The Saints' Safety in Evil Times

Behold, he travaileth with iniquity, and hath conceived mischief, and brought forth a lie (Ps 7:14).

These are the words of David. The title of the psalm shows the occasion, which was the malicious slander and cruel practices of Ahithophel or Shimei in the time of Absalom’s rebellion. The words express the conception, birth, carriage, and miscarriage of a plot against David. In them you may consider (1) what his enemies did, (2) what God did, and (3) what we all should do: his enemies’ intention, God’s prevention, and our duty. His enemies’ intention: he travaileth with iniquity, and conceiveth mischief. God’s prevention: he brought forth a lie. Our duty: Behold.

His enemy’s intention or action is set out by comparison with a bodily conception. The Holy Spirit delights to present the plots of wicked men to us under the likeness of a bodily conception and birth, because of the analogy between the two. The mind has its conceptions as well as the body. The seed of this conception was some wicked thought, either raised up by the heart itself or cast in by Satan, that envious man. Not only wicked men but also their devices are the seed of the serpent. The understanding was the womb to conceive, and the will to consent. The conception was the hatching of a mischievous plot. Its quickening was the resolution to do it and the taking of it in hand. Its impregnation, its growing big, and its travail were the carrying of it to the due time. The birth itself was the expected execution, which nevertheless miscarried and was stillborn. They intended the destruction of David, but brought forth their own ruin.

1. “The less necessity there is to sin, the greater the sin.” As for the conception, observe how the sin is aggravated: “he conceiveth.” He was not pushed into it or forced to it; it was voluntary. The more freedom we have not to sin, the greater our sin. He did not do this in passion but in cold blood. The less will, the less sin. Here there could be no plea, because nothing is more voluntary than plotting. When the will sets the wit to work devising mischief, and the body to carrying it out, it shows how widely and largely sin has spread in a person. For the will, being the desire of the whole man, carries the whole man with it.

Besides, when a man sins voluntarily, there is less hope of amendment, because his will cannot be counseled. If the defect were in a man’s understanding, sound direction might set it right. But where the will is set on a thing and is its own only reason (as when a man wills something because he wills it), counsel will not be heard. Tell a rover that he is off the road, and he knows it well enough already and has no intention of taking your directions; but tell an honest traveler who has mistaken his way through ignorance, and he will thank you. In the same way, tell a popish atheist that he is in error, and he pays no heed, because he is a papist for selfish ends, not from conviction. He is resolved to remain one, whatever reasons you bring, since his hope is to rise that way. Though the will follows some kind of understanding, it is still in the will’s power what the understanding shall consider and decide. And so, unless the malice of the will is first taken away by grace, it will always bias our judgments the wrong way.

2. Nor was this plot only voluntary; it was also carried on with delight, because it was a conception, and it is births that come with more pain. Delight carries the whole strength and marrow of the soul with it; much of the soul is where delight is.

3. Again, it was a spiritual sin. The spirit of a man is the chief seat of God’s good Spirit, where he frames all holy devices and good desires. The spirit is either the best or the worst part of a man. Here Satan builds his nest and forges all his designs, his masterpieces, his gunpowder plots. God’s chief curse or blessing rests on the spirits of men. However high people are raised in the world, if they are given over to a malicious and devilish spirit, they are under a most heavy judgment, carrying Satan’s stamp on them. Diseases that seize the spirits of men, such as plagues and the like, are more deadly than those that seize the humors. Spiritual wickednesses are the most desperate wickednesses. Sins are judged more by the mind than by the deed.

4. And as it was a spiritual sin, so it was an artful one. There was a great deal of art and cunning in it, and in evil things, the more art, the worse. Art commends other things, but it makes sin the more sinful. “Tricks are no tricks unless you work them with cunning.” When men are clever at working mischief and wise to do evil, they are dyed in the grain with evil. It is best to be a bungler at this trade. Honorable men carry their hatred in the open, but this plot was spun with so fine a thread that it could not easily be discerned.

5. Again, they were very diligent in it, for it was an intricate web. And as in weaving the head and hand, eye and foot all work together, so here they mustered all their wits. Judas is awake when Peter sleeps.

6. And worst of all, they were so pleased with the brat of their own brain that they travailed with it. It increases guilt when people, on viewing and seeing their plot, grow so much in love with it that they long to be delivered of it. The more the soul dwells on any sinful plot, the more estranged it is from God, because the happiness of the soul consists in cleaving to God, the fountain of all good. The more deliberation anyone takes in sinning, the more his soul is pleased with wickedness. A heart long exercised in sin will admit no impression of grace, for its spirits are so absorbed with other designs that they are dry and dead to better things. Many thousands are in hell today for allowing their spirits to shove them too far into sin. Many suck out the delight of sin before they act it, as Esau pleased himself with thinking that the day of mourning for his father would come, wherein he might be revenged of his brother (Gen 27:41).

7. Yet this sin was not only spiritual and inward but outward as well, passing over onto others. It reached against the second table of the law, and therefore against the principles of nature and against society, out of which God gathers a church. There was false witness and murder in this sin. In this respect the sins against the second table are greater than the sins against the first, because they go against clearer light. A natural conscience has a clearer eye in these things. Here is light upon light, for both grace and nature condemn these sins.

Yet in the order of sinning, all sin against man rises from our sinning against God first. No one sins against people without sinning against God in the first place, and so breaking the first commandment is the ground of breaking all the rest. For if God were set up in the heart in first place, parents would be honored there, and every kind of injury would be suppressed for conscience’ sake. Scripture gives this as a cause of the notorious courses of wicked men: “that God is not in all their thoughts” (Ps 10:4). They forget that there is a God of vengeance and a day of reckoning. The fool would insist on forcing upon his heart “that there is no God” (Ps 14:1), and this is what follows: “Corrupt they are, there is none doth good, they eat up my people as bread.” They make no more scruple of devouring people and their estates than they make of eating a piece of bread.

What a wretched condition sin has brought man into, that the great God who “filleth heaven and earth” (Jer 23:24) should still have no place in the heart he has made especially for himself! The sun is not so clear as this truth, that God is; for all things in the world exist because God is. If he were not, nothing could be. It is from him that wicked men have whatever strength they have to commit sin. Therefore sin proceeds from atheism, especially these plotting sins; for if God were thought of more, he would draw the soul away from sinful contriving and fix it on himself.

But by whom and against whom was this plotting? By children of the church, not by uncircumcised Philistines. Opposition is bitterest between those who are nearest, as between the flesh and the spirit in the same soul, and between hypocrites and true-hearted Christians in the same womb of the church. Brothers they were, but false brothers; children, but strange children. They were children on the mother’s side, all bred in the same church, but they did not have the same father. Children on the mother’s side only are commonly persecutors. Popish spirits count it presumption to know who their father is, which shows them to be illegitimate children.

The greatest sins of all are committed within the church, because they are committed against the greatest light. That is why the great sin against the Holy Spirit (which, like Jonah’s whale, devours all at once) is not committed outside the church at all. Oh, beloved, how we should reverence the blessed truth of God and the gracious motions of his Spirit! If it is a sin to kill infants in the womb, what is it to kill the offspring of the blessed Spirit in our hearts!

But against whom was this plot directed? Against David himself: a prophet and a king, a kingly prophet, a man after God’s own heart (1 Sam 13:14; Acts 13:22), though not after theirs; a sacred person, and therefore inviolable. “Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm” (Ps 105:15) was a prohibition from heaven. David was a man eminent in goodness, and goodness clothed with greatness is a fair mark for envy to shoot at. What people do not care to imitate out of sloth, cannot imitate out of weakness, or will not imitate out of pride, they malign. They sit cursing and fretting at the bottom of the hill at those they see climbing above them, whose lives bear witness against them. When goodness shines out, it immediately meets with envy, until it rises high enough to be above envy, just as the sun at its highest casts no shadow. Envy has an evil eye; it cannot look on goodness without grief. The spirit that is in us lusts after envy (Jas 4:5).

Persecuting goodness in people, and people for their goodness, is a sin of a deep dye. For whoever hates a man for his goodness hates goodness itself; and whoever hates goodness itself hates it most in the fountain, and so becomes a hater of God himself. If Christ were in such a man’s power, he would fare no better than his members do. For Christ is joined, either in love or in hatred, with his cause and his children. He and his people have common friends and common enemies. People think they are dealing with weak and helpless men, but they will one day find that they have to deal with the great Lord of heaven and earth.

But how did they carry out their design? This cruel plot was cunningly carried out. They kill him in his good name first and accuse him as an enemy of the state, so that their slanders may make way for violence. Satan is a liar first and then a murderer; indeed, he is a liar so that he may be a murderer all the better. He is first a serpent, then a lion; first a lion crouching, then a lion rampant. He teaches his scholars the same method. Cruelty marches on furiously, under warrant and privilege, when it has slander to give it countenance. Once you taint people in the world’s opinion, they lie open to any treatment. It becomes not only safe but glorious to oppose such people, and so virtue comes to receive the reward due to wickedness and passes under public hatred. The open cause and pretext is one thing, and the inward moving cause another, which perhaps lies hidden until the day of revelation of the secrets of all flesh (Rom 2:5). It is as in a clock: the wheels and the hand appear openly, but the weights that move them all are out of sight.

But what course did David take in this? Innocence was his best defense, and when that would not serve, then patience. He saw God in the wrongs he suffered: God bade Shimei curse (2 Sam 16:10). But because this invites more injuries, he lays his soul open to God in prayer. David’s prayer prevailed more in heaven than Ahithophel’s scheming could do on earth. Carnal men are pregnant and full of wiles and tricks to secure themselves. But godly people have only one refuge and hiding place, though it is a great one: to run to God by prayer, as to their rock and tower of defense in their distresses. From all that has been said, these conclusions arise.

First, even the best of God’s saints are liable to be the objects of the plots of wicked men. (1) This comes from an antipathy between the two contrary seeds in them. (2) Because God will not have his children love the world, he allows the world to hate them. (3) They are strangers here, and so it is no wonder if they find strange entertainment from those who think themselves at home. From the beginning of the world there has always been a continual conspiracy of Satan and his instruments against God and goodness. Emperors and kings became Christians, but Satan has never yet become a Christian. He has always bestirred himself to maintain the first division, and he has never yet lacked a strong faction in the world.

Second, observe that it is the mark of a man wicked to a high degree to contrive wickedness. The reasons are these. (1) It is a disposition of those who are given up by God to a reprobate mind, and it is reckoned among other vile sins that they are full of maliciousness and inventors of evil, and so on. A son of Belial carries a perverse heart and devises mischief (Prov 6:14). (2) It shows that malice is so natural to such people that they cannot sleep unless they cause some to fall (Prov 4:16). “Wickedness comes from the wicked” (1 Sam 24:13), as naturally and speedily as poison from a spider. (3) It shows that such men work out of a vicious habit, which stamps a second evil nature on top of the first, when their hearts are exercised in doing mischief. (4) It shows that they are of the devil’s trade, whose only work is to hurt and harm, all he can, those who have broken loose from him.

Certainly such people as these are children of the devil in a higher degree than ordinary. It is said that when Judas began to betray Christ, the devil entered into him (Luke 22:3). He was a child of the devil to some degree before, but now the devil took stronger possession of him; his unnatural treason in some sense changed him into the very form of the devil. When Elymas sought to turn the proconsul away from the faith, St. Paul had no fitter terms for him than to address him, “Thou full of all subtlety and mischief, and child of the devil” (Acts 13:10). And indeed there is no disposition so contrary to the sweet Spirit of God, which is a Spirit of love and goodness, as this one.

Application 1. Learn from this, then, as you love God, to abhor this hateful disposition. The serpent was indeed wiser than all the beasts of the field (Gen 3:1), yet when he became an instrument of mischief, he was cursed above all the rest (Gen 3:14). Satan labors to serve his turn with the best wits. But what greater curse can befall a man than to serve the basest creature in the basest service, and that with our best abilities? Men of a devilish spirit carry God’s curse beneath their zeal; indeed, they carry the devil in their brain in all their works of darkness. For, alas, what business have the subtlety of foxes, the fierceness of lions, and the malice of devils in a heart dedicated to Christ?

Such men work from a double principle: the evil of their own disposition within, and Satan going with the tide of it. His chief labor is to make a prey of men of the best gifts, so that by them he may either snare others or else harass those who have enough wit or grace not to be caught by his baits. This course is contrary to humanity as we are men, contrary to honorable dealing as we are civilized men, and contrary to religion as we are Christian men. It plainly shows that such persons are led by another spirit than their own, even by the prince who rules in the air.

Our care and duty, therefore, should be to submit our spirits to the sweet guidance and government of God’s good Spirit, and to be content that every device and imagination of our hearts should be brought captive to higher and better reasons than our own.

We are not wise enough in ourselves for our own wills and wits to be our prime movers. Everything is perfected by subjection to a superior. Where there should be subordination to a higher wisdom, to withdraw our understandings and wills is sheer rebellion. What the prophet says is too true of many in these days: “Thy wisdom hath made thee to rebel” (Isa 47:10). Such people are too wise to be saved.

Application 2. We need not be ashamed to learn some things even from our enemies. If they are so busy for evil, why should we not be as active for good? I am sure we serve a better Master. True love is full of inventions; it will always be devising good things. As soon as our nature is changed, the stream of the soul is turned another way, and its bent is toward God. Alas, it is small praise to be only passively good, and it is a poor excuse to be only passively evil. A good Christian does not think it enough to see good done by others, but labors to have a hand in it himself. And whoever allows evil to be done that he might have opposed and hindered brings its guilt upon his own head. “Curse you Meroz,” God says, for not helping the Lord against the mighty (Judg 5:23).

What shall we think, then, of those who help the mighty against the Lord, who pour on oil to kindle where they should pour water to quench, who inflame the rage of great persons when they should labor to bring everything back to moderation? That apostate was of this spirit who stirred up the emperor to kill every man, woman, and child among the Protestants, with all their kindred and allies, for fear that anyone left alive would avenge the others’ quarrel.

We see that God has stooped so low as to commend his cause to us, as if he needed our help; and usually whatever good he does for us is conveyed by people like ourselves. Therefore we should labor to appear on his side and to own his cause and his children. In the house of God there are vessels of all kinds, some of more honorable use than others. Some make the very times and places where they live good by an influence of good. Others, like malignant planets, threaten misery and desolation wherever they come. These are the calamities of the times. People may know whether they are vessels of mercy or not by the use they are put to. The basest of people are fit enough to be executioners; the worst of men are good enough to be rods of God’s wrath. How much better it is to be full of goodness, as Scripture says of Josiah and Hezekiah and others! Indeed, what is a man but his goodness? Such people live desired and die lamented. Even their very name is as the ointment of the apothecary poured out (Song 1:3). They leave a sweet fragrance behind them in the church.

Now I come to their miscarriage. They brought forth a lie: a lie with respect to their expectation, for their hopes deceived them, but a just defeat with respect to God. It was contrary to their desire but agreeable to God’s justice. Nor were they merely disappointed so as to miss what they intended; they met with a misery they did not intend, and indeed with the very misery they meant to bring on David.

This defeat comes about in five steps: (1) they were disappointed; (2) they fell into danger; (3) they were contrivers of this danger themselves; (4) there was a penal proportion, for they fell into the same danger they plotted for another; (5) they were a means of doing good to the one they devised evil against, and raised the one they thought to pull down. David fared the better for Shimei’s malice and Ahithophel’s scheming. See all five of these likewise in the example of Haman and Mordecai: (1) Haman missed his plot; (2) he fell into danger; (3) he fell into the same danger that he contrived himself; (4) he fell into the same danger that he contrived for Mordecai; and (5) he was the means of Mordecai’s advancement.

It would have been vexation enough to weave a spider’s web, which is made with a great deal of art and yet comes to nothing. But to hatch a cockatrice’s egg that brings forth a viper which stings to death is a double vexation. Yet this is how God delights to catch the wise in the imagination of their own hearts (Luke 1:51), and to pay them in their own coin. The wicked carry a lie in their right hand, for they trust in man, who is but a lie. And since they are liars themselves too, no wonder their hopes prove deceitful, so that while they sow the wind, they reap the whirlwind (Hos 8:7).

Reason. (1) The reason for God’s dealing this way is, first, in regard to himself. God will not lose the glory of any of his attributes. He will be known as the only wise God, and he will make this appear especially when wicked men think to outwit him.

(2) It is also in regard to his tender care over his children. They are as the apple of his eye; and as they are very near to him, so they are very dear to him. They cost him dearly; they are his jewels, and he gave a Jewel of infinite price for them. He has a stake in their quarrels, and they in his.

If they are in any misery, God’s heart yearns for them. He is always awake and never slumbers, as we see in the parable, where the master of the house stayed awake while the servants slept (Matt 25:1-13). God’s eye is upon them for good. He has them written in the “palms of his hands” (Isa 49:16). Christ carries them always in his breast. Christ, who is the husband of his church, is Lord of heaven and earth. All power has been committed to him (Matt 28:18; John 17:2), and he will rule in the midst of his enemies. He is the only Monarch of the world, and he makes all things and all persons serve his own end and his church’s good. He is higher than the highest. Satan, the god of the world (2 Cor 4:4), is only his slave and his church’s slave. All things belong to the church, to further its best good.

(3) Another reason is the insolence of the enemies, whose fierceness turns at length to God’s praise. For as he is a just Lord, so he will be known to be just by executing judgment (Ps 9:16). It will become plain that there is “a God that judgeth the earth” (Ps 58:11).

(4) Again, God’s children will give him no rest. When he seems to sleep, they will wake him with their prayers. They will not let him go without a blessing from him (Gen 32:26). They will prevail by persistence, like the widow in the gospel (Luke 18:5). Since they are dealing with a just God, in a just cause, against common enemies who are his as well as theirs, they bind him with his own promises. And he is content to be bound, because he bound himself first. He will not lose that part of his title by which he is known as a God hearing prayers (Ps 65:2).

Objection. But it will be objected that wicked men not only set themselves against the people of God but prevail over them, even to the scorn of those who look on. Cicero could say, “The gods show how much they esteem the Jewish nation, by allowing them so often to be conquered.” Has not antichrist prevailed for a long time? And was it not foretold that the beast would prevail (Rev 13)? Where, then, is the bringing forth of a lie?

Answer. (1) I answer that the enemies have power, but no more than is given them by God, as Christ answered Pilate (John 19:11). They do prevail, but only for a time, a limited time, and a short one at that: ten days (Rev 2:10). And what is that compared with the vast time of their torment? The time will come when there will be no more time for them to persecute in.

(2) Besides, even when they do prevail, it is only over a part, not over the whole. They prevail over persons, it may be, but not over the cause; that stands impregnable. They prevail over men’s lives, perhaps, but not over their spirits, which is what they chiefly aim at. A true Christian conquers when he is conquered. Stephen prevailed over his enemies when they seemed to prevail over him. God put glory upon him, and a spirit of glory into him (Acts 7).

(3) The church’s enemies may prevail in one place, but then, like the sea, they lose ground in another. The more they cut down God’s people, as Pharaoh did the Israelites, the more they multiply; and the more they are hemmed in, the more they spread and are enlarged. God allows the enemies of his truth to prevail in some episodes, to harden their hearts all the more for destruction, as Pharaoh prevailed in oppressing the Israelites, and Herod in killing John, and so on. But lay the beginning and the end together, and we will see that they did not prevail. And so far as they did prevail, it served only to hasten their own ruin, because present success lifts up the heart.

We see that antichrist prevailed, but spiritually only over those “whose names were not written in the Lamb’s book of life” (Rev 13:8), and outwardly over the saints. For it was set down beforehand that he would “make war with the saints, and overcome them” (Rev 13:7). This was hurled as a fiery dart at the Christians of those times, to make them think their cause worthless because they were so overcome. But by the help of the Spirit of God they understood as much of the Revelation as concerned themselves, and they used this very thing as a weapon, confessing that they were the conquered people of God, but still the people of God. Yet the chief support and satisfaction of the soul in all this is to look to the day of God’s righteous judgment, when we will see all promises performed, all threatenings executed, and all enemies trodden forever under the feet of Christ and his church.

Use 1. This is a point of marvelous comfort, when Israel can say, “They have afflicted me from my youth, but yet they have not prevailed over me” (Ps 129:1-2). The gates of hell may set themselves against the church, but they will not prevail. The church is not ruled by human counsel. We neither live nor die at man’s appointment. Our lives are not in our own hands, or Satan’s, or our enemies’, but in God’s. They can do no more, and they will do no less, than God wills, who is our life and the length of our days. God may give way for a while, so that the “thoughts of many may be revealed” (Luke 2:35), and so that his glory may shine all the more in raising up his children and confounding his enemies. But he will put an end to it in his own due time, and that is the best time.

There is a day of Jacob’s trouble (Jer 30:7), when his enemies say, “This is Sion, whom none regards” (Jer 30:17). But God sets bounds both to the time of his children’s trouble and to the malice of the wicked. Their rod shall not rest over-long upon the back of the righteous (Ps 125:3). God will put a hook into the nostrils of these leviathans and draw them whichever way he pleases.

Use 2. Again, we see here that mischievous schemes come to nothing in the end. For did anyone ever harden himself against God and prosper long? Let Cain speak; let Pharaoh, Haman, Ahithophel, and Herod speak; let the persecutors of the church in its first two hundred years speak; let all who ever bore ill will toward Zion speak, and they will confess that they did nothing but kick against the goads and dash themselves against the rocks.

The greatest torment of the damned spirit is that God turns all his plots to the good of those he hates most. He tempted man to desire to become like God (Gen 3:5), so that he might ruin him; but God became man, and so restored him. God makes use of this arch-schemer and all his instruments; they are only executors of God’s will even while they rush against it. Joseph’s brothers sold him so that they would not have to bow down to him, and that was the very means by which they came at length to bow down to him. God delights to take the side of the oppressed. Wicked men cannot do God’s children a greater kindness than to oppose them, for by this means they help to advance them.

Why wicked plots miscarry. The reason wicked plots miscarry is that Satan and his followers maintain a damned cause, and their plots are under a curse. Everyone who prays, “Thy kingdom come,” prays by consequence against them as its opposers. And how can men and plots under so many curses do anything but miscarry, and prove no better than the untimely fruit of a woman? They are like the grass on the housetop, which pokes up above the grain in the field, yet no one prays for a blessing on it. When people pass a fine field of grain, everyone is ready to say, “God bless this field.” Beloved, it is a heavier thing than atheistic spirits imagine to be under the curse of the church. For as God blesses out of Zion, so the heaviest curses usually come out of Zion. Woe to the Herods and Julians of the world when the church, whether directly or indirectly, prays against them.

Use 3. This gives God’s people ground for steadying their souls when things seem to be in confusion. There is a harmony in all this discord. God is fitting his people for a better condition even when they are at their worst, and he is hardening and preparing the wicked for ruin even when they are at their best. “The wicked practice against the righteous, but God laugheth them to scorn” (Ps 37:12-13). For he sees all their plotting, and his day is coming. While they are digging pits for others, a pit is being dug and a grave is being made for themselves. They have a measure to fill up and a treasure to fill, which at length will be broken open. This, I think, should keep those who are set on mischief from pleasing themselves in their plots. Alas, they are only plotting their own ruin, and building a Babel that will fall on their own heads.

If there were anything praiseworthy in plotting, then that great plotter of plotters, that great engineer, Satan, would outdo us all and take all the credit from us. But let us not envy Satan and his followers their glory. They need something to comfort them. Let them please themselves with their trade. The day is coming when the daughter of Zion will laugh them to scorn. There will be a time when it will be said, “Arise, Sion, and thresh” (Mic 4:13). And usually the deliverance of God’s children is joined with the destruction of his enemies: Saul’s death and David’s deliverance; the Israelites’ deliverance and the Egyptians’ drowning. The church and her opponents are like the scales of a balance; when one goes up, the other goes down.

Haman’s wife had learned this: if her husband once began to fall before the Jews, he would surely fall. Wicked men have their hour, and they will be sure to take it; and God has his hour too, and he will be just as sure to take that. The judgments on the wicked are mercies to the church. So David says, “He slew mighty kings, Og king of Bashan, for his mercy endureth for ever” (Ps 136:20).

God has only two things in the world that he greatly regards: his truth, and his church, which is begotten by his truth. And shall we think that he will long put up with wretched men who turn the wit and power they have from him against his truth and his church? No, assuredly. He will give them up, by that very wit of theirs, to work their own destruction; the people they hate most will be the very ones they serve most. God sits in heaven and laughs them to scorn. Shall God laugh, and we cry? They take counsel together on earth, but God has a counsel in heaven that will overthrow all their counsels here.

Notice the biting expressions in Scripture: “Why do the heathen rage” (Ps 2:1), without fear or wit? Go to now, says God, gather a council (Isa 8:9). Beloved, it cuts proud people to the heart to be scorned, especially when what they count their masterpiece miscarries; they would rather be counted devils than fools. “Let us work wisely,” says Pharaoh (Exod 1:10), when he was never more a fool. They encroach on God’s right and promise themselves great things for the time to come, whereas that is God’s prerogative alone. They know neither what the womb of their counsels nor what the womb of tomorrow may bring forth. What they are pregnant with may prove a miscarriage, or a viper that eats away the womb that bred it.

“Go to now,” says the prophet, “all ye that kindle a fire: walk in the light of your fire, but take this of me, you shall lie down in sorrow” (Isa 50:11). Scripture is full of such remonstrances and taunts. “Man is become like one of us,” says God (Gen 3:22). When men will have a way of their own and think themselves wiser than God, then God’s honor requires him to outwit them. “Yet God is wise,” says the prophet (Isa 31:2). You think you can get the better of God. Do not deceive yourselves. God is wise, and you will find him so. He has a way of getting the better of you. Do not many men spin a fine thread and weave a fair web, when by their turnings and devices they turn themselves into hell? “Woe be to them that dig deep,” says the prophet, “and think to hide their counsels from the Lord” (Isa 29:15). God has an eye that sees into the most secret and darkest dealings of business. God has a key to open the closet of their hearts, however tightly it is locked.

Oh, that men would fear this all-seeing eye of God more, and be wise for themselves and not against themselves! It is a miserable wisdom when men are wise to work their own ruin. Beloved, when men have laid all their plots, God still has a plot beyond them. He catches them failing in something or other. Their schemes are like an intricate clock; if the least thing is out of order, all is ruined. God lets them spin a fine thread for a long while, and at length he cuts the web, and there is an end of it. And they may thank themselves for all this, for they carry in their own breasts what justifies God. They perish because they will perish; and this will be the torment of all torments to the graceless, that they pulled destruction down upon themselves.

Malice blinds the understanding in Satan and his instruments. For if their malice did not outrun their wit, would they, to gratify their evil passions, knowingly rush into the displeasure of God, and into courses that will unavoidably bring their ruin? Malice drinks up the greatest part of its own poison. “His own iniquity shall take the wicked himself,” says Solomon, “and he shall be holden with the cords of his own sin” (Prov 5:22).

This may be extended to every sinful course. Every sinner works a deceitful work and brings forth a lie. Augustine says well that every sin is a lie. Men want to be happy, yet they will not live in the way that would make them happy; what could be more deceitful than this? In the end every sinner will make the complaint that was Eve’s: “the serpent hath deceived me” (Gen 3:13). It was St. Paul’s complaint (Rom 7:11), and it will be the complaint of all sinful wretches at the last day. What has pride profited us? What good can the favor of men we leaned on do us now?

Sin promises us contentment, continuance, secrecy, full satisfaction, and so on; but does it make this good? When the beginning and the end were laid together, was anyone ever established by wickedness? Take it from God himself (we have a commission to say it): Say, it shall not go well with the wicked, though they escape an hundred times (Eccl 8:12-13). Yet their escape is only a reprieve for some further service that God has to do by them. “Be not deceived, God is not mocked” (Gal 6:7). When we can be more subtle than the devil, or stronger than God, we may think to thrive by sin. Can we think that God will alter the course of divine justice for us? Had we not better believe this than find it so hereafter? Beloved, hell is for those to feel who will not believe.

This much is certain: those who will sin in spite of God’s justice will be severely punished in spite of his mercy. God is not more resolute about anything than about this: If any man bless himself in an ill way, my wrath shall smoke against him (Deut 29:19-20). Therefore it is a good prayer: Lord, do not give me over to lying, that is, to trusting in what will lie to me and deceive me.

This is the unhappiness of us ministers: all other professions are believed when they point out danger, but “who believeth our report?” (Isa 53:1). We are men’s enemies, because we tell them the truth (Gal 4:16). We labor to take their sweet morsels away from them, their Herodiases, and to part men from their sins, which they love better than their souls. No creature but man loves what will be its own ruin. Only wretched man seeks happiness in the way to misery, and heaven in the way to hell. I beg you therefore, as you would not be deceived (and indeed, who would?), beware of the deceitful works of darkness. Satan, who tempts us, is only a lying spirit, which he is not ashamed to confess (1 Kgs 22:22), and sin is like him. What did Ahab get by his vineyard? Or Judas by his thirty pieces of silver? What did Haman, and the rest, get by their sins in the end? Men are usually ashamed of a bad bargain, because the very thought of it reproaches them with weakness and folly. Whatever we gain by sin for the present, it will prove the worst bargain we ever made.

Oh, therefore, let us use our wits and gifts to better purpose. If we must be plotting, let us plot for eternity; that is worth plotting for. Let us plot how to avoid Satan’s plot. Our time is short, and opportunity, the flower of time, is shorter. Our talents are many, our accounts strict, our judge impartial. Let us be “sowing to the Spirit” (Gal 6:8). Let us labor to be like our Judge, who went about doing his Father’s work (John 17:4) and came to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8). Oh, beloved, shall we build up what Christ came to destroy? All his miracles tended to good. He worked the salvation of those who worked his destruction; he shed his blood for those who shed his blood.

Satan is all for mischief, and rather than do no hurt at all, he is content to be set to drowning swine (Mark 5:13). And such are all who are led by his spirit: people clever at destroying and sharp at doing others harm, who take a great deal of pains to go to hell and carry others with them. Those skilled in natural history write of the scorpion that it often whets its tail on stones, so that it may be sharp and ready for mischief. There are some crooked wits who make it their business to disturb the quiet of the land; it is as natural to them as poison to a scorpion.

But our happiness lies in learning how to be like the one who is the idea, the pattern of all grace, and the glory of our nature, by whom we hope to be saved. Our happiness is to bring forth fruit, and our own fruit, “in due season” (Ps 1:3); to have the opportunity, the ability, and a heart to do good. How comforting is death when it finds people doing so! Before long the time will come when it will comfort us above everything else in the world that we have been honored to be instruments of doing good, and have stood in the gap to hinder evil.

Beloved, we serve a good master. Not one good word spoken for a good cause will be lost. There is a “book of remembrance” (Mal 3:16) for every good word and work we do. When wicked men have beaten their brains, spent their spirits, and wasted their strength, what becomes of them at length? A conscience often wounded will receive no comfort, but takes God’s part against itself. When the other powers are wearied, then conscience comes and does its office. Then the eyes of the soul are opened to see what it would not see before; then sin that “lay at the door” (Gen 4:7), at the going out of this life, flies in our faces. Pleasure and profit, for which wicked men plot and scheme so much, all come to nothing; but sin itself, and its punishment, abide forever. Men, like popes, will grant themselves dispensations. They imagine a latitude and breadth in their courses, telling themselves that they may do this and that and still do well at last. But who tells them this? Is it not a spirit of delusion? Punishment is indeed often deferred; it does not come all at once like thunder and lightning. Yet as surely as God is true, sin will be bitterness in the end. When the honey is gone, the sting will remain.

To conclude this point: when we are tempted to any hurtful design, let us look upon Christ and that great project for our redemption which he undertook, and reason this way with ourselves: “Has he plotted and worked out my salvation, and shall I plot against him in his members?”

I beg you, stir up your hearts to conceive and bring forth good purposes. Satan is an enemy to all strong resolutions and manly conceptions, and tries to kill them at their very birth. Alas, how many good thoughts are conceived while the word is being heard, which yet prove abortive and stick in the birth! How few actions come to their due ripeness and perfection! I am sure our encouragements to good are far greater than our encouragements to evil. We serve a better master, and for better wages. The wicked may prosper for a time, but nothing is more wretched than the happiness of wicked men; it first hardens them, and then destroys them (Prov 1:32).

1. Our only way is to get into Christ, “the true vine” (John 15:1). Then we will take root and bear fruit at once, and draw and suck the same disposition out of him.

2. And then we must lay up good principles, look with a single eye to the main end of our life, and see that all the particular passages of our life tend toward it. It is the sign of a narrow heart to be wise in some particular business, for some particular end, and yet careless in the main. Other creatures are carried by a particular instinct to some particular thing. A spider is clever at catching flies, a bird at building nests, and so on. As man has larger powers, so he should have larger aims.

What we should especially labor for is, first, to be good in ourselves, and second, to do all the good we can to others, even as God our Father is good and does good. The further our goodness reaches, the more we resemble our Father. As we are, so are our thoughts, and so are our devices. A good man will devise liberal things. Any vermin can do mischief. We see some who are never in their element except when they are plotting or working mischief, as if they were born for no other end than to exercise the graces of men better than themselves. It is a poor commendation to be counted a cunning person for selfish ends. Alas! The heart of man, which is “deceitful above measure” (Jer 17:9), has an abundance of turnings and windings in it, and can suggest tricks enough to outwit the best of us.

I come, in the third place, to our duty, which is to “behold.” This word is the usual beacon kindled to point out some extraordinary thing.

Question. But what is there here to behold?

Answer. Behold the subtlety, malice, and restless endeavor of the enemies of goodness. Is it not a grievous thing to behold, that one member should tear another? That one who professes the same religion should study to supplant and devour another? Behold, likewise, how fruitless their enterprise is: they bring forth a lie.

But above all, behold the mercy of God to his children: his wisdom in exposing, and his justice in confounding, the mischievous practices of their enemies, making them the workers of their own ruin.

The things that especially deserve our beholding are either, first, things excellent, as all God’s works are in their season, yes, even his justice; or second, things rare, such as comets and eclipses; or else, third, great things, such as stars of the first magnitude.

Such, and much more, is God’s mercy to his children and his justice against his enemies. Behold what great things he has done for them (Ps 126:2). Shall the heathen say so, and shall not Israel much more? Beloved, we ought to seek out God’s works; and shall we not take notice of them when they are set before our eyes? This is especially the duty of the saints of God. “All thy works praise thee, and thy saints bless thee,” says David (Ps 145:10). The works of God praise him by our mouths and by our tongues. If it were not for a few who, by a more divine light and a spiritual eye, see more of God than others do, what glory would God have in the world? God has not brought us onto the stage of this world to be mere gazers, but to draw something out of it for our own use, and to give him the glory of his excellencies.

But we are too wise to admire anything! It is a matter too lowly for our abilities to take notice of God and his works. You have some who can see nothing in the works of God worth admiring; and yet they will hold men’s persons in admiration, in hope of some advantage by them. We are apt to admire any outward excellence, like the disciples before the Holy Spirit came upon them, who stood admiring the fine stones of the temple. When our minds are taken up like this, it would be good for us to hear Christ speaking to us as he did to them: Are these the things you wonder at? (Mark 13:1-2).

Beloved, it is our duty to observe special occurrences, not out of any Athenian curiosity, but to begin now, while we are upon earth, the employment we shall have in heaven, and to take occasion from them to bless God. We should compare the rule and the event together, and observe what truth or attribute of his God makes good by what has thus come to pass. We should see how God comments upon himself by his own actions. And from observing particulars it is good to rise to generals, as Deborah rose from the destruction of one enemy to the destruction of all: “So let all thy enemies perish, O Lord” (Judg 5:31). This was Moses’s song, and Hannah’s, and the Virgin Mary’s. They mounted up from the consideration of their own particular case, and had their thoughts enlarged to the mercy and justice of God toward others in succeeding generations.

And among all God’s works we should take more notice of his mercy to the church than of his justice toward his enemies, because his justice is, as it were, a foil to set off the luster of his mercy. God delights more in mercy, as his proper work, flowing from his own compassionate heart, than in works of justice that are occasioned by the malice of men. God is wonderful in his saints, and more so in saving them than in destroying his enemies. Since, then, mercy plays the chief part in the great works of God, we ought to dwell most in the consideration of it, and feed our thoughts more with meditation on his saving works for his church than on the ruin of his enemies.

We pray, “Hallowed be thy name.” Unless we practice what we pray for, we mock God and deceive our own souls. Let God not lose any glory by us; and let us not lose such a pledge of future happiness as glorifying God is. “Oh that men would praise the Lord,” says David (Ps 107:8); and fearing lest God should lose any glory from his creatures, he stirs up angels and all creatures to bless the Lord (Ps 148:2-3). God takes it very unkindly when we do not especially observe the excellent pieces of his workmanship. “A fool considereth not this” (Ps 92:6).

The Lord has done marvelous things for his church of late, in which we should rejoice. We should do as Moses did when he came out of the sea, and as the church did, in resemblance of that deliverance from Egypt, when it sang the song of Moses, being delivered from its spiritual Pharaoh (Rev 15:3).

We see the vial now poured upon the sun; we see the prophecies against antichrist’s kingdom being fulfilled. God has been pleased to strengthen our faith by experience. We have something to lay hold on, which may encourage us to expect more from God, and to look for those hallelujahs to be sung by all creatures in heaven and earth at the utter confusion of antichrist. Whoever labors in any way to hinder that hinders the glory of God and the joy of his people.

It is good to observe how the Scripture sets out the enemies of God’s church in a double representation: first, as terrible, calling them lions, bulls, and the like; second, as base, comparing them to chaff and dust before the wind (Ps 1:4), to dung, and the like. It does this so that when we see them in their present swagger and revelry, we may steady ourselves by considering their future baseness.

Faith looks on things as present, because it looks on them in the word of Jehovah, who will give being to all his promises and threatenings. That is why faith is called the subsistence of “things not seen” (Heb 11:1): it gives things a kind of being to the mind and affections of man, as if they were present. Therefore believing in the final deliverance of God’s people and the ruin of his enemies cannot help but raise the souls of good men to a marvelous degree of joy and thankfulness to God. Who would not fear to cleave to antichrist, if they would only set before themselves by faith the certain ruin of that state, which the Scripture sets down in a prophetic manner as a thing already present? “Babylon is fallen” (Rev 18:2).

But to come to a more particular application, suited to the present time. The occasion and the text are as parallel as can be. Our gunpowder plotters were as pregnant with mischief as ever these men were. As for its conception, it could only have come from beneath the vault. There was the very quintessence of devilishness in it. Satan emptied out all his entrails, as it were, in this project. If all the devils in hell were set to work to devise the like, they could hardly do it. There has scarcely been, since the beginning of the world, a design more monstrous and merciless, of greater depth and extent of villainy. Were it not for this yearly commemoration of it, posterity would hardly believe that a plot so hellish could be hatched in the hearts of men: of Englishmen, of Catholic men, as they would be called; of men borne with so patiently, despite their dangerous dealings with foreign enemies; men who are only half subjects, since their better parts, their spirits, are subject to another visible head, who can untie the bond of allegiance at his pleasure.

Nor did they only conceive this hellish wickedness. They were big with it, kept it close for many months, and pleased themselves with it, monstrous and misshapen as it was. They lacked neither wit, nor counsel, nor combination, nor secret encouragement to carry it out.

No, it was a holy villainy, sealed with oaths, with the sacrament, and with all the bonds of secrecy that could be invented. Oh, horrible profanation, to set God’s seal to Satan’s plot! But God, who delights to confound all presumptuous attempts, exposed it just when it should have come to the birth, and so it proved to be only the untimely fruit of a woman.

They brought forth a lie. They intended to blow up king and kingdom, churchmen and church, statesmen, yes, the whole state itself, all at once, without any warning for anyone to prepare for another world. Yet they not only missed their aim, but brought upon themselves the ruin they intended for others. And whereas they thought to establish their superstition forever (shall I call it religion, or idolatry?), they have by this means made it more odious than ever before. As the northern gentleman said, though he was not able to dispute, he had two arguments against popery: equivocation and the gunpowder treason. But they brush it off easily, as they think. “Alas,” they say, “it was only the plot of a company of unfortunate gentlemen.” It was our happiness that they were unfortunate; if it had succeeded, they would have had other names for it. Successful villainy passes for virtue.

Well, the net is broken, and we are delivered. God thought of us when we were not thinking of him, and awoke for us when we were asleep. (Here is a place for behold!) For what a miserable face things would have worn if their plot had succeeded!

Now what return shall we make for all this? They conceived mischief; let us conceive praise, and be in labor with holy resolutions to give ourselves up to God, who has given us our king, our state, yes, ourselves to ourselves. He has given us our lives more than once, every one of us in particular, especially in the last heavy visitation. But would it not have been better for many, as far as they themselves are concerned, to have been swept away in that flood than to live longer only to treasure up further wrath for themselves?

Many are not content to go to hell alone; they will draw as many others as they can into their fellowship here, and into their torment hereafter. Oh, beloved, the preservation of such people is only a reservation for further judgment! What good did the king of Sodom get by being delivered once, only to be consumed afterward with “fire and brimstone from heaven” (Gen 19)? What did Pharaoh gain by being delivered from ten plagues, only to perish in the sea (Exod 14)? What are all our temporal deliverances, if we still live in sin, go on in sin, die in our sins, and so perish eternally? Blessings without a return of due thanks increase the guilt of sin, and the increase of guilt brings an increase of judgments.

The most fitting way of thanks, and the one most of a piece with this occasion, is to stir ourselves up to a greater hatred of that religion. They would gladly clear it, as if the fault lay with some persons only. But alas! What else can be distilled from the dangerous points they hold? They hold, for instance, that the pope has temporal jurisdiction over princes, that he may excommunicate them; that he may, out of fullness of power, dispense with the oath of allegiance; that he cannot err; that subjection to him is a point of absolute necessity to salvation, and so on. What, I say, can be distilled from these opinions but treason, in a people who live under a prince of a contrary religion? The dispositions of many of them are better than their positions.

Though the present pope may perhaps be more moderate and neutral, yet this is what their religion instills wherever it prevails. These tenets will be put into action and in full force whenever they please, and it will please them whenever it is to the advantage of the Catholic cause. This was Bellarmine’s tenet: “If the pope should err in commanding vice or forbidding virtue, the church is bound to believe vice to be good, and virtue to be ill, or else it would sin against conscience; for it is bound to believe what he commands.”

So they make the judgment of man the rule of truth and falsehood, of good and evil. But truth is truth, and what is false is false, whether men think so or not. There is an intrinsic evil in evil which no man’s judgment can take away; and the truth and goodness of things stand upon eternal grounds, not flexible or alterable by the will of any creature. Otherwise it would be as good as thinking that the course of the sun should be guided by a sundial. Is there any hope of their coming over to us, when they would rather have the rules of nature and religion, which are as immovable as a mountain of brass, vary than be thought to confess that the pope may err? This, indeed, is the grand and leading error of all.

But how can we expect our words to prevail, when the great works of God do not prevail with them at all? The power of error is so strong in many that, though they should see the vial poured out “upon the throne of the beast” (Rev 16:10), yet they will not repent.

For ourselves, we cannot better show our thankfulness for this deliverance, by which we enjoy our lives and our religion, than by preserving the truth that is grounded upon the foundation of truth: the truth that has come down to us from those who went before us and held out the same truth; that has been sealed by the blood of so many martyrs; that has been established by the authority of gracious princes; that God has borne witness to by so many deliverances; that agrees with the confessions of all the Reformed churches; and that God has blessed with a constant course of peace, to the rejoicing of all neighboring churches, the envy of our enemies, and the admiration of all.

We see all the countries around us in confusion, while we, like the three young men in the fiery furnace (Dan 3), are safe, without so much as the smoke or smell of fire, as if we were the only people of God’s delight. Now, what does God care for most among us, but his truth? If we allow it, as far as lies in us, to suffer any harm, God may justly make us a spectacle of his wrath to others, as others have been to us. Beloved, God has a cause and a people in the world that he esteems more than all the rest of the world. Let us therefore own God’s cause and people; his side will one day prove the better side.

I beg you, consider: what harm have we ever had from the Reformation of religion? Has it come to us naked? Has it not been attended with peace and prosperity? Has God been a barren wilderness to us (Jer 2:31)? Has not God been a wall of fire around us? If he had not been, the water that surrounds our island could not have kept us. As long as we keep Christ’s truth, Christ will keep us. Otherwise, depend upon it, Christ and his truth will leave us. No nation under heaven has as much cause to say “Behold” as we have.

Men are ready on every occasion to feel civil grievances, as in Solomon’s time, when gold was as stones in the street (2 Chr 1:15; 2 Chr 9:27); but we should be sensible of the spiritual favors we enjoy. If we look at other kingdoms abroad, what nation under heaven has such cause as we have to bless God for religion, for our prince, for peace, and so on? Beloved, we cannot serve our king, church, and state better than by giving up our lives to God, who has blessed us like this. The greatest enemies of a church and state are those who provoke the highest Majesty of heaven by obstinate courses against the light that shines in their own hearts. What Samuel said to the people deserves serious consideration. And therefore, if not for love of ourselves, yet for love of our king, religion, and state, let us beware of provoking courses, and beware of wearing out the patience of God too long.

To conclude all: it is prayer that gets blessings, but thankfulness witnessed by obedience that keeps them. And what can our thoughts devise, our tongues utter, or our lives express that is better than the praise of our good God, who continually loads us with his benefits, so that God may still delight to show himself to us in the ways of his mercy, think thoughts of love toward us, and dwell among us to the world’s end?

Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me, that by me the preaching might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might hear: and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion. And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. (2 Tim 4:17-18)

The blessed St. Paul, now an old man and ready to sacrifice his dearest blood to seal the truth he had so carefully taught, records in this chapter the very different treatment he met with, from God and from men, in preaching it. As for men, he found that they dealt most unfaithfully with him just when he stood most in need of comfort from them. Demas, a man of great note, forsook him in the end. Alexander the coppersmith did him the most harm (this is how it pleases God to try his dearest ones, with the base opposition of worthless people). Weaker Christians forsook him.

But notice the wisdom of God’s Spirit in the blessed apostle in his different conduct toward these persons. Demas’s fault was greater because of how eminent his profession had been, and so Paul brands him before all posterity for looking back to Sodom and to the world after he had put his hand to the plow. Alexander’s opposition sprang from the extremity of malice against the profession of godliness, and so Paul curses him: “The Lord reward him…” (2 Tim 4:14). The weaker Christians failed him for want of some measure of spirit and courage, yet they still kept a hidden love for the cause of Christ; so he conceals their names and prays that God would not lay their sin to their charge.

But while Paul lived on this cold comfort on earth, see what large encouragement he had from heaven! Though all forsook me, he says, yet God did not forsake me, but stood by me, and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion. And the Lord will deliver me.

In these words we have, in Paul’s example, an expression of that general truth he set down himself: “And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope” (Rom 5:3-4). So here affliction breeds experience of God’s mercy in our deliverance, and experience breeds hope of deliverance for the time to come. And both his experience and his hope stir him up to glorify God, who was his deliverer. So these things offer themselves to us here to be unfolded:

1. Paul’s experience of God’s loving care of him in his past deliverance.

2. His assured hope, built on his experience, for the time to come. This is set down in two branches:

(1) The Lord will deliver me from every evil work.

(2) He will preserve me to his heavenly kingdom.

3. The conclusion he draws from both: as they both flow from God’s grace, so he ascribes the glory of both to him. “To whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

As for the first, I find that most writers, both ancient and modern, understand the lion to be Nero, that cruel tyrant who thirsted for blood, especially the blood of Christians. Some also take it to be a proverbial saying expressing the extremity of danger. Both are true. But if we take the words in the full breadth of the apostle’s intent, we may understand by the lion the whole united company of his cruel enemies, as David does in many places; and by the mouth of the lion, the present danger he was in because of their cruel malice. From this, observe:

1. That enemies of the truth are lions (often in power, always in malice).

2. That God allows his dearest children to fall into the mouths of these lions.

3. That in this extremity of danger God delivers them.

As for the second, his hope built on his experience, both branches of it have their own limitation and extent. The Lord shall deliver me, not from suffering evil, but from evil works. This he could boldly build on. He could not guess what he would suffer, because that lay in the power of others; but he could build on this: what God would give him grace to do. And so he limits his confidence: “He will deliver me from evil works, and he will preserve me.” From what? From danger? From death? No. Here is the limitation: “He will preserve me to his heavenly kingdom.” He will not preserve me from death (and yet he will do that too while I can do him service by my life), but I am sure he will preserve me beyond death to a state of security and happiness. “He will preserve me to his heavenly kingdom.”

And then as for the third. Once his experience, confidence, and hope were well built, he breaks out into thanksgiving, as his way is when his heart has once been warmed, considering God’s favors past and to come. His tongue runs freely on this, and God has the fruit of it: “To whom be glory for ever.” And last of all he seals up everything with the word “Amen.”

“I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.” Beloved, by nature we are all lions, and nothing will change us except the effectual knowledge of Christ. Education may civilize us, but it cannot subdue us. A sound knowledge of God’s truth has a changing power. For the spirit becomes tender when the heart, which lies in a cursed state, under and in danger of the wrath of a just God whose eye cannot spare unrepented iniquity, is effectually summoned and terrified by the spirit of bondage. That will cast down the strongest spirit and wring sorrow from it, making it melting and tender. Again, in this state, when the soul has felt favor shining on it, when the eye is opened to see the high privileges and exceeding riches of Christ, and when we find that we ourselves have been delivered from the lion’s mouth, we cannot help showing others the pity that we ourselves felt from God.

Paul now thirsts as eagerly for the conversion of others (Acts 9:22) as he ever thirsted for their blood before. The jailer, too, was a man hardened in the practice of cruelty by nature, custom, and calling. Yet after he had felt the power of God’s blessed truth, he showed that tender compassion which he had felt from Christ and which had been shut up in him before (Acts 16:33).

Let us be thankful, then, that God has changed us from being lions. Let us meekly submit ourselves to God’s ordinances, and ask him to write his law not only in our understandings but in our very hearts and inmost affections (Jer 31:33), so that we may not only know that we should walk harmlessly and full of good, but may actually be so. In this way we will resemble him by whom we hope to be saved, in a right and serviceable readiness for every duty of love.

And because our imperfect degree of mortification in this life keeps us from full contentment in one another’s fellowship, let this make us the more willing to be taken up to God’s holy mountain. There, purged of all the lusts that hinder our peace and love, we will fully enjoy one another without the least falseness or distrust. Then we will see the complete fulfillment of these promises, which are only partly fulfilled in this life.

Observation 1. That God allows his children to fall into the mouth of lions, or into some comparable danger in which they can see no help from him, is a truth as clear as the sun. The history of the church in every age shows as much. Was not Christ in the mouth of the lion as soon as he was born, when Herod sought to kill him (Matt 2:13)? Did not Satan and all the spiritual powers of hell come around him daily like rearing and roaring lions? And has it not been this way with God’s church from Abel to the present day? It appears in the children of Israel in Egypt, at the Red Sea, and on their journey to Canaan, surrounded on every side by cruel enemies and dangers, like Daniel among the lions. God gave them up so far to the power of their enemies that the wisest of the heathen judged them a forlorn people, hateful to God and to men. For particular instances, consider Job and David, who came so near that there was only a step between them and death.

Besides this, God often awakens the consciences of his children and exercises them with spiritual conflicts. Their sins stand up against them like so many lions, ready to tear their souls. Indeed, rather than let those who belong to him lack what will drive them to him, God himself will be a lion to them, as he was to Ephraim: “For I will be unto Ephraim as a lion, and as a young lion to the house of Judah: I, even I, will tear and go away; I will take away, and none shall rescue him” (Hos 5:14). This is what made David pray, “O Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure” (Ps 6:1). Of all the troubles a child of God goes through on his way to heaven, these bring him lowest. When the body is afflicted and the spirit troubled, that is much. But when God frowns, when neither heaven nor earth yields any comfort to a distressed soul, no evil in the world is like this. Imagine the horror and distress of such a soul, when everything seems to be against it, and it is even against itself, as near as it can be to the pains of the damned in hell.

The reasons for this dealing of God are these:

1. We are so desperately addicted to present things, and so prone to put our confidence in the arm of flesh, that unless God drives us from these strongholds by casting us into a perplexed condition, we will never know what it is to live by faith in God alone, when all other props are pulled away and the stream of things seems to run against us. So that God may train us to live the spiritual life of the just, which is by faith in him when everything else fails, he allows us to fall into the lion’s mouth. Then our prayers, which are the flame of faith, may be more ardent and piercing, cries rather than words. “Why criest thou unto me?” God says to Moses (Exod 14:15). When was this? It was when Moses did not know which way to turn. It was out of the depths that David cried most earnestly to God (Ps 130:1). And Christ, in the days of his flesh, cried to God in deep distress with strong cries and tears, and was heard in that which he feared (Heb 5:7). Strong troubles force strong cries from the afflicted. Experience itself shows how faint and cold the prayers and desires of men are in prosperity and a full estate.

2. Besides this, it is fitting that the secrets of men’s hearts should be uncovered, for when all is quiet we do not know the falseness of our own hearts. Some overvalue their strength, as Peter did (Matt 26:33). Others undervalue themselves and the gifts and graces of God’s Spirit in them, thinking they lack faith, patience, love, and the like; yet when God calls them out to the cross, they shine in the eyes of others as examples of meek and faithful submission. The wisdom of God therefore judges it fitting that there should be times of sifting, so that both the church and we ourselves may know what good or evil is in us, and what soundness or looseness remains in our hearts. So when we fail to winnow ourselves, God in love takes the winnowing fan into his own hand.

It is also needful that false brethren be uncovered. Afflictions are rightly called trials, because then it becomes known what metal men are made of, whether pure silver or reprobate silver. So do not think it strange when our condition seems desperate. It is only with us as it has been with God’s dearest ones; why should our lot be separate from theirs? Remember this: just as God allows his children to fall into the lion’s mouth, so he delivers them out of it. He never leaves his own, especially in their extremity, except in a fit condition of soul to receive the greatest comfort and to give him the greatest glory. For then it is known to be God’s work. Our extremity is his opportunity. God will show himself especially at such a time, and make it plain that the church does not stand by man’s strength. When Christians are at a loss and do not know which way to turn, then God is nearest at hand and cares most for them.

The Lord does this both for the greater shame of those who contrive mischief (for when they make most sure of bringing their wicked plots and purposes to pass, then their designs are most frustrated), and also to draw in others who are not yet called. Seeing God’s immediate care over his church and children, they may come in and obtain the same protection and deliverance.

The ways in which God delivers his children out of the lion’s mouth are various.

1. By suspending their malice for a time. In Noah’s ark the fierceness of the wild creatures was restrained by divine power from preying on the tamer ones. In the same way the lions’ mouths were stopped from preying on Daniel in the lions’ den (Dan 6:22).

2. By stirring up one lion against another. So he stirred up the Persians against the Babylonians, the Greeks against the Persians, the Romans against the Greeks, and the other barbarous nations, such as the Goths and Vandals, against the Romans. While lions spit their fury on one another, the sheep are at peace. In this way the Turks and other enemies have kept popish princes from raging and tyrannizing over the church to the height of their malice.

3. By throwing something to these lions to turn them aside from their intended prey, as when a man is in danger and a dog is thrown to the lion. So when Saul was ready to devour David, the Philistines broke in on him, invaded the land, and turned his fury another way (1 Sam 23:27).

4. By altering and changing lions into lambs. When Paul was bent on havoc and mischief, God changed his heart and so gave the churches cause to glorify God for the very man they had feared most before.

5. God shows himself a lion to these lions, breaking their teeth and jawbones and striking them with sudden and fearful judgment, as he did Herod (Acts 12:23) and the persecuting emperors, and as he did in 1588, when God fought for us with his four winds against the enemies of his truth.

6. By making them lions to themselves. Witness Ahithophel, Saul, and other such enemies of God’s children.

7. Again, God makes them friends without changing their disposition, by putting some notion into their hearts for a time that inclines them to show favor. So in Nehemiah’s case, God put it into the king’s heart to favor his people (Neh 2:8). Esau was not changed (Gen 33:4); God only changed his feelings for a time so that he favored Jacob. In the same way God puts it into the hearts of many who are wicked to the core to favor the best people.

8. Lastly, God sometimes makes his own children lions to their adversaries. For the image of God shining in his children has a secret majesty in it and strikes awe into wicked men. So Pharaoh at length could not bear to see Moses and Aaron any more (Exod 10:28), and Felix trembled while Paul reasoned of temperance and judgment (Acts 24:25).

Use of instruction and consolation. So we see that the Lord knows how to deliver his own, and can do it if he will; and he will do it in their extremities, when it is most for his glory, his people’s comfort, and the confusion of his own enemies and theirs. Never despair, then, of yourself or of the church of God. Rather than fail, the church will breed in the lion’s den itself. Paul greets the Philippians from the church in Caesar’s house (Phil 4:22), a place that seemed little fitter for a church than hell itself. What if things abroad seem past recovery? When they are at their worst, they are nearest to mending. When Pharaoh doubled Israel’s task of bricks (Exod 5:11), then Moses came to work out their deliverance. When the Jews heard news of their liberty to return from captivity, they were like those who dreamed (Ps 126:1). They could not believe it at once, it seemed so strange a thing in their hopeless condition.

Let us learn, then, from this way God deals with his people in the midst of all extremities, to plead before God the extremity we are in. “Help, Lord, for vain is the help of man” (Ps 60:11) is a prevailing argument. Plead the pride of our enemies, the presumption of those who do not fear God, and so on, and that he alone can give escape from death when he pleases. And as God brings us to heaven by contraries, so let us in one contrary believe its opposite: hope against hope, in misery look for mercy, in death for life, in guilt for forgiveness.

Learn to wrestle with God when he seems to be your enemy. Set before God his former dealings, his nature, his promise, and so on. Job had learned this: “Though he kill me, yet will I trust in him” (Job 13:15). Be of Jacob’s resolution: I will not leave hold of thee, until I get a blessing (Gen 32:26). Whatever we are stripped of, let us never forsake our own mercy (Jonah 2:8). This one phrase, “I despair,” takes away God and Christ all at once. We must remember that our sins are the sins of men, but mercy is the mercy of God. God will never leave us; he will be with us while we are with him.

The world and all its comforts leave a man when they can have no more use of him, nor he of them. Satan leaves his sworn slaves at their wits’ end once he has brought them into danger. But blessed forever be our gracious God, who of all times is nearest to help us when we stand most in need of him. He was never nearer to Moses than when Moses seemed furthest from comfort (Exod 3:2). He was never nearer to Jacob than when heaven was his canopy and a stone his pillow (Gen 28:12); never nearer to Joseph than when he was in prison; never nearer to Jonah than in the belly of the whale, for God went down with him; never nearer to Paul than when he was in the dungeon (Acts 16:25). A Christian is not alone when left alone, nor forsaken when forsaken (2 Cor 4:9). God and his angels make up to him for the lack of other comforts.

Is it not a greater comfort when a prince comes in person to cheer up a subject than when he sends a lesser man? “And whence is this to me,” said Elizabeth, “that the mother of my Lord should come unto me?” (Luke 1:43). Is it not the greatest comfort to a Christian soul when God, in the absence of means, comes to us directly himself and comforts us by his Spirit? For comforts are always sweetest when secondary causes fail. Therefore in all extremities let us still wait and hope for mercy. If the vision stay, says Habakkuk, wait, for it will come (Hab 2:3).

The difference between the godly and the wicked. This is a main difference between a child of God and a person who lacks sound grace. The child of God recovers himself in extremity. So David, after a great conflict, still gets the upper hand: “Yet, my soul, keep thou silence unto God, for God is yet good to Israel” (Ps 62:5; Ps 73:1). It is as if he were saying, “Though I stagger when I look at my present outward condition, yet when I consider his dealings more deeply, I am resolved that God is good to Israel.” So after much tossing, they get up onto the rock that is higher than they are. But those who are not upright in heart sink down in despair in any great extremity, like heavy bodies falling to the center of the earth without a stop. The reason is that even in their best condition they were never acquainted with relying on God, but held themselves up with fleshly helps; and when these are taken away, they must fall straight down. But a sincere Christian, in the midst of his flourishing condition, acquaints himself with God and does not set his heart on present things. Job says that the very thing he feared in his best condition befell him (Job 3:25). Therefore such people can rest on God’s mercy when other props are taken away.

Our support in spiritual losses. Yet there are various degrees of upholding us when we are at a spiritual loss. For usually, in whatever measure we inordinately let our affections loose in times of peace and liberty, in that measure we are cast down, or sunk more deeply in discomfort. When our adulterous hearts cling to outward things more than befits chaste hearts, it makes the cross sharper and more extreme. For what is not enjoyed with too much pleasure is parted with without too much grief. But as for spiritual extremities, the strongest often feel them most keenly. For in this God does not always have regard to past sins, or to a greater or lesser measure of grace. So it was in Job’s case. He could endure extremities of body and estate without much distress of soul, but when God wrote bitter things against him, he immediately began to sink, and only began. For when he was at his worst, he stayed himself on his Redeemer, to the glory of God’s grace and the shame of the devil. So God sometimes makes his children triumph, setting them up as champions in defiance of Satan. In their weakness they think they will utterly fail and perish, but their holding out in the greatest conflicts shows the contrary.

But to come to what I chiefly intend to dwell on: “The Lord shall deliver me from every evil work.” Here we may see:

1. The author of his safety.

2. The deliverance itself.

The author is the Lord. Nothing less than almighty power is needed to deliver from any evil work. For so inclined are we to fall in with temptation, so great is the malice and strength of our enemy, and so many are the snares, so cunningly spread in everything we have to do with, that whatever delivers us must be above Satan and our own evil hearts. It must be wiser, more powerful and more gracious to preserve us than any opposing power can be to draw us into evil works. In this case Moses spoke well when God refused to go along with them in his accustomed glorious presence: O, if thou go not with us, carry us not hence (Exod 33:15).

“Deliver” presupposes danger, whether possible or present. Beloved, our lives are such that they stand in need of continual deliverance. Our condition here is unsettled. The church always lives in tents and has no hope of rest until the day of triumph. Therefore, after the forgiveness of sins, there follows “lead us not into temptation”; for though our past sins are forgiven, we are still in danger of being led into temptation. Let no one promise himself a truce that God does not promise. If Satan and our corruptions join forces, we cannot be at peace. After the sins of youth we are in danger of the sins of riper years. For though sin is in some sort subdued by grace, yet until it is wholly mortified there will be some stirring, until what is imperfect in us is abolished.

But I hasten to what follows: “The Lord will deliver me from every evil work.”

From the form of the argument, observe that we ought to reason with God from past experience to the future (1 Sam 17:37; 2 Cor 1:10). Indeed, it is a binding argument with God. He loves to be petitioned and pressed on the ground of former mercies, and allows them to be bonds upon him. Men will not do this, because their fountain is soon drawn dry; but God is a spring that can never be emptied. As he was able to help in times past, so he is able for the time to come. He is always “I am Jehovah,” always where he was. His arm is not shortened. What he has done before, he can do now.

Use. We should therefore keep a register of God’s favors, which is the best use we can put our memories to, and make them so many arguments for building on him for the time to come. So David says, “The Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine” (1 Sam 17:37). Oh, if only we were acquainted with this kind of reasoning with God, how undaunted we would be in all our troubles! We would be as secure for the time to come as for the time past, for it is all one with God. We greatly wrong our own souls, and weaken our faith, by not keeping God’s favors in mind. How strong in faith old men might be, who have had many experiences of God’s love, if they would take this course! Every former mercy should strengthen our faith for a new one, just as every former victory encourages conquerors to a new conquest. So old favors should help us to set upon God afresh.

But what is the limitation here? “From every evil work.” We will first touch on these words a little one by one, and then consider them more particularly.

Sometimes God speaks of duties as they issue from man. For indeed the will, from which the duty comes, is man’s; and therefore the Scripture speaks as though the duty came from us, because the powers from which it springs are ours. At other times the Scripture speaks of holy duties as they issue from a higher power, from God. So here, when he says, “the Lord will deliver me from every evil work,” he means that God would stir up his heart to a care to avoid evil works. We are both active and passive in all we do. We are active, because the powers are ours; we are passive, because the Lord does all. Now when the Holy Spirit speaks of good duties, it is for the most part his language to go to the fountain, especially when faith is to be strengthened.

Question. But how does God deliver?

Answer. By keeping us from occasions of sin, or by supplying strength if such occasions are offered. By giving occasions of good, and by giving a heart to welcome those occasions.

(1) He preserves us from evil works by planting the graces of faith and of fear in us, by which we are preserved, and by peace, which guards our souls from despair and tumultuous thoughts (Phil 4:7). Yes, he preserves us from evil works, through faith, to his heavenly kingdom.

(2) In a word, God preserves his children by making them better. He does it by weakening their corruptions; by his Spirit stirring up in them a clear sight and hatred of those corruptions; by withdrawing occasions that might prevail over us, and by keeping us from betraying ourselves to them; and by chaining up Satan until our strength is such that we can encounter him. It is a great mercy, though little thought of, that God does not let Satan loose upon us every moment. How this should stir us up, with David, to thankfulness and dependence on God!

He also delivers wicked men from dangers. He does not do it out of any love for their persons, but because he has some base service for them to undertake: to exercise the patience of his children and to vex others better than themselves, which is not fit work for godly men to do. They are only God’s rod, and their deliverance is no preservation but a reservation to worse mischief. It is not a deliverance that makes them better.

But God graciously delivers his own, not only from danger, but from those evil works they are liable to fall into in their danger. It is not evil to suffer evil; the evil is to do evil. For doing evil makes God our enemy; suffering evil does not. Doing evil stains and defiles the soul and blemishes the image of God in us; suffering evil does none of this. Doing evil hinders communion and acquaintance with God; suffering evil does not. Indeed, in suffering evil God is more closely acquainted with the soul. Doing evil is the cause of all evils; suffering evil comes from doing evil. The evil of sin is the evil of evils, because it is evil itself and the cause of every other evil whatsoever. We may thank our evil in doing for our evil in suffering. And therefore the apostle is well assured of what he says: “The Lord will deliver me from every evil work.” He does not mean from every inward infirmity and weakness, but from every evil work that is scandalous and offensive to God.

Evil is made worse when it is brought into the open, for then it either taints others or grieves them. Indeed, as soon as the soul has passed its resolution on a thing, when the will resolves on it, it is done before God, in good and evil alike. But with regard to the world and the church we live in, bringing the deed onto the stage, as it were, makes the evil worse. For besides the harm that is done to evil men, good men are either hurt or vexed by it. Therefore the apostle says, “the Lord will deliver me from every evil work.”

This is what a Christian should especially labor for: that God would keep him free from sin in all things. Yes, this is what distinguishes a Christian from other men. Take a carnal man when he is likely to fall into danger. He studies how to get out of suffering evil, not how to avoid doing evil. He plots and schemes and entangles himself in his own cleverness, and makes the matter worse by equivocation and similar sinful courses, as we might learn from the papists if we had not learned enough from our own hearts. But Paul’s care was to be delivered from evil works. For indeed a man is never overcome, however much he is harassed in the world by anyone, until his conscience is cracked. If his conscience and his cause stand upright, he still prevails. “In all these things we are more than conquerors,” says the apostle (Rom 8:37). The meaning is that sufferings cannot quench our courage. They cannot stain our conscience, and they do not hurt the cause; rather, the cause wins the victory in spite of them, so that our courage remains undaunted and our conscience unstained. Let it be our care, therefore, to beware of evil works.

Look into the world and see what most of the men we deal with care about. “Oh, if only I could get such a position! If only I could get such an estate!” Yes, but it cannot be had without sinful self-abasement, without cracking one’s conscience, and without unlawful entanglements. “Oh,” they say, “it does not matter; God will pardon everything. I do not care, so long as I get my wish.” This is the heart of many graceless people who are not led by heavenly considerations. But take a Christian: he would rather beg, would rather do anything in the world, than do something unworthy of his profession, unbecoming to the gospel or to the high calling to which he is called. Shall such a man as I do this? (Neh 6:11). He will not. And therefore his care is to beware of evil works, for then he is sure to have God as his friend, who has riches and honor enough for him, because “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof” (Ps 24:1). This is the care of a wise, well-instructed Christian.

But mark the extent: from every evil work. St. Paul’s care is not about one or two, but that God would keep him from every evil work. Why so? Why does St. Paul say “from every evil work”? Because he who truly hates one sin will hate every kind of sin. Both come from the same love of God. He who loves God as he should will hate whatever God hates, “and have respect to all God’s commandments,” as the psalmist speaks (Ps 119:6).

Partial obedience is indeed no obedience at all. For he who obeys one command and not another does not obey simply because of the one who commands, in order to yield obedience to him. He obeys only to satisfy his own corrupt nature, picking and choosing what pleases himself, and that belongs not to an inferior but to a superior. Such people therefore make themselves gods. They single out easy things that do not oppose their lusts and do not go against their reputation. In these things perhaps they will even go beyond what is required and do more than they need, only because they want to strike a bargain of compensation with God, so that he should call it even with them for other things: “I have done that, and therefore he must bear with me in this.” Oh, but there is no compensation here! No one is ever so hard-pressed that he cannot escape without sin. No pretext will serve; we must abstain from every evil work.

Satan keeps many men in his snare by this. So long as he has them safe in one sin, he does not care. Therefore he will let them hear, read, pray, and so on, while he holds them fast in one reigning sin. In that sin he will leave them alone until the time of some great affliction, or death, and then he will roar upon them. Oh, beloved! We cannot provide worse for our own souls than to cherish a purpose of living in any one sin. That is enough for the devil to hold his possession in us by, and at the hour of death to claim us as his own. “If we regard any iniquity in our heart, the Lord will not hear our prayers” (Ps 66:18). I beg you, therefore, let us labor to have clear consciences, freeing ourselves from any purpose to live in any sin, so that in all our slips and failings we may say with an honest heart, “My purpose was not to do this, but to refrain from wickedness.”

Again, he speaks of this for the time to come: the Lord will deliver me from evil. A true Christian is as careful to avoid sin in the time to come as to be freed from the guilt of past sins. Judas may desire to have his conscience freed from former sins, but Judas cannot desire to be a good man in the time to come. Nothing argues a good conscience more than this. The most wicked wretch alive may desire to have his conscience quieted, and yet never have any purpose or power to abstain from sin, but, like a dog that has vomited, return to his vomit again.

True repentance is a turning from former evils to the contrary good. Our grief yields the comfort of sound repentance only so far as it is accompanied by care to prevent sin. This agrees with what Christ said to the woman taken in adultery, “Go, and sin no more” (John 8:11), and with David’s prayer, “Purge me, O Lord, and cleanse me, but withal, establish me with thy free Spirit for the time to come” (Ps 51:2, 12). It is as if he said, “Lord, I know it is not in man to order his own ways. I do not desire the forgiveness of my sins so that I might offend your majesty with more liberty. But together with pardoning grace, I beg for preventing grace.” No false heart can move such a desire as this to God. A gracious heart that prays rightly prays as much that God would preserve him from future sin as that he would forgive his former sins.

It is a ridiculous thing in the papists to make confession of a sin they mean to commit, as some recent traitors confessed such and such things they were about to carry out, and were immediately absolved for it. So too with those cursed duelists who will pray and repent when they mean to fall upon one another the very next moment. Is this repentance, when a man is ensnared by the sin he means to commit, and cannot master himself in the matter of revenge? Do these men think they repent? No, certainly not. Repentance concerns sins past, and the conduct of every true Christian is to avoid evil in the time to come.

Again, here it is a continuing act: the Lord will still deliver me from every evil work. From this you see that in every evil work we are tempted to, we need delivering grace, just as we need assisting grace for every good work. Indeed, if we look upward, our whole life is nothing but a deliverance; but if we look to ourselves, it is nothing but danger and warfare, and therefore we need a deliverance. How small a temptation overturns a great man, as a little wind sometimes overturns your mighty galleys! We see this in David and Solomon. If God leaves us to ourselves, even the strongest man in the world, how soon he is overturned! In the midst of sinful occasions, how ready we are to join with them and betray our own souls!

But taking the whole together, as it all comes from God, the truth amounts to this: a Christian who is conscious in his own soul of good intentions to abstain from all evil at present may confidently expect that God will help him against all evil works in the time to come. I say that a Christian whose conscience tells him that he means to be better, and who is not in league with any sin, may believe this for the time to come: that God will keep him from evil works. I say this because many who are still sinners think it is useless to strive, for they shall never be better. What are you talking about, man? Do you have a mind to be better? God will meet you sooner or later. Is your will set free? He who gives you the will, will also give you the deed. Is not this the promise, that God will deliver you from every evil work? And therefore away with all discouragements.

Objection. Oh, but there are sons of Anak, mighty giants, that trouble me. My sins are like so many giants blocking my progress. I shall never be better!

Answer. Do not say so. Rather, the truth is that you are not willing to be better. You are in league with some secret sin. Your heart rises up against those who reprove you for it, and your own conscience tells you that your heart is corrupt. For if you would set yourself to obey God in truth, he would assuredly deliver your soul. And therefore the apostle, to prevent such doubts, speaks of deliverance from evil works as coming from God.

Objection. But some may object, “We sin every day; and ‘if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us’” (1 John 1:8).

Answer. You must not understand this phrase legally, in its full rigor, as though God will deliver us from every evil thought or stirring in the heart, or from every outward slip and failing. By “every evil work” the apostle means every disgraceful sin that breaks the peace of our conscience and swallows up a man’s salvation. From sins of that kind, which bring a stain and discredit on a man’s profession, wound his soul, and may discourage others, the Lord will deliver his own. He will keep them from greater sins altogether, and from being in league with lesser ones. You know that in falls there are several degrees: there is a slip, a fall, and a fall on all fours, a flat fall, as we say. Now God will deliver his children from falling so foully.

2. How God delivers from evil works by not delivering. Indeed, sometimes he will deliver them from evil works by not delivering them from evil works. He will deliver them from great evil works by leaving them alone in lesser evil works. God delivers from evil in various ways. He delivers from falling into evil, and he delivers out of evil when we have fallen. He also delivers from evil by supporting us. And, what is more, he delivers from evil works by evil works.

Question. How is that?

Answer. How do physicians deliver someone from an apoplexy or from a lethargy? Is it not by throwing the sick person into a fever, to rouse him out of that dull sickness? So God, to cure a man’s conscience, when he sees him in danger of complacency through those soul-killing sins of pride, covetousness, looseness, hypocrisy, and the like, sometimes allows him to fall into lesser offenses. He does it to awaken his conscience, so that once roused he may fly to God’s mercy in Christ. So infinite is God’s care in this, that he will deliver either from evil works or from the evil of evil works; or, if he does not deliver from evil works, he will still deliver us from worse works by those evil works. Augustine says, “I dare presume to say, it is profitable for some men to fall.” If a man is of a proud, overbearing disposition, or of a blockish, dull, and complacent nature, it is good for him to become acquainted with the sin he carries in his breast and where his corruptions lie, so that he may know himself and his danger better.

Use. I beg you, make use of this to help your faith and thankfulness. When we are delivered from evil works, it is God who does it. To my mind, the consideration of this should strengthen our faith against Satan and all his fiery darts, and encourage us to set confidently upon any corruption we are moved toward, whether by others or by our own natural inclination. It is God’s enemy, and it is my enemy. It is opposed to God’s will, and it is an enemy to my comfort. God will take my part against what is opposed to him. He has promised to help me against every evil work by his Holy Spirit. A Christian is a king (Rev 1:6), and he has the triumphing Spirit of Christ in him, which will prevail over all sin in time.

Objection. But some poor soul may object, “Alas! I have been assaulted by such a corruption for a long time, in a grievous manner, and I am not yet delivered from it.”

Answer. God purges out corruption little by little. Just as every stroke helps to fell the oak, and even the first stroke moves it forward, so every resistance to corruption, however small, helps to root it out. It is weakened little by little, until death brings about a fuller mortification.

But to proceed. God not only delivers from evil works; he also preserves us to his heavenly kingdom. We must take preserve here in its full breadth. He preserves us while he has any work for us to do in this life; and when he will have us live no longer, he will preserve us to heaven. Although he takes us away by death, yet even then the Lord still preserves us.

Under-preservers of the saints. He will preserve us in our outward condition, both by himself and by under-preservers, for there are many such under God. There are the angels, who are his ministering spirits; and magistrates, who are the shields of the earth (Ps 47:9), for they too may preserve under God; and likewise ministers, who are the chariots and horsemen of Israel (2 Kgs 2:12); and good laws, and so on. But God is the first turner of the wheel, and we must see him in all other preservers whatsoever. And therefore the apostle, in the language of the Holy Spirit and of Canaan, says here, “The Lord will preserve me.” And rather than let a man miscarry while God still has anything for him to do, God will work a miracle.

The three men could not be burned in the fire (Dan 3:25); God so suspended its force. Daniel could not be devoured by the greedy lions (Dan 6:22). Rather than God’s purpose should fail, and a man perish before the time God has allotted him, the lions shall not devour and the fire shall not burn. God has measured our hourglass and our time, even to a moment. Our Savior Christ, knowing this heavenly truth, says, “My time is not yet come” (John 7:6); so let us know that until our hour comes, all the devils in hell cannot hurt one hair of our head. And this is a wonderful ground of confidence, that we should carry ourselves above all threats and above all fears whatsoever. “Thou canst do nothing except it were given thee” (John 19:11), says Christ to bragging Pilate, who boasted of his power. Alas! What can all the enemies of God’s people do unless God permits them?

If a king or a great man should say to someone beneath him, “Go on; I will stand by you and preserve you; you will come to no harm,” what an encouragement that would be! Oh, but when God says to a Christian, “Walk humbly before me, keep close to my word, be steadfast in the ways of holiness, do not fear man; you are under my protection and safekeeping,” what an encouragement this is to a believing soul!

But suppose we cannot be preserved from death, for so it was here with the apostle: he died a bloody death. Why, let us observe his blessed conduct in all this and do likewise. I do not regard that, he says. Do your worst; God will still preserve me. So it should be the bent of a Christian’s soul to come to God with this limitation in his faith and in his prayer: “Lord, if you will not deliver me from suffering evil, preserve me from doing evil. If you will not preserve me from death, preserve me from sinful works.” This we may build on: either God will preserve us in life, or, if we die, he will preserve us in death to his heavenly kingdom. And sometimes God preserves by not preserving from death, for indeed death keeps a man from all danger whatsoever. Once he is dead, he is out of range of every gunshot. Death is in itself a deliverance and a preservation; it sends a man straight to heaven. And therefore the apostle knew what he was saying: “The Lord will preserve me to his heavenly kingdom.”

That is, he will preserve me until I am in possession of heaven. He will go along with me through all the passages of my life; he will carry me through everything and bring me there at last. As the angel that struck off Peter’s chains “shined in the prison” (Acts 12:7) and led him out into the city, so God by his Spirit shines into our souls and carries us through all the passages of this life, never leaving us until he has brought us to his heavenly kingdom.

I will not try to open to you what a state this heavenly kingdom is, to which St. Paul hoped to be preserved! That is beyond my understanding, and still more beyond my power of expression. But observe briefly this much: first, of all conditions it is the freest kingdom; second, the most glorious; third, the most abundant in all supplies; fourth, it is a heavenly kingdom; fifth, it is an everlasting kingdom.

The excellence of the heavenly kingdom. The nearer things are to the heavens, the purer they are. First, heaven is a most holy kingdom: no uncleanness can enter there. Second, it is a large kingdom. And third, it is an everlasting kingdom. Other men’s kingdoms end with their persons. Perhaps they may even live to outlive their glory in the world, as Nero did (the emperor Paul was under at this time, when he wrote this epistle), who came to a base end. But this kingdom can never be shaken. God’s preservation shall end in eternal glory.

Use 1. Here is a special ground for God’s children to persevere in well-doing. What! Does God undertake, even of himself, to deliver us from evil works that might endanger our salvation, and to preserve us until he has put us into heaven? Where, then, is the popish doctrine of falling away?

Objection. Oh, but I may sin, and so fall away.

Answer. Yes, but God will deliver us from evil works; he takes away that objection. He who keeps heaven for us keeps us for heaven, until he has put us into possession of it. “We are kept (we are guarded, as the word is) by the power of God to salvation” (1 Pet 1:5). Salvation is kept for us, and we are kept for it. If we endanger heaven in any way, it is by evil works, and God keeps us from them. What a most comforting doctrine this is!

Use 2. But to add a second, against that foolish, vain, and proud point of popish merit. We see what a strain they are in. First, before conversion they will have merit of congruity: that it befits the goodness of God, when we do what we can, that we should have grace. Second, when we are in the state of grace, they will have merit of condignity. But how can that be, when free grace runs through everything? God preserves us from evil works, and preserves us to his heavenly kingdom, out of his mere love and mercy. Where, then, is the merit of man? Indeed, we do good when we do good, but God enables us. We speak to the praise of God, but he opens our mouth. We believe, but God draws our heart to it. As Augustine says, “We move, but God moves us.”

Use 3. I beg you, observe further here how complete God’s favors are to his own. He deals with his children like a God, that is, fully and eternally. If he delivers, it is from the greatest evil; if he preserves, it is to the greatest good. Who would not serve such a master? Oh, the baseness of the vile heart of man, which is a slave to inferior things and afraid to displease men! It never considers what a blessed condition it is to be under the government of a gracious God, who will keep us from evil, if it is for our good, forever: outwardly from evil works, inwardly from the terrors of an evil conscience; who will preserve us here in this world and give us heaven when we are done. I beg you, let this complete and full dealing of God quicken us to holy courage and constancy in his service.

Use 4. And see here a point of heavenly wisdom: when we are in any danger, to look with the apostle to the heavenly kingdom. When we are sick, let us not look at death. Paul did not care for that, but he says, “The Lord will preserve me to his kingdom.” He looked to the bank of the shore. As a man who wades through a river keeps his eye on the shore, so the apostle had his eye fixed on heaven. I beg you, therefore, in all dangers and distresses whatsoever, if you would keep your souls free from discouragement, as you should, be much in heaven in your thoughts, minding the things above and conversing with God in your spirits. Look to the crown that is held out to us; let our minds be in heaven before our souls. It is a wonderful help to our weakness in the time of trouble not to think, “I am full of pain; I must be turned into the grave and rot; and what will become of me then?” Away with this carnal reasoning! It greatly weakens faith and dampens the hearts of Christians.

Use 5. Again, how this arms the soul with invincible courage in any trouble! God may call me to trouble, but he will preserve me in it so that I shall not stain my conscience. What a ground of patience this is! Patience is too poor a word; what a ground of joy and triumph it is! We rejoice under the hope of glory (Rom 5:2). A Christian should triumph in soul over all evils whatsoever and be, as the apostle says, “more than a conqueror” (Rom 8:37), considering that God will be present with him all his life long, and after that bring him to an everlasting kingdom. What an encouragement this is!

Heaven is holy; and shall we not fit ourselves for that blessed state? Much holiness is required for heaven. The sinful, wicked, malicious, poisonous world heaps reproaches on holiness; but “without it no man shall see God” (Heb 12:14). Does that man believe he shall obtain a heavenly kingdom who never fits himself for it with holiness? Oh no! “Faith and hope have this efficacy in the breast, wherever they are, to frame the heart to the thing believed.” If I believe there is a kingdom where righteousness and holiness dwell (2 Pet 3:13), this belief compels me to conduct myself in keeping with the state of things there. And therefore the apostle says, “our conversation is in heaven, from whence we look for the Saviour” (Phil 3:20). Because he was assured of heaven, he lived as a citizen of heaven before he came there. He praised God, kept himself undefiled by the world and kept company with the best people. In every way he carried himself, as far as earth would allow him, as they do in heaven. Certainly, “he that hath the hope of a heavenly kingdom is pure as Christ is pure” (1 John 3:3). He endeavors and aims to be holy as God, who has called him, is holy. Faith has power to conform a Christian’s conduct to the likeness of the one he believes to be so excellent. And therefore profane people, who live in sins that stain their consciences and blemish their conduct, are unbelievers and have no saving faith; they do not believe that there is a heaven. “Deceive not yourselves; neither whoremongers, nor adulterers, nor extortioners…” shall inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:9). Do people who live in these sins without remorse think they will come to heaven? As though they could step out of the puddle into heaven? No, no. “Away, you workers of iniquity, I know you not,” says Christ (Luke 13:27). Let no one cherish any presumption of a heavenly kingdom unless he abstains from all sins against conscience. When the apostle wants to urge us to holiness of life, he uses this argument: “If you be risen with Christ, seek those things that are above, where Christ is, at the right hand of the Father” (Col 3:1).

Well, I beg you, let us often set before our souls the blessed condition to come. It will work powerfully to quicken us and stir us up to every good duty, and it will comfort us in all conditions whatever. What will a man care for crosses and losses and disgraces in the world, if he thinks of a heavenly kingdom? What will a man care for ill treatment on his pilgrimage, when he knows he is a king at home? We are all strangers on earth, now in the time of our absence from God. What if we suffer indignities, considering that we have a better estate to come, when we shall be somebody! What if we pass unknown in the world! It is safe for us to do so. God will preserve us for his heavenly kingdom, and all that we suffer and endure here is only a fitting for that place. David was an anointed king many years before he actually possessed his kingdom. But all that time between his anointing and his installation in the kingdom was a preparation of him by humility, so that he might know himself and learn to be fit to govern rightly. So we are anointed kings as soon as we believe. For when we believe in Christ, who is King, Priest, and Prophet, we share in his offices. We have the same blessed anointing poured on our head, and it runs down all about us (Ps 133:2). But we must be humbled by crosses and fitted for the kingdom; we must be drawn further out of the world and become heavenly-minded first.

Rules for Discerning Our Interest in Heaven

Would you know some rules for discerning whether heaven belongs to you or not? 1. In brief, just remember the qualification of those who must reign. They are those who labor daily to purge themselves of all pride and self-confidence; who see no excellence in created things compared with heaven; who see a vanity in all outward things, which keeps them humble in the midst of all their finery; who see themselves empty of everything without God’s favor. “The poor in spirit… theirs,” says Christ, “is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 5:3).

2. Faith makes us kings, because by it we marry the King of heaven. The church is the queen of heaven, and Christ is the King of heaven. Where this grace is present in truth, happiness belongs to that soul.

3. Those who are kings have a royal spirit. The hopes of a young prince put a great deal of spirit into him, perhaps beyond his natural disposition. So all who are kings have a royal spirit in some measure. It raises them above all earthly things and makes them see all other things as nothing in comparison with Christ, as but dross and dung, as holy Paul says (Phil 3:8). Those, therefore, who are slaves to their base lusts, to riches, honor, pleasure, and the like, do not know what belongs to this heavenly kingdom. What, do people think they will reign in heaven when they cannot reign over their own base corruptions! We see David pray to God for an enlarged spirit (Ps 51:12), so that he might be capable of the best things. And certainly those who have this knowledge are of a spirit above the world, “more excellent than their neighbors,” as the wise man says (Prov 12:26). You cannot shake them with offers of promotion, or with fears. They will not stake their hope of eternity on this or that base earthly thing; they are of too royal a spirit for that.

I beg you, therefore, let us examine our spirits and see what they are, whether God has established us with a free spirit or not. The kingdom of heaven is begun on earth; the door by which we must enter it is here. The graces that must fit us for happiness hereafter must be begun here. As the stones of the temple were first hewn and then laid in the temple (1 Kgs 6:7), so we must be hewn and shaped here before we can come there. Those who are not fitted and squared now must never think that God will use them then as living stones of his temple. Now a word on Paul’s use of all this, and so I will conclude:

“To whom be glory for ever and ever” (2 Tim 4:18).

When he had mentioned the heavenly kingdom, and by faith had set himself, as it were, in possession of it, he immediately began the occupation of heaven, to praise and glorify God, even while he was on earth. For faith stirs us up to do what we shall do when we obtain the thing believed. It is called “the evidence of things not seen” (Heb 11:1), and it makes those things present to the soul, as it were. When we are in heaven indeed, we shall do nothing else but praise God. Faith grasps this as if the believer were already there, for everything is sure to faith, since God, who will do it, has said it. And so faith sets the soul upon that occupation here which it will have eternally with God hereafter.

It is therefore Christian wisdom to fix our souls on good meditations, to have them wedded to good thoughts, to have those excellent thoughts that befit Christians and that may lead us comfortably on our way to heaven. Let a man think of God’s past deliverances, and that will strengthen his faith for future deliverances. Let him think of future deliverances, and that will lead him to a kingdom, and to praise God. And this praising of God will stretch his soul for ever and ever, as if no length of time were enough to glorify God, who is so excellent and glorious. What a blessed condition this is: to have God’s Spirit warming our souls and perfuming our spirits with short, holy prayers, continually setting us upon the occupation of heaven, until at last he has safely brought us there!

Here, then, is the use of all uses. What is the former use Paul makes of his experience of God’s deliverance? The Lord has delivered me, and therefore he will deliver me. But what use does he make of this, that God will deliver him? To glorify God. Here is the end of all ends: to praise God. Happy are we when God’s end and our end meet together. He has made all things for his own glory, and when we, with a single eye, can aim at that too, what sweet harmony there is!

1. To direct us in this duty of praising God, let us with Paul (for I go no further than the text leads me) seriously meditate on God’s mercies, both past and to come. Nothing moves us to thankfulness more than this. When a Christian looks backward he has comfort, and when he looks forward he still sees comfort, for preservation, and kingdoms, and crowns await him. If someone wants to praise God, therefore, let him consider how graciously God has dealt with him. He has already delivered me by Jesus Christ from sin and eternal wrath, and he will deliver me from every evil work to come that might endanger my salvation. Think of these things, and see whether your hearts can be cold and dead or not; see whether your spirits can be cramped. Certainly both heart and mouth will be full. You cannot help but say, as you take in God’s mercies, “To him be glory for ever.”

2. Consider the kinds of favors you receive. They are either positive or privative, spiritual or temporal. Positive: the Lord will preserve me. Privative: the Lord will deliver me from every evil work. Temporal: the Lord will keep me in this life. Spiritual: he will deliver me from the power of sin. Eternal: he will preserve me for his heavenly kingdom. Think forward or backward, outward or inward, spiritual or temporal. Wherever you look, tell me whether you can do anything other than break out with the holy apostle in praise of so good a God.

3. Think of the greatness of all these: the greatness of the deliverance from sin and damnation. To make himself all the more thankful, the apostle says he was delivered out of the mouth of the lion. He had large conceptions of God’s goodness. So should we, beloved. Let us consider the greatness of the misery we are in by nature, being slaves of Satan, in danger of slipping into hell at every moment. And when God has secured us from this, let us think of the greatness of the benefit, a “heavenly kingdom.” When we think not only of the benefits but of their greatness, it is a wonderful encouragement to be thankful. Labor, then, to have a due and high esteem of every mercy. God has brought us out of darkness into marvelous light, says the apostle (1 Pet 2:9); great is the mystery of godliness (1 Tim 3:16); and he speaks of the unsearchable riches of his grace (Eph 3:8). He did not have words big enough to express God’s goodness. Oh, the height, and breadth, and depth, and length of his love (Eph 3:18). When we consider these dimensions, our thankfulness must match them.

4. Again, if you want to be thankful, labor to have humble spirits, to see God in all things. Then you will sacrifice to him alone, and not to your gifts and graces, friends, abilities, and the like. The meek are fit to pray to God: “Seek the Lord, ye meek of the earth” (Zeph 2:3). And a humbled, meek soul is the fittest of all to praise God. He who knows he is worthy of nothing will bless God for anything. He who knows he has nothing in himself will be thankful for the least measure of grace. A humble soul is a thankful soul. We see that this was Paul’s disposition here. He gives everything to God, and that is what makes him break out so in praising his name.

5. Again, if we would be thankful, as Paul is here, and begin heaven on earth, labor to be assured of salvation, and of perseverance in your Christian course. The papists, who speak against assurance and perseverance, kill prayer and the praising of God. Shall a man praise God for something he doubts? “I cannot tell whether God will damn me or not; perhaps I am only being made ready like a sheep for the slaughter.” How shall a man praise God for any blessing he enjoys while these thoughts are always with him? How shall a man praise God for salvation, when perhaps he will never come to it? How shall a man praise God for something he may perhaps fall from before he dies, when perhaps he is God’s today and may be the devil’s tomorrow? How can there be hearty thanks except when a man can say, “The Lord will deliver me from every evil work” that through my own weakness and Satan’s malice I may at times fall into between now and heaven? Therefore, if we would praise God as we should, let us work our hearts to labor after assurance of God’s favor. Let us redeem our precious time, and every day set some time apart to strengthen the evidence of our right to heaven. This will keep us continually in a frame for every good work.

So we see from Paul’s example how we should be disposed here, so as to be in heaven before our time. For undoubtedly, the one who praises God is in heaven as much as he is given to thankfulness. He is engaged now in that occupation which will be his entire occupation there. But how long does Paul desire that God should have glory? For ever and ever.

Observation. A Christian should carry the reach of his desires for God’s glory out to eternity. On what ground? Because God intends glory for him for ever and ever. A Christian who is assured of his salvation is assured that God will glorify him eternally. He knows that Christ is King for ever; he knows that Christ is a Priest for ever; he knows that the state and condition he is kept for is everlasting: “it is an inheritance immortal and undefiled, that fadeth not away” (1 Pet 1:4). And therefore he says, “Does God have eternal thoughts of my good? And is Christ an eternal Head, an eternal King to rule me, both in life and in death? Surely I will extend my desires for his glory as far as he extends his purpose to do me good. Now, his purpose to do me good is for eternity, and so my desire that he may have glory shall be for eternity, world without end” (Eph 3:21). This is the disposition of a gracious soul: that God may be honored not by him alone, but by all. To him be praise, not by me alone, but by all. I am not sufficient to praise him. To him be praises in the churches, throughout all ages, for ever. David did not have enough largeness in himself to bless God, and therefore he stirs up his spirit and all that is within him to praise God’s holy name (Ps 103:1), as if everything were too little to set forth the glory of God’s infinite goodness, mercy, wisdom, and power, those gracious attributes that show themselves glorious in bringing man to salvation and in governing the church.

Use. Learn this duty, therefore: if we will make it good to our own souls that we are in the state of grace, we must plan for eternity, and endeavor to lay a ground and foundation so that the church may flourish for eternity. No one can assure himself that he is a good Christian except the one who labors to have the church and commonwealth flourish, to have a happy kingdom, happy government, and happy laws. He labors not only to have the church in his own family, but that the church may flourish in those who rise up after we have gone the way of all flesh. And therefore he labors to declare the mind of God, and his favors to us and to our children, so that they may strengthen their own experience with their fathers’ experience and say to God, “You are the God of my fathers; therefore be my God.” Those who are called to positions of dignity should consider that it is required of them to labor that there may be means to continue religion even to the world’s end, if possible, and to repair all the breaches of this kind. And if it were possible, it would be greatly desired that lights might be set up in all the dark corners of this kingdom, to shine on the people who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.

2. One way is to take care that no breaches are made in the sound doctrine that has been left to us and has been sealed by the blood of so many martyrs. It cost us dearly. It has been taught by our forefathers and sealed with their blood, and shall we betray it? No. Let us labor to deliver it to our posterity, from hand to hand, until the coming of Christ. Then we shall in deed, and not in word only, do what Paul says here: labor to glorify God for ever and ever, both in the church and in heaven. Surely those who will glorify God in heaven, he will have so disposed as to glorify him on earth.

It is a dangerous thing when people are wicked. We see what comes of it, especially if they are great. It is said of Manasseh that when God had forgiven him his sin, God still afterward plagued the kingdom for the sins Manasseh had committed (2 Kgs 24:3). How can this be? Because by his sin, though he repented, he had still set the kingdom in an evil frame. And no doubt he had wicked principles. Among people given to licentiousness, if there is anything of that in great men, it will pass to posterity after them. So when rulers are wicked, they are not only a poison to the church and state while they live; the mischief of it goes on and on afterward. And so it is with the best things too. If the ruler is good, he lays a foundation of good for the kingdom in time to come as well as for his own time.

How it will shame a man when he thinks, “I do these things now, but what will posterity think of me? What will be the memory of it when I am gone? Then my name will stink.” The wicked emperor Nero was of this resolve when he was about to die. “Let heaven and earth mingle together,” he said, “when I am gone.” He knew himself to be so wicked, and knew he would be so evilly spoken of, that he wished there were no posterity, but that the world might end with him. Such are the wishes of those who are wretches themselves and who lay a foundation for wretched times afterward. They wish that heaven and earth may mingle, so that no one may pass judgment on them when they are gone. What a shameful condition it is for people to gratify a host of unruly lusts, and give them such sway as to do evil while they live and to lay a foundation of misery for the times that follow!

On the other hand, what a good thing it is, like Josiah and Nehemiah, to be full of goodness while we live, and to lay a foundation of happiness and prosperity for the church and state when we are gone! What a happy thing it is, when a man is gone, for people to say, “Such a man did such a thing! He stood boldly for the church, for religion; he was a public man; he forgot his own private good for the public good; he served well the times in which he lived.” What a blessed commendation this is, next to heaven: to have a blessed report on earth, and to carry such a conscience as will comfort a man that he has conducted himself well and abounded in doing good.

I beg you, let us think of this “for ever and ever.” It is not enough for us to be good in the times allotted to us. But as God has given us immortal souls and preserves us for immortal glory and a crown of immortality, so let our thoughts and desires be immortal, that God may be glorified in the church, world without end. Oh, what sweet comfort it will be on our deathbed to think of what we have done in our lifetimes! Then all our good actions will come and meet together to comfort and refresh our souls.

Encouragements to Glorify God

To encourage us all the better to glorify God while we are here, and to lay a foundation for making his glory endure in time to come, consider:

1. God’s gracious promise: “Those that honor me I will honor” (1 Sam 2:30). If we had enlarged hearts to honor God, God would honor us. He has given his word for it. If a king said so, oh, how we would be set on fire! How much more when the King of kings says it!

2. Consider that we honor ourselves when we honor God. Indeed, the more we honor God, the more we are indebted to God, for it is from him that we honor him. The sacrifice comes from him, as well as the thing for which we sacrifice. He provided a ram for Abraham to sacrifice (Gen 22:13). He gives the heart to be thankful. The more thankful we are, the more thankful we shall be, and the more we ought to be thankful for our thankfulness.

3. The more we praise God, the more we should praise him, for it is the gift of God. When God sees that we honor him, and that we frame ourselves to be the kind of people who may honor him, by emptying ourselves and renouncing any sufficiency of our own to do him any service, he will bestow more on us. People sow seed upon seed where the ground is fruitful, but they will sow nothing on a barren heath. So the more we set ourselves to do good in our places, the more opportunity we shall have for it; and the more good we do, the more good we shall do. When God sees us put the talents he has entrusted to us to such good use, he will entrust us with more.

4. Again, consider that our glorifying and praising God causes others to do so, which is the main end for which we live in this world. It is the occupation of heaven, and we are in heaven as much as we are about this work. And when God gives us hearts to glorify him here, it is a good pledge that he will afterward glorify us in heaven. Who would lose the comfort of all this to be barren, and give in to his base, unbelieving, dead heart? To save a little here? To keep his own skin whole, and venture on no good action? Who would not rather take a course that has such large encouragements attending it, both in life and in death? I beg you, think of these things. Before long Christ will come to be glorified in all those who believe (2 Thess 1:10). He will come to be glorified in his saints. Our glory serves his glory. Shall we not glorify him all we can here, by setting forth his truth, by supporting his children and servants, by doing good, and by serving well the ungrateful times we live in? Let people be as unthankful as they will; we do not look to them, but to the honor of God, the good name of religion, the maintenance of the truth, and the like. Let people be as they will be, base and wicked, enemies of grace and goodness; we do it not for them but for God. Consider this. Will Christ come from heaven before long to be glorified in us, and shall we not labor to glorify him while we are here? He will never come hereafter to be glorified in any but those who glorify him now. As we expect, therefore, that he should be glorified in us and by us, let us glorify him now. For he condescends to be glorified in us and by us so that he may also glorify us.

Question. Paul says that the wife is the glory of the husband (1 Cor 11:7). What does he mean by this?

Answer. That is, she reflects the graces of a good husband. If he is good, she is good; she reflects his excellencies. So let every Christian soul that is married to Christ be the glory of Christ. Let it reflect his excellencies: be holy as he is holy (1 Pet 1:15), fruitful as he was in doing good, meek and humble as he was, and in every way be his glory. And then, undoubtedly, when he comes to judge us, he will come to be glorified in us, having first been glorified by us.

Beloved, these and similar considerations should set us to work on how to do Christ all the honor we can. David says, Is there any of Jonathan’s posterity alive, that I may do good unto them for his sake? (2 Sam 9:1). So, considering that we shall be so glorified by Christ, and that he will do so much for us in another world, we should ask, “Are there any of Christ’s posterity here, any of his children in this world, to whom I may do good? Is there any way in which I may show my thankfulness? If so, I will do it.” Let us consider that we shall be glorified for ever and ever. It is beyond all imagining to express it; we shall never know it until we have it. I beg you, let this stir us up to study how we may be thankful to God, set forth his glory, and do good service to the church and the times in which we live. God has children and a cause in the world that he dearly loves. Let us own them, and stand for them to the utmost of our power, despite all the spite and opposition of Satan and his wicked instruments.

The Lord in mercy settle these truths upon our hearts, and encourage us in his most holy way.