Reader! mark, I beseech you, what a gracious expostulation of the Lord is contained in these verses. The Lord retraces the subject from the beginning. He gives his people to see what they were, and what he is. He takes them by the hand, as it should seem, and leads them into retirement, to consider how gracious he hath been, and how unworthy they have proved. And in the close of this expostulation, that they might behold how magnified his grace had been, he gives them to understand that there was nothing in all this ungrateful conduct of theirs which surprised him: for from the womb he knew how very treacherously they would be found. Reader! remark, that of all the views to overwhelm the soul in the contemplation of sovereign grace and mercy, this seems the highest and the best: for it comes with the fullest tide. When the Lord gives grace, in direct opposition, as it were, to our undeservings and where sin aboundeth, that there grace should much more abound; what shall we call this? And was not the Lord Jesus so given? Did our nature, universally speaking, desire a Saviour? Did we ask the blessing? Did we know we needed this unspeakable mercy? Yea, did we not, everyone of us in heart and practice, if not in words, say, we will not have this man to reign over us? Reader! bring the subject home yet a little nearer, and make it personal: How were you engaged, when Jesus passed by and bid you live? Were you not in pursuit of things temporal, making, as the Apostle speaks, provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof. Nay, since the Lord called you by his grace, how have you manifested your sense of his grace, and your obedience? Had the Lord treated you, as you have treated him, where, even now, would have been your portion? Hath Jesus continued his love amidst all your undeservings; and still continues it; yea, doth he say to thee, as to Israel, in this expostulating scripture, I knew that thou wouldest deal very treacherously, and wast called a transgressor from the womb? Surely, under such views, if any where, the soul will bow down to the very dust of the earth, in admiring and adoring the riches of grace, which takes occasion from human misery, to display divine mercy, and to constrain every child of God to exclaim, with the Prophet, who is a God like unto thee? Micah 7:18-20.
Isaiah 48:3-8
3 I have declared the former things from the beginning; and they went forth out of my mouth, and I shewed them; I did them suddenly, and they came to pass.
4 Because I knew that thou art obstinate,a and thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass;
5 I have even from the beginning declared it to thee; before it came to pass I shewed it thee: lest thou shouldest say, Mine idol hath done them, and my graven image, and my molten image, hath commanded them.
6 Thou hast heard, see all this; and will not ye declare it? I have shewed thee new things from this time, even hidden things, and thou didst not know them.
7 They are created now, and not from the beginning; even before the day when thou heardest them not; lest thou shouldest say, Behold, I knew them.
8 Yea, thou heardest not; yea, thou knewest not; yea, from that time that thine ear was not opened: for I knew that thou wouldest deal very treacherously, and wast called a transgressor from the womb.