the foundation of the world;” “upon one stone shall be seven eyes, behold, I will engrave the graving thereof.” This stone shall undergo the graving, the seven eyes denoting completeness of perfection. Now go to Hebrews 2 and get a scripture to explain this graving which this living stone underwent and see what he achieved; and then come back to Zechariah 3 and see how beautifully the two accord. In Hebrews 2, it is said “It became him, for whom are all things, and by him are all things, in bringing many sons into glory, to make the captain”, or as the original word properly means, the Prince, “of their salvation perfect through suffering.” How does he bring “many sons unto glory”? Why, by being made perfect through sufferings. So, then he brings in by his suffering’s eternal perfection, and that eternal perfection brings them all to glory. That perfection brings us now, in time, into the sweet fellowship with the blessed God; it lights up a dying bed, it indissolubly unites the soul to the Great Eternal; no separation. Now notice, “upon one stone shall be seven eyes:” he will undergo the graving; and the apostle shows, in Hebrews 2, that Christ thereby became perfect; that is, a perfect and eternal salvation to a poor sinner, and he thereby brings the people unto glory. Now in Zechariah 3, what are the next lovely words? “And I will remove the iniquity of that land”, Immanuel’s land, “in one day;” and the enemy shall no more be able to so stretch his wings as to fill Immanuel’s land with sin against Immanuel; for when any soul taught of God finds out the secret, and sees the infinite and eternal value of the dear Savior, that soul shall never learn war against Gods Christ after that; that soul shall beat its hither-to warriors sword against the truth into a ploughshare; that soul shall beat its spear of enmity, with which it slandered and tried to injure the cause of the great Mediator, it shall beat that spear into a pruning-hook, and shall come into peaceful unity with the blessed God. “In that day, says the Lord of hosts, shall you call every man his neighbor under the vine and under the fig tree.
But just look at the character of the people that are brought savingly out of the condition they are in by nature into oneness with Christ. Isaiah 29: “In that day shall the deaf hear the words of the book.” Ah, this Holy One of Israel embodies all the words of life; “You have the words of eternal life.” “The deaf shall hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity, and out of darkness.” And what shall they see? Why, they shall see that Jesus Christ is the end of sin, that he has brought in eternal righteousness. “The meek also,” for those whose eyes are opened are meek and down before God, “the meek also shall increase their joy in the Lord, and the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.” Oh, how true it is! And one with the sweet intensity of feeling says, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” “The poor among men”, notice, it is the man that knows his poverty, his destitution, and his lost condition as a sinner, “shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel;” that is, shall rejoice in Christ as the sanctification, justification, life, light, salvation, in a word, his all in all. Then let us have another scripture, Isaiah 12: “Fear not, you worm Jacob.” What a poor worm I feel myself to be. I feel I am a poor, withered, worthless, helpless creature before God. I am speaking no fancy; I am speaking what a long series of years has established over, and over, and over again; the Lord knows what poor creatures we are, and that we are infinitely worse than we know we are. None of us fully knows our badness, none of us fully know the depth of our fall, none of us fully recognizes the full wretchedness we are under by nature; God alone knows the full depth thereof; “the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it?” None but God himself. Therefore, he has provided a remedy that is deeper than the disease; and if the remedy be deeper than the disease, and we cannot fathom the disease, much less can we fathom the depth of the remedy. Hence, I loathe, detest, and abhor all the miserable remedies that men bring forward of creature doings to heal me of that deep, damnable disease under which I am by nature. None but that ransom that is deeper than hell, high as heaven, broader than the sea, longer than the earth, can be a remedy for such. It is a mercy to know our state, to know whereby nature we are, in blind and deadly enmity; and then for the eyes to be opened, and for us to be brought to rejoice in this Holy One of Israel; and then to go on to find out what poor weak creatures we are. “Fear not, you worm Jacob.” After the Lord speaking of us in this our degradation, if the Holy One of Israel does not come in as the remedy, then I will stop; I will not preach my sermon but give out a hymn and close the service. We will go on and see if I am wrong. I will not leave off if I am right. “Fear not, you worm Jacob, and you men of Israel; I will help you, says the Lord, and your Redeemer the Holy One of Israel. Behold, I will make you a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth.” Ah, I know what that is, that is the new covenant, and the teeth will bite pretty hard too; there is nothing bites the adversary so much. Preach the gospel: it tears the devil all to pieces; it tears his irreligious all to pieces; it tears his religions all to pieces. “I will make you a new sharp threshing instrument, having teeth; you shall thresh the mountains;” whether it be sins or tribulations, or nations combined against you; though the mountains be as big as the mountains of Popery and the mountains of Rome; whatever they may be, “you shall thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and shall make the hills as chaff. You shall fan them, and the wind”, the Eternal Spirit of God, setting in from the everlasting hills,” shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them; and you shall rejoice in the Lord, and shall glory in the Holy One of Israel.” I thought it was coming, so I will not leave off; I will go on now, and glory in the Holy One of Israel; and while I may, to see my mountain is sins turned into chaff, and to see all the attempts of the adversary turned into chaff, and to see all these things become as the chaff of the summer flood threshing floor, carried away. Surely, we may hear exclaim, O Immanuel, what have you wrought! Oh Immanuel, you have indeed removed the iniquity of your land. Sin filled your land from end to end; not one but was filled with sin, and now there is not one whose sin is not removed, carried away, blotted out, cast into the depths of the sea. “The stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of your land, O Immanuel.” So, then I think I have made three things clear. First, that all of us by our fall in Adam, which was the work of the devil, are full of sin; secondly, that the Lord Jesus Christ has put away all that sin; and thirdly, that those who rejoice in him are those that have heard the words of the book; “He that believes,” that is, the words of the book, “shall be saved and whose eyes are thereby opened to see out of obscurity and out of darkness. These are they that increase their joy in the Lord and rejoice in the Holy One of Israel; those who see what mountainous impediments stand in the way and feel what poor worms they are. But the Lord steps in, and by him all things evaporate into thin air, and they shall rejoice in the Lord, and glory in the Holy One of Israel. Ah, my hearer, can you enter a little into sympathy with the words of one when he said, “My soul shall make her boast in the Lord,” glory in his holy name? “I will go in the strength of the Lord God; I will make mention of your righteousness, even of yours only.”
Such, then, is our state by nature, enmity against the Holy One of Israel. I could say a great deal upon this, for we live in a very peculiar age; a vast amount of hedonism we have in our land in the Christian name, and such hollow preaching, with gospel enough in it to decoy some of the weakest of the household of faith, and hold them in bondage for years; and if you attempt to stand out for the liberty that is in Christ, you go down directly, you sink directly; you are one of the worst and most pestilential fellows on the face of the earth. Never mind; be it so: there must be something to prove (for God says it is so) that the carnal mind is enmity against God.
But, secondly, tribulation. The Assyrian king was to come into Judea up to the very neck, up to Jerusalem; and the searching out of the wings of those hostile kings or powers was to “fill the breadth of your land, O Emmanuelle.” And so, the king of Assyria did; he came with 185,000 men, a pretty large army; and he had destroyed a great many gods, a great many cities, and a great many nations; and there he was come just very near Jerusalem. It was a time of great tribulation; the people had no earthly defense whatsoever; they were but few in number, and everything seemed to be against them. The Assyrian king had already done enough on most to reduce them to famine, for he had so ravaged over the land that the people were driven, and they could not cultivate their fields. Therefore, when the Lord gave promise of deliverance, Well, said the people, if we have deliverance from the enemy our fields are all barren, and we shall be starved, that it will be all over with us then. No, the Lord says, you shall eat this year such as grows of itself. I will take care there shall be enough there for you; you shall neither need to plough nor sow. There are a few grains left in the earth, and I can make each grain bring forth a thousandfold. You cannot go into your fields to plough and sow; leave the matter to me, I will provide for you. And so now do not our comforts come to us sometimes in that spontaneous and wonderful way that we are astonished at the Lord’s mindfulness of us and care of us? And then the Lord says, In the second year also I will bring you harvest and vintage; you shall eat that that grows of itself in the second year; and then in the third year you will be able to plough and sow comfortably; we shall go on together then. But you cannot go on now, so I will do it all; and then, when you can plough and sow, we will go on together. So when you are shut up, and cannot read the Word, and cannot pray, and cannot do anything, well, the Lord says, you cannot come to me now, so I will come to you; and you cannot even use the means, so I will bless you without the means. What a mercy it is that our God is independent of all! In ancient times, when heathen nations were carried away captive, their gods were carried away also; they themselves went into captivity. Our God went to Babylon, but he was not in captivity any more for that; no, he went to Babylon, but the Lord had his way in Babylon. Now, you three Antinomians, we have got you and your God too in bondage; here is a furnace for you. Very well, cast us into the furnace; and if you can roast ns, you can eat us, but pray roast us first. So, they cast them into the furnace; but the Lord soon showed that he was not in captivity to Babylon, but that Babylon was in captivity to him. Now, you atheist Daniel, that do not believe in our thousand and one gods, will very soon put you into the lions’ den. Very well, my God is not in captivity to the lions, but he can show that the lions are in captivity to him. Now all this is written to encourage us amidst most trying circumstances to trust in the Lord our God, if we are friends to his dear Son; for all that are believers in him and love him are friends of God, and for them the Lord will appear. Tribulation, you must have trouble in this world one way or the other. I seem to understand better than I used to the Savior’s words, when he said, “take no thought of tomorrow;” for really sometimes something will occur in the day, some tidings or another, that catch you up and distress you, and I don’t know what all; and you begin to think how you will get through tomorrow under that trouble; you don’t know. Take no heed, leave it with the Lord; it is a great thing to be able to do so. And while we live in a world of tribulation, these things are written for our learning that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, the best of all, comfort, might have hope. Now I will not here occupy your time in noticing the arguments of the adversary, but we see how they were in the dark. Hezekiah and those with him were in the light. And Hezekiah had not taken away God’s altars, he had taken away those that were set up in the name of the Lord, but they were the devil's altars; and Hezekiah was determined to have but one altar of sacrifice, but one altar of incense, one high priest, one God, one way of access to him. So, the people of God were not much alarmed. Well, if we cannot conquer these stubborn people, we will make a proposition to them. Well, what is it? Why, that they will give you two thousand horses if you are able to set riders upon them, and then you may go away into a land like your own. Ah, the people are in a covenant with God not to accept your horses. “Ashur”, Assyria, “shall not save us: we will not ride upon horses: neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, You are our God; for in you the fatherless,” the solitary, the desolate, the outcast, the poor, the needy, the wretched, the miserable, “finds mercy.” And we read that Isaiah was sent to the Lord’s people, and he preached a sermon to them; and it is astonishing what that did; the people could hardly keep still while he was preaching. “Thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria, He shall not come into the city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shields, nor cast a bank against it.” Bless the Lord for that. While I am preaching a sermon to you, I will tell you what I have to say to the king of Assyria; that you, king of Assyria, that boast of having overturned the nations and their gods, and done such wonders, “the Virgin, the daughter of Zion, has despised you, and laughed you to scorn; the daughter of Jerusalem has shaken her head at you.” And what will become of this adversary? Well, the Lord says, I will send the blast upon his powers, and when he goes back to his own land, his neck shall be broken there. So, the Lord sent a blast upon them; the king returned to his land, and was killed there, and so the Lord’s people were delivered. I don’t know any circumstance in the history of the Old Testament that is more expressive of the work of faith than that great deliverance from the power of the king of Assyria; that circumstance has been a great help to me many times. I have looked at the few that were on the Lord side, at the many that were against them; I have looked that the weakness of the Lord’s few, and the strength of the adversary; I have looked at the fact that not one carnal weapon was used by the Israelites, simply faith in God, simply prayer to God; and when a blasphemous letter was sent, Hezekiah did the best thing he could do, he spread it before the Lord. I dare not here, because of your time, bring in other scriptures to illustrate this beautiful subject, beautiful I mean to the Lord’s people as expressive of the deliverances which he will work for them and all this by faith in Christ. I must quote one scripture out of the five or six that smilingly present themselves, Zechariah 10, just to show that all these deliverances are founded upon what the Savior has wrought “He,” Christ Jesus, “shall pass through the sea with affliction;”, is not the sea there the world, and our sins, and God’s wrath? “and shall smite the waves in the sea, and all the deeps of the river shall dry up;” that is, Christ shall work victory. What is the consequence? “The pride of Assyria shall be brought down, and the scepter of Egypt shall depart away. And I will strengthen them in the Lord; and they shall walk up and down in his name, says the Lord.”
But we come to the last part. The third and last sense in which there are wings to be stretched out to fill the land of Immanuel we must now come to. We have seen how sin filled the land, we have seen how tribulations filled the land; but now the scene changes altogether; we shall now take the wings to mean the wings of God’s power and presence, filling Immanuel’s land with God himself; filled with all the fullness of God; the stretching out of his wings of mercy and the power shall fill the breadth of your land, O Immanuel. We will now take the text in the ultimate glory that is here meant. You observe that here is an intensity, “your land, O Immanuel;” that word is used to give intensity to this clause. It seems to say, O Immanuel, what a burden you will have to bear, what a life you will have to live, what a death you will have to die, what a scene you will have to pass through! And shall it be so that many waters shall not, when you pass through that scene, quench your love, nor floods drown it? Nor did it. The Savior when he reappeared to his disciples, showed the same love to them after passing through this scene that he had before. Secondly of Immanuel, what a victory you have wrought, what a glory have you obtained what wonders have you achieved! O Immanuel, what are all the acquirements, achievements, honors, and doings of the mightiest men on earth when compared with your mighty doings and having brought out the endless deliverance of countless millions, who, apart from your anointing blood, must have sunk to hell forever: but by the blood of your everlasting covenant they are brought out of the pit were in there is no water, into that living land where the blessed God will be unto them as a place of broad rivers and streams, the rivers of his pleasures, to make them happy forever. Thirdly, O Immanuel, you are all I want. How adapted you are to me! He is the adaptation unto us of infinite wisdom. It was infinite wisdom that contrived the exact adaptation of Christ in his complexity, and I feel as though I could die ten thousand mortal deaths, and I hope you feel the same, before I could admit any one creature thought, doctrine, saying, or doing, into connection with the work of Immanuel. His righteousness is the righteousness of God; his blood is the blood of God; his salvation is the salvation of God, and as infallible as God himself. It is by his mediatorial work that he gathers the lambs in his embrace; it is by that that he carries them in his bosom. O Immanuel how adapted you are to my precious soul; how adapted you are to all my necessities! I do love you I do adore you; I do admire you; I do rejoice in you. And then, fourthly, look at the intensity when you get to heaven. O Immanuel, what have you brought us to! What have you brought us from, and brought us by, and brought us to! Everlasting fullness of joy and pleasures for evermore. I had almost said if we sing one of our hymns concerning our God that “here he smiles, and smiles forever,” and that Jesus looks, and loves and smiles what must be the uniform, entire, intense approbation with which our immortal eyes shall look upon him in the bright realms of bliss, where we shall see him as he is, and be like him! Oh, he will see that he has effectively and entirely won our hearts and souls, and he will be as happy with us as we are with him, and that forever more. “O Immanuel!” And in many other respects this intensity may apply. There is not a scripture from Genesis to Revelation that has a better conclusion than our text, “Immanuel,” “God with us;” that is the conclusion now friends, my most solemn and earnest prayer for you, and for myself as well, is that we may realize while we live, and when we come to die, and forever, the same conclusion, Immanuel, God with us. That is all I want, to know that God is, and always will be, with us. The 21st of Revelation explains very beautifully what is meant by “Immanuel,” the word meaning “God with us.” “I heard a great voice out of heaven, saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men,” Immanuel, God with us; “he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.” Then what is the conclusion? “And wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. I offer, then, in conclusion a word of exhortation: whatever you do, hold sacredly the truth as it is in Jesus, and see to what a blissful end you are hereby to be brought; you are, by Immanuel, to be presented to God: holy, and un-blamable, and unreprovable in his sight; that is, if you continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the Gospel. See, then, what a delightsome land shall be Immanuel’s land! the winter past, the rain over and gone, and a God of love all and in all.
Should we not, then, ever be ready to endure hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ? should we not put on the whole armor of God, that we may stand against the wiles of the devil, and so go on in the service, the holy and glorious service of God until Immanuel’s land shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
Immanuel, God with us: what else can be so lovely? a hope and assurance for life to walk by faith in Immanuel with God; what on earth can equal this? God with us: we must prevail; God with us, death itself to us will be but a shadow; and at the same time, eternal gain. Well might the Psalmist say, “How excellent is your loving- kindness, O God; therefore, the children of men (that are taught of God) put their trust under the shadow of your wings;” so shall the glory of God fill Immanuel’s land.
See, then, how instructive our text is. First, full of sin, to be convinced of that, and receive the dear Savior as the deliverer, the great essential. Secondly, filled with tribulation, bitterness, and gall very often: “Call me no more Naomi, call me Mara, for the Lord has dealt bitterly with me, and the Almighty has afflicted me.” Never mind, it will end by and by. Then see the sweet conclusion, that he shall thus terminate this tribulation: there shall be no more pain, but they shall rejoice in the Lord their God, and reign for ever and ever. Amen.