O My people, remember now
A Divine reading
This chapter is a pathetical expostulation of God with His chosen people, the Jews, for their ungracious demeanour and miscarriage towards Him.
This expostulation is carried in a gracious manner. God pleads the justice and equity of His cause by a threefold argument.
1. By an attestation of the dumb and senseless creatures (Micah 6:1).
2. An appeal and reference to themselves.
3. A commemoration of many blessings bestowed upon them.
He insists upon three fundamental blessings, by all which He manifests His favour towards them, and aggravates their impiety and ingratitude against Him.
1. A redemption from a long and tedious bondage; from a grievous and miserable bondage, and from a vile and base bondage.
2. The placing of a gracious administration over them.
3. He watches over them, against all attempts of their malicious enemies. He defeated Balak and Balaam’s conspiracy. And this makes up the full sum and measure of God’s goodness to His people.
I. The commemoration itself. Here is a gracious compellation. “O My people.” It imports three things. It is a speech of claim and possession. It is a speech of love and affection. It is a speech of recall and invitation. Here is a forcible quickening of memory. “Remember now.” God appeals to His ancient mercies. He kept them upon record; registered them up in His holy Book; framed them into songs of commemoration; put them into the form of an oath; founded the sacrament of the passover as a commemoration. These remembrances are provocations of thankfulness, and obligations to obedience, and encouragements to faith.
II. The benefit or blessing to be commemorated.
1. Of the danger that beset them. Notice the ground of it; the manner of it; the matter of the conspiracy.
2. The issue out of this danger. The answer to Balak contains God’s gracious deliverance of His people from Balak’s malicious and wicked intendment. In it there is a strict prohibition, a gracious inversion, a just retorsion.
III. The end and purpose of this gracious deliverance. That ye may understand the righteousness of the Lord. (George Stradling, S. T. P.)
That ye may know the righteousness of the Lord--
The importance of just ideas of God
If idolaters are zealous in the service of imaginary deities, we ought much more to be engaged in the service of the one living and true God forever. The ideas which people entertain of their God do actually exert great influence, and produce interesting effects upon their disposition and conduct. It has been observed by men of the best information, that idolatrous nations have cherished the dispositions and indulged the vices which they have attributed to their deities. Virtue and vice are measured by the supposed disposition and character of their idols. The descendants of Abraham imagined that God was partial to them and vindictive to other nations. Hence they despised and hated the nations around them, and looked upon them as dogs and outcasts from God. Then it is easy to see the high importance of entertaining just notions of the Lord our God. If we believe that God is partial, arbitrary, and vindictive we shall cherish a similar disposition and practice, as far as we make any sober pretensions to religion. And we ought to imitate the moral character of God. See what results if we think God arbitrary, hard and revengeful, or passionate and wrathful. Our relations with our fellows will match our thoughts of our God. The same applies to better thoughts of God. It would be difficult to set in a just light the moral purity, excellence, and happiness of a character formed by such a glorious and perfect model as that of the infinite God, who is emphatically love. But most persons arrive at mature years without acquiring just, enlarged, and honorary notions of God, especially on some important points and traits of character. How shall this evil be remedied? By a careful attention to the Bible, where the character of God is fully revealed. By excluding from the character of God everything that appears to be hard and unreasonable, partial and vindictive--everything that would be thought unreasenable and unworthy in a good man, a wise and affectionate parent, or an upright and compassionate judge. (Ezra Ripley, D. D.)