THE MOURNING CHRISTIAN’S HEAVENLY CORDIAL

(Continued)

The wheels (i.e.), the motions of revolutions of providence are full of eyes; they are welladvised and judicious motions, “Non caeco impetu volvuntur rotae”; they run not at random. The most regular and excellent working, must needs follow the most deep end perfect counsel. “He is deep in counsel, and excellent in working.”—(Isa. 28:29).

Now every affliction that befals God’s covenanted people, being placed by the most wise and infinite counsel of God, in that very order, time and manner, in which they befal them, this very affliction, and not that, at this very time, and not at another (it being always a time of need, 1 Peter 1:6), and ushered in by such forerunning occasions and circumstances; it must follow, that they all take the proper places, and nick exactly the fittest seasons; and if one of them were wanting, something would be defective in the frame of your happiness. As they now stand, they work together for your good, which displaced, they would not do.

It is said, Jer. 18:11, “Behold I frame evil, and I devise a device.” It is spoken of the contrivance and frame of afflictions, as the proper work of God. The project of it is laid for his glory, and the eternal good of his people. It turns to their salvation, Phil. 1:19. But oh how fain would we have this or that affliction screwed out of the frame of Providence, conceiving it would be far better out than in. O if God had spared my child, or my health, it had been better for me than now it is. But this is no other than a presumptuous correctiing and controlling of the wisdom of God; and so he interprets it, “He that reproveth God, let him answer it.”—Job 40:2. God hath put every affliction upon your persons, estates, relations, just where you find and feel it; and that whole frame he hath put into the covenant, in the virtue whereof it works for your salvation; and therefore let all disputings and reasonings, all murmurs and discontents cease, nothing can be better for you, than as God hath laid it; and this one would think should heal and quiet all. You yourselves would mar all, by presuming to mend any thing. “Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being his counsellor, hath taught him? With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him the path of judgment ? and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding?” — Isa. 40:13. 14. Well then, be satisfied it is best as it is; and nothing can be so advantageous to you, as God’s project and contrivance; which you are so uneasy under, and dissatisfied about.

Argument IV.

As the covenant sorts and ranks all your troubles into their proper classes and places of service, so it secures the special gracious presence of God with you, in the deepest plunges of distress that can befal you; which presence is a full relief to all your troubles, or else nothing in the world is or can be so.

The very heathens thought themselves well secured against all evils and dangers, if they had their petty household gods with them in their journeys: but the great God of heaven and earth hath engaged to be with his people, in all their afflictions and distresses. As a tender father sits up himself with his sick child, and will not leave him to the care of a servant only; so God thinks it not enough to leave his children to the tutelage and charge of angels, but will be with them himself, and that in a special and peculiar way: so run the express words of the covenant, “I will not turn away from them to do them good, but I will put my fear into their hearts; and they shall not depart from me.”—Jer. 32:40. Here he undertakes for both parts, himself and them. I will not, and they shall not.

Here is the saint’s security for the gracious presence of God with them, a presence which dispels all the clouds of affliction and sorrow, as the sun scatters the morning mists. The God of all consolation is with you, O poor, dejected believers; and will not such a presence turn the darkness into light round about you? There is a threefold presence of God wtih his creatures;

1. Essential, which is common and necessary to all.

2. Gracious, which is peculiar to some on earth.

3. Glorious, which is the felicity of heaven.

The first is not the privilege here secured; for it is necessary to all, good and bad. In him we all live, and move, and have our being. The vilest men on earth, yea, the beasts of the field, and the very devils in hell, are always in this presence of God; but it is their torment, rather than their privilege. The last is proper to the glorified saints and angels. Such a presence embodied saints cannot now bear; but it is his special gracious presence which is made over and secured to them in the covenant of grace; and this presence of God is manifested to them two ways,—

1. Internally, by the Spirit;

2. Externally, by Providence.

1. Internally, by the Spirit of Grace dwelling and acting in them. This is a choice privilege to them in the day of affliction; for hereby they are instructed and taught the meaning of the rod. “Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, and teachest him out of thy law.”—Psalm 94:12. O, it is a blessed thing to be taught so many lessons by the rod, as the Spirit teacheth them! Surely they reckon it an abundant recompense of all that they suffer. “It is good for me that I have been alfficted, that I might learn thy statutes.”—Psalm 109:71. Yea, he refreshes as well as teaches, and no cordials revive like this. “In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight my soul.”—Psalm 94:19. Yea, by the presence and blessing of his Spirit, our afflictions are sanctified to subdue and purge out our corruptions. “By this shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged, and this is all the fruit to take away sin.”—Isaiah 27:9. Now, if a man be instructed in the ends and designs of the rod, refreshed and comforted under every stripe of the rod, and have his sins mortified and purged by the sanctification of the Spirit upon his afflictions, then both the burdensomeness and bitterness of his afflictions are removed and healed by the internal presence of the Spirit of God with his afflicted ones. But,

2. Besides this, God is providentially present with his people, in all their troubles, in a more external way, ordering all the circumstances of their troubles to their advantage. He orders the degree and extent of our afflictions, still leaving us some mercies and comforts to support and refresh us when others are cut off. In measure doth he debate with his covenant people, staying the rough wind in the day of the east wind. He might justly smite all our outward comforts at once, so that affliction should not rise up the second time; for what comfort soever hath been abused by sin is thereby forfeited into the hand of judgment. But the Lord knows our inability to sustain such strokes, and therefore proportions them to our strength. We have some living relations to minister comfort to us when mourning over our dead. He makes not a full end of all at once. Yea, and his providence supports our frail bodies, enabling them to endure the shocks and storms of so many afflictions without ruin. Surely there is as much of the care of Providence manifested in this, as there is in preserving poor crazy leaking barks, and weather-beaten vessels at sea, when the waves not only cover them, but break into them, and they are ready to founder in the midst of them.

O what a singular mercy is the gracious presence of God with men! even the special presence of that God, “who is above all, and through all, and in you all,” Eph. 4:6; as the Apostle speaks. Above all, in majesty, and dominion; through all, in his most efficacious providence; and in you all, by his grace and Spirit. As he is above all, so he is able to command any mercy you want, with a word of his mouth; as he is through all, so he must be intimately acquainted with all your wants, straits, and fears; and as he is in you all, so he is engaged for your support and supply, as you are the dear members of Christ’s mystical body.

Objection.—But methinks I hear Gideon’s objection rolled into the way of this sovereign consolation. If God be with us, why is all this evil befallen us?

Solution.—All what? If ‘it had been all this rebellion and rage against God, all this apostacy and revolting more and more, all this contumacy and hardness of heart, under the rod; then it had been a weighty and stumbling objection indeed; but to say, If God be with us, why are all these chastening corrections and temporal crosses befallen us ? why doth he smite our bodies, children, or estates ? is an objection no way fit to be urged by any that are acquainted with the scriptures, or the nature and tenor of the covenant of grace ? Is afflicting and forsaking all one with you ? must God needs hate, because he scourgeth you? I question whether Satan himself hath impudence enough to set such a note or comment upon Heb. 12:6, “For whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.”

No, no, Christian, it is not a chastening rod, but the denying of such a favor, and suffering men to sin with impunity, and go on prosperously in the way of their own hearts—that speaks a rejected man, as the next words (vers 7), informs you. As he never loved you the better for your prosperity, so you may be confident he loves you never the less for your adversity: and will not this close and heal the wounds made by affliction? What, not such a promise as this, “I will be with him in trouble,” Psalm 91:15. Will not such a presence revive thee? What then can do it? Moses reckoned that a wilderness with God, was better than a Canaan without him. “If thy presence go not with me (saith he) then carry us not hence.”— Exod. 33:15. And if there be the spirit of a Christian in thee, and God should give thee thine own choice, thou wouldst rather choose to be in the midst of all these afflictions with thy God, than back again in all thy prosperity, and among thy children and former comforts, without him.

(Continued next month)

‘Have you ever seen the wicked one? When you see men strolling about the fields and shores on the Lord’s day, then you see him.’

‘Have compassion (he said in prayer) on thy poor ones encompassed with their corruptions; but was not thine own tabernacle with badgers’ skin?’

‘In the times of the prosperity of the church, the Lord’s servants ploughed with four horses —faith, love, discernment, and zeal; but as the church declined, faith became lame, love got sick, discernment lost the sight of an eye, and zeal died, so that many do the work with the two horses of carnal reason and human learning.’

‘Have you heard the mournful cry of the bee on getting no honey from flower after flower? Even so gracious souls mourn when, in the various means of grace, they fail ‘to meet with “Christ.’

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