God’s People Delivered
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By their own painful experience they learned the evil of sin, its power,
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its guilt, its woe; and they look upon it with abhorrence. A sense of
the infinite sacrifice made for its cure humbles them in their own sight
and fills their hearts with gratitude and praise which those who have
never fallen cannot appreciate. They love much because they have
been forgiven much. Having been partakers of Christ’s sufferings, they
are fitted to be partakers with Him of His glory.
The heirs of God have come from garrets, from hovels, from
dungeons, from scaffolds, from mountains, from deserts, from the
caves of the earth, from the caverns of the sea. On earth they were
“destitute, afflicted, tormented.” Millions went down to the grave
loaded with infamy because they steadfastly refused to yield to the
deceptive claims of Satan. By human tribunals they were adjudged the
vilest of criminals. But now “God is judge Himself.”
Psalm 50:6
. Now
the decisions of earth are reversed. “The rebuke of His people shall He
take away.”
Isaiah 25:8
. “They shall call them, The holy people, The
redeemed of the Lord.” He hath appointed “to give unto them beauty
for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the
spirit of heaviness.”
Isaiah 62:12
;
61:3
. They are no longer feeble,
afflicted, scattered, and oppressed. Henceforth they are to be ever with
the Lord. They stand before the throne clad in richer robes than the
most honored of the earth have ever worn. They are crowned with
diadems more glorious than were ever placed upon the brow of earthly
monarchs. The days of pain and weeping are forever ended. The King
of glory has wiped the tears from all faces; every cause of grief has
been removed. Amid the waving of palm branches they pour forth a
song of praise, clear, sweet, and harmonious; every voice takes up the
strain, until the anthem swells through the vaults of heaven: “Salvation
to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.” And all
the inhabitants of heaven respond in the ascription: “Amen: Blessing,
and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honor, and power, and
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might, be unto our God for ever and ever.”
Revelation 7:10, 12
.
In this life we can only begin to understand the wonderful theme
of redemption. With our finite comprehension we may consider most
earnestly the shame and the glory, the life and the death, the justice
and the mercy, that meet in the cross; yet with the utmost stretch of
our mental powers we fail to grasp its full significance. The length and
the breadth, the depth and the height, of redeeming love are but dimly