By this therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged
God’s end in sending calamities and afflictions on His people
Motives to enforce this duty of complying with the Lord’s end, in afflicting and bringing calamities upon us.
1. Otherwise our calamities are like to continue.
2. This may increase the affliction upon you, add more weight, and put more sting into it.
3. This may multiply your afflictions, and make them come in upon you as waves and billows in a storm.
4. This may bring more grievous evils upon you than any you have yet met with.
5. The Lord may give you over and refuse to correct any more.
6. He may leave you to spiritual judgments. Outward afflictions are His rods, but these are His swords; and when upon incorrigibleness under those, He takes up these, His wrath is raised to the height.
7. This is the way to be rejected of the Lord; for those that are not His to be rejected wholly, for those that are His to be in part rejected Jeremiah 7:28-29).
8. This provokes the Lord to bring destruction. (D. Clarkson.)
Mortifying sin
If you would subdue your iniquity and mortify your sin--
1. Get mortifying apprehensions of it.
2. Get mortifying resolutions. Get your hearts resolved against sin; to prosecute it to the death; to engage all the strength you have, and can procure, in such a prosecution of it; resolve not to spare it; not to forbear it in the least; not to tolerate it, nor suffer it to have any quiet abode in any part of heart or life; not to enter into a parley or treaty with it; not to yield to any cessation, much less to make any peace with it, no more than the Israelites with those whom the Lord had devoted to destruction.
3. Get mortifying affections--affections which carry the heart from sin, or set it against it.
4. Get mortifying graces, three especially, love to God, faith in Him, and fear of Him.
5. Use mortifying means, those which the Lord has appointed for this end. (D. Clarkson.)