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<p>Judgment had hitherto triumphed, but in these verses mercy rejoices against judgment. A sad end is made of this provoking people, but not a full end. The ruin seems to be universal, and <i>yet will I leave a remnant</i>, a little remnant, distinguished from the body of the people, a few of many, such as are left when the rest perish; and it is God that leaves them. This intimates that they deserved to be cut off with the rest, and would have been cut off if God had not left them. See <a class="bibleref" title="Isa.1.9" href="/passage/?search=Isa.1.9">Isa. 1:9</a>. And it is God who by his grace works that in them which he has an eye to in sparing them. Now,</p>
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<p class="tab-1">I. It is a preserved remnant, saved from the ruin which the body of the nation is involved in (<a class="bibleref" title="Ezek.6.8" href="/passage/?search=Ezek.6.8">Ezek. 6:8</a>): <i>That you may have some who shall escape the sword</i>. God said (<a class="bibleref" title="Ezek.5.12" href="/passage/?search=Ezek.5.12">Ezek. 5:12</a>) that he would <i>draw a sword after those</i> who were <i>scattered</i>, that destruction should pursue them in their dispersion; but here is <i>mercy remembered in the midst of</i> that <i>wrath</i>, and a promise that some of <i>the Jews of the dispersion</i>, as they were afterwards called, should <i>escape the sword</i>. None of those who were to <i>fall by the sword about</i> Jerusalem <i>shall escape</i>; for they trust to Jerusalem’s walls for security, and shall be made ashamed of that vain confidence. But some of them <i>shall escape the sword among the nations</i>, where, being deprived of all other stays, they stay themselves upon God only. They are said to <i>have</i> those who shall <i>escape</i>; for they shall be the seed of another generation, out of which Jerusalem shall flourish again.</p>
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<p class="tab-1">II. It is a penitent remnant (<a class="bibleref" title="Ezek.6.9" href="/passage/?search=Ezek.6.9">Ezek. 6:9</a>): <i>Those who escape of you shall remember me</i>. Note, To those whom god designs for life he will give <i>repentance unto life</i>. They are reprieved, and <i>escape the sword</i>, that they may have time to return to God. Note, God’s patience both leaves room for repentance and is an encouragement to sinners to repent. Where God designs grace to repent he allows space to repent; yet many who have the space want the grace, many who <i>escape the sword</i> do not forsake the sin, as it is promised that these shall do. This remnant, here marked for salvation, is a type of the remnant reserved out of the body of mankind to be monuments of mercy, who are made safe in the same way that these were, by being brought to repentance. Now observe here,</p>
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<p class="tab-1">1. The occasion of their repentance, and that is a mixture of judgment and mercy-judgment, that they were <i>carried captives</i>, but mercy, that they <i>escaped the sword</i> in the land of their captivity. They were driven out of their own land, but not out of the land of the living, <i>not chased out of the world</i>, as other were and they deserved to be. Note, The consideration of the just rebukes of Providence we are under, and yet of the mercy mixed with them, should engage us to repent, that we may answer God’s end in both. And true repentance shall be accepted of God, though we are brought to it by our troubles; nay, sanctified afflictions often prove means of conversion, as to Manasseh.</p>
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<p class="tab-1">2. The root and principle of their repentance: <i>They shall remember me among the nations</i>. Those who <i>forgot God</i> in the land of their peace and prosperity, who <i>waxed fat and kicked</i>, were brought to remember him in the land of their captivity. The prodigal son never bethought himself of his father’s house till he was ready to perish for hunger in the far country. Their remembering God was the first step they took in returning to him. Note, Then there begins to be some hopes of sinners when they have sinned against, and to enquire, <i>Where is God my Maker</i>? Sin takes rise in forgetting God, <a class="bibleref" title="Jer.3.21" href="/passage/?search=Jer.3.21">Jer. 3:21</a>. Repentance takes rise from the remembrance of him and of our obligations to him. God says, <i>They shall remember me</i>, that is, “I will give them grace to do so;” for otherwise they would for ever forget him. That grace shall find them out wherever they are, and by bringing God to their mind shall bring them to their right mind. The prodigal, when he remembered his father, remembered how he has <i>sinned against Heaven and before</i> him; so do these penitents. (1.) They remember the base affront they had put upon God by their idolatries, and this is that which an ingenuous repentance fastens upon and most sadly laments. They had departed from God to idols, and given that honour to pretended deities, the creatures of men’s fancies and the work of men’s hands, which they should have given to the God of Israel. They <i>departed from</i> God, from his word, which they should have made their rule, from his work, which they should have made their business. <i>Their hearts departed from</i> him. The heart, which he requires and insists upon, and without which <i>bodily exercise profits nothing</i>, the <i>heart</i>, which should be set upon him, and carried out towards him, when that <i>departs from</i> him, is as the treacherous elopement of a wife from her husband or the rebellious revolt of a subject from his sovereign. <i>Their eyes</i> also <i>go after their idols</i>; they doted on them, and had great expectations from them. Their hearts followed their eyes in the choice of their gods (they must have gods that they could see), and then their eyes followed their hearts in the adoration of them. Now the malignity of this sin is that it is spiritual whoredom; it is a <i>whorish heart</i> that <i>departs from</i> God; and they are <i>eyes</i> that <i>go a whoring after their idols</i>. Note, Idolatry is spiritual whoredom; it is the breach of a marriage-covenant with God; it is the setting of the affections upon that which is a rival with him, and the indulgence of a base lust, which deceives and defiles the soul, and is a great wrong to God in his honour, (2.) They remember what a grief this was to him and how he resented it. They shall remember <i>that I am broken with their whorish heart and their eyes</i> that are full of this spiritual adultery, not only angry at it, but grieved, as a husband is at the lewdness of a wife whom he dearly loved, grieved to such a degree that he is broken with it; it breaks his heart to think that he should be so disingenuously dealt with; he is broken as an aged father is with the undutiful behaviour of a rebellious and disobedient son, which sinks his spirits and makes him to stoop. <i>Forty years long was I grieved with this generation</i>, <a class="bibleref" title="Ps.95.10" href="/passage/?search=Ps.95.10">Ps. 95:10</a>. <i>God’s measures were broken</i> (so some); a stop was put to the current of his favours towards them, and he was even compelled to punish them. This they shall remember in the day of their repentance, and it shall affect and humble them more than any thing, not so much that their peace was broken, and their country broken, as <i>that God was broken</i> by their sin. Thus <i>they shall look on him whom they have pierced and shall mourn</i>, <a class="bibleref" title="Zech.12.10" href="/passage/?search=Zech.12.10">Zech. 12:10</a>. Note, Nothing grieves a true penitent so much as to think that his sin has been a grief to God and to the Spirit of his grace.</p>
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<p class="tab-1">3. The product and evidence of their repentance: <i>They shall loathe themselves for the evils which they have committed in all their abominations</i>. Thus God will give them grace to qualify them for pardon and deliverance. Though he had been <i>broken by their whorish heart</i>, yet he would not quite cast them off. See <a class="bibleref" title="Isa.57.17,Isa.57.18,Hos.2.13,Hos.2.14" href="/passage/?search=Isa.57.17,Isa.57.18,Hos.2.13,Hos.2.14"><span class="bibleref" title="Isa.57.17">Isa. 57:17</span>, <span class="bibleref" title="Isa.57.18">18</span>; <span class="bibleref" title="Hos.2.13">Hos. 2:13</span>, <span class="bibleref" title="Hos.2.14">14</span></a>. His goodness takes occasion from their badness to appear the more illustrious. Note, (1.) True penitents see sin to be an abominable thing, that <i>abominable thing which the Lord hates</i> and which makes sinners, and even their services, odious to him, <a class="bibleref" title="Jer.44.4,Isa.1.11" href="/passage/?search=Jer.44.4,Isa.1.11"><span class="bibleref" title="Jer.44.4">Jer. 44:4</span>; <span class="bibleref" title="Isa.1.11">Isa. 1:11</span></a>. It defiles the sinner’s own conscience, and makes him, unless he be past feeling, an abomination to himself. An idol is particularly called <i>an abomination</i>, <a class="bibleref" title="Isa.44.19" href="/passage/?search=Isa.44.19">Isa. 44:19</a>. Those gratifications which the hearts of sinners were set upon as delectable things the hearts of penitents are turned against as detestable things. (2.) There are many <i>evils committed in these abominations</i>, many included in them, attendant on them, and flowing from them, many transgressions in one sin, <a class="bibleref" title="Lev.16.21" href="/passage/?search=Lev.16.21">Lev. 16:21</a>. In their idolatries they were sometimes guilty of whoredom (as in the worship of Peor), sometimes of murder (as in the worship of Moloch); these were <i>evils committed in their abominations</i>. Or it denotes the great malignity there is in sin; it is an abomination that has abundance of evil in it. (3.) Those that truly loathe sin cannot but loathe themselves because of sin; self-loathing is evermore the companion of true repentance. Penitents quarrel with themselves, and can never be reconciled to themselves till they have some ground to hope that God is reconciled to them; nay, <i>then</i> they shall lie down in their shame, when he is pacified towards them, <a class="bibleref" title="Ezek.16.63" href="/passage/?search=Ezek.16.63">Ezek. 16:63</a>.</p>
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<p class="tab-1">4. The glory that will redound to God by their repentance (<a class="bibleref" title="Ezek.6.10" href="/passage/?search=Ezek.6.10">Ezek. 6:10</a>): “<i>They shall know that I am the Lord</i>; they shall be convinced of it by experience, and shall be ready to own it, <i>and that I have not said in vain that I would do this evil unto them</i>, finding that what I have said is made good, and made to work for good, and to answer a good intention, and that it was not without just provocation that they were thus threatened and thus punished.” Note, (1.) One way or other God will make sinners to know and own that he is the lord, either by their repentance or by their ruin. (2.) All true penitents are brought to acknowledge both the equity and the efficacy of the word of God, particularly the threatenings of the word, and to justify God in them and in the accomplishment of them.</p>
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