SEE AND BE SENSIBLE.

SEE AND BE SENSIBLE.

Psalm 25:11 For thy names sake, oh LORD, pardon mine iniquity and my guilt; For they are great.

WE should see our misery, and be sensible of our need for mercy.
They who are not sensible of their misery cannot truly look to GOD for mercy; for it is the very notion of divine mercy, that it is the goodness and the grace of GOD to the miserable.
WITHOUT misery in the object, there can be no exercise of mercy. To suppose mercy without supposing misery, or pity without calamity, it is a contradiction:
therefore men cannot look upon themselves as proper objects of mercy, unless they first know themselves to be miserable; and so unless this be the case, it is impossible that they should come to GOD for mercy.
THEY must be sensible that they are children of wrath; that the LAW is against them, and that they are exposed to the CURSE of it: that the wrath of GOD abideth upon them; and that HE is angry with them every day while they are under the guilt of SIN.
THEY must be sensible that it is a very dreadful thing to be the object of the wrath of GOD; that it is a very awful thing to have HIM for their enemy; and that they cannot bear HIS wrath.
THEY must be sensible that the guilt of SIN makes them miserable creatures, whatever temporal enjoyments they have; that they can be no other than miserable, undone creatures, so long as GOD is angry with them: that they are without strength, and MUST perish, and that eternally, unless GOD help them.
THEY must see that their case is utterly desperate, for anything that anyone else can do for them;that they hang over the pit of eternal misery; and that they must necessarily drop into it, if GOD have not mercy on them.
(Puritan Jonathan Edwards 1668– 1759)