A53721:415
A practical exposition on the 130th Psalm
A practical exposition on the 130th Psalm wherein the nature of the forgiveness of sin is declared, the truth and reality of it asserted, and the case of a soul distressed with the guilt of sin and relieved by a discovery of forgiveness with God is at large discoursed / by John Owen.
London: printed by Robert White for Nathaniel Ponder, 1669
AN EXPOSITION UPON PSALM CXXX. › General Scope of the whole Psalm. › Verse 4 › Section
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
These things being premised, we may consider what was the mind and aim of God in the Institution of this Worship. One instance, and that of the most solemn, of the whole kind, will resolve us in this enquiry, Lev. 16. 5. Two Kids of the Goats are taken for an offering for sin. Consider only (that we do not enlarge on particulars) how one of them was dealt withal, ver. 20, 21, 22. He shall bring the live Goat, and Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live Goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgression in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the Goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the Wilderness, and the Goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a Land not inhabited.
Let us see to what end is all this Solemnity, and what is declared ⟨p. 144⟩thereby. Wherefore should God appoint poor sinful men to come together, to take a Goat or Lamb, and to confess over his head all their sins and transgressions, and to devote him to destruction under that confession? Had men invented this themselves, it had been a matter of no moment. But it was an Institution of God which he bound his Church to the observation of upon the penalty of his highest displeasure. Certainly this was a solemn declaration that there is forgiveness with him. Would that God who is infinitely Good, and so will not, who is infinitely True, holy and faithful, and so cannot deceive, call men out whom he loved, to a solemn Representation of a thing wherein their chiefest, their eternal concernment did lye, and suffer them to feed upon Ashes? Let men take heed that they mock not God; for of a Truth God mocketh not man, until he be finally rejected by him. For four thousand years together then, did God declare by Sacrifices, that there is forgiveness with him, and lead his people by them to make a public Representation of it in the face of the world. This is a second uncontrollable Evidence of the Truth asserted, which may possibly be of use to souls that come indeed deeply and seriously to deal with God; for though the Practice be ceased, yet the Instruction intended in thern continues.