The Desire of the Righteous Granted

“The desire of the righteous is only good” (Prov 11:23).

“The fear of the wicked, it shall come upon him: but the desire of the righteous shall be granted” (Prov 10:24).

This book of the Proverbs is so called because it contains hard, dark and pithy sentences of wisdom, by which young men are taught knowledge and discretion (Prov 1:1-6). So this book does not open up truths by the words that come before or after the text, as other scriptures generally do. Its texts or sentences stand more on their own. Usually each verse stands on its own bottom and presents by itself some particular thing for the reader to consider. So I will not need to send my reader back to what went before, or on to what follows, for the better opening of the text. I will therefore come straight to the words and search into them for the hidden treasures they contain.

The words, then, in the first place, present us with the general condition of the whole world. For all men are ranked under one of these conditions, the wicked or the righteous: he who is not wicked is righteous, and he who is not righteous is wicked. So again: “Lay not wait, O wicked man, against the dwelling of the righteous, spoil not his resting place” (Prov 24:15). I could give you many such instances out of this book, for it flows with them; but the truth of this is plain enough.

The world is also divided by other general terms, such as these: believers and unbelievers; saints and sinners; good and bad; children of God and children of the wicked one; and so on. These, I say, are general terms. They take in not this or that sect or order of either, but the whole. The believer, the saint, the good and the child of God are one, that is, the righteous. The unbeliever, the sinner, the bad and the child of the devil are one, that is, the wicked, as the text also expresses it. So, I say, the text, or these two terms in it, takes in all men: the one, all who shall be saved; the other, all who shall be damned forever in hellfire (Ps 9:17; Ps 11:6). The wicked: who is he but the man who loves neither God nor doing his will? The righteous: who is he but the man who loves God and his holy will, to do it?

Of the wicked there are several sorts, some more ignorant, some more knowing. The more ignorant of them are those who go to be executed as the ox goes to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks (Prov 7:22). That is, they go like creatures whose ignorance leaves them unconcerned while they are going down the stairs to hell. But alas! their ignorance will be no plea for them before the bar of God. For it is written, “It is a people of no understanding: therefore he that made them will not have mercy on them, and he that formed them will show them no favor” (Isa 27:11).

I must confess, though, that the more knowing the wicked man is, or the more light and goodness he sins against, the greater his judgment will be. These shall receive greater damnation (Luke 20:47); it shall be more tolerable in the judgment for Sodom than for them (Luke 10:12). There is a wicked man who goes to hell blind, and a wicked man who goes there with his eyes open. There is a wicked man who cannot see the danger he is in, and a wicked man who will not see it; but hellfire will open the eyes of both (Luke 16:23). There are some who are wicked and cover it all with a cloak of religion, and there are some who proclaim their profaneness; but they will both meet in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone. “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God” (Ps 9:17).

There are also several sorts, if I may put it so, of those who are truly righteous: children, young men, fathers (1 John 2), or saints who fear God, both small and great (Rev 11:18). Some have more grace than others, and some make better use of the grace they have than others of their brethren do. Some also are more valiant for the truth upon the earth than others of their brethren are. Yes, some are so swallowed up with God, and with love for his word and ways, that they are fit to be a pattern or example of holiness to all who are around them. And some, again, have their light shining so dimly that they leave their brethren in doubt whether they are of the number of those who have grace or not. But being gracious, they shall not be lost, although such will suffer loss at the day of reward (1 Cor 3:15). For this is the will of the Father who sent the Son to be the Savior of the world, “That of all which he had given him he should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day” (John 6:37-39).

In the next place, we are presented here with some of the qualities of the wicked and the righteous: the wicked has his fears, the righteous has his desires. The wicked has his fears: “The fear of the wicked, it shall come upon him: but the desire of the righteous shall be granted.” It is true that to the godly it seems the wicked does not fear. Nor does he, after a godly sort; for anyone who fears God rightly must not be counted a wicked man. The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, declares that he does not fear God rightly, because he does not call upon him in a gracious way. Yet for all that, the wicked are at times haunted, sorely haunted, and that with the worst of fears. “Terrors,” says Bildad, “shall make him afraid on every side.” And again, “His confidence shall be rooted out of his tabernacle, and it shall bring him to the king of terrors” (Job 18:11-14).

A wicked man may bluster at times with his proud heart, as though he feared neither God nor hell; yet again, at times, his soul is drowned in terrors. “The morning is to them even as the shadow of death: if one knew them, they are in the terrors of the shadow of death” (Job 24:14-17). At times, I say, it is like this with them. It is so especially when they are under warm convictions that the day of judgment is at hand, or when they feel in themselves as if death were coming like a storm to steal them away from their enjoyments, and lusts, and delights. Then the bed they lie on shakes. Then the proud tongue falters in their mouth, and their knees knock one against another. Then their conscience stares, and roars, and tears, and arraigns them before God’s judgment seat, or threatens to follow them down to hell and wreak its fury on them there. It will do this for all the abuses and affronts this wicked wretch offered it in the days when it rebuked his unlawful deeds. Oh! no one can imagine what fearful plights a wicked man is in at times. Yet God, in his just judgment toward them, lets them stifle and choke such awakenings again and again, because he purposes to reserve them to the day of judgment to be punished (2 Pet 2:7-9).

In the third place, as the wicked has his fears, so the righteous has his desires: “The desire of the righteous shall be granted.” But this must not be taken exclusively, as if the wicked had nothing but fears and the righteous nothing but desires. For both by Scripture and by experience we also find that the wicked man has his desires, and the righteous man his fears.

1. As for the wicked, they are not without their desires. “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his,” was the desire of wicked Balaam (Num 23:10). And another place says, “the wicked boasteth of his heart’s desire”: that is, he boasts that he is for heaven as well as the best of you all. Yet even then “he blesseth the covetous, whom the Lord abhorreth” (Ps 10:3). Wicked men have their desires, and their hopes too, but the hope and desire of unjust men perishes (Prov 11:7; Prov 14:32). Yes, and though they look and long all the day long with desires of life and glory, yet their fears, and their fears only, shall come upon them; for it is the desires of the righteous that shall be granted (Ps 112:10).

The desires of the wicked lack a good foundation. They do not flow from a sanctified mind, nor from love for the God or the heaven now desired, but only from such a sense of torment as devils have. And so, like the devils, they cry out, “I beseech thee torment me not” (Luke 8:28; Luke 16:24). But their fears have a substantial foundation, for they are grounded on the sight of an ill-spent life, whose due reward is hellfire. “The unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor 6:9-10); their place is outside, “for without are dogs and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie” (Rev 22:15).

Their fears, therefore, have a strong foundation. They also have matter to work on, namely guilt and justice, which they will never be able to escape without a miracle of grace and mercy (Heb 2:3). Therefore the text says, and that with emphasis, “The fear of the wicked, it shall come upon him.” So his desires must die with him, for the promise that what is desired will be granted is entailed to righteousness only. “The desire of the righteous shall be granted”; but “grant not, O Lord, the desires of the wicked,” says David (Ps 140:8).

2. Nor are the righteous without their fears, and that even all their life long. Through fear of death some of them are all their lifetime subject to bondage (Heb 2:15). But as the desires of the wicked shall be frustrated, so also shall the fears of the godly. That is why you find them admonished, yes, commanded, not to be afraid of devils, death or hell; for the fear of the righteous shall not come upon them to eternal damnation (Isa 35:4; Isa 41:10-14; Isa 43:1; Isa 44:2; Isa 44:8; Luke 8:50; Luke 12:32; Rev 1:17). “The desire of the righteous shall be granted.” No, they are not to fear what sin can do to them, nor what all their sins can do to them. I do not say they should not be afraid of sinning, or of those temporal judgments that sin will bring upon them. Of such things they ought to be afraid, as the Psalmist says, “My flesh trembleth for fear of thee; and I am afraid of thy judgments” (Ps 119:120). But of eternal ruin they ought not to be afraid with slavish fear. “Wherefore should I fear,” said the prophet, “in the days of evil, when the iniquity of my heels shall compass me about?” (Ps 49:5). And again, “Ye have done all this wickedness, yet turn not aside from following the Lord; … for the Lord will not forsake his people, for his great name’s sake” (1 Sam 12:20-22).

The reason is that the righteous are secured by their faith in Christ Jesus. Their fears also rest on a mistake about the nature of the covenant they are wrapped up in, which is ordered for them in all things, and sure (2 Sam 23:5; Isa 55:3). Besides, God has purposed to magnify the riches of his grace in their salvation (Eph 1:3-7). Therefore goodness and mercy shall, to that end, follow them all the days of their life, that they may “dwell in the house of the Lord for ever” (Ps 23:6). They also have their intercessor and advocate ready with God, to take up matters for them in such a way as may maintain true peace between their God and them (1 John 2:1-2), and as may encourage them to be sober and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought to them at the revelation of Jesus Christ (1 Pet 1:13). So though the godly have their fears, yes, sometimes dreadful fears, and those of perishing forever and ever, yet the day is coming when their fears and tears shall be done away, and when their desires only shall be granted. “The fear of the wicked, it shall come upon them; but the desire of the righteous shall be granted.”

The words, then, are a prediction or prophecy, and that concerning both the wicked and the righteous, with reference to times and things to come; and they shall certainly be fulfilled in their season. That is why it is said of the wicked that their triumphing is short, and that the joy of the hypocrite is but for a moment (Job 20:5). Oh, their end will be bitter as wormwood, and will cut like a two-edged sword! Solomon warns youth of this when he says, “Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes; but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment” (Eccl 11:9).

This, then, shows the desperate spirit that possesses the children of men. Though they hear and read all this, they still cannot be reclaimed from courses that are wicked and that lead to such a condition (Prov 5:7-14). I say they will not be reclaimed from such courses as lead to ways that go down to hell, where their soul must mourn even when their flesh and their body are consumed. Oh, how dearly bought are their pleasures, and how will their laughter be turned into tears and anguish beyond words! And that soon, for it is coming! Their “judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not” (2 Pet 2:3). But what good will their covenant with death do them then? And will their agreement with hell give them comfort (Isa 28:18)? Is not God as mighty to punish as to save? Or can these sinners believe God out of the world, or bring it about that he will not pay them home for their sins, and recompense them for all the evil they have loved and gone on committing (Job 21:29-31)? “Can thy heart endure, or can thy hands be strong in the days that God shall deal with thee?” (Ezek 22:14).

You are bold now; I mean bold in a wicked way. You say now that you will keep your sweet morsels of sin under your tongue, that you will keep them still within your mouth. Poor wretch! Your sins shall lie down in the dust with you (Job 20:11). You have sucked the poison of asps, and the viper’s tongue shall slay you (Job 20:16). “Thou shalt not see the rivers, the streaming floods, the brooks of butter and honey” (Job 20:17). “All darkness shall be hid in thy secret places, a fire not blown shall consume thee.” “This is the portion of a wicked man from God, and the heritage appointed to him by God” (Job 20:26-29).

And as the words predict or prophesy what will become of the wicked, so they also plentifully foretell what will happen to the righteous, when it is said that their desire shall be granted. Of this I will say more shortly. Only here I will drop this short hint: the righteous have great cause to rejoice. For what could be more pleasing, what more comforting to a man, than to be assured, and that by the Spirit of truth, that what he desires shall be granted? And the righteous are assured of this here, for it is said in so many words, “The desire of the righteous shall be granted.” This, then, should comfort them against their fears and the sense of their unworthiness. It should also make them hold up their heads under all their temptations, and under the affronts they usually meet with in the world. The righteous! Who is so vilified as the righteous? The wise men of the world count him a very Abraham, a fool, just like the Abraham who is the father of us all. But Abraham left all for the desire he had of a better country, and at last obtained his desire; for after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise (Heb 6). So those who walk in the steps of the faith that our father Abraham had shall also, in the end, find a place in Abraham’s bosom. Therefore it is fitting that we should cheer up and be glad, because what we desire shall be granted to us.

But I will now leave off this short way of paraphrasing the text, and come to inquire more closely into the nature of the words. My subject, however, will be the last part of the verse: “The desire of the righteous shall be granted” (Prov 10:24). From these words the following things are to be inquired into. First, what, or who, is the righteous man? Second, what are the desires of a righteous man? Third, what is meant, or to be understood, by the granting of the desires of the righteous? “The desire of the righteous shall be granted.”

First, then, for the first of these: what, or who, is the righteous man?

My way of pursuing this head will be to show you, first, that I do not mean a righteous man in every sense, but in the best sense. Otherwise I would miss what the Holy Ghost intends. For we may not suppose that these words reach those who are righteous in a general sense, but only those who are righteous in a special sense; I mean those who are righteous in the judgment of God. For, as I hinted, there are several sorts of righteous men who still have nothing to do with this blessed promise, or who, as such, will never have their desires granted.

1. There is one who is righteous in his own eyes, and yet is far enough from the blessing of the text: “There is a generation that are pure” (or righteous) “in their own eyes, and yet is not washed from their filthiness” (Prov 30:12). These are the people you also read of in the evangelist Luke, who are said to trust “in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others” (Luke 18:9). By this foolish confidence of theirs they are set so low in the eyes of Jesus Christ that he even preferred a praying tax collector before them (Luke 18:13-14). So these cannot be the men, I mean the righteous men, to whom this promise is made.

2. There are those who are counted righteous by others; I mean they are reckoned so by their neighbors. Thus Korah and his company are called the people of the Lord, and all the congregation, every one of them, is in turn called holy by them (Num 16:3, 41). But just as the one who commends himself is not approved, so it is no great matter if all the world counts us righteous, if God does not esteem us so: “For not he that commendeth himself is approved, but whom the Lord commends” (2 Cor 10:18).

3. There are those who are indeed righteous when compared with others. “I came not to call the righteous” (Matt 9:13); “for scarcely for a righteous man will one die” (Rom 5:7); these texts, and others like them, are to be understood in this way. For people like these are better than others as to the moral life. But if they are righteous in no other way than by acts and works of righteousness of their own, they are not the persons meant in the text who are to have their desires granted.

4. The righteous man in the text, therefore, is, and ought to be, described in this way: (1) He is one whom God makes righteous by reckoning him so. (2) He is one whom God makes righteous by endowing him with a principle of righteousness. (3) He is one who is practically righteous.

(1) He is one whom God makes righteous. Now if God makes him righteous, then his righteousness is not his own; I mean this sort of righteousness. “Their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord” (Isa 54:17). God, then, makes a man righteous by putting righteousness upon him, that is, by putting the righteousness of God upon him (Phil 3:6-9). This is why we are said to be made the righteousness of God in Christ: “For God hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor 5:21). In this way, therefore, God reckons a person righteous: by imputing to us that which is able to make us so. “Christ of God is made unto us … righteousness” (1 Cor 1:30). That is why he says again, “In the Lord shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory” (Isa 45:25).

The righteousness, then, by which a man is made righteous with a righteousness to justification of life before God (for that is what we are speaking of now) is the righteousness of someone other than the one who is justified by it. That is why the soul thus justified and made righteous says again, “The Lord hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness” (Isa 61:10). As God also says in another place, “I spread my skirts over thee, and covered thy nakedness” (Ezek 16:8). This is what we call being made righteous by reckoning, by the reckoning of God. For no one has power to reckon a person righteous but God, because no one but he can make a person so. He who can make me rich, though in myself I am the poorest of men, may reckon me rich, if together with his reckoning he does indeed make me rich. This is the case here. God makes a man righteous by bestowing righteousness upon him, by counting the righteousness of his Son as his. He gives him righteousness, a righteousness already performed and completed by the obedience of his Son (Rom 5:19).

Not that this righteousness, by being bestowed on us, is severed from Jesus Christ; for it is still his, and in him. How then, someone may ask, does it become ours? I answer: by our being put into him. For of God we are in Christ Jesus, who is made unto us, of him, “righteousness.” And again, we are made “the righteousness of God in him.” So then, the righteousness of Christ covers his own, as a man’s garments cover the members of his body; for we are “the body of Christ, and members in particular” (1 Cor 12:27). The righteousness, therefore, is Christ’s. It still resides in him, and it covers us, as a child is wrapped up in its father’s skirt (Ezek 16:8), or as a chick is covered with the feathers of the hen (Matt 23:37; Ps 36:7). I use all these comparisons to show you what I mean; for all these things set forth the way we are made righteous to justification of life.

Now in this way a man is made righteous without any regard to what he has, or to anything that comes from him; for as far as he is concerned, the righteousness is utterly another’s. It is just as if I should find some poor, naked infant cast out into the open field, and take it up and clothe it with the skirts of my garments. Now if I cover the person, I cover scabs and sores and ulcers and all blemishes. So God, by putting this righteousness upon us, is said to hide and cover our sins: “Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin” (Rom 4:7-8). For since this righteousness is Christ’s, and is counted or reckoned ours by the grace of God, it is bestowed on us, not because we are righteous, but to make us righteous before the face of God. So, as I said, it is said to make us righteous, just as fine clothes make a naked body fine. “He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”

This must, of absolute necessity, be known and believed. For without it no one can be counted righteous before God; and if we do not stand righteous before God, it will do us no good as to eternal life, even if all the people on earth should count us righteous. Besides, if God counts me righteous, I am safe, though in and of myself I am nothing but a sinner, and ungodly. The reason is that God has a right to bestow righteousness on me, for he has righteousness to spare. He also has a right to forgive, because sin is the transgression of the law. Yes, he has for this very purpose sent his Son into the world to accomplish righteousness for sinners, and God in his mercy bestows it on those who will receive it by faith. Now if God counts me righteous, who will be so bold as to conclude that I shall still perish? “It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” (Rom 8:33-35).

In this way, therefore, a man is made righteous by God through Christ, or through his righteousness. Now if, as was said, a man is made righteous in this way, then in this sense he is good before God before he has done anything that the law calls good before men. For God does not make men righteous with this righteousness because they have been good, or have done good, but before they are capable of doing good at all. That is why we are said to be justified while ungodly (Rom 4:4-5), just as an infant is clothed with another’s skirt while, as far as itself is concerned, it is naked. Works, therefore, do not go before this righteousness but follow after it. And so it is even in nature: the tree must be good before it bears good fruit, and so must a man. It is as impossible to make a man bring forth good fruit to God before God has made him good as it is for a thorn or a bramble bush to bring forth figs or grapes (Matt 7:15-16).

But again, a man must be righteous before he can be good. He must be righteous by imputation before his person, his inward powers, can be endowed with good, that is, with the principle of good. For neither faith, nor the Spirit, nor any grace is given to the sinner before God has made him righteous with this righteousness of Christ. That is why it is said that after he had spread his skirt over us, he washed us with water, that is, with the washing of sanctification (Ezek 16:8-9). To conclude otherwise is as much as to say that an unjustified man has faith, and the Spirit, and the Spirit’s graces; and to say that is to overthrow the gospel. For what need would there be of Christ’s righteousness, if a man may have faith and the Spirit of Christ without it? For the Spirit is said to be the pledge of our inheritance, and the one by whom we are sealed for the day of redemption (Eph 1; Eph 4). But the truth is that the Spirit who makes our person good, I mean who sanctifies our natures, is the fruit of the righteousness that is by Jesus Christ. For as Christ died and rose again before he sent the Holy Ghost from heaven to his people, so the benefit of his death and resurrection is bestowed on us by God so that the Spirit may possess our souls.

(2) And this leads me to the second thing, namely, that God makes a man righteous by endowing him with a principle of righteousness, even with the spirit of righteousness. For though, as to justification before God from the curse of the law, we are made righteous while we are ungodly and still sinners (Rom 4:4-5; Rom 5:7-9), yet, being made free from sin in this way, we immediately become the servants of God through a change that the Holy Ghost works in our minds. Hence it is said, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Rom 8:1). For though, as the apostle also suggests here, being in Christ Jesus comes before our walking after the Spirit, yet a man can give no demonstration of his being in Christ Jesus except by his walking in the Spirit. For the Spirit is an inseparable companion of imputed righteousness, and immediately follows it, to dwell with whoever receives it. Now the Spirit, dwelling in us, fixes in all the powers of our souls a principle of that which is righteousness in its very habit and nature. Hence the fruits of the Spirit are called the fruits of goodness and righteousness, as the fruits of a tree are called the fruit of that tree (Eph 5:9).

And again, “He that doth righteousness is righteous” (1 John 2:29; 1 John 3:7), not only in our first sense, but in this one too. For who can do righteousness unless he has a principle within him for doing it? Who can act by reason who has no reason? Just so, no one can bring forth righteousness who does not have in him the root of righteousness, which is the Spirit of God; and the Spirit comes to us by virtue of our being made sons of God (Gal 4:5-7). Hence the fruits of the Spirit are called “the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ unto the glory and praise of God” (Phil 1:11). This, then, is what we are saying: the one who is made righteous unto justification of life before God is also given a settled principle of righteousness, as something that follows the righteousness by which he stood just before. I say, as something that follows it; for it comes by Jesus Christ, and by our being justified before God and made righteous through him.

This second thing, then, also comes to us before we do any act that is spiritually good. For how can a man act righteousness except from a principle of righteousness? And since this principle is not of or by nature, but of and by grace through Christ, it follows that just as no one is just before God who is not covered with the righteousness of Christ, so no one can do righteousness except by the power of the Spirit of God, who must dwell in him. Hence we are said to put to death the deeds of the body through the Spirit, and these works prepare the way for fruitful actions. The farmer who labors, says Paul, must first share in the fruit; so the one who works righteousness must first be blessed with a principle of righteousness (2 Tim 2:1-6). Men must have eyes before they see, tongues before they speak, and legs before they walk; even so a man must be made habitually good and righteous before he can work righteousness. This, then, is the second thing: God makes a man righteous by endowing him with a principle of righteousness, and that principle is not of nature but of grace, not of man but of God.

(3) The man in the text is practically righteous, that is, one who shows himself by works that are good to be a virtuous, a righteous man, just as the tree shows by the apple or plum it bears what kind of tree it is: “Ye shall know them by their fruits” (Matt 7:16). Fruits show outwardly what principle the heart holds. Show me, then, your faith, which lives in the heart, by your works in a well-spent life. Notice how the apostle puts it. We, he says, being “made free from sin, and become servants to God, have our fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life” (Rom 6:22).

Notice his order. First we are made free from sin; and that is by being justified freely by the grace of God through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood (Rom 3:24). Now this is God’s act, without any regard at all to any good the sinner has or can accomplish. He saves us in this way, “not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy” (Titus 3:5; 2 Tim 1:9). Now, being made free from sin, what follows? We become the servants of God; that is, by the turn the Holy Ghost makes upon our heart when he reconciles it to the Word of God’s grace. For that, as was said before, is the effect of the indwelling and working of the Holy Ghost. Now with our hearts changed in this way by God and his Word, the fruits of righteousness show themselves through us. For as, when we were in the flesh, the impulses of sin, which is in our members, brought forth fruit unto death, so now, if we are in the Spirit (and we are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of Christ dwells in us), by the impulses and workings of the Spirit we have our fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life (Rom 8:6, 9).

But by these fruits we are made neither righteous nor good; for the apple does not make the tree good, it only shows it to be so. Here, therefore, all those are mistaken who think to become righteous by doing righteous actions, or good by doing good. A man must first be righteous, or he cannot do righteousness, that is, righteousness in the gospel sense. Now if a man is, and must be, righteous before he acts righteously, then all his works are born too late to make him just before God. For his works, if they are right, flow from the heart of a righteous man, of a man who, before he had any good work, had a twofold righteousness bestowed on him: one to make him righteous in the sight of God, the other to give him a principle by which to be righteous before the world. “That he might be called a tree of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified” (Isa 61:3).

The lack of understanding of this is what keeps so many in a mist of darkness about the way of salvation. For these poor hearts, when they hear of the need they have of a righteousness to commend them to God, are ignorant of the righteousness of God, that is, of that which God imputes to a man, and by which he counts him righteous. So it never enters their thoughts to accept that for justification of life. Instead they immediately betake themselves to the law of works, and set to work there to perform a righteousness, so that they may be accepted by God for it. And so they do not submit themselves to the righteousness of God, by which, and by which only, the soul stands just before God (Rom 10:1-3). Therefore, I say, it is necessary that this be laid down distinctly: that a man must be righteous first, even before he does righteousness. The argument is plain from the order of nature: “For a corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit”; therefore make the tree good and its fruit good, or the tree corrupt and its fruit corrupt (Luke 6:43).

Reason also says the same. For how can black parents beget white children, when both father and mother are black? How can a man without grace, and the Spirit of grace, do good? Nature is defiled even to the mind and conscience (Titus 1:15); how then can good fruit come from such a stock? Besides, God accepts no work of a person who is not first accepted by him: “The Lord hath respect unto Abel and to his offering” (Gen 4:4). To Abel first, that is, before Abel offered. But how could God have respect to Abel if Abel was not pleasing in his sight? And how could Abel yet be pleasing in his sight for the sake of his own righteousness, when it is plain that Abel had not yet done good works? He was therefore first made acceptable in the sight of God by, and for the sake of, the righteousness that God in his grace had put upon him to justification of life; and through and by this righteousness the Holy Ghost also dwelt in Abel’s soul with his graces.

Now Abel, being justified and also endowed with this holy principle, offers his sacrifice to God. Hence it is said that he offered “by faith,” by the faith he had before his offering. For if he offered through faith, he had that faith before he offered; that is plain. Now his faith did not look for acceptance for the sake of what he offered, but for the sake of the righteousness that it grasped God had already put upon him, and by which he was made righteous. Therefore his offering was the offering of a righteous man, of a man first made righteous. And so the text says, “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous” (Heb 11:4), that is, righteous before his offering. For he had faith in Christ to come, by which he was made righteous; he also had the spirit of faith, by which he was endowed with a righteous principle. And so, being made righteous in this manner, righteous before God and also given a principle to work by, he comes and offers his more acceptable sacrifice to God.

For this all will grant: that the works of a righteous man are more excellent than even the best works of the wicked. Hence Cain’s works came behind. For God had not made him righteous, had no respect to his person, and had not given him the Spirit and faith, by which alone men are made capable of offering acceptably: “But unto Cain and to his offering, the Lord had not respect” (Gen 4:5).

From all this it is plain that the person must be accepted before the duty he performs can be pleasing to God. And if the person must first be accepted, it is evident that the person must first be righteous. But if the person is righteous before he does good, then it follows that he is made righteous by a righteousness that is none of his own, which he has no hand in, beyond receiving it as the gracious gift of God. Deny this, and it follows that God accepts men without respect to righteousness; and what follows from that, but that Christ is dead in vain?

We must not, therefore, be deceived. “He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he,” the Lord, “is righteous” (1 John 3:7). He does not say that he who does righteousness shall be righteous, as if his doing works would make him so before God; but that he who does righteousness is righteous, before his doing righteousness. And it must be understood this way, or else what follows means nothing. For he says, “He that doth righteousness is righteous, even as he,” the Lord his God, “is righteous.” But how is the Lord righteous? Even before his works. The Lord was righteous before he worked righteousness in the world; and so are we, that is, every child of God. “As he is, so are we, in this world!” (1 John 4:17). But in this we must allow for this difference: the Lord was eternally and essentially righteous before he did any work, but we are imputatively righteous, and also made so by a second work of creation, before we do good works. The comparison holds, therefore, only as to order: God was righteous before he made the world, and we are righteous before we do good works.

Thus, therefore, we have described the righteous man. First, he is one whom God makes righteous by reckoning, or imputation. Second, he is one whom God makes righteous by endowing him with a principle of righteousness. Third, he is one who is practically righteous. And I dare not give a narrower description of a righteous man than this, nor any other than this.

(1) I dare not give a narrower description of a righteous man than this, because whoever lays claim to justification, if he is not sanctified, claims to be what he is not. And whoever lays claim to sanctification, if he does not show its fruits by a holy life, deceives his own heart and professes in vain (Jas 1:22-27).

(2) Nor dare I give this description in any other way than this, because a real distinction must be made between the righteousness by which we are to be just before God and that which is in us as a principle of sanctification. The first is the obedience of the Son of God outside us; the second is the work of the Spirit in our hearts. There is also a difference to be made between the principle by which we work righteousness and the works themselves, just as a difference is to be made between the cause and the effect, the tree and the apple.

Second. I come now to the second thing we are to inquire into, and that is, What are the desires of a righteous man?

My way of handling this question will be, first, to speak of the nature of desire in general; and second, to show you more particularly what the desires of the righteous are.

Desire in General

First. For the first: desires in general may be described this way. They are the workings of the heart or mind after something that the soul is persuaded is good to be enjoyed. I say this holds without regard to whether they are rightly ordered; for we are not speaking now of good desires, but of desires themselves, just as they flow from the heart of a human creature. Desires, I say, are, or may be called, the working of the heart after this or that, the strong motions of the mind toward it. That is why the love of women for their husbands is called “their desires” (Gen 3:16), and the wife is also called “the desire of thine eyes,” that is, of the husband’s eyes (Ezek 24:16). Love for a woman, in order to make her one’s wife, is also called by the name of “desire” (Deut 21:10-11). Now, how strong the motions or passions of love are, who is there that is a complete stranger to that (Song 8:6-7)?

Hunger is also a most vehement thing; and what is called “hunger” in one place is called “desire” in another. So the beggar “desired to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table” (Luke 16:21; Ps 145:16). Exceeding lustings are called “desires,” to show how vehement desires are (Ps 106:14; Ps 78:27-30). Longings, pantings, thirstings, prayers, and the like, if there is any life in them, are all fruits of a desirous soul.

Desires, therefore, flow from considering the goodness, or profitableness, or pleasurableness of a thing. Indeed, all desires flow from there. For a man does not desire something he has never considered at all; nor does he desire something he has thought about, if he does not judge that it will yield him something worth desiring.

When Eve saw that the forbidden fruit was a beautiful tree (though her sight deceived her), then she desired it, and took some of it herself, and gave it to her husband, and he ate. Yes, says the text, “when she saw that it was a tree to be desired, to make one wise, she took” (Gen 3:6). Hence what is called “coveting” in one place is called “desiring” in another; for desires are craving, and by desires a man seeks to enjoy what is not his (Exod 20:17; Deut 5:21). From all these things, then, we see what desire is. It is the working of the heart after something that the soul is persuaded is good to be enjoyed. And desires have these two effects.

1. The first effect, supposing that the soul is not satisfied with what it has, is to make the soul range and hunt through the world for something that may fill up the emptiness it still finds in itself and wants supplied. That is why desires are said to be wandering, and the soul is said to walk by them: “Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the desire,” or than the walking of the soul (Eccl 6:8-9). Desires are hunting things. And how many things some empty souls who have desirous minds go seeking after, both in the world and also in religion!

2. The second effect is this: if desires are strong, they carry everything away with them. They are all like Samson; they will pull down the gates of a city rather than fail to get out. Nothing can stop the current of desires except the enjoyment of the thing desired, or a change of opinion about the worth, or lack of worth, of the thing that is desired.

The Desires of the Righteous

Second. But now we come to the thing more particularly intended, which is to show what the desires of the righteous are. This is what the text calls us to consider, because it says, “The desire of the righteous shall be granted.”

So far we have spoken of desires as to their nature, without regard to whether they are good or bad. But now we shall speak of them as they are the effects of a sanctified mind, as they are the breathings, pantings, lustings, hungerings, and thirstings of a righteous man. The text says, “The desire of the righteous shall be granted.” What, then, are the desires of the righteous? Now, first, I will speak to their desires in general, or with reference to them in their bulk. Second, I will speak to them more particularly, as they work this way and that.

Their Desires in General

First. As for their desires in general: the same Solomon who says, “The desire of the righteous shall be granted,” also says, “The desire of the righteous is only good” (Prov 11:23). This text gives us, in general, a description of the desires of a righteous man, and a sharp and stinging description it is. For some may say, Where, then, is the righteous man, the man who has nothing but good desires? And if the answer is that they are good in the main, or good in general, that will still seem to fall short of an answer. For when he says that “the desires of the righteous are only good,” it is as much as to say that a righteous man has none but good desires, or desires nothing but things that are good. Therefore, before we go any further, I must labor to reconcile the experience of good men with this text, which gives us this description of the desires of the righteous.

A righteous man is to be considered more generally or more strictly.

1. More generally, as he consists of the whole man: of flesh and spirit, of body and soul, of grace and nature. Now consider him this way, and you can by no means reconcile the text with his experience, or his experience with the text. For as he is body, flesh, and nature (for all these are still with him, though he is a righteous man), so he has desires vastly different from those this text describes, vastly different from what is good. Indeed, what wicked thing is there that the flesh and nature, even of a righteous man, will not desire? “Do ye think that the Scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?” (Jas 4:5). And again, “In me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing” (Rom 7:18). And again, “The flesh lusteth against the spirit” (Gal 5:17). And again, its lusts “war against the soul” (1 Pet 2:11).

From all these texts we find that a righteous man has other workings, lusts, and desires besides those that are good. Here, then, if we consider a righteous man in this general way, there is no agreement between him and this text. So we must next consider him more strictly, as he may be, and is to be, distinguished from his flesh, his carnal lusts, and his sinful nature.

2. More strictly. Then a righteous man is sometimes taken as to, or for, his best part, or as he is a second creation; and so, or considered this way, his desires are only good.

(1) He is sometimes taken as to, or for, his best part, or as he is a second creation, as these scriptures declare: “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature … all things are become new” (2 Cor 5:17). “Created in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:10). “Born of God” (John 3; 1 John 3:9). Become heavenly things (Heb 9:23), renewed after the image of him that created them (Col 3:10); and the like. By all these places the sinful flesh, the old man, the law of sin, and the outward man, all of which are corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, are excluded, and so pared off from the man as he is righteous. For his “delight in the law of God” is “after the inward man” (Rom 7:22). And Paul himself was forced to make this distinction about himself before he could come to a right judgment in this matter. He says, “That which I do, I allow not; what I would, do I not; but what I hate, that do I” (Rom 7:15). Do you not see here how he splits himself in two, separating himself as he is spiritual from himself as he is carnal, and ascribes his motions toward what is good to himself only as he is spiritual, or the new man? “If then I do that which I would not, I consent to the law that it is good” (Rom 7).

But surely, sir, your consenting to what is good does not come from the part that does what you would not? “No, no,” he says, “that which does what I would not, I disown, and count it no part of sanctified Paul.” His words are these: “Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me; for … in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good, I find not: for the good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now, if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwells in me” (Rom 7). Thus you see that Paul is forced to make two men of himself, saying “I” and “I”: “I do,” “I do not”; “I do,” “I would not do”; “what I hate, that I do.” Now it cannot be the same “I” to whom these contraries are applied. Rather, his sinful flesh is one “I,” and his godly mind the other. And indeed he concludes it this way in this chapter, saying, “So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin” (Rom 7:25).

Thus, then, the Christian must distinguish concerning himself. And in doing so he will find that, though he has flesh, and as he is flesh has lusts contrary to God, yet as he is a new creature he does not allow but hates the motions and desires of the flesh, and consents to, and wills, and delights in the law of God (Rom 7:17-22). Indeed, as a new creature he can do nothing else. For the new man, the inward man, or the hidden man of the heart, being the immediate work of the Holy Spirit and consisting only of what is divine and heavenly, cannot breathe, or act, or desire to act, in ways and courses that are carnal. Therefore in this sense, or as the righteous man is considered this way, “his desires are only good.”

(2) As the righteous man must here be taken for his best part, for the “I” that would do good, for the “I” that hates evil, so again we must consider the desires of this righteous man as they flow from that fountain of grace which is the Holy Spirit within him, and as they are immediately mixed with those foul channels in and through which they must pass before they can be put forth into acts. For though the desire, as to its birth and first being, is only good, yet before it comes into much motion it gathers something from the defilements of the passages it comes through, which gives it a tang of flesh and weakness at its edges. And the evil that dwells in us is so universal, and also always so ready, that as surely as there is any motion toward what is good, so surely evil is present with it. “For when,” or whenever, “I would do good,” says Paul, “evil is present with me” (Rom 7:21). From this it follows that all our graces, and so our desires, are put at a disadvantage by our flesh, which mixes itself with what is good and so lessens the excellence of the good.

There is a spring that yields water good and clear, but the channels through which this water comes to us are muddy, foul, or dirty. Now the waters are put at a disadvantage by the channels, and so they come to us tasting of what did not come with them from the fountain, but from the channels. This is the cause of the coolness and of the weakness, of the flatness, and of the many irregularities that attend some of our desires. They come warm from the Spirit and grace of God in us; but like hot water running through cold pipes, or clear water running through dirty conduits, our desires gather soil.

You read in Solomon’s Ecclesiastes of a time when desires fail, because “man goeth to his long home” (Eccl 12:5). And as for good desires, there is not one of them, even when we are in our prime, that does not also fail as to perfecting what a man desires to do. “To will is present with me,” says Paul, “but how to perform that which is good I find not” (Rom 7:18). To will, or to desire, that is present with me; but when I have willed or desired to do something, to perform it is what I cannot attain to. But why can he not attain to performing it? “Why,” he says, “I find a law ‘in my members warring against the law of my mind’; and this law takes me prisoner, and brings ‘me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members’” (Rom 7:23). Now, where things willed and desired meet with such obstructions, it is no wonder if our willing and desiring, though they set out vigorously at the beginning, still come home lame in the end.

There is a man who, when he first prostrates himself before God, does it with desires as warm as live coals; but before long he finds, for all that, that the strength of those desires, if it were not revived with fresh supplies, would quickly be spent and grow cold. But still the desire is good, and only good, as it comes from the breathing of the Spirit of God within us. We must therefore, as I said, distinguish between what is good and what troubles it, as gold is to be distinguished from the earth and dross that cling to it. The man who believed desired to believe better, and so he cries out, “Lord, help mine unbelief” (Mark 9:24). The man who feared God desired to fear him better, saying, “I desire to fear thy name” (Neh 1:11). But these desires failed as to performing what was begun, so that they were forced to come off only lamely as to the faith and fear they had. Yet the desires were true and good, and such as God accepted through Christ: not according to what they did not have, but according to the good motions they did have. Distinguish, then, the desires of the righteous in their nature from the corruption and weakness of ours that cling to them, and then again, “they are only good.”

(3) There is another thing to be considered, and that is the different frames our inward man is in while we live as pilgrims in the world. As a man is not always well without, so neither is he always well within. Our inward man is subject to passing decays, though not to utter ones (Isa 1:5). And as it is when the outward man is sick, and strength, and stomach, and appetite or desire fail, so it is when our inward man has caught a cold too (Ezek 34:4).

By the inward man I mean the new creature, of which the Spirit of God is the support, as my soul supports my body. But, I say, this new man is not always well. He knows nothing who does not know this. Now, when he is sick, things fail. When a man is not in health of body, his pulse beats in a way that shows he is sick. So when a man is not well within, his inward pulse, which is his desires (for I count the desires as the pulse of the inward man), also shows that the man is not well within. They beat too little after God, weakly and faintly after grace. They also have their halts; they do not beat evenly, as they do when the soul is well, but in a way that shows all is not well there.

We read that the church of Sardis was under sore sickness, so much so that some of her things were quite dead, and those that were not were still ready to die (Rev 3:2). Yet “life is life,” we say; and as long as there is a pulse, or breath, though breath hardly able to stir a feather, we do not cast away all hope of life. Desires, then, though they are weak, are nevertheless true desires, if they are the desires of the righteous as described here; and therefore they are truly good, according to our text. David says he “opened his mouth and panted,” for he longed for God’s commandments (Ps 119:131). This was a sickness, but not such a one as we have been speaking of. The spouse also cried out that she was “sick of love” (Song 5:8). Such sickness would do us good, for in it the pulse beats strongly and well.

Some Objections Answered

Objection. But someone may object, “I am still in doubt about the goodness of my desires, both because my desires run both ways, and because those that run toward sin and the world seem more numerous and stronger than those that run after God, and Christ, and grace.”

Answer. There is not a Christian under heaven who does not have desires that run both ways, as is plain from what has been said already. Flesh will be flesh; grace will not make it otherwise. By flesh I mean that body of sin and death that dwells in the godly (Rom 6:6). As grace will act according to its nature, so sin will act according to the nature of sin (Eph 2:3). Now, the flesh has desires; and in the ungodly the desires of the flesh and of the mind are one and the same. Thank God it is not so with you (Rom 7:24)! The flesh, I say, has its desires in the godly. That is why it is said to lust enviously, and to lust against the Spirit: “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit” (Gal 5:17). And if it is so audacious as to fly in the face of the Holy Spirit, wonder that you are not wholly carried away with it (Rom 7:25)!

Objection. “But the desires that run to the world and sin seem the most and the strongest in me.”

Answer. The works of the flesh are manifest; that is, they are more plainly discovered, even in the godly, than the works of the Holy Spirit are (Gal 5:19). And this showing of them arises from the following particulars.

1. We know the least appearance of a sin by its native color better than we know a grace of the Spirit.

2. Sin is felt in its bitterness to and upon a sanctified soul sooner than the grace of God is. A little aloes will be tasted sooner than much sweetness, though mixed with it.

3. Sin is dreadful and murderous in the sight of a sanctified soul. Therefore our apprehension of it often makes us forget whether we have any grace or not, and often makes us question it.

4. Grace lies deep in the hidden part, but sin lies high and floats on top in the flesh; therefore sin is more easily and more often seen than the grace of God (Ps 51:6). The little fish swim at the top of the water, but the biggest and best keep down below, and so are seen less often.

5. Grace, as to quantity, seems less than sin. What is leaven, or a grain of mustard seed, compared with the bulky lump of a body of death (Matt 13:31-33)?

6. Sin is seen by its own darkness, and also in the light of the Spirit; but the Spirit does not reveal either itself or its graces by every glance of its own light.

7. A man may have the Spirit busily at work in him; he may also have many of his graces in vigorous exercise, and yet may be greatly ignorant of both. Therefore we are not competent judges in this case. A thousand acts of grace may pass through your soul, and you be aware of few of them, if any.

8. Do you think that the one who repents, believes, loves, fears, or humbles himself before God, and exercises other graces too, always knows what he is doing? No, no; many times grace, even in a man, is exercised by him without his being aware of it. Did Gideon, do you think, believe that he was as strong in grace as he was? No; was he not ready to call the angel a liar when he told him God was with him (Judg 6:12-13)? Or what do you think of David, when he said he was cast off from God’s eyes (Ps 31:22)? Or of Heman, when he said he was free among those whom God remembered no more (Ps 88)? Did these men, then, see their graces as clearly as they saw themselves, by their sins, to be unworthy ones? I tell you, it is a rare thing for some Christians to see their graces, but a very common thing for them to see their sins; yes, and to feel them too, in their lusts and desires, to the shaking of their souls.

Question. “But since I have lusts and desires both ways, how shall I know which of them my soul holds to?”

Answer. This may be known in this way.

1. Which would you have prevail, the desires of the flesh or the lusts of the spirit? Whose side are you on? Does your soul not now inwardly say, and that with strong indignation, “O let God, let grace, let my desires that are good, prevail against my flesh, for Jesus Christ’s sake!”

2. What kind of secret wishes do you have in your soul when you feel the lusts of your flesh rage? Do you not inwardly, and with indignation against sin, say, “O that I might never, never feel one such motion again! O that my soul were so full of grace that there might never again be room for the least lust to come into my thoughts!”

3. What kind of thoughts do you have of yourself, now that you see these good desires of yours so briskly opposed by the bad ones? Do you not say, “O! I am the basest of creatures; I could even spew at myself. There is no one in all the world so loathsome in my eyes as I am to myself. I abhor myself; a toad is not as vile as I am. O Lord, let me be anything but a sinner; anything, so long as you subdue my iniquities for me!”

4. How do you like the discovery of what you think is grace in other people? Do you not cry out, “O, I bless them in my heart! O, I think grace is the greatest beauty in the world! Yes, I could be content to live and die with those people who have the grace of God in their souls. A hundred times, and a hundred more, when I have been on my knees before God, I have desired, if it were God’s will, that I might be in their condition”?

5. How are you when you think that you yourself have grace? “O then,” says the soul, “I am as if I could leap out of myself; joy, joy, joy fills my heart then. I think it is the greatest mercy under heaven to be made a gracious man.”

And is it really this way with your soul? Happy man! It is grace that has your soul, though sin at present works in your flesh. Yes, all these breathings are the very actings of grace: of the grace of desire, of love, of humility, and of the fear of God within you. Be of good courage; you are on the right side. Your desires are only good; for you have desired against your sin, your sinful self, which indeed is not yourself, but sin that dwells in you.

Second. I come next to speak of desires more distinctly, or particularly, as they work this way and that. First, then, the desires of the righteous are either such as they would have accomplished here, or else, second, such as they know they cannot come to enjoy until after death.

First, as to the first of these, the desires of the righteous are for such good things as they could have accomplished here; that is, in this world, while they are on this side of glory. In general, these are comprised under two general heads: first, communion with their God in spirit, or spiritual communion with him; and second, the liberty to enjoy his holy ordinances. And indeed, the point of this second is that they may both attain to the first and have it maintained with them. But to take the first:

1. They desire communion with God now. “With my soul,” says the church, “have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early” (Isa 26:9). She gives the reason for this in the verse before, saying, “The desire of our soul is to thy name, and to the remembrance of thee” (Isa 26:8).

Now, to desire like this shows a person already made righteous, for in it there appears a mind reconciled to God. That is why the wicked are set on the other side, in direct opposition to these: “they say unto God, Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways” (Job 21:14). They neither love his presence nor care to frequent his ordinances. “What is the Almighty that we should serve him? and what profit should we have if we pray unto him?” (Job 21:15). So again, speaking of the wicked, the Lord says, “Ye have said it is vain to serve God, and what profit is it that we have kept his ordinance?” (Mal 3:14). This, then, truly to desire communion with God, is the mark of a righteous man, and of a righteous man only. For this desire arises from something in the righteous that is suited to God. “Whom,” said the prophet, “have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee” (Ps 73:25). This could never be the desire of a man unless he were a righteous man, a man with a truly sanctified mind. “The carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (Rom 8:7).

When Moses, the man of God, was with the children of Israel in the wilderness, he prayed that God would give them his presence all the way to Canaan, or else let them die in that place. It was death to him to think of being in the wilderness without God! And he said to God, “If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence” (Exod 33:14-15).

Here, then, are the desires of a righteous man: namely, after communion with God. He would rather be a stranger with God in the world than be a citizen of the world and a stranger to God. “For I am,” said David, “a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were” (Ps 39:12). Indeed, whoever walks with God is only a stranger to this world. And the righteous man’s desires reach to, for, and after communion with God, stranger though he is.

The reasons for these desires are many. In communion with God are life and favor; yes, the very presence of God with a man is a token of it (Ps 30:3-5). For by his presence he helps, succors, relieves, and supports the hearts of his people, and that is why communion with him is desired. “I will,” said David, “behave myself wisely in a perfect way; O when wilt thou come unto me?” (Ps 101:2).

The pleasures that a soul which has communion with God finds in him surpass all pleasures and delights; yes, they infinitely surpass them. “In thy presence is fullness of joy, at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps 16:11). On this account he is called “the desire of all nations” (Hag 2:7), that is, of all in all nations who know him.

Job desired God’s presence so that he might reason with God. “Surely,” said he, “I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to reason with God” (Job 13:3). And again, “O that one would hear me! Behold my desire is that the Almighty would answer me” (Job 31:35). But why does Job so desire to be in the presence of God? Oh, he knew that God was good, and that he would speak to him what would do him good. “Will he plead against me with his great power? No: but he would put strength into me. There the righteous might dispute with him; so should I be delivered for ever from my judge” (Job 23:6-7).

God’s presence is a man’s safety. If God is with a man, who can hurt him? As the apostle said, “If God be for us, who can be against us?” (Rom 8:31). Now, if so much safety flows from God’s being for us, how safe we are when God is with us! “The beloved of the Lord,” said Moses, “shall dwell in safety by him, and the Lord shall cover him all the day long, and he shall dwell between his shoulders” (Deut 33:12). God’s presence keeps the heart awake to joy, and will make a man sing in the night (Job 35:10). “Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them?” (Matt 9:15). God’s presence is feasting (Rev 3:20), and feasting is made for mirth (Eccl 10:19). God’s presence keeps the heart tender and makes it ready to fall in with whatever is made known to it as duty or privilege (Isa 64:1). “I will run the ways of thy commandments,” said the psalmist, “when thou shalt enlarge my heart” (Ps 119:32). The presence of God makes a man affectionately and sincerely good; yes, it makes him willing to be searched and stripped of all the remains of iniquity (Ps 26:1-3).

What, what shall I say? God’s presence is renewing, transforming, seasoning, sanctifying, commanding, sweetening, and enlightening to the soul! There is nothing like it in all the world. His presence supplies all wants, heals all maladies, and saves from all dangers; it is life in death, heaven in hell, all in all. No wonder, then, if the presence of God, and communion with him, has become the desire of a righteous man (Ps 26:9). To conclude this point: by God’s presence being with us, it is known both to ourselves and to others what we are. “If thy presence,” said Moses, “go not with me, carry us not up hence. For wherein shall it be known here, that I and thy people have found grace in thy sight, is it not in that thou goest with us? So shall we be separated, I and thy people, from all the people that are upon the face of the earth” (Exod 33:15-16).

They are then best known to themselves. They know they are his people because God’s presence is with them. That is why God says, “My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest” (Exod 33:14). That is, I will let you know that you have found grace in my sight and are accepted by me. For if God withdraws himself, or hides his presence from his people, it is hard for them to hold up in the steadfast belief that they belong to him. “Be not silent to me, O Lord,” said David, “lest I become like them that go down into the pit” (Ps 28:1). “Be not silent unto me”: that is, as he puts it in another place, “Hide not thy face from me. Hear me speedily, O Lord,” he says, “my spirit faileth; hide not thy face from me, lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit” (Ps 143:7).

So God’s presence is the desire of the righteous for this reason also: by it they gather that God delights in them. “By this I know that thou favorest me, because mine enemy doth not triumph over me” (Ps 41:11). And is this all? No. “And as for me, thou upholdest me in mine integrity, and settest me before thy face for ever” (Ps 41:12).

As by God’s presence being with us we know ourselves to be the people of God, so by this same presence of God the world itself is sometimes convinced who we are as well.

So Abimelech saw that God was with Abraham (Gen 21:22). So Abimelech saw that God was with Isaac (Gen 26:28-29). Pharaoh knew that God was with Joseph (Gen 41:38). Saul “saw and knew that the Lord was with David” (1 Sam 18:28). Saul’s servant knew that the Lord was with Samuel (1 Sam 9:6). Belshazzar’s queen also knew that God was with Daniel. Darius also knew that God was with Daniel. And when the enemy saw the boldness of Peter and John, “they took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13). The girl who was a witch knew that Paul was a servant of the most high God (Acts 16:17). There is a glory upon those who have God with them, a glory that sometimes glances and flashes out into the faces of those who look on the people of God. “And all that sat in the council, looking steadfastly upon him, saw Stephen’s face, as it had been the face of an angel”; such rays of divine majesty showed themselves in it (Acts 6:15).

The reason is this. (1) Such people have the wisdom of God with them (2 Sam 14:17-20). (2) Such people also have a special measure of God’s tender affection and compassion for others. (3) Such people have more of his majesty upon them than others (1 Sam 16:4). (4) As for such people, their words and ways, their conduct and doings, are accompanied by something of God that others lack (1 Sam 3:19-20). (5) Such people are holier, and of more convincing lives in general, than other people are (2 Kgs 4:9). Now there is both comfort and honor in this. For what comfort is like that of being a holy man of God? And what honor is like that of being a holy man of God? This, therefore, is the desire of the righteous: to have communion with God. Indeed, in the thoughts of a righteous man there is none like God, and none to be desired as he is.

2. And this leads me to the second thing, namely, the liberty to enjoy his holy ordinances. For next to God himself, nothing is so dear to a righteous man as the enjoyment of his holy ordinances.

“One thing,” said David, “have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after,” namely, “that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple” (Ps 27:4). The temple of the Lord was the dwelling house of God. There he recorded his name, and there he made himself known to his people (Ps 11:4; Hab 2:20). That was why David so earnestly desired to dwell there too: “To behold,” he says, “the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.” There God had promised his presence to his people, yes, and to bring a blessing there for them: “In all places where I record my name, I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee” (Exod 20:24).

For this cause, then, as I said, the righteous so desire to enjoy the liberty of the ordinances and appointments of their God: namely, that they may attain to communion with him, and have it maintained. Alas! The righteous are, as it were, undone if God’s ordinances are taken from them. “How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts. My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord, my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God” (Ps 84:1-2). See what a state the good man was in, because at that time he could not be in the temple of God as often as his soul desired. His soul even longed and fainted; yes, his heart and his flesh cried out for the God who dwelt in the temple at Jerusalem.

Yes, in the next words he seems to envy the very birds, which could frequent the temple more commonly than he could. “The sparrow,” he says, “hath found a house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my King, and my God” (Ps 84:3). And then he blesses all who had the liberty of temple worship, saying, “Blessed are they that dwell in thy house, they will be still praising thee” (Ps 84:4). Then he proclaims the happiness of those who appear before God in Zion (Ps 84:7). After this he cries out to God to grant him a share in this high favor, saying, “O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer …” “For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand: I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness” (Ps 84:8-10).

But why all this? What ails the man, that he expresses himself like this? Why, as I said, the temple was the great ordinance of God. There his true worship was performed, there God appeared, and there his people were to find him. This, I say, was the reason the psalmist chose out and desired this one thing above all the things under heaven: “to behold there the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.” There the shadows of things in the heavens were to be seen: the candlestick, the table of showbread, the holiest of all, where the golden censer was, the ark of the covenant overlaid round about with gold, the golden pot that had manna, Aaron’s rod that budded, the tables of the covenant, and the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat. All of these were, in that day, things by which God showed himself merciful to them (Heb 9:1-5, compared with Heb 9:23 and Heb 8:5).

Do you think love letters are not desired between lovers? Why, these ordinances of God are his love letters, and his love tokens too. No wonder, then, if the righteous so desire them: “More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb” (Ps 19:10; Ps 119:72, 127). Yes, Wisdom itself passes this judgment on these things: “Receive,” it says, “my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies: and all the things that may be desired, are not to be compared to it” (Prov 8:10-11). For this reason, therefore, the ordinances of God are so much desired by the righteous. In them they meet with God, and by them they are built up and nourished up to eternal life. “As newborn babes,” says Peter, “desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby” (1 Pet 2:2). As milk nourishes children, so the word, heard, read, and meditated on, nourishes the righteous. That is why it is their desire.

Christ made himself known to them in breaking of bread (Luke 24:35). Who, then, who loves to know him, would not be present at such an ordinance? Often the Holy Spirit, in his comforting influence, has accompanied the baptized in the very act of their baptism. Therefore, “in the way of thy judgments,” or appointments, “O Lord, we thy people have waited for thee: the desire of their soul is to thy name, and to the remembrance of thee” (Isa 26:8).

Church fellowship, or the communion of saints, is the place where the Son of God loves to walk. His first walking was in Eden; there he converted our first parents. “And come, my beloved,” he says, “let us get up to the vineyards; let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender grape appear, and the pomegranates bud forth; there will I give thee my loves” (Song 7:12). Church fellowship, rightly managed, is the glory of all the world. No place, no community, no fellowship is adorned and bespangled with such beauties as a church rightly knit together to its head, its members lovingly serving one another. “In his temple doth every one speak of his glory” (Ps 29:9). Hence the church is called the place of God’s desire on earth: “This is my rest for ever, here I will dwell, for I have desired it” (Ps 132:13-16). And again, the church confesses this when she says, “I am my beloved’s, and his desire is towards me” (Song 7:10).

No wonder, then, if this was the one thing David desired, and that he would seek after, namely, “to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of his life.” And this also shows you why God’s people of old used to risk so much for the ordinances, and to get to them at the peril of their lives, “because of the sword of the wilderness” (Lam 5:9).

They were their bread, they were their water, they were their milk, they were their honey. Hence the sanctuary was called “the desire of their eyes, and that which their soul pitieth,” or “the pity of their soul.” They would rather have died than lose it, or than see it burned down, as it was (Ezek 24:21, 25).

When the children of Israel had lost the ark, they reckoned that the glory had departed from Israel (1 Sam 4:22). But when they had lost everything, what a complaint they made then! “He hath violently taken away his tabernacle, as if it were of a garden, he hath destroyed his places of the assembly. The Lord hath caused the solemn feasts and sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and hath despised, in the indignation of his anger, the king and the priest” (Lam 2:6). It was on this account, then, that the church in those days counted the punishment of her iniquity greater than the punishment of Sodom (Lam 4:6).

By these few hints you may see what “the desire of the righteous” is. But this is spoken with reference to things present, to things that the righteous desire to enjoy while they are here: communion with God while here, and his ordinances in their purity while here. I come, therefore, in the second place, to show you that the righteous have desires that reach further, desires that have so long a neck as to look into the world to come.

Second, the desires of the righteous also reach after things which they know cannot be enjoyed until after death. These fall under two heads. First, they desire that presence of their Lord which is personal. Second, they desire to be in that country where their Lord personally is, that heavenly country.

The Personal Presence of Their Lord

They desire that presence of their Lord which is personal. For the first of these, Paul says, “I have a desire to depart, and to be with Christ” (Phil 1:23). There you have it: “I have a desire to be with Christ.”

When I spoke of the first sort of desires, I told you that the righteous desire spiritual communion with God. Now I tell you that they desire to be with Christ’s person. “I have a desire to be with Christ”: that is, with his person, so that I may enjoy his personal presence, a presence of his such as we are not capable of enjoying while we are here. That is why he says, “I have a desire to depart, that I might be with him; knowing,” as he says in another place, “that whilst we are at home in the body, we are,” and cannot help but be, “absent from the Lord” (2 Cor 5:6). Now this desire, as I said, is a desire with a long neck. It can look over the brass wall of this world and see right into another. And as it has a long neck, so it is very forceful and mighty in its working.

(1) This desire brings about a divorce, a complete divorce, between the soul and all disordered love and affection for relatives and worldly comforts. This desire makes a married man live as if he had no wife, and a rich man live as if he did not possess what he has, and so on (1 Cor 7:29-30). This is a desire that sets the soul apart. This desire makes a man willing rather to be absent from all his comforts, so that he may be present with the Lord. This is a notable desire; no one has it but a righteous man. There are those who profess great love for Christ who yet never had such a desire in them all their lives long. No, the ties they have to the world, together with the many flesh-pleasing comforts that surround them, would never yet let such a desire enter their hearts.

(2) The strength of this desire is such that it is ready, as far as it can, to untie that sweet knot of union between body and soul. That knot is dearer to a reasoning creature than any knot can be between wife and husband, parent and child, or a man and his estate. For even “all that a man hath will he give for his life” (Job 2:4), and to keep body and soul firmly knit together. But now, when this desire comes, this “silver cord is loosed” (Eccl 12:6), and loosed by consent. This desire gives the one who comes to dissolve this union leave to do it, and gladly. “We are confident and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord” (2 Cor 5:8). Yes, this desire makes this flesh, this mortal life, a burden. The man who has this desire practices self-denial while he waits for his longed-for change to come. For if it were not God’s will that he should live, and if he did not hope that his life might be of service to the truth and to the church of God, he would have nothing with which to cool the heart of this desire. He would rather cry out in a holy passion with holy Job, “I loathe” (that is, I abhor it), “I would not live alway: let me alone,” that I may die, “for my days are vanity” (Job 7:15-17).

(3) The strength of this desire shows itself in this as well: it is willing to grapple with the king of terrors rather than be kept from that sweet communion the soul looks for when it comes into the place where its Lord is. Death is not to be desired for its own sake. The apostle would rather have been clothed upon with his house which is from heaven, “that mortality might be swallowed up of life” (2 Cor 5:1-4). And yet, rather than be absent from the Lord, he was willing to be absent from the body. Death, even in the thought of it, is grievous to flesh and blood, and nothing can so master it in our minds as that by which we come to these desires. These desires deal with death as Jacob’s love for Rachel dealt with the seven long years he had to serve for her: it made them seem few, only a little while. So, I say, these desires deal with death itself. They make it seem small; no, they make it a servant; no, a privilege, because by it a man may come to enjoy the presence of his beloved Lord. “I have a desire to depart”: to go from the world and from my relatives, to go from my body, that great piece of myself. I have a desire to venture the tugs and pains and the harsh handling of the king of terrors, if only I may be with Jesus Christ! These are the desires of the righteous.

Are these not, then, strong desires? Is there not life and mettle in them? Do they not have power in them to loosen the bonds of nature and to harden the soul against sorrow? Do they not flow, do you think, from faith of the finest sort? Are they not bred in the bosom of a truly mortified soul? Are these the effects of a half-blind spirit? Are they not rather the fruits of an eagle-eyed confidence? Oh, these desires! They belong to the righteous alone; they are none other than the desires of the righteous.

Question. But why do the righteous desire to be with Christ?

Answer. And I ask, Why does the wife, who is like the loving doe, love to be in the presence of her husband?

1. Christ in glory is worth being with. The man out of whom the Lord Jesus cast a legion prayed that he might be with him, in spite of all the trials that went along with Jesus in this life. If that is so, how can a righteous man help but desire to be with him now that he is in glory? What we have heard of the excellence of his person, the unspeakableness of his love, the greatness of his sufferings, and the things he is still doing for us, must command our souls into a desire to be with him. When we have heard of a man among us who has done some excellent thing for us, the next thing our hearts fasten on is this: I wish I could set my eyes on him! But was anything ever heard like what Jesus Christ has done for sinners? Who, then, who has faith in him, can do anything other than desire to be with him? It was this that once comforted John: the time was coming when he would see him (1 John 3:2). But that very thought made him cry out like a deer, to hasten the time when he might quickly set his eyes on him (Rev 22:20). To see Jesus Christ, then, to see him as he is, to see him as he is in glory, is a sight worth leaving relatives for, worth going out of the body for, and through the jaws of death, to see. For this is to see him head over all; to see him in possession of heaven for his church; to see him preparing mansions for those poor ones of his who are now kicked to and fro in the world by his enemies like footballs. And is this not a blessed sight?

2. I have a desire to be with him, to see myself with him. This is more blessed still, for a man to see himself in glory is a sight worth seeing. Sometimes I look at myself and say, Where am I now? And I quickly answer myself: Why, I am in an evil world, a long way from heaven; in a sinful body, among devils and wicked men; sometimes in the dark, sometimes deceived, sometimes fearing, sometimes hoping, sometimes breathing, sometimes dying, and the like. But then I turn the tables and say, But where shall I be shortly? Where shall I see myself before long, after a few more seasons have passed over me? And when I can answer that question like this, “I shall see myself with Jesus Christ,” it brings glory, real glory, to one’s spirit even now. No wonder, then, if the righteous desire to be with Christ.

3. I have a desire to be with Christ, for there the spirits of the just are made perfect (Heb 12:23); there the spirits of the righteous are as full as they can hold. Some know how a sight of Jesus in the Word will change them from glory to glory (2 Cor 3:18). But how shall we be changed and filled then, when we shall see him as he is? “When he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). Moses and Elijah appeared in glory to Peter and James and John at the transfiguration of Christ. How so? Why, they had been in the heavens and came from there with some of the glories of heaven on them. Gild a bit of wood, yes, gild it seven times over, and the difference between it and wood that is not gilded cannot compare with the difference made in a soul that has been dipped in glory for only a little while! Glory is a strange thing to men who are on this side of the heavens. It is what eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man to conceive (1 Cor 2:9). Only the Christian has a Word and Spirit that at times give him a little glimmering of it. But oh, when he is in the Spirit, and sees in the Spirit, do you think his tongue can tell it? But, I say, if the sight of heaven at so vast a distance is so excellent a prospect, what will it look like when one is in it? No wonder, then, if the desires of the righteous are to be with Christ.

Objection. “But if this is the mark of a righteous man, to desire to depart and to be with Christ, then I am not one of them. I never had such a desire in my heart. No, my fears of perishing will not let me desire either to die so as to be with Christ, or that Christ should come to judge the world.”

Answer. Yours is a case that must be set apart, since your desires may not yet have grown so high. Yet if you are a righteous man, your heart has the very seeds of them in it. There are, then, desires, and there are desires to desire, just as one child can reach so high, and another can only wish he could. If you are a righteous man, you have desires, and these desires are ready to break out into action when they have grown a little stronger, or when what hinders them is taken away. Many times it is with our desires as it is with saffron: it will bud and blossom and be ripe, all in a night. Tell me, do you not desire to desire? Yes, do you not earnestly desire to desire to depart and to be with Christ? I know that you do, if you are a righteous man. Here is a man who sows his field with wheat, but as he sows, part of it is soon covered with great clods. Now that wheat grows as well as the rest, though it does not yet shoot upright; it grows, and yet it is kept down. So it is with your desires. And when someone removes the clod, the blade will soon point upward.

I know your mind. What keeps you from reaching this point, to desire to depart and to be with Christ, is that some strong doubt or clod of unbelief about your eternal welfare lies hard on your desiring spirit. Now let Jesus Christ only remove this clod, and your desires will quickly spring up to be gone. I say, let Jesus Christ only give you one kiss, and with his lips, as he kisses you, whisper to you the forgiveness of your sins, and you will quickly break out and say, Why then, Lord, let me die in peace, since my soul is persuaded of your salvation!

Here is a man on his sickbed, but oh, he dares not die, for all is not as he would have it between God and his poor soul. Many a night he lies like this in great horror of mind. But do you think he does not desire to depart? Yes, yes, he too waits and cries to God to set his desires at liberty. At last the visitor comes and sets his soul at ease by persuading him that he belongs to God. And what then? “Oh, now let me die! Welcome, death!” Now he is like the man in Essex whose neighbor, at his bedside, prayed that God would restore him to health. He started up in his bed, pulled his neighbor by the arm, and cried out, “No, no, pray that God will take me away, for to me it is best to go to Christ.”

The desires of some good Christians are pinioned and cannot stir, especially desires of this sort. But Christ can and will cut the cord sometime or other, and then you who long to say it will be able to say, “I have a desire to depart, and to be with Jesus Christ.” In the meantime, be earnest in desiring to know your share in the grace of God, for nothing short of knowing that can make you desire to depart so that you may be with Christ. This is what Paul laid down as the ground of his desire to be gone. “We know,” he says, “that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house, which is from heaven” (2 Cor 5:1-2). And know this: if your desires are right, they will grow as other graces do, from strength to strength. Only in this they can grow no faster than faith grows with respect to justification, and hope, in turn, with respect to glory. But we will leave this and come to the second thing.

The Country Where Their Lord Is

They desire to be in that country where their Lord personally is. As righteous men desire to be present with Jesus Christ, so they desire to be with him in that country where he is: “But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly; wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he hath prepared for them a city” (Heb 11:14-16). “But now they desire a better country.” Here is a comparison. There was another country, namely their native country, the country they came out of, where they left their friends and their pleasures for the sake of another world. And that world is indeed a better country, as is plain from its description: “It is an heavenly.” As high as heaven is above the earth, so much better is that heavenly country than this one we are in now.

It is a heavenly country, where there is a heavenly Father (Matt 6:14-16; Matt 15:13; Matt 18:35); a heavenly host (Luke 2:13); heavenly things (John 3:12); heavenly visions (Acts 26:19); heavenly places (Eph 1:3, 20); a heavenly kingdom (2 Tim 4:18); and the heavenly Jerusalem (Heb 12:22). It is for those who are partakers of the heavenly calling (Heb 3:1), and who are the heavenly things themselves (Heb 9:23). This is a country to be desired. It is no wonder, therefore, if everyone, except those who have lost their wits and senses, refuses to choose a dwelling for themselves here in this world. Here is the “Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and an innumerable company of angels: here is the general assembly and church of the firstborn, and God the Judge of all, and Jesus, and the spirits of just men made perfect” (Heb 12:22-24). Who would not be here? This is the country the righteous desire for a dwelling: “But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly; wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he hath prepared for them a city” (Heb 11:16).

Notice: they desire a country, and God prepares a city for them. He goes beyond their desires, beyond their understanding, beyond anything their hearts could think to ask for. No one is weary of this world out of a gracious inclination toward a heavenly one without God taking notice of them, owning them, and not being ashamed to own them. Yes, such people will not lose what they long for. They desire a handful, and God gives them a seaful. They desire a country, and God prepares a city for them: a city that is heavenly, a city that has foundations, a city whose builder and maker is God (Heb 11:10; Rev 3:12). And all this is so that the promise to them might be fulfilled, “The desire of the righteous shall be granted” (Prov 10:24). And this is the last thing I proposed to speak to from the text, and so to it we now come.

Third. We come now, in conclusion, to inquire what is meant, or what we are to understand, by the granting of the righteous their desires: “The desire of the righteous shall be granted.”

1. To grant is to yield to what is desired, to consent that it shall be just as is requested: “The Lord hear thee in the day of trouble, the name of the God of Jacob defend thee; send thee help from the sanctuary, and strengthen thee out of Zion, remember all thy sacrifices: grant thee according to thine own heart and fulfill all thy counsel” (Ps 20:1-4).

2. To grant is to accomplish what is promised. So God granted to the Gentiles repentance unto life, namely, because he had promised it by the prophets from the days of old (Acts 11:18; Rom 15:9-12).

3. To grant, therefore, is an act of grace and condescending favor. For if God is said to humble himself when he beholds things in heaven, what condescension it is for him to listen to a sinful wretch on earth, and to tell him, “Have the thing you desire!” I call him a wretch when he is compared with the One who hears him, even though, considered as the new creation of God, he is a righteous man.

4. To grant, then, is not to hand over the thing desired as though the desire had merited, purchased, earned or deserved it. It is to bestow the thing desired on the humble out of bounty and goodwill. That is why God’s grants are said to be gracious ones (Ps 119:29).

5. I will add that to grant sometimes means giving someone authority or power to do, or to possess, or to enjoy such and such privileges. And it may be taken that way here, for the righteous have a right to a power to enjoy the things their God bestows on them. So, then, to grant is to give, to accomplish, and that of free grace, the desire of the righteous.

David acknowledges this when he says to God, “Thou hast given him his heart’s desire, and hast not withholden the request of his lips” (Ps 21:2). And this is promised to all who delight themselves in God: “Delight thyself also in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thy heart” (Ps 37:4). And again, “He will fulfill the desire of them that fear him, he also will hear their cry, and will save them” (Ps 145:19). By all these places it is plain that the promise of granting desires is settled on the righteous, and also that the grant to them is an act of grace and mercy. But it also follows that although the desires of the righteous are not meritorious, they are nevertheless pleasing in God’s sight. And this is evident in several ways, besides the promise that they will be granted.

1. It is evident in that the desires of God and the desires of the righteous meet and agree in one. They are of one mind in their desires. God’s desire is toward the work of his hands, and the righteous are for surrendering that up to him.

(1) They agree in giving up the heart to him. “My son,” says God, “give me thy heart” (Prov 23:26). “I lift my soul to thee,” says the righteous man (Ps 25:1; Ps 86:4; Lam 3:41). Here, therefore, there is agreement between God and the righteous. It is agreed on both sides, I say, that God should have the heart. God desires it, and the righteous man desires it. Yes, he desires it with a groan, saying, “Incline my heart unto thy testimony” (Ps 119:36), and, “Let my heart be sound in thy statutes” (Ps 119:80).

(2) They are also agreed about the disposing of the whole man. God is for body and soul and spirit, and the righteous man desires that God should have it all. That is why they are said to give themselves to the Lord (2 Cor 8:5) and to devote themselves to his service (1 Cor 16:15).

(3) God desires truth in the inward parts, that is, that truth may lie at the bottom of everything (Ps 51:6, 16). And this is the desire of the righteous man too: “Thy word have I hid in my heart,” said David, “that I might not sin against thee” (Ps 119:11).

(4) They agree about the way of justification, the way of sanctification, the way of preservation and the way of glorification, that is, about the way by which all is to be reached and enjoyed. So who should hinder the righteous man, or keep him back from enjoying the desire of his heart?

(5) They also agree about the hallowing of God’s name in the world, saying, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:10).

There is a great agreement between God and the righteous: “He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit” (1 Cor 6:17). No wonder, then, that their desires in general are one, as far as the righteous man knows the mind of his God. And consequently their desires must be granted, or God must deny himself.

2. The desires of the righteous are the life of all their prayers, and it is said, “The prayer of the upright is God’s delight” (Prov 15:8).

Jesus Christ makes a distinction between the form and the spirit of prayer, and he indicates that the soul of prayer lies in a man’s desires: “Therefore,” he says, “I say unto you, What things soever ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them” (Mark 11:24). A man may pray ever so long, and have ever so many fine expressions in his prayer, yet God counts it prayer no further than there are warm and fervent desires in it after the things his mouth mentions. David says, “Lord, all my desire is before thee, and my groaning is not hid from thee” (Ps 38:9). Can you say that you desire when you pray? Can you say that your prayers come from the crying out, panting and longing of your hearts? If not, they shall not be granted. For when men are at prayer, God looks to see whether their heart and spirit are in their prayers (Rom 8:26-27), for he counts everything else nothing but vain speaking (Matt 6:7). “Ye shall seek me, and find me,” he says, “when you shall search for me with all your heart” (Jer 29:13). The people you read of in 2 Chr 15 are said there to have done what they did “with all their heart, and with all their soul,” “for they sought God with their whole desire” (2 Chr 15:11-15). When a man’s desires drive him to prayer, run along with him in his prayer, break out of his heart and ascend to heaven with his prayers, it is a good sign that he is a righteous man, and that his desire shall be granted.

3. By desire a righteous man shows more of his heart toward God than he can in any other way whatever. That is why it is said, “The desire of man is his kindness, and a poor man” (that is, one who is sincere in his desires) “is better than” he who shows much love with his mouth, if he is “a liar” (Prov 19:22).

Desires, desires, are vast things. You read that a man may “enlarge his desire as hell” (Hab 2:5), that is, if his desires are wicked. Yes, and a righteous man may enlarge his desires as wide as heaven (Ps 73:25). No grace reaches as far as desires do. Desires outrun everything. Who believes as much as he desires to believe? Who loves as much as he desires to love? Who fears God’s name as much as he desires to fear it (Neh 1:11)? If things were as a righteous man sometimes desires they should be, both in God’s church and in his own soul, stranger things would happen than do! Faith and love and holiness would flourish more than they do! Oh, what does a righteous man desire? What do you think the prophet desired when he said, “O that thou wouldest rend the heavens and come down” (Isa 64:1)? And Paul, when he said he could wish himself accursed from Christ, because of the vehement desire he had that the Jews might be saved (Rom 9:1-3; Rom 10:1)? Yes, and what do you think John desired when he cried out to Christ to come quickly?

Love to God, as I said, is seen more in desires than in any other Christian act. Do you think the woman with her two mites cast in all that she desired to cast into the treasury of God? Or do you think, when David said that he had prepared for the house of God with all his might, that his desires stopped short when his ability had reached its utmost (1 Chr 29)? No, no. Desires go beyond all actions. That is why I said it is a man’s desires that are reckoned as his kindness. And kindness is something God will not forget. I mean the kindness his people show to him, especially in their desires to serve him in the world. You know how many times Israel stumbled after they came out of Egypt and before they got to Canaan. But because they were willing, or desirous, to follow God, he passes by all their failures, saying, almost a thousand years afterward, “I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown” (Jer 2:2). Israel was holiness to the Lord, and the firstfruits of his increase. There is nothing of ours that God likes better than he likes our true desires. For true desires are indeed the smoke of our incense, the flower of our graces and the very vital part of our new man. It is our desires that ascend, and they are the sweetness of all the sacrifices we offer to God. The man of desires is the man of kindness.

4. Desires, true and right desires, are what take a man up from the ground and bring him away to God in spite of all who oppose. A desire will take a man on its back and carry him away to God, though ten thousand men stand by and oppose it. That is why it is said that “through desire a man, having separated himself” (that is, from what is contrary to the mind of God), and so “seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom” (Prov 18:1).

All convictions, conversions, illuminations, favors, tastes, revelations, knowledge and mercies will do nothing if the soul remains without desires. All of it, I say, is like rain on stones, or favors bestowed on a dead dog. Oh, but a poor man with desires, a man who sees but little, knows but little and finds but little in himself, if he has strong desires, they will make up for all. His desires take him up from his sins, from his companions and from his pleasures, and carry him away to God. Suppose you were a minister, sent from God with a whip whose cords were made of the flames of hell. You might lash long enough with that terrible whip before you could drive even one man who remains without desires to God or to his kingdom. Suppose again that you were a minister sent from God to sinners with a crown of glory in your hand, to offer to the first man who comes to you for it. Even so, no one can come without desires. But desire takes the man on its back, and so brings him to you. Why is it that men will commend God with their mouths, and commend Christ, and commend and praise both heaven and glory, and yet all the while flee from him and from his mercy as from the worst of enemies? Why, they lack good desires. Their desires, being mischievous, carry them another way. You plead with your wife, your husband, the son of your womb, to fall in with your Lord and your Christ, but they will not. Ask them why they will not, and they can give no reason, except that they have no desires. “When we shall see him, there is no beauty in him that we should desire him” (Isa 53:1-3). And I am sure that if they do not desire him, they can by no means be made to come to him.

But desires, desires that are right, will carry a man clean away to God and to doing his will, however hard the work may be. Take an instance or two of this.

You may see it in Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The text says plainly that they were not mindful of the country they had come out of, because of their desires for a better one (Heb 11:8-16). God gave them notice of a better country, and their minds clung to it with desires for it. And what then? Why, they went out, and desired to go, though they did not know where they were going. Yes, they all lived in the land of promise as in a strange country, because it was only a shadow of what God had designed for them and what their faith looked to. So they cast that behind their backs too, looking for that city which had foundations, which was mentioned earlier. Did these men not have mighty desires? It was their desires that separated them in this way from their dearest and choicest relations and comforts. Their desires were fixed on the heavenly country, and so they broke through all difficulties for its sake.

You may see it in Moses. He had a kingdom at his feet and was its only visible heir, but desire for a better inheritance made him refuse it, and choose rather to take part with the people of God in their afflicted condition than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. You may say, “The Scripture attributes this to his faith.” I answer, it likewise attributes Abraham’s leaving his country to his faith. But his faith bred in him these desires for the country that is above. So, indeed, Moses saw these things by faith, and therefore his faith bred in him these desires. For it was because of his desires that he refused and chose as you read. And here we may fittingly take the opportunity to touch on the emptiness of that faith which breeds nothing, and does not know how to bring forth strong desires to enjoy what it claims to believe. All such faith is false. The faith of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses bred desires in them, strong desires. Yes, their desires were so strong that they took them up and carried them after what their faith had made known to them. Their desires were so mightily set on the things their faith had shown them that neither difficulties nor dangers, neither frowns nor flatteries, could stop them from using every lawful means of enjoying what they believed was to be had and what they desired to possess.

So it was also with the women you read of, and with the others who would not accept deliverance from torments and various trials on unworthy terms, so that they might, or because they desired to, be made partakers of a better resurrection. “And others,” he says, “had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings; yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonments. They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword; they wandered about in sheepskins, and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented; of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and caves of the earth” (Heb 11:35-38).

But we will come to the Lord Jesus himself. Where did his desires bring him? Where did they carry him? And to what did they make him stoop? For it was his desires toward us and toward our good (Song 7:10) that made him humble himself to do as he did. What was it, do you think, that made him cry out, “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!” (Luke 12:50)? What was that baptism but his death? And why did he long for it so, but out of desire to do us good? Yes, when the Passover was to be eaten on the eve of his sufferings, with what desire did he desire to eat it with his disciples (Luke 22:15)! Yes, his desires to suffer for his people made him go with more strength to lay down his life for them than they, lacking such desires, had to go and watch him suffer. They were on their way up to Jerusalem, he to suffer and they to look on: “And Jesus went before them, and they were amazed, and as they followed, they were afraid” (Mark 10:32; Matt 20:17).

I tell you, desires are strange things, if they are right. They agree exactly with God’s mind. They are the life of prayer. They are a man’s kindness to God. And they are what will take him up from the ground and carry him away after God to do his will, however hard the work may be. Is it any wonder, then, that the desires of the righteous are as pleasing to God as they are, and that God has so graciously promised that the desires of the righteous shall be granted? But we come now to the use and application.

The first use will be a use of information. You have heard what has been said about desires, and what pleasing things right desires are to God. But you must know that it is the desires of his people, of the righteous, that are so. No wicked man’s desires are regarded (Ps 112:10).

Men must be informed of this, or else their desires may become a snare to their souls. You read of a man whose “desire killeth him” (Prov 21:25). And why? Only because he rests in desiring, without considering what he is, and whether he is the kind of man to whom the promise of granting desires is made. He covets greedily all day long, but to little purpose. The grant of desires, of the fulfilling of desires, is settled on the righteous man as his inheritance. There are four sorts of people who desire, who desire the kingdom of heaven; consequently, desires have a fourfold root from which they flow.

First. The natural man desires to be saved and to go to heaven when he dies. Ask any natural man, and he will tell you so. Besides, we see that it is so with such people, especially at certain seasons. It is so when some guilt or conviction for sin takes hold of them, or when some sudden fear terrifies them. It is so when they are afraid that the plague or pestilence will come upon them and break up their household, or when death has taken them by the throat and is hauling them downstairs to the grave. Then, oh then, it is, “Lord, save me! Lord, have mercy on me! Good people, pray for me! Oh, where will I go when I die, if sweet Christ has no pity on my soul?” And now the bed shakes, and the poor soul is as unwilling to go out of the body, for fear the devil will catch it, as the poor bird is to go out of the bush while she sees the hawk waiting there to receive her. But the fears of the wicked, they must come upon the wicked; it is the desires of the righteous that must be granted. Please take good notice of this.

And to back this with the authority of God, consider this scripture: “The wicked man travaileth with pain all his days, and the number of years is hidden to the oppressor. A dreadful sound is in his ears; in prosperity the destroyer shall come upon him. Trouble and anguish shall make him afraid; they shall prevail against him as a king ready to the battle” (Job 15:20-24).

Can anyone imagine that when the wicked are in this distress, they will not desire to be saved? Therefore he says again, “Terrors take hold on him as waters, a tempest stealeth him away in the night. The east wind,” that blasting wind, “carrieth him away, and he departeth, and as a storm hurleth him out of” the world, “his place. For God shall cast upon him, and not spare”; and as he flees, “he would fain fly out of his hand” (Job 27:20-23). Their terrors and their fears must come upon them; their desires and wishes for salvation must not be granted (Isa 65:13; Isa 66:4). “They shall call upon me,” says God, “but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me” (Prov 1:28).

Second. There is the hypocrite’s desire. Now his desire seems to have life and spirit in it. He also desires while he has his youth, his health, and the like; yet it comes to nothing. You can see him drawn to the life in Mark 10:17. He comes running and kneeling and asking, and that, as I said, while he is young and healthy; and that is more than merely natural men do. But it is all to no purpose. He went away as he came, without the thing he desired. The conditions set before him were too hard for this hypocrite to comply with (Mark 10:21-22). Some, indeed, make a greater noise with their desires than others do; but in the end it all comes to one thing. They all meet together in the place where those go whose desires are not granted.

“For what is the hope of the hypocrite, though he has gained” to a higher strain of desires, “when God taketh away his soul?” “Will God hear his cry when trouble cometh upon him?” (Job 27:8-9). Did this young man not, even when he desired life, still break with God on the very day the conditions of life were set before him? Did he not, even when he asked what good things he must do to have eternal life, refuse to listen to or comply with what was set before him? How then can his desires be granted, when he himself refused to have them answered? No wonder, then, if he perishes like his own dung, and if those who have seen him say they miss him among those who are to have their desires granted.

Third. There are the desires of the cold, formal professor of religion; the desires, I say, of the man whose religion lies in a few of the shells of religion. He is like the foolish virgins, who were content with their lamps but did not take care to take oil in their vessels. These I take to be the ones whom the wise man calls the slothful: “The soul of the sluggard desireth, and hath nothing; but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat” (Prov 13:4). The sluggard is one who comes to poverty through idleness, who contents himself with forms; he is the one “that will not plow” in winter “by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest,” or at the day of judgment, “and have nothing” (Prov 20:4).

So you see that there are many who desire. The natural man, the hypocrite, the formalist: they all desire. For heaven is a splendid place, and nobody wants to go to hell. “Lord, Lord, open to us” (Matt 25:11) is the cry of many in this world, and it will be the cry of more on the day of judgment. You should therefore be informed of this, and that for these reasons:

Because ignorance of this may keep you asleep in complacency, and cause you to fall under disappointments that are the worst there are, and the hardest to bear. For a man to expect to go to heaven because he desires it, and then, when all is done, to fall into hell, is a dashing of hopes of the most dismal kind. And yet this is how it will be when desires fail, “when man goes to his long home, and when the mourners go about the streets” (Eccl 12:5).

Because otherwise, as I said before, your desires, the very things that should be for your good, will kill you. They kill you at death, when you find every one of them empty. And they kill you at the judgment, when you are convinced that you ought to go without what you desire, because you were not the man to whose desires the promise was made, nor the man who desired rightly. To be informed of this is the way to bring you to such a sense and sight of your case as will make you turn in earnest, in the way that is acceptable, to him who grants the desires of the righteous. And then you will be happy, when you refuse to desire as the natural man desires, as the hypocrite desires, or as the formalist desires. When you desire as the righteous do, your desire will be granted.

The second use is a use of examination. If this is so, then you who know in yourself that you are a man of desires, what cause you have to examine yourself whether you are one whose desires will be granted! For to what purpose should a man desire, or what fruit will desire bring him, if his desires are not to be granted? Such a man is just like a woman who longs but loses her longing, or like a man who looks for peace while evil overtakes him.

You have heard it over and over that the granting of desires belongs to the righteous. Shouldn’t you, then, inquire into your condition, and examine yourself whether you are a righteous man or not? The apostle said to the Corinthians, “Examine yourselves whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves; know you not … how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?” (2 Cor 13:5). You may be reprobates and not be aware of it, if you do not examine and test your own selves. It is therefore for your life; so do not deceive yourself.

I gave you earlier a description of a righteous man: he is one whom God has made righteous by imputation and by an inward principle, and he is one who brings forth fruit to God. Now, this last thing you may think you have; for it is easy and common for men to think, when they bring forth fruit to themselves, that they are bringing it forth to God. So examine yourself.

1. Are you righteous? If you say, “Yes,” I ask, “How did you become righteous?” If you think that obedience to the law of righteousness has made you so, you are utterly deceived. For the one who seeks righteousness that way is still not righteous, because by doing so he cannot attain the thing he is seeking (Rom 9:31-32). Didn’t I tell you before that a man must be righteous before he does one good work, or he can never be righteous? The tree must be good first, even before it brings forth one good apple.

2. Are you righteous? In whose judgment are you righteous? Is it in the judgment of God, or of man? If it is not in God’s judgment, it makes no difference if all the men on earth should justify you; you are not one bit more righteous for that.

3. Are you righteous in the judgment of God? Who told you so? Or are you only dreaming it? Indeed, to be righteous in God’s sight is that, and only that, which can secure a man from the wrath to come; for if God justifies, who is he that condemns? (Rom 8:33-34). And this alone is the man whose desires will be granted.

4. But still, I say, the question is: How do you come to know that you are righteous in the judgment of God? Do you know by what it is that God makes a man righteous? Do you know where that thing is, by which or with which God makes a man righteous? And do you know how God makes a man righteous with it? To answer these questions you must have some heavenly skill, or else all that you say about your being righteous will seem to have no bottom to it.

5. Now, suppose you answer, “What makes me righteous is the obedience of Christ to his Father’s will; this righteousness is before the throne of God; and it is made mine by an act of God’s free grace.” Then I will ask you yet again:

6. How did you come to see your need of this righteousness? And by what means do you apply this righteousness to yourself? For this righteousness is bestowed on those who see their need of it. This righteousness is the refuge to which the guilty flee for help, so that they may be sheltered from the wrath to come. Have you, then, fled to it, or are you truly fleeing to it now (Heb 6:16-19)?

7. No one flees to this righteousness for life except those who feel the sentence of condemnation by God’s law upon their conscience, and who, in that extremity, have first sought righteousness elsewhere but cannot find it in all the world.

8. For when a man first finds himself a sinner, he does not go straight to God by Christ for righteousness. Instead, he first seeks it in the law on earth, laboring to obey it, so that when he stands before God at death and judgment he may have something to commend him to God, something for whose sake he may at least help forward his acceptance with him.

9. But when he is wearied out of this (and if God loves him, he will weary him out of it), then he looks to heaven and cries to God for righteousness. And in his own good time God shows him that he has reckoned this righteousness to him for the sake of Jesus Christ.

10. Now, by this very discovery the heart is also given the spirit of the gospel as its inward principle. For the Spirit comes down from heaven with the gospel to such a person and fills his soul with good. By this he is enabled to bring forth fruit, true fruit, which are the fruits of righteousness imputed and of righteousness infused, to the glory and praise of God.

11. Nor can anything but faith make a man see himself made righteous in this way. For this righteousness is revealed from faith to faith: from the object of faith to the grace of faith, by the Spirit of faith. A faithless man, then, can no more see this than a blind man can see colors, and can no more relish it than a dead man can taste food. So, just as blind men talk of colors and dead men relish food, so carnal men talk of Jesus Christ: without sense or savor. That is, they talk of him without any sense of their need of him, and without any savor of his worth and goodness to the soul.

12. So I say it is absolutely necessary that you deal with this point with all your heart, and beware of deceiving yourself. For if you fail here, your desires will fail you forever: “for the desire of the righteous,” and that only, “must be granted” (Prov 10:24).

The third use is one of caution. Let me therefore warn you here to beware of some things by which you might otherwise deceive yourself.

1. Be careful not to take things that happen by accident as grants of your desires. By “accident” I mean in relation to your desires. For it is possible that the very thing you desire may come to pass in the ordinary course of providence, and not as an answer to your desires. Now if you take such things as a grant of your desires, and so conclude that you are a righteous man, how easily you may be deceived! The ark of God was delivered into the hands of the Philistines, which they desired; but not for the sake of their desires. It was for the sins of the children of Israel. The land of Canaan was given to Israel, not for the sake of their desires, but for the sins of those whom God cast out before them, and to fulfill the promise that God had made to their fathers before they were born (Deut 9:5-6). Israel was carried away captive out of their own land, not to fulfill the desires of their enemies, but to punish Israel for their transgressions.

These examples, with many others of smaller importance and of a more personal kind, might be mentioned to show that many things happen to us, some to our pleasing and some to the pleasing of our enemies. If either we or they should count such things the returns of our prayers or the fruits of our desires, and so conclude that our state will be happy in the future because in these things we seemed to be answered by God, we might go far wrong in our judgments and become the greatest of self-deceivers.

2. Or suppose you take it for granted that what you enjoy, you have as the fruit of your desires. Yet if the things you boast of are things that belong to this life, they may be granted to you because God considers you as his creature, even though you yourself are far enough from being a righteous man. “Thou openest thy hand,” says the Psalmist, “and satisfiest the desire of every living thing” (Ps 145:16). Again, “He feeds the young ravens that cry to him; and the young lions seek their meat from God” (Ps 147:9; Ps 104:21). Cain, Ishmael, and Ahab too had their desires granted them by God in some things (Gen 4:14-15; Gen 21:17-18; 1 Kgs 21:29). For if God will hear the desire of the beasts of the field, the fish of the sea, and the birds of the air, it is no wonder if the wicked man also may boast of his heart’s desire (Ps 10:3), since, as he says in another place, into his hand “God bringeth abundantly” (Job 12:6).

Be careful, therefore: neither these things nor the granting of them are any sign that you are a righteous man, or that the promise made to the righteous, to grant their desires, is fulfilled in you. I think a man may say that those who do not know God have a fuller grant (I mean generally) of their desires for temporal things than the child of God himself has. For since his portion lies in better things, his desires are answered another way.

3. Be careful: God grants some men their desires in anger, and to their destruction. He gave some “their own desire,” “but sent leanness into their soul” (Ps 78:29; Ps 106:15; Jer 13:22). Not all that God gives to the sons of men does he give in mercy. He gives to some an inferior portion and to some a superior one, and yet even so he answers them in the joy of their heart. Some men’s hearts are narrow upward and wide downward: narrow toward God, but wide for the world. They gape for the world but shut themselves up against God, so that as they desire, they have some of what they desire: “whose belly thou fillest with thy hid treasure,” for that is what they desire. “But as for me,” said David, these things will not satisfy: “I shall be satisfied when I awake, with thy likeness” (Ps 17:14-15).

I told you before that the heart of a wicked man is widest downward; but it is not so with the righteous. Therefore the portion of Jacob is not like theirs: God has given himself to him. The temple that Ezekiel saw in the vision grew ever wider upward; it spread itself toward heaven (Ezek 41:7). So is the church, so is the righteous man, and so are his desires.

Since you are confident that God also hears your desires, your great concern, therefore, is to consider (I say, to consider) whether he answers you in his anger. For if he does, your desires come with a woe. Therefore, I say, look to yourself. A full purse and a lean soul is a sign of a great curse. “He gave them their desire, but he sent leanness into their soul.” Take heed of that. Many men crave by their desires as a man sick with dropsy craves drink: his drinking makes his belly swell big, but wastes the other parts of his body. Oh, it is a sad grant when the desire is granted only to make the belly big, the estate big, the name big, while by this very bigness the soul pines, is made to dwindle, grows lean, and comes to look like a skeleton.

I am persuaded that it is this way with many who had fat souls while they were lean in their estates; but the fattening of their estates has made their souls, as to anything good, as lean as a rake. They cannot now breathe after God; they cannot now look to their hearts; they cannot now keep watch and guard over their ways; they cannot now spare time to examine who goes out or who comes in. They have so much of their desires in things below that they have no leisure to concern themselves with things above, or to look after them. Their hearts are now as fat as grease; their eyes now stand out too far to be turned and made to look inward (Ps 119:70; Ps 73:7). As to their best part, they have now become like the garden of the slothful, all grown over with nettles and briars that cover its face; or like Saul, who was raised from a little estate and a low condition to much, and grew even worse and worse.

Men do not know what they are doing when they desire the things of this life, things over and above what is necessary. They desire them, and they have them with a woe. “Surely he shall not feel quietness in his belly”: here his belly is taken for his conscience (Prov 20:27). “He shall not save of that which he desired” (Job 20:20) to help him in an evil day (1 Tim 6:17-19).

I will not give my caution to the righteous here, but will reserve that for the next use. But oh, that men were as wise in judging the answering of their desires as they are in judging the excesses of their appetites! You will see a man, taught by experience, pull himself back from whatever excess in eating, drinking, smoking, sleeping, talking, or pleasurable activities he finds by experience to be hurtful to him. And yet all this may only hurt the body, or at least it hurts the body directly. But how blind, how unskilled they are in the evils that attend desires! For like the man with dropsy I mentioned before, they desire this world as he does drink, until they desire themselves quite down to hell. Look to it, therefore, and take heed. God’s granting you the things that belong to this life neither proves that you are righteous nor that he acts in mercy toward you by giving you your desires.

The fourth use is for encouragement. Is it so? Shall the desire of the righteous be granted? Then this should encourage those who have first sought the kingdom of God and his Son’s righteousness to go on in their desires. God has given you his Son’s righteousness to justify you. And because you are a son, he has also sent the Spirit of his Son into your heart to sanctify you, and to help you cry to him, “Father, Father.” Will you not cry? Will you not desire? Your God has bidden you, “open thy mouth wide.” He has bidden you open it wide, and has promised, saying, “And I will fill it” (Ps 81:10). And will you not desire? Oh, you have a license, a leave, a grant to desire! So do not be afraid to desire great mercies of the God of heaven. This was Daniel’s way, and he set others to do it too (Dan 2:18).

Objection. “But I am an unworthy creature.”

Answer. That is true. But God gives to no one for their worthiness, and he rejects no one for their sinfulness, who comes to him aware of how much they lack mercy and how much mercy is worth. Besides, I told you before that the desires of a righteous man and the desires of his God fit together, or agree. God has a desire toward you, and you have a desire toward him (Job 14:15). God desires truth in the inward parts, and so do you, with all your heart (Ps 51:6). God desires mercy, and desires to show it to the needy; that is what you also lack, and what your soul craves at his hand (Hos 6:6). Seek, man! Ask, knock, and do not be discouraged. The Lord grant all your desires!

You say you are unworthy to ask for the biggest things, things spiritual and heavenly. Well, will earthly things serve you, and answer the desires of your heart? Can you be content to be put off with a well-filled belly and a well-clothed back? “Oh,” you answer, “better that I had never been born!” See, you will not ask for the best things, and yet you cannot manage without them. “Manage? No, there is no managing without them. I am undone without them, undone forever and ever,” you say. Well then, desire! “So I do,” you say. Ah, but desire with stronger desires, desire with larger desires. Desire spiritual gifts and covet them earnestly; you have a license to do that too (1 Cor 14:1). God bids you do so. And the apostle says, “I desire that ye faint not” (Eph 3:13), that is, in the pursuit of your desires, whatever discouragements you may meet with on the way. For he has said, “The desire of the righteous shall be granted.”

Objection. “But I do not find it so,” says one. “For though I have desired and desired, a thousand times on my knees, for something that I lack, yet I do not have my desire. And indeed, thinking about this has made me question whether I am one of those to whom the promise of granting desires is made.”

Answer. Many things must be said in reply to this objection: first, by way of question; second, by way of answer.

First, by way of question. What are the things you desire? Are they lawful or unlawful? For a Christian may desire unlawful things, as the mother of Zebedee’s children did when she came to Christ. Indeed, her sons themselves had their hearts in it, saying, “Master, we would that thou shouldest do for us whatsoever we shall desire” (Mark 10:35; Matt 20:20). They came with a wide mouth, but their desire was unlawful, as is evident from the fact that Christ would not grant it. James also caught those he wrote to in just such a fault as this, where he says, “Ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain” (Jas 4:2).

There are four things that are unlawful to desire. To desire the life of your enemy is unlawful (1 Kgs 3:11). To desire anything that is your neighbor’s is unlawful (Deut 5:21). To desire to share in the prosperity of the wicked is unlawful (Ps 73:3; Prov 24:1, 19). To desire spiritual things for evil ends is unlawful (Jas 4:2-4).

Are the things you desire lawful things? Then the question still is, are they promised absolutely or conditionally? If they are promised absolutely, hold on in desiring. If they are promised conditionally, then you must consider whether they are such things as are essential to the well-being of your soul in your Christian course in this life, or whether they are things of a more inferior sort.

If they are such things as are essential to the well-being of your soul in your Christian course in this world, then hold on in your desires. Look also for the conditions called for by the word that offers them to you. And if it is not possible to find those conditions in yourself, look for them in Christ, and cry to God for them for the Lord’s sake. But if they are of an inferior sort, and you can be a good Christian without them, desire them, and yet be content to go without them. For who knows but it may be better for you to be denied than to have a grant now of some things you desire? And in this you have your Lord for your pattern. Though he desired that his life might be prolonged, yet he wound up that prayer with a “nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done” (Matt 26:39-42; Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42).

Second, by way of answer. But we will suppose that the thing you desire is good, and that your heart may be right in asking. Suppose, for example, that you desire more grace, or, as David has it, more “truth in the inward and hidden part” (Ps 51:6). Even so, there are several things that may be said in reply to your objection, for your instruction, as follows.

1. Though you desire more of this, you may not yet be as aware of the worth of what you ask as perhaps God will have you be before he grants your desire. Sometimes Christians ask for good things without having in themselves an estimate that matches the worth of what they desire. And therefore God may hold it back, to teach them to know better the worth and greatness of the thing they ask for. The good disciples did not know what they were asking for (Mark 10:38). I know they asked for what was unlawful, but they were ignorant of the value of the thing; and the same may be your fault when you ask for things most lawful and necessary.

2. Have you made good use of what you have already received? Fathers will hold back more money when their sons have lavishly spent what they received before. “He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much” (Luke 16:10). “And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who shall give you that which is your own?” (Luke 16:12). See here an objection made against a further supply, or rather against such a supply as some would like to have, because they have misspent, or been unfaithful in, what they have already had. If you, then, have been at fault here, go and humble yourself before your friend, and beg pardon for your past faults when you are desiring more grace from him.

3. When God grants his people their desires, he does it in the way that may be best for our advantage. Now there are times when the giving of grace may be most to our advantage, as follows.

(1) Just before a temptation comes. Then, if God rains grace on you from heaven, it may be most to your advantage. This is like God’s sending plenty in Egypt just before the years of famine came.

(2) For God to hold back what you desire, even until the spirit of prayer is in a manner spent, may serve to teach you something further. Though prayer and desires are a duty, and a duty to which the promise is made, yet God sees such imperfections in both your prayers and your desires as would utterly bind his hands, if he did not act toward you purely from motives drawn from his own tender heart and compassion, rather than from any deserving that he sees in your prayers. Christians, even righteous men, are apt to lean too much on their own doings. And God, to wean them from these, often delays doing what they expect to gain by their doing, even until their spirits are spent in doing and they can do no more. When those who cried for water had cried until their spirits failed and their tongue stuck to the roof of their mouth for thirst, then the Lord heard, and then the God of Israel gave them their desire (Isa 41:17-18). Also, when Jonah’s soul fainted at the thought of all the evils he had brought upon himself, then his prayer came to God, into his holy temple (Jonah 2:7). The righteous would be too light in asking, and would overvalue their works too much, if their God did not sometimes deal with them in this way.

(3) It is also to the advantage of the righteous that they be kept and led in the way that will make the best use of the grace they have already received. And that is when they spin it out and use it to the utmost, when they do with it as the prophet did with the meal he ate under the juniper tree: “he went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights, even to the mount of God” (1 Kgs 19:8). Or it is when they do as the widow did, living on their handful of flour in the barrel and that little oil in the jar until God sends more plenty (1 Kgs 17:9-16). The righteous would be apt to be like well-fed children, too unruly, if God did not appoint them some fasting days. Or they would be apt to throw away the leftovers if God gave them a new dish every day. So then, God will grant the desires of the righteous in the way that will be most for their advantage, and that is when they have made the best of the old store (1 Kgs 19:4-8). If God gave us two or three harvests a year, we would be inclined to feed our horses and hogs with wheat; but things being as they are, we learn better how to make it last.

By this means we are also made to see that there is power enough in our old store of grace to keep us with God in the way of our duty longer than we could imagine it would. I myself have cried out, “I can stand no longer, hold out no longer, without a further supply of grace.” And yet I have been kept by my old grace even after this, for days and weeks and months, in a way of waiting on God. A little true grace will go a great way, yes, and do more wonders than we are aware of. If we have only grace enough to keep us groaning after God, it is not all the world that can destroy us.

4. Perhaps you are mistaken. The grace you pray for may in great measure have come to you already. You have been desiring more grace from God, you say, but do not have it.

But what if, while you are looking for it to come to you by one door, it should come in to you by another? And so that we may inquire a little into the truth of this, let us consider a little what the effects of grace are as it comes to the soul, and then see whether it has not been coming to you almost ever since you set about this fresh desire after it.

(1) Grace, in its general effect, is to mend the soul and to make it better disposed. Hence, when it comes, it brings convincing light along with it, by which a man sees more of his baseness than at other times; more, I say, of his inward baseness. It is through the shining of the Spirit of grace that the cobwebs and stinks that still remain in you are exposed: “In thy light shall we see light” (Ps 36:9). And again, whatever makes manifest is light. If then you see yourself as more vile than before, grace has done this for you by its coming to you.

(2) Grace, when it comes, breaks and crumbles the heart in the sense and sight of its vileness. A man stands amazed and confounded in himself. He breaks and falls down on his face before God. He is ashamed to lift up so much as his face to God at the sight and realization of how wicked he is.

(3) Grace, when it comes, shows a man more of the holiness and patience of God: his holiness to make us wonder at his patience, and his patience to make us wonder at his mercy, that yet, even yet, such a vile one as I am should be allowed to breathe in the land of the living; yes, more, should be allowed to come to the throne of grace.

(4) Grace is of a heart-humbling nature. It will make a man count himself the most unworthy of anything, the most unworthy of all saints. It will make a man put all others ahead of himself, and be glad too if he may be one who is loved, though least loved, because most unworthy. It will make him gladly accept the lowest place, counting all saints more worthy of exaltation than himself.

(5) Grace will make a man prize other men’s graces and gracious actions above his own. He thinks every man’s candle burns brighter than his, every man makes better use of grace than he does, and every good man does his duty more sincerely than he does. And if these are not some of the effects of the renewings of grace, I will confess I have aimed wide of the mark.

(6) Renewings of grace bring renewed self-bemoaning, self-condemnation and self-abhorrence.

And suppose you pray for communion with God and for his presence. God can have communion with you and grant you his presence, and yet all this, instead of comforting you for the present, shall confound you more and make you see your wickedness (Isa 6:1-5). Some people think they never have the presence and the renewings of God’s grace upon them except when they are comforted and cheered up. And yet, alas, God may be richly with them while they cry out, “By these visions my sorrows are multiplied,” or, “Because I have seen God, I shall die” (Dan 10:8-17; Judg 13:22).

And now tell me, all these things considered, has not grace, even the grace of God which you have so much desired, been coming to you and working in you in all these hidden ways? And in doing so, has it not also furnished you with all the benefits named above? When you consider them, I know you would not be without them for all the good in the world. In this way, then, your desire is being fulfilled; and when it is fulfilled, it will be sweet to your soul (Prov 13:19).

5. But we will follow you a little further in the way of your heart. You say you desire, and desire grace; yes, you have been a thousand times on your knees before God for more grace, and yet you cannot attain it. I answer:

(1) It may be that the grace you pray for is worth your being on your knees a thousand times more yet. We find that those who go to kings’ courts seeking promotion are usually put to great expense there. Yes, and they wait a long while, even until they have spent their whole estates and worn out their patience too. Yet at last they prevail, and the thing desired comes. Yes, and when it has come, it sets them up anew and makes them better men than ever they were before, though they spent all they had to obtain it. Wait, therefore; wait, I say, on the Lord (Ps 27:14). Wait, therefore, with David; wait patiently; tell your soul to cheer up, and wait (Ps 37:7; Ps 42:5). “Blessed are all they that wait for him” (Isa 30:18).

(2) You must consider that great grace is reserved for great service. You desire abundance of grace, and you do well; and you shall have what will qualify and fit you for the service God has for you to do for him and for his name in the world. The apostles themselves had to wait for great grace until the time of their work had come (Acts 1:4-8; Acts 4:33). I will not assign your service. But be assured that when your desire comes, you will have occasion for it: new work, new trials, new sufferings, or something that will call for the power and strength of all the grace you will have, to keep your spirit steady and your feet from slipping while you are exercised in new engagements. Be assured, your God will not give you straw without expecting brick: “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required; and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more” (Luke 12:48).

So, while you are busy desiring more grace, desire also that wisdom to manage it faithfully may be granted to you as well. You will say, “Grace, if I had it, would do all this for me.” It will, and it will not. It will if you watch and are sober; it will not if you are foolish and careless. Men of great grace may waste away in grace, and idleness may bring the man in a plush jacket to rags. David was once a man of great grace, but his sin made the grace he had shrink up and dwindle away, so that it made him cry out, Oh, “take not thy holy spirit” utterly “from me” (Ps 51:11; Ps 119:8). Or perhaps God withholds what you would have so that you may prize it more when it comes: “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick, but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life” (Prov 13:12).

6. Lastly, do you think that more grace will exempt you from temptations? Alas! The more grace, as was hinted, the greater the trials. For all that, you must be like the ship you read of: sometimes high, sometimes low; sometimes steady, sometimes staggering; sometimes in your right mind, and sometimes even at your very wits’ end. For so he brings us to our desired haven (Ps 107:23-30). Yet grace is the gold and the treasure of the righteous man. Yes, and in this the uprightness of his soul appears: though all these things attend the grace of God in him, yet he chooses grace here above everything. He chooses it because it makes him more like God and his Christ, because it seasons his heart best to his own contentment, and also because it fits him to glorify God in the world.

Is it so? Is this the sum of it all, that “the fear of the wicked it shall come upon him,” and that “the desire of the righteous shall be granted”? Then this shows us what has been determined concerning both. Concerning the wicked, it is determined that all his hopes will not bring him to heaven; and concerning the righteous, that all his fears will not bring him to hell.

But what a sad thing it is to be a wicked man! Nothing can help him. His wickedness is too strong for him: “His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins” (Prov 5:22). He may twist and turn, and try to work himself out from under the sentence passed on him, but nothing will do him any good: “The wicked is driven away in his wickedness. But the righteous hath hope in his death” (Prov 14:32). He is unwilling to be righteous now, and he will be just as unwilling to be found in his sins at the dreadful day of doom. But so it must be: “Upon the wicked God shall rain snares, fire, and brimstone, and a horrible” burning “tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup” (Ps 11:6).

Therefore, “Woe unto the wicked”: “it shall be ill with him, for the reward of his hands shall be given him” (Isa 3:11). The just God will repay both the righteous and the wicked, according to their works. And yet for all this the wicked will not listen! When I read God’s Word, and see how the wicked follow their sins, yes, dance in the ways of their own destruction, it astonishes me. Their actions show them to be atheists in practice, though not in principle. What do all their deeds declare but this: that they either do not know God, or do not fear what he can do to them? But oh, how they will change their tune when they see what will become of them! How pale they will look! Yes, the hair on their heads will stand on end for fear, for their fear is their portion. Neither their fears, nor their prayers, nor their pleading, nor their wishes, nor their repentings can help them on that day.

And so I have shown you what “the desires of the righteous” are, and that “the fear of the wicked shall come upon him, but the desire of the righteous shall be granted” (Prov 10:24).