Use 2

USE II.

Let it serve to awaken carnal and fruitless professors out of this security, you that have been many years in the vineyard, and barren still, be roused up by this consideration; God has born with you a great while; but seriously consider that, the day of patience has its limits, and will come to an end. And that I may urge this truth upon you in its solemnity, give me leave to lay some awful considerations before you.

1. Consider that you have to do with a God who will not be mocked. It is true, he is a gracious, and merciful, and long-suffering God, but beware of misimproving these discoveries; know it therefore that he is a holy God too, and jealous for his great name; he shows his rich mercy to you in that he gives you the privileges of his house, and lays out so much upon you in it; in that he bestows on you the gospel favors, and waits that he may be gracious to you; but he is not to be trampled upon, his goodness is not to be despised. He will be glorified in them that draw near to him; be not therefore deceived, think not that he will be trifled withal by sinners; he is a terrible God in his church, and all they there that will dare him to it, by their living in sin, shall find him to be so to their cost.

2. Consider the covenant under which you stand. It has its threatenings as well as its promises. There are indeed great and precious promises held out to all those that are in the covenant; but they are also under severe menace; and by virtue of their station in the visible church, they are equally related to the one as to the other. Do not forget that the gospel covenant has its conditions, and accordingly as men are under them, so it speaks to them comfort or terror. It says, if you believe you shall be saved, but it says too, if you believe not, you shall be damned; it says, if you bear fruit you shall be commended, but it also assures you, that if you bear none you shall be condemned: yes, as it has better promises, so it has more severe threatenings than the first covenant had. Think it not to be enough to say, I am in the covenant, and so to run away with a carnal confidence, that all is well: but put yourselves upon a thorough search, and inquire what part of the covenant you stand under; there is a vast difference between being under the covenant-promise, and threatening; nothing is more comfortable than the former, nothing more amazing than the latter: and know it, that if you abide barren still, this is your condition, and you may well expect to have the threatening accomplished upon you.

3. The day of God's patience may be nearer an end than you are aware of. This deserves to be well thought of, and, to give some weight to this argument, be advised to consider.

1. In general, that God frequently falls upon such sinners, when they least expect it. Not but that they have reason and sufficient grounds for this expectation; if they would entertain them; for indeed their very barrenness is enough to excite it in them: but when they, through carnal confidence and vain security, indulge themselves in the expectance of many more days of tranquility, shut their eyes against convictions, and so live without fear of evil; then God breaks in upon them, and makes them to feel the impressions of his indignation; when they say, Tomorrow shall be as this day; and much more abundant, when they despise warnings, and trample upon threatenings, and say, the vision is for many days to come. Thus our Savior declares that it shall be done to the unfaithful steward (Matthew 24:50-51). This Paul tells us shall be the lot of such as neglect a day of grace (1 Thessalonians 5:3).

2. More particularly take these two rules.

1. That you may be under all the means of grace, and strivings of the Spirit and yet God's patience be near worn out. The husbandman, as long as the fig-tree is in the vineyard, and he is waiting for fruit of it, neglects not the husbandry of it, but gives it the tendance that is proper, and he is wont to do so, till he resolves with himself that there will no good come of it, and so to remove it away. Thus God does by men in the visible church; let them be never so sinful and vain, yet they shall have the ordinances, and possibly many convictions of the Spirit, awakenings and terrors, which are a witness that God's day of patience is not at an end with them; but it does not say but that they may speedily be cut off: the man without the wedding garment is taken from the table: this therefore is no plea sufficient to build your confidence upon.

2. That God frequently withdraws his Spirit from the means, as the first effect of his departure from unfruitful sinners. He possibly neither takes the means from them, nor them from the means for the present; but he secretly withdraws from them, and leaves them only under outward dispensations, without any inward impressions upon their hearts; he makes their hearts fat, and leaves senselessness and remoteness upon them: the Spirit of God departs from them, and then the means ripen them the faster, and make them the more stupid and sottish; and the going away of the Spirit is an awful desertion, and, though not regarded by sinners, yet greatly discovers the wrath of God against them (Hosea 9:12).

4. Be persuaded to think whether God's jealousy be not kindled against this people. Are there not many awful tokens of his anger, and such as speak so much to us, that he is almost weary with forbearing? Look where we will, and observe the frame of things, the state of affairs at home, abroad, in public, in private concerns, and they all witness that God has a controversy with us, and that it is begun: and how many are taken by it? And now let us ask, why is all this? What means the heat of this anger? Is it not for the barrenness of God's people? Is it not because he has been coming to seek fruit and finds it not? I am sure every unprofitable soul has reason to think of it, and that with trembling too, and to say, will not this judgment find me out? And suppose it should seize me in particular, will it not be a righteous judgment upon me? When God is bringing of his judgments upon his visible people, they that forget God, had need to consider with themselves.

5. Think how woeful your condition will be, when God has done waiting, and you prove unfruitful: God's day of patience, is your day of grace; when that ends, this ends; and when that is done it will be an evil case that you will be found in. When God says, I am weary with forbearing, let sinners in Zion be afraid, and look to themselves: it is for your sakes that he is angry, and therefore you will stand just in the way of his indignation: and how terrible a thing it will be, to be made the monuments of it, when with the day of forbearance, all hopes will cease, and the wrath of God will make a way for itself to fall upon you, will be evident by the next doctrine, let sinners then entertain the consideration of this truth with fear and trembling.