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SAFETY IN TIMES OF DANGER

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SAFETY IN TIMES OF DANGER

11 minuten leestijd Arcering uitzetten

“Come My people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee; hide thyself, as it were, for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast. For, behold, the Lord cometh out of His place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain.” Isa. 26:20,21.

MY friends, it is a very hard matter for people to be made sensible of their sins, and danger by reason of sin, so as to flock to Christ. Oh what a mercy were it, if, when we hear of the Lord’s coming to judgment, we were fearing, and fleeing from the wrath to come! At the voice of the Lord the birds will cry, the beast will roar, the hinds will calve, the cedars will shake, the mountains will tremble; but men and women, though endued with rational souls, and hearing His threatening voice in His Word, yet neither fear His voice nor tremble at His Word, nor flee from His wrath to His mercy, nor from their sin to the Saviour, to save them from sin and wrath. This text is a call upon the back of a song. After singing, the church may prepare for suffering. It is said of the disciples, after their last communion with Christ, “When they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives,” the place of suffering and trial. The songs of the temple do not exclude sufferings; but may be preparatory of them.

Omitting many doctrines, take this one: That in shaking times, when wrath is threatened upon a sinful people, such is the care that God hath for the safety and security of His Own, that He wills them to come into their chambers, and not stay without doors to be exposed to the violence of the storm that is coming.

I. When is it evident that a storm of Divine wrath is coming upon a land, and that the Lord is about to come out of His place to punish the inhabitants of the earth?

(1) When all manner of sins abound, and these become national, such as those mentioned: Hosea 4:1-3, “There is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land; by swearing and lying, and killing, and stealing and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood.” Together with back-sliding from God’s covenant, hypocrisy, and lukewarmness. When people are lukewarm, God will spue them out of His mouth, Rev. 3:16. Incorrigibleness, Deut. 28:20. When they persecute the servants of God, II Chron. 36:16. When universal security prevails, as it did over the old world, Jer. 5:11,12. Falling from their first love, Rev. 2:4,5. Obsti-nancy in sin, oppression of the poor and fatherless, Covenant-breaking, loathing of the heavenly manna, despising the gospel, the Word of God. Scoffing at religion and good men, Psalm 37:13, 14. When error abounds, II Thess. 2:11,12. Unbelief, the mother sin, Psalm 78:20-23. Pride, corrupting the worship of God, disobedience to the call of God, upon whatever pretence, and following false light.

(2) It is evident that a storm of wrath is coming upon a land, when people’s sins are aggravated. When they are the sins of Jerusalem, a professing people, then six angels were sent to destroy them, while only two were sent to Sodom, Ezek. 9:2, “And behold six men came from the way of the higher gate which lieth toward the north, and every man’s slaughter weapon in his hand.” When sins are committed against much light, against many checks of conscience, many beams of light, many means of grace, many calls of providence, many instances of mercy and Divine goodness; and against the patience and forbearance of God, Rom. 2:4,5.

(3) When the patience of God is not only abused, but laughed at, ridiculed, by a profane age, that begin to say (II Peter 3:4) : “Where is the promise of His coming?” Where is the threatening of His coming to judgment? Then is the Lord angry and will let men know that He is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness, though He is long suffering to usward; and that He is not slack concerning His threatening, but will render vengeance to His enemies, Deut. 32:41.

(4) It is an evidence that the Lord is about to punish the inhabitants of the earth, when there are few or none to stand in the gap, and keep out the wrath that is coming in: “And I sought for a man among them that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before Me for the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found none. Therefore have I poured out Mine indignation upon them, I have consumed them with the fire of My wrath; their own way have I recompensed upon their own heads, saith the Lord God,” Ezek. 22:30,31. Then it is the time for the birds to fly into their nests, the storm is aproaching. When good men are taken away, and there is a great scarcity of them: “the righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart; and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come” Isa. 57:1. It is on this account that the Prophet Micah cries out, “Woe is me, for the good man is perished out of the earth, and there is none upright among men.” Sometimes the aspect of providence prophesies this to all that have eyes in their head.

II. We come now to speak a little of the respect the Lord hath to the safety and security of His Own people when a storm is coming. And here we may consider (1) the reasons why; and (2) the manner how He secures them. He will do so for the reasons following.

(1) Because He loves them with a peculiar love. Hence the Psalmist prays that the Lord would let him see the good of His chosen; says he, “That I may rejoice in the gladness of Thy nation, that I may glory with Thine inheritance” Ps. 106:5. The love of God is above all love; and it is a tender and compassionate love. He loves His people, and therefore can protect them in time of danger: “As a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that love and fear Him” Ps. 103:13. “Though He visit their iniquities with rods, yet His loving kindness will He not utterly take from them” ‘Ps. 89.

(2) He will take care of their safety because of His relation to them; He being their God and they His people; He their King and they His subjects. He is indeed King and Lord of all the earth, but theirs in a special sense. He is their Shepherd and they the sheep of His pasture; and because He is their Shepherd, they shall not want protection or provision in straits. He is their Father and they His sons and daughters: will He not take care of His children? He is their Husband :and will He not take care of His spouse? “No man hateth his own flesh, but nourisheth it, even as the Lord the Church,” Eph. 5:29.

(3) The Lord will provide for the security of His people because of the constant intercession of Christ for them in heaven; for He is their Advocate, appearing in the presence of God for them. There are some who have been given to Christ by the Father, whom He will take care of and protect by His prayers: “I pray for them. I pray not for the world, but for them which Thou hast given Me.” John 17:9. The preservation of the remnant is owing to Christ’s prayer and intercession. See this clear from Zech. 1:12, 13, “Then the Angel of the Lord answered and said, O Lord of Hosts, how long wilt Thou not have mercy on Jerusalem, and on the cities of Judah, against whom Thou hast had indignation these three-score and ten years? And the Lord answered the Angel that talked with me, with good words and comfortable words.”

(4) The Lord will take care of His Own because of His promise engaged for their security: Psalm 27:5, “For in the time of trouble He shall hide me in His pavilion: in the secret of His tabernacle shall He hide me; He shall set me upon a rock.” Isaiah 33:16: “He shall dwell on high; his place of defence shall be the munition of rocks; bread shall be given him, his water shall be sure.” Isaiah 32:2: “A man shall be a hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest.” Malachi 3:17: “And they shall be Mine, saith the Lord of Hosts, in that day when I make up My jewels; and I will spare them as a man spareth his own son that serveth him.” He will set a mark upon them, Ezek. 9:4: “Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof.”

How and in what manner He will secure them, when they seem to be exposed as the rest of the world? Do not good men fall in common calamities as well as others? True, indeed; sometimes it is so: but then it is—

(1)) For their compliance with the sins of the time, and not coming into their chambers, but staying without doors when the storm comes on. When they partake of the sins of the wicked, they partake of their plagues: when they too much conform to the world, they suffer with the world. Good men may be careless in sanctifying the Lord, and making Him their fear and their dread: but when they do so, then He is to them for a sanctuary, Isaiah 8:13, 14.

(2) God sometimes suffers His own to fall in the common calamity, because there is another world, there is a rest remaining for them, a better happiness than this life. Yet after all there is a vast difference betwixt the righteous falling in the common calamity, and the wicked. (1) The godly man may suffer affliction and yet have the support of Divine grace, while the wicked know nothing of it. (2) The sufferings of the one purge him, the sufferings of the other poison him. (3) They are for a chastisement to the one, but for a punishment to the other. (4) Yet, death itself to the one but kills the body, but to the other it is the destruction of soul and body both. But as to the manner how God secures His people in the common danger,

1. He sometimes secures them by death itself, that they may not see the evil and farther calamity that is coming upon the earth. Thus it is said of Abijah, I Kings 14:13, “He shall die: for he only of Jeroboam shall come to the grave; because in him there is found some good thing toward the Lord God of Israel.” None in Jeroboam’s family had any good thing in them but this child. Thus see what is said of good Josiah, II Kings 22:20, “Behold therefore, I will gather thee unto thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered into thy grave in peace, and thine eyes shall not see all the evil that I will bring upon this place.”

2. God secures His people in the storm, by supporting and comforting them in their trouble; “Who comforteth us in all our tribulation that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God,” II Cor. 1:4. Who would not drink of that cup that is sweetened with the consolation of the Holy Ghost, sometimes making them say, This trouble is no trouble; this pain is no pain; this rack is like a bed of roses; for the sense of God’s love swallows up all?

3. In a word, He hath wonderful ways of securing them by His presence and providence. Thus Paul was secured by the merciful providence of God when forty persons and persecutors had vowed his ruin, and that they should neither eat nor drink till they had killed him. Both Scripture and Ecclesiastical history are full of instances of His merciful protecting providence. Infinite Wisdom hath many ways of securing His Own.

(To Be Concluded)

Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to Thy Word. Ps. 119:9.

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