1. It becomes us to be deeply affected with the excommunication of the ancient people of God. In the temporary rejection of those two branches of the Hebrew nation, the truth is solemnly enforced, that the God of Zion is a God of government; and that he will be known by the judgments that he executeth. The casting out of the ten tribes for their impious idolatries, is full of instruction. The wonders God had done for them, and all their privileges in the land of promise, could not save, when they rejected the stated place of his worship, and united in the abominations of the open enemies of God. They should be excommunicated from the covenant, hurled from the promised land, and abandoned to a state of savage wretchedness, for two and a half millenaries. Their sin in those dark ages of the old dispensation was no trifle. Its consequence is held up as an awful warning to the world. It impresses the following language; "Know thou and see that it is an evil thing and bitter that thou hast forsaken the Lord" [Jer 2:19]. To that event people under evangelical privileges ought to turn their eyes, and take the solemn warning. The God of Abraham is a God of judgment; while blessed are all they that put their trust in him.
The judgments of Heaven on the Jews were still more dreadful. The Lord of that vineyard did indeed come in a day when they looked not for him, and in an hour when they were not aware; and did cut them asunder. He came and miserably destroyed those husbandmen, and burned up their cities, as he foretold. Upon their turning him off with hypocrisy and will-worship, and rejecting the Saviour, the denunciation, "Cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?" [Luke 13:7] was fulfilled with unprecedented decision. Let all rejectors of Christ, behold and tremble. The Jews were confident in a fancied
. security, to the last. But an impious confidence can never save. It is but a dead calm before a fatal catastrophe. Such presumptuous leaning upon the Lord, and saying, "Is not the Lord among us? no evil shall come upon us" [Micah 3:11]; was so far from saving, that it was a sure precursor of perdition, and of the coming of wrath upon them to the uttermost. Let gospel rejectors beware. "Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish" [Acts 13:41]. "Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall" [1 Cor 10:12].
2. How evident and rich is the entail of the covenant which will recover the two branches of the house of Israel! Truely they are "a nation of line, line; " (Isai. xviii. 2, in the Hebrew, and margin of the great Bible.) Though they be infidels, and rejected, and as touching the gospel are enemies for our sakes; yet as touching the election, (the entail of the covenant,) they are beloved for the fathers' sakes; Rom. xi. 28.—This entail insures their ingrafting again into their own olive tree, which shall be as life from the dead to the nations. This is the infallible hold upon them, which shall finally recover them again to Palestine, and to the covenant of their God. It is upon this covenant- hold upon them, that the God of Abraham promises to take away their stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh; to sprinkle them with clean water, and to make them clean; to put his spirit within them and cause them to walk in his statutes, and make them keep his judgments and do them; Ezek. xxxvi. 24—27. It is upon this entail, that God thus engages to bring them in under his new covenant, or the Christian dispensation; that their children shall be as aforetimes, and their congregations established before him; and "that all who see them shall acknowledge they are the seed which the Lord hath blessed" [Isa 61:9]; "that they are the seed of the blessed of the Lord, and their offspring with them" [Isa 65:23]. It will then be understood, that though blindness in part had happened to Israel, it was that the gentiles might take their place, and only till the fulness of the gentiles be come in; and then all Israel shall be saved. The Jewish church will thence be a kind of capital and model of the Christian world; see Isai. Ix. [Isa 65:3] and many other promises of the same tenor.
The entail of the covenant may be expected thenceforth to have its proper and perfect effect in the fulfilment of such promises as the following, which relate to that period; "I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring; and they shall spring up as among the grass, as willows by the water courses;" Isai. xliv. 3, 4.