Considerations of God, rendering our waiting on him reasonable and necessary — His glorious being.
First, Let us consider the infinite glorious being of Jehovah, with his absolute, incommunicable, essential excellencies; and then try whether it doth not become us in every condition to wait for him, and especially in that under consideration. This course God himself took with Job to recover him from his discontents and complaints, to reduce him to quietness and waiting. He sets before him his own glorious greatness, as manifested in the works of his power, that thereby, being convinced of his own ignorance, weakness, and infinite distance in all things from him, he might humble his soul into the most submissive dependence on him and waiting for him. And this he doth accordingly, chap. xlii. 6: “I abhor myself,” saith he, “and repent in dust and ashes.” His soul now comes to be willing to be at God’s disposal; and therein he found present rest and a speedy healing of his condition. It is “the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy,” Isa. lvii. 15, with whom we have now to do: “He sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants of it are as grasshoppers before him; yea, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance; he taketh up the isles as a very little thing. All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted unto him less than nothing, and vanity,” Isa. xl. 15, 17, 22. To what end doth the Lord set forth and declare his glorious greatness and power? It is that all might be brought to trust in him and to wait for him, as at large is declared in the close of the chapter; for shall “grasshoppers,” a “drop of the bucket,” “dust of the balance,” things “less than nothing,” repine against, or wax weary of, the will of the immense, glorious, and lofty One? He that “taketh up the isles as a very little thing,” may surely, if he please, destroy, cast, and forsake one isle, one city in an isle, one person in a city; and we are before him but single persons. Serious thoughts of this infinite, all-glorious Being will either quiet our souls or overwhelm them. All our weariness of his dispensations towards us arises from secret imaginations that he is such a one as ourselves, — one that is to do nothing but what seems good in our eyes. But if we cannot comprehend his being, we cannot make rules to judge of his ways and proceedings. And how small a portion is it that we know of God! The nearest approaches of our reasons and imaginations leave us still at an infinite distance from him. And, indeed, what we speak of his greatness, we know not well what it signifies; we only declare our respect unto that which we believe, admire, and adore, but are not able to comprehend. All our thoughts come as short of his excellent greatness as our natures do of his, — that is, infinitely. Behold the universe, the glorious fabric of heaven and earth; how little is it that we know of its beauty, order, and disposal! — yet was it all the product of the word of his mouth; and with the same facility can he, when he pleaseth, reduce it to its primitive nothing. And what are we, poor worms of the earth, an inconsiderable, unknown part of the lower series and order of the works of his hands, few in number, fading in condition, unregarded unto the residue of our fellow-creatures, that we should subduct ourselves from under any kind of his dealings with us, or he weary of waiting for his pleasure? This he presseth on us, Ps. xlvi. 10, “Be still, and know that I am God;” — “Let there be no more repinings, no more disputings; continue waiting in silence and patience. Consider who I am. ‘Be still, and know that I am God.’ ”
Farther to help us in this consideration, let us a little also fix our minds towards some of the glorious, essential, incommunicable properties of his nature distinctly; as, —
1. His eternity. This Moses proposeth, to bring the souls of believers to submission, trust, and waiting: Ps. xc. 1,” From everlasting to everlasting thou art God;” — “One that hath his being and subsistence not in a duration of time, but in eternity itself.” So doth Habakkuk also, chap. i. 12, “Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord my God, mine Holy One?” and hence he draws his conclusion against making haste in any condition, and for tarrying and waiting for God. The like consideration is managed by David also, Ps. cii. 27. How inconceivable is this glorious divine property unto the thoughts and minds of men! How weak are the ways and terms whereby they go about to express it! One says, it is a “nunc stans;” another, that it is a “perpetual duration.” He that says most, only signifies what he knows of what it is not. We are of yesterday, change every moment, and are leaving our station to-morrow. God is still the same, was so before the world was, — from eternity. And now I cannot think what I have said, but only have intimated what I adore. The whole duration of the world, from the beginning unto the end, takes up no space in this eternity of God: for how long soever it hath continued or may yet continue, it will all amount but to so many thousand years, so long a time; and time hath no place in eternity. And for us who have in this matter to do with God, what is our continuance unto that of the world? a moment, as it were, in comparison of the whole. When men’s lives were of old prolonged beyond the date and continuance of empires or kingdoms now, yet this was the winding up of all, — such a one lived so many years, “and he died,” Gen. v. And what are we, poor worms, whose lives are measured by incises, in comparison of their span? what are we before the eternal God, God always immutably subsisting in his own infinite being? A real consideration hereof will subdue the soul into a condition of dependence on him and of waiting for him.