And shall we not rejoice and give thanks? Should we refuse, would not the stones cry out against us? Rejoice then we may and ought. But, O let our rejoicing be in the Lord and run in a religious channel. This, we find, has been the practice of God’s people in all ages. When he was pleased, with a mighty hand and out-stretched arm to lead the Israelites through the Red Sea, as on dry ground, ‘Then sang Moses and the children of Israel. And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand and all the women went out after her. And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to the Lord. For he hath triumphed gloriously.’ When God subdued Jabin, the King of Canaan, before the children of Israel, ‘then sang Deborah and Barak on that day, saying, “Praise ye the Lord for the avenging of Israel.”’ When the ark was brought back out of the hands of the Philistines, David, though a king, danced before it.
And, to mention but one instance more, which may serve as a general directory to us on this and such-like occasions: when the great head of the church had rescued his people from the general massacre intended to be executed upon them by a cruel and ambitious Haman, ‘Mordecai sent letters unto all the Jews that were in all the provinces of the King Ahasuerus, both nigh and far, to establish among them, that they should keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar and the fifteenth day of the same yearly, as the days wherein the Jews rested from their enemies and the month which was turned unto them from sorrow unto joy and from mourning into a good day: that they should make them days of feasting and joy and of sending portions one to another and gifts to the poor’ [Esther 9:20-22]. And why should we not go and do likewise?
~George Whitefield~
The Sermons of George Whitefield (Wheaton, IL; Crossway Books; 2012) Sermon 6: Britain’s Mercies and Britain’s Duty
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Other Whitefield Quotes at the Old Guys
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