Ezekiel 20:43-44 And there shall you remember your ways, and all your doings, wherein you have been defiled… Manton says: "Old bruises may trouble us long after, upon every change of weather, and new afflictions revive the sense of old sins." We know one who broke his arm in his youth, and though it was well set, and soundly healed, yet before a rough season the bones cry out bitterly; and even so, though early vice may be forsaken, and heartily repented of, and the mind may be savingly renewed, yet the old habits will be a lifelong trouble and injury. The sins of our youth will give us many a twist fifty years after they have been forgiven. How happy, then, are those who are preserved from the ways of ungodliness, and brought to Jesus in the days of their youth, for they thus escape a thousand regrets. It is well to have a broken bone skilfully set, but far better never to have had it broken. The fall of Adam has battered and bruised us all most sadly; it is a superfluity of naughtiness that we should incur further damage by our own personal falls. The aches and pains of age are more than sufficient when every limb is sound, and recklessly to add the anguish of fractures and dislocations would be folly indeed. Young man, do not run up bills which your riper years will find it hard to pay; do not eat today forbidden morsels, which may breed you sorrow long after their sweetness has been forgotten. ( C. H. Spurgeon.) Parallel Verses KJV: And there shall ye remember your ways, and all your doings, wherein ye have been defiled; and ye shall lothe yourselves in your own sight for all your evils that ye have committed. |
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