will it be when their great Deliverer appears for them! Conceive the state of mind of this remnant, on the veil being removed, and their beholding Christ, with the marks of the wounds in his body, appearing. visibly as their deliverer, to extricate them from their last bitter trouble. When all hope is gone, when half of their city is already captured-then they see Jesus of Nazareth come as their Deliverer, and stand on Mount Olivet. They recal all their blasphemies of his name for eighteen hundred years; his crucifixion, his rejection, their hatred and scorn; their persevering contempt and blasphemy, through so many generations, against their own long-desired King and Deliverer. O what remorse and bitter grief fills every bosom! How could we have been so blind? how could we have sinned against such a meek, tender, mighty and gracious King and Saviour? This is perhaps the deepest sorrow for sin that will ever agonize the human heart.

2. THEIR SANCTIFICATION. The affliction will be purifying. I will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried.

Under the law of Moses there was this ordinance for purifying the spoil taken in war: The gold, the silver, the brass, the iron, the tin and the lead, every thing that may abide the fire ye shall make it go through the fire and it shall be clean. Numb. xxxi. 22, 23. Thus passing through the fire is made the emblem of the means of purification. The soul is purified by the fire of trouble. This effect God has himself announced (Isaiah xlviii. 10), saying, Behold I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction. Speaking of the afflictions of Israel in another place (Isaiah xxvii. 9,) God says, By this shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged, and this is all the fruit to take away his sin. All affliction is not indeed thus purifying. It may even harden the soul to its final rebellion and destruction, according to

that inquiry, Why should ye be stricken any more? ye

will revolt more and more: which issued in, Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire; your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate as overthrown by strangers. But afflictions

sanctified by the grace of God, afflictions joined with the view of Christ crucified, are eminently purifying; and this is the peculiarity of this last Jewish trouble, I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and supplications; and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him. And then only will the promise be accomplished, Isaiah 1x. 22, Thy people shall be all righteous, they shall inherit the land for ever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glorified. We have a type of this (Dan. iii. 25) in Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego, passing through the burning fiery furnace, sustained by the personal and visible appearance of one like the Son of God walking through the fire. We have another clear prediction of this, Isaiah li. 16, I have put thy words in my mouth, and I have covered thee in the shadow of mine hand, that I may plant the heavens, and lay the foundations of the earth (that is, of the new heavens and new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness), and say unto Zion, Thou art my people. Their completed salvation is directly connected with the personal and visible return of our Lord, and their previous troubles. Psalm cii. 16, 17. When the Lord shall build up Zion, he shall appear in his glory; he will regard the prayer of the destitute, and not despise their prayer. And so it follows in my text.

3. THEIR COMPLETED SALVATION follows this. I will bring them through the fire. They shall call on my name and I will hear them. This spirit of prayer is often connected with the last times and Israel's deliverance. Thus Joel ii. 32, It shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be de

livered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the Lord hath said, and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call. The great tribulation then passes over from the Jews to the apostate Gentiles their oppressors, Joel iii. 7, 19. The hand of the Lord (it is said Isaiah Ixvi. 14) shall be known to his servants, and his indignation towards his enemies. For, behold, the Lord will come with fire and with chariots, like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire and by his sword will the Lord plead with all flesh. Thus shall at length the millennial kingdom be established. The full glories of the completed salvation of Israel, and its blessed effects on the whole earth, are the subjects on which the prophets delight to dwell. You may see it fully displayed in such chapters as Isaiah xi. and lx.

Zechariah brings it before us in its more spiritual aspect, in what we have next to consider.

IV. THEIR RENEWED ADOPTION AS THE PEOPLE OF GOD.

I will say, It is my people, and they shall say, The Lord is my God. You observe two things-God's recognized adoption of them; and their grateful confession of him. The same third part that is tried is converted. Hence I judge that this can only be completely fulfilled in days yet to come, and among the Jews restored to their own land.

1. GOD'S RECOGNIZED ADOPTION OF THEM. I will say, It is my people. This was their covenant privilege from the beginning. Exod. xix. 5. If ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people; for all the earth is mine: and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. But through their unbelief and disobedience they broke this covenant, and forfeited their privileges, as Hosea i. 9, 10, predicts.

God said, call his name Lo-ammi, for ye are not my people and I will not be your God. But with that prediction he immediately, as is usual in the full heart of God's love, often thus flowing over in the prophecies, connects with this rejection the glowing promise, Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered. And it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God. And afterwards he renews it—I will have mercy upon her that had not obtained mercy, and I will say to them which were not my people, Thou art my people, and they shall say, Thou art my God. Hosea ii. 23. This, indeed, is the great promise of the new covenant God has engaged to make with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, Jer. xxxi. 31-34. At present we Gentiles have been taken in their place. Through their fall, salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy. But the Gentile churches have been high-minded, instead of fearing. The Gentile churches have largely also apostatized through unbelief, and the people of Israel are about to be restored as God's covenant people. Nor let us be envious at this, but see in it another enlarging step of God's mercy to all our fallen race: his surprising goodness takes occasion, from the sins of one class, to bestow mercy upon others, and finally concludes all in unbelief, in order that he may have mercy upon all. The glories of the latter dispensation always also surpass and eclipse, in a fuller splendour of blessedness, the glories of the preceding. I cannot now however enter even on the great blessedness which follows this re-adoption of Israel; but our text proceeds to notice one thing farther.

2. THEIR GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE LORD. They shall say, the Lord is my

God.

At length the Jews shall confess Jehovah Jesus as

M

their God, their own God: at length he shall be not only the light to lighten the Gentiles, but the glory of his people Israel: at length the veil is removed from their eyes; they behold with unveiled face all the glory of the Lord in Jesus, their own Messiah, and are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

The source of all this is the free grace of God. The promise is absolute and unconditional: They shall say, though all the world should combine in unbelief and opposition; though all the world should contradict the divine purpose, and assert they will never say of Christ, the Lord is my God: God has pledged himself for it, and it cannot be broken. The nature of this acknowledgment is no vague, uncertain notion, but the confidence and joy of a living and appropriating faith-the Lord is my God: he is my all-sufficient portion; long have I hewn out broken cisterns, now I have returned to the true fountain of living waters, and every desire is met and satisfied in the possession of God, even my own God.

And there is no longer a selfish nationalism, that would keep the blessing from others: but they shall say, that is, there is an open confession of God our Saviour before the nations: there is a heartfelt, universal, and lasting acknowledgment of him before the world, which finally causes the Gentiles to rejoice with his people Israel, and to bring the glorious present of their hitherto ungathered brethren, as an offering unto the Lord out of all nations. Isaiah lxv. 17. God promises to create new heavens and a new earth, and in them to create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy. He also testifies, as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain. Nothing less than this is the glorious consummation; and the restoration of the Jews to their own land is as it were the bridge from our present low and