Page:The works of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., late fellow of Lincoln-College, Oxford (IA worksofrevjohnwe3wesl).pdf/317



THE WILDERNESS STATE.

xvi. 22.

''Ye now have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.''

1. After God had wrought a great deliverance for Israel, by bringing them out of the house of bondage, they did not immediately enter into the land which he had promised to their fathers, but ''wandered out of the way in the wilderness'', and were variously tempted and distressed. In like manner after God has delivered them that fear him from the bondage of sin and Satan; after they are ''justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Jesus'', yet not many of them immediately enter into the rest which remaineth for the people of God. The greater part of them wander, more or less, out of the good way into which he hath brought them. They come as it were into a waste and howling desert, where they are variously tempted and tormented. And this some, in allusion to the case of the Israelites, have termed a wilderness-state.