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As if he had said, "By growing weary and faint in your minds, you will plainly show and evidently declare, that you have forgotten that exhortation which God gives, Proverbs 3." The want of a diligent consideration and due remembrance of God's promises, recorded in scripture for our encouragement unto duty, and support under difficulties, is very sinful, and of dangerous consequence unto our souls. Ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you,-
Note here, 1. A sweet and endearing compellation, My son.
Learn hence, That good men, when under the greatest trials and heaviest afflictions, are God's sons; he calls them sons, and he deals with them as with sons.
Note, 2. The nature of the saints' afflictions declared; not judgments, out chastisements, and fatherly rebukes; the original word signifies such a correction as a father gives a child for his instruction, and bringing him to a sense of his duty.
Learn hence, That all the afflictions which God lays upon his children are not the effects of his vindictive anger, but the fruits and effects of his paternal love.
Note, 3. A cautionary direction given against two very dangerous extremes in the time of affliction, namely, despising correction, and fainting under it. It is the duty, and ought to be the endeavour, of all the children of God, when under his fatherly hand, to take care that they neither despise his chastisements, nor faint under them.
When God has taken away one of our comforts, to say, "Let him take all if he will; if my children must die, let if he will; if my children must die, let them die; if my estate must go, let it go;" -this is to despise. God cannot bear to see us bear his hand thus lightly.
The other extreme is fainting: If when goods are taken away, the heart is taken away, and whe relations die, the spirit of a person dies with them: Despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint, &c.