June 25 Daily Devotional

He decreed statutes for Jacob and established the law in Israel. As the reception or approbation of any doctrine by men would not be a sufficient reason for yielding a firm assent to its truth, the prophet proceeds further, and represents God as the author of what he brings forward. He declares, that the fathers were not led to instruct their children in these truths under the mere impulse of their own minds, but by the commandment of God. God not only acquired a right to the Jews as his people by his mighty power, but he also sealed up his grace, that the knowledge of it might never be obliterated. And, undoubtedly, it was then registered as it were in public records, when the covenant was ratified by the written law, in order to assure the posterity of Abraham that they had been separated from all other nations. It would have been a matter of very small importance to have been acquainted with, or to have remembered the bare history of what had been done, had their eyes not been, at the same time, directed to the free adoption and the fruit of it. The decree then is this, That the fathers being instructed in the doctrine of the law themselves, should recount, as it were, from the mouth of God, to their children, that they had been not only once delivered, but also gathered into one body as his Church, that throughout all ages they might yield a holy and pure obedience to him as their deliverer.

That they might set their hope in God.* The fathers, when they find that on the one hand they are the means of providing for the salvation of their children, should, by such a precious result of their labours, be the more powerfully stirred up to instruct their children. The children, on their part, being inflamed with greater zeal, should eagerly press forward in the acquisition of divine knowledge, and not suffer their minds to wander in vain speculations, but should aim at, or keep their eyes directed to, the right mark. It is unhappy and wretched toil to be “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 3:7).

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