Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.
~ James 4:3
But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.
~ James 1:6-7
There they cry, but none giveth answer, because of the pride of evil men.
~ Job 35:12
There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.
~ Proverbs 14:12
For the wicked boasteth of his heart’s desire, and blesseth the covetous, whom the LORD abhorreth.
~ Psalm 10:3
Directions Against Sinful Hopes, by Richard Baxter. The following contains Title Five of Chapter Six, “Directions for the Government of the Thoughts” of his work, “A Christian Directory, Volume One”. Baxter wrote this between 1664 to 1665.
Title 5. Directions against sinful Hopes
Hope is nothing but a desirous expectation: therefore the directions given before, against sinful love and desire, may suffice also against sinful hopes, save only for the expecting part. Hope is sinful; 1. When it is placed ultimately upon a forbidden object: as to hope for some evil to yourselves which you mistakingly think is good. To hope for felicity in the creature, or to hope for more from it, than it can afford you. To hope for the hurt of other men; for the ruin of your enemies; for the hindrance of the Gospel, and injury to the church of Christ. 2. When you hope for a good thing by evil means: as to hope to please God, or to come to heaven by persecuting his servants, or by ignorance, or superstition, or schism, or heresy, or any sin. 3. To hope ungroundedly for that from God, which he never promised. 4. To hope deceitfully for that from God which he hath declared he will never give. All these are sinful hopes. But it is not these last that I shall here say much to, because I have said so much already of them in many other writings.
Direct. I. ‘Hope for nothing from God against faith or without faith; that is, for nothing which he hath said he will not give, nor for any thing which he hath not promised to give, or given you some reason to expect.’ To hope for that which God hath told us he will not give, or that which is against the holiness and justice of God to give, this is but to hope that God will prove a liar, or unholy, or unjust, which are wicked and blaspheming hopes. Such are the hopes which abundance of ignorant and ungodly persons have; who hope to be saved without regeneration, and without true holiness of heart or life; and hope to be saved in their wilful impenitence or beloved sins: who hope that God forgiveth them those sins, which they hate not, nor will be persuaded to forsake: and hope that the saying over some words of prayer, or doing something which they call a good work, shall save them though they have not the spirit of Christ: or that hope to be saved, though they are unsanctified, because they are not so bad as some others, and live not in any notorious, disgraceful sin: all these believe the devil who tells them that an unholy person may be saved, and believe that the Gospel is false which saith, “without holiness none shall see the Lord;” and they hope that God will prove unholy, unjust, and false to save them, and yet this they call a hoping in God. Hope for that which God hath promised, and spare not; but not for that which he hath said he will not do, yea, protested cannot before.
Direct. II. ‘When thou hopest for any evil to others, or thyself, remember what a monstrous thing it is to make evil the object of thy hope, and how those hopes are but thy hastening unto chosen misery, and contradict themselves.’ For thou hopest for it as good; and to be greedy for evil on supposition that it is good, doth shew thy folly that wilt try no better the objects of thy hopes: like a sick man that longs and hopeth for that which if he take it will be his death. Thus sinners hope for the poisoned bait.
Direct. III. ‘Understand how much of the root of worldliness consisteth in your worldly hopes.’ Poor worldlings have little in possession to delight in; but they keep up a hope of more within them. Many a covetous or ambitious wretch, that never reacheth that which he desireth, yet liveth upon the hopes of it: and hope is it that setteth and keepeth men at work in the service of the world, the flesh and the devil; as divine hope doth set and keep men at work for heaven, for their souls, and for Jesus Christ. And many an hypocrite that loseth much upon the account of his religion, yet sheweth his rottenness by keeping up his worldly hopes, and going no further than will stand with those.
Direct. IV. ‘Hath not the world deceived all that have hoped in it unto this day?’ Consider what is become of them and of their hopes? What hath it done for them, and where hath it left them? And wilt thou place thy hopes in that which hath deceived so many generations of men already?
Direct. V. ‘Remember that thy worldly hopes are a sin so fully condemned by natural demonstration, that thou art utterly left without excuse.’ Thou art certain beforehand that thou must die: thou knowest how vain the world will be then to thee: and how little it can do for thee; and yet art thou hoping for more of the world!
Direct. VI. ‘Consider that the world declareth its vanity in the very hopes of worldlings.’ In that it is still drawing them by hopes, and never giveth them satisfaction and content. Almost all the life of a worldling’s pleasure is in his hopes. The very thing which he hopeth for, doth not prove so sweet to him in the possession, as it was in his hopes. A hoping and still hoping for that which they never shall attain, is the worldling’s life.
Direct. VII. ‘O turn your souls to those blessed hopes of life eternal, which are sent you from heaven by Jesus Christ, and set before you in the holy Scriptures, and proclaimed to you by the messengers of grace.’ Doth God offer you sure, well-grounded hopes of living for ever his joy and glory? And do you neglect them, and hoping for that felicity in the world which cannot be tained, and which will give no content when you have attained it? This is more foolish than to toil and impoverish yourselves in hope to find the philosopher’s story and refuse a kingdom freely offered.
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