God Shall Purge our Iniquities Away

"Iniquities prevail against me: as for our transgressions, Thou shalt purge them away." -Psalm 65:3 [KJV]

My soul, ponder over this important verse. It is but short, but it is full of precious things. Blessed the man that can, from his heart, make use of what is here said as his own experience! He hath learned much of Christ, that can do so. In a time when a sense of sin abounds, when comforts run low, and the rebellion of the remains of indwelling corruptions riseth high; when the enemy cometh in like a flood, and no answers return from the sanctuary; yea, when the very spirit of prayer fails, and the heaven that is over the head, is as brass, and the earth that is under the feet, is as iron; then to rest simply upon Christ, and to say, "Iniquities prevail against me!"  

I feel the dreadful consequences of a fallen state; but all those transgressions Jesus will purge them away; though the Canaanites are yet in the land, my almighty Joshua will, by little and little, drive them out before me, until they are utterly destroyed; to say these things, and to know them, and, by a firm reliance on Jesus, to depend upon the accomplishment of them, is to have faith in lively exercise indeed! This is to rest on God the Father's covenant engagement, and Jesus's person and righteousness only, and at a time, when, of all others, perhaps faith is hard put to it, to call Christ our own.  

Oh! the blessedness of this state of the soul, when a sense of prevailing iniquities, instead of damping the actings of faith, becomes a stimulus to look to Jesus, and to call in His powerful hand to restrain, when a man is driven out of himself, to lay hold on the blessed Jesus! My soul, hast thou thus far advanced in the school of grace? Happy, happy indeed, if a daily sense of thy nothingness tends more and more to endear the Lord's all-sufficiency! And blessed will be the final issue of that divine teaching which brings thee at last most low and humble at the feet of Jesus, content to be nothing, yea, worse than nothing, that Jesus may have all the glory, who is alone worthy of it, in the salvation of His people. 

-Robert Hawker (1753-1827 A.D.)