Yet Thou in Thy manifold mercies forsookest them not in the wilderness… – Nehemiah 9:19

While God forgave His people He showed His readiness to pardon. He continued while they were in all these sins to guide them both by night and by day. The nineteenth verse says, “Yet Thou in Thy manifold mercies forsookest them not in the wilderness: the pillar of the cloud departed not from them by day, to lead them in the way; neither the pillar of fire by night, to show them light, and the way wherein they should go.” Only think of it, that very day they made a calf, when the sun went down the fiery pillar still lit up the camp. At that very hour in which they said “We will make to ourselves a captain, and go back to Egypt,” the cloud was covering the camp, and screening them from the burning heat of the sun. They sinned beneath the shade of special mercy. Oh, if the Lord had said, “Now I will leave you, I will give you no more guidance. Since you will not follow My commandments, go which way you will,” should you have wondered? If He had left them to faint in the heat of the day and grope in the darkness of the night would you have been surprised? Ah, but let us wonder to think that the Lord has guided us as pilgrims through this desert land: He has still been both sun and shade to us, even to this day, notwithstanding all our sin. Had He deserted us what countless evils had befallen us. Blessed be the mercy which faileth not.

My brethren, bless ye also the Lord that though He has often smitten you, and given you the bread of affliction and the water of affliction, yet He has not taken away your teachers from you, nor quenched the light of Israel. Still doth His good spirit enlighten and instruct the people. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1272.cfm