I create the fruit of the lips; Peace, peace to him that is far off, and to him that is near, saith the LORD; and I will heal him. But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.
— Isaiah 57:19-21
Woe unto him that saith to the wood, Awake; to the dumb stone, Arise, it shall teach! Behold, it is laid over with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in the midst of it.
— Habakkuk 2:19
But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.
— Romans 13:14
But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman’s hand.
— Ezekiel 33:6
Give not sleep to thine eyes, nor slumber to thine eyelids. Deliver thyself as a roe from the hand of the hunter, and as a bird from the hand of the fowler. Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest. How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? when wilt thou arise out of thy sleep?
— Proverbs 6:4-9
Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.
— Ecclesiastes 9:10
That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;
— Philippians 3:10
Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
— 2 Timothy 2:3
Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.
— Luke 21:36
The Saints Are to Prepare Themselves for Greater Trials, by John Flavel. The following contains Chapter Fifteen of his work, “Preparations for Sufferings.”
Chapter XV
Then Paul answered, What mean ye to weep, and to break my heart? For I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.
— Acts 21:13
Containing another use of the point, by way of exhortation, persuading all the people of God, whilst the Lord respites, and graciously delays their trials, to answer the end of God therein, and prepare themselves for greater trials; where several motives are propounded to excite to the duty.
Up then from your beds of sloth, awake from your security, O ye saints, get upon your watch-towers, tremble in yourselves, that ye may rest in the day of evil, Hab. 2:1, 3, 16. “Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand in the evil day, and when you have done all, to stand,” Eph. 6:11. O let it never be said of your dwellings, as it is said of the tabernacles of the wicked, Job 21:9. “Their houses are safe from fear.”
Augustus hearing of one that was deeply in debt, who yet slept heartily, sent for his pillow, supposing there was some strange virtue in that pillow. I wonder what pillow ye have gotten, O ye drowsy saints, that you can sleep so quietly upon it, now that all things about you are conspiring trouble, and threatening danger. Can you sleep like Jonah, when seas of wrath are tumbling and roaring round about you, and threaten to entomb you and all your enjoyments? Behold, “The stork in the heavens knows her appointed time,” Jer. 7:8 and hath not God made you wiser than the fowls of the air, Job 35:11. It may be the sound of some present judgment may a little startle you, like a sudden clap of thunder in the air; but how soon doth sloth and security prevail, and overcome you again. They say poison by being habituated, may be made innocent: We are so used to, or rather hardened under calamities, that nothing moves or effectually awakens us. Lord, what will the end of these things be? Wilt thou surprise thy people at unawares? Shall thy judgments find them secure, and leave them desperate? O that God would persuade you “togather yourselves together, yea, to gather together,” (not in an unlawful and seditious way, but in the way of duty,) “before the decree bring forth, and the day pass as the chaff,” Zeph. 2:1, 2. O prepare to meet your God, Amos 4:12. Prepare your faith, love, courage, &c. before God call you to the exercise of them.
And to excite you to this duty, besides all the forementioned benefits of a prepared spirit, consider these following particulars by way of motive.
Motives
1. Motive. The many calls which God hath given you to this work. The Lord hath uttered his voice, and called from heaven unto you; will you be deaf to his calls? He hath called upon you, (1.) By the word: God would have it cry to you first, because he would give the first honour to his word. He hath given all his prophets one mouth, Luke 1:70 and they have warned you faithfully. (2.) By the rod: this also hath a loud voice, Mic. 6:9. Psal. 2:5. Men of understanding will hear this voice; and those that will not hear it shall be lashed by it even till they are sick with smiting, verse 13. (3.) By prodigious and portentous signs in the heavens and earth, such as no age can parallel, these have a loud voice to all that regard the works of the Lord, or the operations of his hands. Eusebius calls them God’s sermons to the world*. O that we were wise to consider what God’s ends are in these things! one observes, ‘That as they are the plainest and most obvious to sense, so they are commonly the last sermons which God intends to preach to nations, before he inflicts his punishment on them, if they repent not.’ O let not God, speaking in ordinary and extraordinary ways to you, still speak in vain.
Your preparations for sufferings, is the most probable means of preventing your fall and ruin by those sufferings.
2. Motive. Sufferings prove fatal and destructive to some; but it is to secure and careless ones; Such as are diligent and faithful in the use of God’s means, are secured from the danger. Christ lays our constancy and perseverance very much upon our forecasting the worst that may fall out, Luke 14:28. “Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand,” Eph. 6. He that hath first severed Christ in his thoughts from all worldly advantages, and puts the case thus to his own soul, O my soul, canst thou embrace or love a naked Christ? Canst thou be content to be impoverished, imprisoned, and suffer the loss of all for him? He is most likely to cleave faithfully to him, when the case is really presented to him indeed. And can it seem a light thing in your eyes, to be enabled to stand in such an evil day? If you fall away from Christ, then all you have wrought is lost, Ezek. 33:13. Gideon’s one bastard destroyed all his seventy sons. This act renders all former actions and professions vain. If you fall, you shall thereby be brought into a more perfect bondage to the devil than ever, Mat. 12:23. Yea, ordinarily, apostates are judicially given up to be persecutors, Hos. 5:12. 1 Tim. 1:20 and are seldom or never recovered again by grace, Heb. 6:4, 6. They that lick up their vomit, seldom cast it up any more. It is a fall within a little as low as the unpardonable sin, whence never any rise again. In some cases the judge will not allow the offender his book. And is it not then a choice and desirable mercy to escape and prevent such a fall as this? O good souls, ply your preparation-work close then; prepare, or you perish.
3. Motive. This will best answer the grace of God, in affording you such choice helps and advantages as you have enjoyed. How long have you enjoyed the free liberty of the gospel, shining in its lustre among you? This sun, which to some other nations hath not risen, and to divers on whom it hath shined, yet it is but as a winter’s sun, remote, and its beams but feeble; but you have lived, as it were, under the line, it hath been over your heads, and shed its richest influences upon you. Yea, God’s ministers, who are not only appointed to be watchmen, Ezek. 3:16 but trumpeters to discover danger, Num. 10:8. These have faithfully warned you of a day of trouble, and given you their best assistance to make you ready for it. And is not their joy, yea, life, bound up in your stability in such a day of trial? Doth not every one call upon you in the words of the apostle, Phil. 4:1. “Therefore, my brethren, dearly beloved, and longed for, my joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved.” Will it not cut them to the very heart, if after all their spending labours among you, they still leave you unready? enemies still to the cross of Christ, impossible to be reconciled and persuaded to suffering-work for Christ.
I remember I have read of the Athenian Codrus, who being informed by the oracle, that the people whose king should be slain in battle should be conquerors: he thereupon disrobed himself, and in a disguise went into the enemies quarters, that he might steal a death to make his people victorious.
Oh! how glad would your ministers be, if you might conquer and overcome in the day of temptation, whatever become of their lives and liberties! Yea, and if they be offered up upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, they can rejoice, and joy with you all. Such is their zeal and longing after your security and welfare. But if still you remain an unready people, and do become a prey to temptation, Oh how inexcusable will you be!
4. Motive. Remember how ready the Lord Jesus was to suffer the hardest and vilest things for you. He had a bitter cup put into his hands to drink for you, into which the wrath both of God and man was squeezed out. Never had man such sufferings to undergo as Christ,* whether you consider, (1.) The dignity of his person, who was in the form of God, and might have stood upon his peerage and and equality with him; he is the sparkling diamond of heaven, Acts 7:56 the darling of the Father’s soul, Isa. 42:1. glorious as the only begotten of the Father, John 1:14. yea, glory itself, Jam. 2:1. yea, the very brightness of glory, Heb. 1:3. He is the deliciæ Christiani orbis, fairer than the sons of men; And for him to be so debased, below so many thousands of his own creatures, become a worm, and no man; this was a wonderful humiliation. It was Jeremiah’s lamentation, that such as were brought up in scarlet, embraced dunghills; that princes were hanged up by the hands, and the faces of elders were not reverenced: But what was that to the humiliation of the Lord of glory? Or, (2.) That he suffered in the prime and flower of his years; when full of life and sense, and more capable of exquisite sense of pain than others: for he was optime complexionatus, † of a singular constitution; and all the while he hanged on the tree, his sense of pain not at all blunted or decayed, Mark 15:37, 39. Or, (3.) The manner of his death. It was the death of the cross, which was a rack to Christ: for in reference to the distention of his members upon the cross is that spoken, Ps. 22:17. “I may tell all my bones.” Or, (4.) That all this while God hid his face from him. When Stephen suffered, he saw the heavens opened. The martyrs were many of them ravished and transported with extasies of joy in their sufferings; but Christ in the dark. He suffered in his soul as well as in his body; and the sufferings of his soul were the very soul of his sufferings. It was the Father’s wrath that lay so heavy on him, as to put him into such an agony, that an instance was never given of the like nature: for he sweat θρομβοι, great drops, or dodders of blood, which fell from his body to the ground, Luke 22:44. “It amazed him, and made him very heavy;” see Mark 14:33. yea, sorrowful even to “death,” Mat. 26:38.
And yet, as bitter as the cup was, he freely and willingly drank it up, John 18:11. prepared himself to be offered up a sacrifice, Psal. 40:6, 7. “gave his back to the smiters,” Isa. 50:6. yea, longed exceedingly for the time till it came, Luke 12:50.
Now, if Christ so cheerfully prepared and addressed himself to such sufferings as these for you, should you not prepare yourselves to encounter any difficulty or hardships for him? O my brethren, doth not this seem a just and fair inference to you, from the sufferings of Christ for you? 1 Pet. 4:1. “For as much then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind.”
O trifle no longer, feed not yourselves with fancies and groundless presumptions of immunity and peace, but foresee difficulties, and fit yourselves to bear them.
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