Chapter 13

CHAP. XIII.

1. Of striving against sovereignty. 2. Some striving is lawful. 3. A gracious behavior it is to be woe at God's forsaking. 4. To repine at sovereignty in hearing or not hearing of prayer. 5. Contradicting. 6. Murmuring. 7. Counter-working of sovereignty is dreadful. 8. Opposing the operations of the Spirit. 9. Despairing. 10. Reproaching proud disputing. 11. Submission to want of influences. 12. What way the Lord recompenses desertions. 13. Closing with influences of the law-rebukes.

Elihu most gravely speaks, (Job 33:13) Why do you strive with him, for he gives not an account of any of his matters? The word is to strive and contend in words only, as Mercerus and Pagnin, either in judgement or out of judgement, jurgare. And it is strange that any dare chide or scold with the sovereign Lord.

But 1. Jacob's striving and wrestling in a holy willful peremptoriness in praying, the Lord being on Jacob the wrestler's side really to bear him up by his grace, is a lawful striving.

2. There is a difference between a mere temptation and a threatening. The woman of Canaan strives not against Christ's not answering her one word (Matthew 15); what? he is master of his own answers. When Christ says, I came not but for the lost sheep of the house of Israel, she strives not; he is master of his own journey from heaven to earth; yet that answer weakens her not in the duty of praying, and worshipping. But when she is reproached as to her interest in Christ, It is not meet to take the children's bread and to give it to dogs, she mildly, yet in the boldness of faith contradicts Christ: suppose Christ out of his own mouth should deny a child of God to be a child of God, there is place for a holy striving and contradicting of him.

3. It is a gracious behavior in the man Christ, that he is affected with grief for the Lord's forsaking, and expresses it with tears and strong cries (Hebrews 5). Should not the child weep, when the father is angry? 2. The privation of the greatest good, such as the overclouding of the Lord's favor, is a due cause of sadness; Woman, why weep you, says the Angel to Magdalen? Why weep I? they have taken away my Lord. 3. It wants not reason I weep, for my father is dead; there is my mother's grave, she is very new buried, therefore I weep; all my goods are taken away, and therefore I weep; yet the Lord has forsaken me, and I weep not; that is dreadful. So Job, Jeremiah, David, Hezekiah, are sadly afflicted, when the Lord seems angry.

4. There is a sovereignty in hearing or not hearing of prayer, against which we must not strive. 1. Sometimes the unwritten bill is answered (Isaiah 65:24), and the Lord yields to our blank papers, and subscribes them. 2. Sometimes he hears the dumb man's signs, and his breathing, instead of his praying (Isaiah 38:14, 20; Lamentations 3:56; Psalm 6:8; Psalm 102:19, 20). 3. Sometimes the Lord hears, and sends the message of deliverance, but we hear not, nor do we know or feel that he hears (Psalm 18:4, 5, 6, compared with verse 16; Daniel 10:12); one crying for comfort may be heard and not comforted. (Isaiah 66:13, 14) As one whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you, and you shall be comforted. And when you see this, your heart shall rejoice, and your bones shall flourish like a green herb.

5. The clay's no and the great Potter's yes and vain man's I will and the Almighty's I will not are most unsuitable. (Isaiah 29:16) Shall the work say of him that made it, He made me not? or shall the thing framed, say of him that framed it, He has no understanding? (Romans 9:20) Who are you, O man, that replies against God? (Isaiah 45:9) Woe to him that strives with his Maker: let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth: shall the clay say to him that fashions it, What do you make? or your work, He has no hands? (Jeremiah 18:6) O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as the potter, says the Lord? behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. Humble speaking to God does well become us. Abraham excuses his contrary pleading with God (Genesis 18:27): Behold, now I have taken upon me to speak, who am but dust and ashes. Verse 30: Oh, let not my Lord be angry, and I will speak. Verse 32; (Job 42:3) Therefore have I uttered that I understood not, things too wonderful for me, that I knew not.

3. Beware of murmuring and angry and fretting words against God; (Exodus 14:11) Were there no graves in Egypt? (Exodus 15:24; Exodus 16:2; Numbers 14:2, 27) and much more. It is dreadful to contend with the Almighty; and for so small a thing as a drink of water, and for a piece of flesh, should we fall a pleading with the sovereign Lord?

4. Especially we should not counter-work the uncontrollable providence of God; for that is to give the Lord battle, and to lead an army against him: as (Isaiah 9:10) The bricks are fallen down, but we will build them with hewn stones; the sycamores are cut down, but we will change them to cedars.

5. There be divers kinds of striving with the Almighty; such are they who blasphemously oppose the shining and convincing power of the Spirit in Christ casting out devils (Matthew 12); such are they who gnash with the teeth and spit upon the shining beauty of godliness in Stephen (Acts 7); and kick against pricks as persecutors do (Acts 9); who if they had the Father and Spirit incarnate, as the Son was, would crucify both, and would, were it in their blasphemous power, crucify the Godhead; whereas meek yielding to the actings and flowings of the Spirit in others, says there must be much of the Spirit there; for the Spirit cannot but love the Spirit.

6. Despairing stoutly of mercy and the power of grace is of this sort; when Cain, Judas, and others defy Omnipotency and infinite mercy to save them, and spitefully hate the influences of saving grace, and say, mercy cannot save me; the complete ransom of the blood of God cannot buy me from the second death. To this we may reduce a lazy despairing; what if I be never saved, I can, I will do no more? The people are bidden return; no, there is no hope (say they) (Jeremiah 18:12), but we will walk after our own devices.

7. There is here, the fainter reproaching of Omnipotency, as if God were weary and not able to bring back the captive people (Isaiah 40:27, 28). Hence the Lord must prove his omnipotency by that rare piece the curtain of Heaven stretched out, and a measuring line drawn over the Earth (Isaiah 51:14, 15; Isaiah 50:2).

8. There is a proud disputing with God when we dare give in a bill against God. 1. Ah, he takes me for his enemy. 2. He has left off to be gracious; an ungracious God is no God. O the pride of a tempted mind that dare oppose the very existence of God.

3. Some say, God has need to be instructed to govern the world better, otherwise what needed that be said by Isaiah 40:13: "Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being his counsellor, has taught him?" Ver. 14. "With whom took he counsel, who instructed him, and taught him in the path of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding?" Or what needs that (Job 21:22): "Shall any teach God knowledge? seeing he judges things that are high." What a God is an unknowing God, who needs a lesson from the creature, or from some higher God? And then who taught that other God who is supposed to be higher than the Most High? What a carnal mind is this that chases the Almighty God out of the world?

4. What do they who curse the day, the stars, the twilight, the birth? as Job chap. 3. A gracious heart says, let the Lord be the Lord, and closes with all the attributes of God, and with all the influences of omnipotency, wisdom, goodness, and justice on men, and of love, mercy, grace, bounty, forbearance to the saints, and to their own soul; this is to sing mercy, and to sing judgment. Whereas it is a note of atheism to wish and vote out of the world God, his attributes, and all the acting and influences of mercy, justice, truth, grace, sovereignty, and to say, it is not the Lord, the Lord can neither do good, neither can he do evil (Zephaniah 1).

So would we beware to fight with the Lord's dispensations of grace; he is Lord and sovereign disposer of his own comforts: whether we look upon comforts as duties commanded (2 Thessalonians 5:17; Jeremiah 31:15), or as a reward of duties from the Lord (Romans 15:4; Psalm 27:14; 2 Thessalonians 2:16; Isaiah 66:13, 14), he is the Lord of all influences to work in us to will and to do, and Master of his own rewards. The Lord is Master of his own love-visits, and is neither debtor to the man Christ, nor to the elect angels; yes, the Lord's saving influences go along with his free decree of Election; and look as the Lord of nature preserves the species of roses, of vine-trees, though this or that individual rose or vine-tree may wither and be blasted; so he holds on the work of believing, praying, of hoping, and persevering to the end; though there may be a miscarrying in this or that particular act of faith, and some deadness in praying, hic & nunc. And as in a great work of a water-mill, some one of the wheels may be broken, and yet the mill is kept a going, and the ship still under sail, though some instrument, or other be wanting and laid aside for a while: So when there is a withdrawing of feeling of a presence in praying, as Canticles 5:6, I called him, but he answered me not; yet influences flow in another duty of praising, ver. 10, My Beloved is white and ruddy, and the chief among ten thousand; and when there are withdrawings of God, as touching vigorousness of believing, Why are you disquieted, O my soul? &c. yet are there very large outlettings of God in love-sickness and strong desires after the Lord (Psalm 42:2), My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. So is it that some river which flows a far other way, in a new cutted out channel, the former being dried up. So the blood runs in another vein, and still furnishes strength to the body: nor is there cause to complain, as if all strength were gone; for when the afflicted man eats ashes for bread, and drinks tears, and the heart is withered as grass, and the man's bones are burnt as a hearth (Psalm 102), the flood breaks out in another corner. Ver. 12, But you, O Lord, shall endure for ever; and your remembrance to all generations. V. 19, He looks down from Heaven. 20, To hear the groaning of the prisoner: to loose them that are appointed for death. There is some spiritual compensation in the Lord's forbidding the wind to blow in one earth, when it strongly blows in another. Some deadened deserted ones are much meekened and made to speak out of the dust, and fed and fattened also with hunger; yes, if it were but lying at the gate of Christ and knocking, though no answer at all be returned, it has much of Christ in it, in other considerations; deadness may be on, and want of holy vigorous acting of faith, and yet spiritual complainings; yes and with the complainings fervent praying (Psalm 119:25), My soul cleaves to the dust: quicken me according to your word. Ver. 28, My soul melts for heaviness, strengthen me according to your word. You would judge righteously of the Lord, and see whether or no you complain without cause; for though there be fainting, yet there is hoping (Psalm 119:81), My soul faints for your salvation, but I hope in your word. Some children are always malecontent and still weeping, nothing in the house can please them: it's the fault of some greedy wretches, who have abundance, and yet still complain of want. It were good to turn our censuring of the Lord's providence into complaining of our own evil hearts, it follows humble and diligent obedience, that has sweetness of submission (Psalm 119:165), Great peace have they that keep your Law and nothing shall offend; or (as the word is) stumble their feet. There is a heart-covenanting with God, when the man says, God shall do nothing that shall stumble me; his killing of me, his casting me out of his presence, into hell shall not offend me (Job 1:22; 2 Samuel 16:10). The man Christ could be broken or offended at nothing, whether the traitor sell him, or the disciples forsake him, or the Jews apprehend him, or the soldiers spit on his face, or Pilate condemn him, or the people nod the head, shoot out the lip, and mock him; there is nothing can break Christ, but the Scriptures must be fulfilled in Christ's sufferings. If the Lord slay Aaron's sons, Aaron holds his peace. Let me be rained upon with showers of influences from Heaven, or let my fleece be dry, and let me be a bottle in the smoke, yet there is no unrighteousness with God, and in him is no darkness. Ah, I am dead, but the Lord guides well; ah he is a Lion to me, and a Leopard; but the Lord is good to the soul that waits for him. The man that stumbles least at the sins of others and their falls, is the man nearest to God's heart. Psalm 18:18, They prevented me in the day of my calamity. They wronged me, ver. 25, But I kept myself from my iniquity: and what can you say against his withdrawings, will you make it a quarrel that he hides his face? There is a deep of sovereignty between the Lord's withdrawing from Hezekiah, and Hezekiah's pride. God hardens Pharaoh's heart, and Pharaoh hardens his own heart (Joshua 11:19, 20; Isaiah 57:17; Psalm 81:11, 12).

Qu. But what shall be done under deadness?

Ans. 1. If there be any life, life helps life; the one part of the worm acts upon the other to bring forth a motion of life.

2. You have no more reason to chide him for blasting your heart with withering, than that the Lord sends a wind upon the rose, and dries it up, and the grace of it is gone.

3. Meddle not with his part but complain of your part; let his sovereignty alone and confess your own guiltiness (Isaiah 64:6, 8); there is a confession of our sin. But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and withal an acknowledgment of his sovereignty, we are the clay and you our potter.

When the Lord withdraws, seek again and again, be sick after him (Cant. 3:1, 2, 3; Cant. 7:6, 7, 8; John 20:1, 2, 3, 13), and know that Christ is never so absent, but there may be also much cause of praising and humble blessing God, if there be love-sickness for him, hunger after him, and a spiritual missing of him, as there is reason to complain of the withdrawing of his influences. For in Cant. 3, when Christ is absent, he is not absent; the soul is shined upon when the soul is overclouded, for it is noon-day at mid-night; he is absent as to feeling, as to finding, and quiet enjoying. I sought him, but I found him not; and again, I sought him, but I found him not: but he is strongly present and shining, as to influences of grace. 1. In painful seeking in the bed by night (Canticles chap. 3, ver. 1). 2. In and about the broad streets and ways (v. 2). 3. In using public means; watch-men, saw you him? (v. 3). 4. In using other means in private: I went a little further. 5. In holy missing: I found him not (v. 1), I found him not (v. 2); in holy finding (v. 4): I found him. 6. And all the while his presence is mighty in the soul-love to him: I sought him whom my soul loved, four times expressed (v. 1, v. 2, v. 3, v. 4), so that the gleaning is better than the full harvest, the mid-night absence has as many sweet privileges as the noon day's presence. A sinner's seeking, loving, and longing and languishing after lost Christ is heaven upon earth; his pawns he leaves behind him are rich and sweet; nor can one be out of heaven in a better desertion than missing and seeking the face of Jacob's God (Psalm 24:6; Psalm 27:8; Jeremiah 50:4), so groundless often is our complaining that we want Christ, that Christ guides and tutors us badly, that he mis-guides rather. Ah, how sinfully querulous are we? He does all things well, his absence is presence, his frownings sweet and profitable. Yet is not this spoken to cool our fervor of seeking when we miss him, and find him not, but rather we are to go on; not to say any thing of law-smiting and of law-firings of the soul under apprehended wrath, especially that which has Gospel-hope, and Gospel-sickness after Christ conjoined with them (Romans 7): the law slew me. The law kills no man who is under Christ out of hand; yes, to such as are under grace somewhat of the Gospel-heaven cleaves to the law-hell. It is a miracle how some are burnt with the law, slain with the terrors of God, wounded with the arrows of the Almighty, and yet are green in the furnace; as Job (c. 6, c. 7, 20): I have sinned, what shall I do to you, O you preserver of men? Ver. 21: Why do you not pardon my transgression, and take away my iniquity? To strive with the law were to strive with God; so do devils and reprobates for eternity wrestle with the law-justice and the law-curse: grace teaches meek assenting to the law as good and spiritual; neither Christ nor any of his live at odds and variance with the law. Indeed to the saints the law is, as they say of elements, they exist not in their purity but with some mixture; for the law to believers is managed by Christ, and in his hands made use of for saving ends, even when the believer is in the law-furnace; nor is there any who could guide and make so good use of the law as Jesus Christ. Some there are, that one night's waking under the terrors of the law would make an end of them, if invisible Gospel strength were not furnished to them; and here there must be a mixture of law-influences, and of Gospel impressions of Christ upon the spirit. It speaks much grace in Josiah (2 Kings 22:19) to feel and suffer, with softness and tenderness of a meekened and a tamed heart, the smart and pain of the influences of the threatening law. And it is prevalency of grace for Hezekiah (Isaiah 39) to stoop to the like and to say, good is the word of the Lord, even the word of a curse (Deuteronomy 28), of threatening the saddest evils: as to kick like a fatted horse and to spurn at such impressions of wrath borne in upon the conscience in Pharaoh (Exodus 10:28), in Ahab (1 Kings 22:26), in the priests, prophets, and people (Jeremiah 26:8), of the chief priests and Pharisees (Matthew 21:45, 46), does proclaim much gracelessness of an undaunted and unplowed heart. Where there is any ingredient of Gospel-grace, there is a coming down and a stooping to the influences of God, of what kind soever, yes and generally a gracious spirit dare no more resist and pray against the Lord's will of pleasure or purpose in its event, than against any part of the revealed will of God or the will of precept, either law or Gospel. The disciples were to watch and pray against the decreed and prophesied scattering of the flock, and their fleeing and forsaking of Christ (Matthew 26:31, 32, 38, 41), but there can no case be given, in which we may resist the approving will of God in his word; that then must be a sweet conformity with God, when the heart sweetly closes with impressions of rebukes, threatenings, convictions, and influences of Evangelical commands. It is good earth that easily yields and cedes to the breakings and tillings made by the plough; let the word act as the Lord will, in all its kinds, and the soul says amen: but the ground that breaks the irons of the tilling plough is convinced to be rocky and barren. Every string of the harp beaten on by the hand of the musician gives a resound like itself; a bell of silver has another sort of excellent sound than a bell of brass or iron: the gracious heart answers to every letter and impression of the word, to the promise with faith, to the precept with pliableness of obedience, to the threatening with softness and godly trembling; for all the word and law and the several parts thereof are written and engraved in the heart; and the gracious heart is a double or a second copy of the Old and New Testament. So Ahab on the contrary meets every word from Micaiah with hatred, and there is a resound and an echo of hatred and persecution which in the Pharisees meets the words of rebuke in Christ's mouth, and bitterness in Herod resounds when John Baptist does rebuke his incest and adultery. Take it for a sad condition when there is a practical contrariety and hatred between the heart and the word of the Lord; a heart loathing of the word and a rejecting thereof is dreadful; whereas the esteeming of the word sweeter than the honey or the honeycomb, more than thousands of silver and gold, the man's treasure, his heritage, his soul's delight and love night and day, his work, meditation, study, wisdom, do proclaim much of the new creation; the word being the seed of the new birth, and new creations must love the mother seed, its own native beginning, as the streams are of the same nature and likeness with the fountain. The word tries all men's hearts; see John 7:40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46; Luke 4:21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, 29; Acts 2:12, 13, 37, 38, 39; Acts 7:54, 55, etc.; Acts 13:38, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46; Acts 14:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.; Acts 17:34, 35, 36. Some believe, some mock, the natural man cannot close with the word.

Now Christ is given as a Leader and Commander to the people (Isaiah 55:4). Charge him not as a misleading and a rash guide because he carries you through a wilderness where there is neither flood nor fountain on the earth, nor dew or rain from heaven; you are withered and no influences come from him, let faith complain of the barrenness of the earth but justify the dryness of the clouds. It is the wisdom of God that teaches the believer to weep because he wants rain and moistness and is sinfully dry; and yet to submit to him who denies rain, and dew; for he gives not, here upon just grounds and holily; I want, deservedly for my just demerit.