Doctrine 2: A Fearful Destruction Awaits Those Who Have Wearied Out God's Patience by Their Barrenness

DOCTRINE II. A Fearful Destruction waits upon such as have wearied out Gods patience by their barrenness.

Here is the sentence which the Owner pronounceth on the fig-tree, upon his complaint; Cut it down: stub it up, root it out, let it no longer have any room in the vineyard, but make it fit for the fire. Their danger then is very great, they stand on the very brink of ruine. That Gods patience may be tired out, and is so by multitudes under the Gospel, has been already observed; and now we see what becomes of such as these they are to be cut down: God says it, and he does not speak words but things. That this Doctrine may be made manifest, we may consider.

1. What is contained or implied in this cutting down?

2. Why it must come to this when Gods patience is wearied?

3. Wherein the dreadfulness of this destruction may be discovered?

1. What is contained or implied in this cutting down.

A. The Metaphor here used, sutably represents those judgments of God which fall upon unprofitable ones, in the progress of them; we may therefore take up the allusion in several particulars.

1. Cutting down a fig-tree in the vineyard argues the Owner's great displeasure at it. It says that he can bear it no longer there: as long as he afforded it dressing, it shewed that he had a favor for it; but this action proves that now he has none. Cutting down a timber tree may be with approabation, to put it into the building which he judgeth it meet for; but cutting down a fruit-tree is from disapprobation, because he sees it unworthy of his care. Hereby therefore is expressed that God is exceeding angry at men; that his pity and compassion is ended, and his wrath is kindled. God has no passions in him, properly essential to him, but we ascribe them to him with respect to his Providence. The Scripture therefore signifies such things to be the fruits of his indignation (Jeremiah 4:4; Leviticus 26:28; Job 20:28). Godly men are taken away by death, but it is to make pillars of them in the celestial temple; to transplant them into the heavenly paradise; but these are cut down to shew that God hates them.

2. Cutting down is properly for destruction. This is the true import of the word here: it is not a promise, but a threatning, when a tree is cut down and rooted up, it is by that very act destroyed; it kills it, it presently dies upon it, it withers up, the sap and leaves are presently gone, there is henceforth no more possibility that it should bear any fruit; it puts an end to all hopes of any such thing. Christ therefore intends that God will destroy the sinner; he before seemed to have some sap in him, and bear the leaves of a fair profession, it may be: but now as the fig-tree cursed by Christ, he withers up to the very roots. The Apostle speaks of some in the Visible Church, whose end is destruction (Philippians 3:19). A tree may be moved for its better growing, but it is cut down to put it beyond hopes of any such thing.

3. When the Owner cuts down the tree, he now puts an end to all his husbandry about the tillage of it. Tillage and extirpation are contraries; he may prune it, and cut off many exuberant branches from it, for its advantage, that it may bring forth more fruit and grow the better; but if he cuts it down, this is no part of husbandry to the tree, but a putting of an end to it. It therefore signifies, that God will no more do any thing for such a person: he shall have no more offers of grace, no more strivings of his Spirit, no more dews of ordinances; he puts an end to all warnings, counsels, perswasions, entreaties. He says to the clouds that they rain no more upon him (Isaiah 5:6). It puts a full period to his day of grace, withdraws from him all the means of good. There is a vast difference between afflicting his professing people, and cutting them down; a man may be afflicted for his good, but if he be cut down, it is for his hurt.

4. There is an instrument used by the husbandman, for the cutting down of the tree withal. This is fitted and prepared for the purpose. Men use an ax in this service, and they are wont to sharpen it that it may do it effectually. Thus we read (Matthew 3:9), The ax is laid to the root of the tree. This is the ax of divine vengeance, and God is usually pleased to do this by the instrumentality of second causes, fitted by him for the purpose: these are for this reason called his instruments in Scripture; his ax, his saw, his sword. He sometimes indeed makes them only rods, and then indeed it is for amendment; but at other times they are swords, instruments of excision (Ezekiel 21:9, 10, 11). Sometimes God sends a sickness, and that is commissioned to take away his life, and it does it, and no means can save him alive; it chops him down, and there is an end of him here: sometimes he delivers him up into the hands of an enemy, and he slays him without pity. These do it but instrumentally; they are Gods tools, and it is he who makes use of them for this purpose.

5. There are usually divers stroaks given for the cutting a tree down, it is not ordinarily done at once, but several blows; it is a successive action; every stroak does something toward it, but the thing is accomplished by degrees, it falls not till the last be given. And thus God often proceeds gradually to the destruction of such sinners; he first kills them by prophets, and afterwards by his own hand; he first smites them with spiritual plagues, and after that with temporal judgments. It is true, God sometimes to shew his power and the strength of his hand, useth a sharp ax, and strikes a fearful blow, by which he cuts them down at once, but for the most part he does it by divers judgments successive. And it is to be observed that every thing which God does to them, after once he has clapt the curse and seal of his wrath upon them, is a stroak given towards their cutting down, a step directly to their ruine (Revelation 20:20).

Cutting down is in order to casting out. When the Husbandman is come to this work, it says that he is resolved this tree shall stand here no longer; and therefore as soon as that is done he presently throws it out of the vineyard; it is there to continue no longer: if he had intended it a room in his Orchard, he would have let it grow still, for it was because he could not endure to see it there that he thus dealt with it. Thus God, when he comes to bring this Judgment upon unfruitful professors, he removes them by it out of the visible Church, he takes them away from all relation, to, or benefit of the privileges that hitherto they had enjoyed there. There is an Ordinance of Christ, instituted in his Church, whereby men are cut off from communion with his people, which is a ministerial cutting them down, and is a figure or token of what God himself will do to such if they repent not, but go on to provoke him.

Cutting down is for some other use. When the Owner cuts up his fig-tree, and casts it out of the Vineyard, he does not throw it away and make no improvement of it; no, though it will not bear figs, yet it will make fires; and so it will not be altogether unprofitable, though it answers not the end of its planting, yet there is a use that he puts it to; he therefore makes it up into faggots, and so burns it as he has occasion for it. And such is the improvement which God makes of such as did not serve and glorify him in his Church; he cuts them down, he destroys them; but still he makes use of them; though they are not fit to be vessels of honor, yet he makes them vessels of dishonor, and that also turns to his honor and glory. There is a hell which God has prepared for the exalting of the glory of his revenging justice in; and there are the monuments on whom this glory is exalted, and in whom it is manifested eternally: now such as being fruitless in the vineyard, provoke God to cut them down, are thus disposed of by him, and he is so glorified in them for ever. He is known in his judgments which he executes; thus are the tares and the chaff, which grow together with the good grain in the field, disposed of (Matthew 13:30, 3:12); thus, the tree that brings not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire, verse 10.

2. Why it must come to this when God's patience is wearied?

A. This will be evident by the consideration of these things?

These were all of them heirs of destruction before in their natural state. All those that are planted in God's Vineyard, were at the first transplanted out of the Wilderness; there was no difference in them from others, but what God was pleased to make by bringing them under the Gospel, so the Apostle tells his Ephesians (Ephesians 2:12): yes, he assures them that they were by nature children of wrath even as others, verse 3. All mankind were fallen under condemnation by sin; God in his mercy picks up whom he pleases among these, and puts them under the means of Salvation, where he makes the offers, and proposes the terms of it to them; but still this is their natural estate, God therefore puts his people in mind of what they were, when he first looked upon them (Ezekiel 16:3). God for this end appointed a remembrance to be solemnly observed by the children of Israel, and to be after at the appointed time openly acknowledged (Deuteronomy 26:[illegible]). Now men's merely being in the visible Church does not really alter this state, but only puts them under the advantage for it, and affords to them a merciful treaty, in which God transacts with them about it.

Hence it was only God's merciful patience which reprieved them from that destruction all this while. There was nothing in them to lay him under the obligation to do it. Men are not in themselves any things the better morally for being in the visible Church; they have the same nature in them, the same evil heart cleaving to them. It alters indeed their outward estate, but that in itself does not change their hearts; nor are they at all changed, as long as they remain barren, that very thing is an evidence that they are the same men still: it therefore can be nothing but patience that keeps ruin from them. It cannot be thought rationally, that God is the less provoked by them, because they are within the pale, while they abide unfruitful, than he is with others, or that their sin is less, because they are there, no, but a great deal more: they are a trial to his patience, they live upon it, it is that only keeps them from perishing.

The end of patience being thus altogether frustrated, there now remains nothing else but destruction for them. Why did God bear and wait? It was not for nothing; no, it was to see if they would comply with him, and do him services; if they would repent of their sins, and believe in Christ, and do good works, but they do no such thing, but continue to be obstinate, they out-stand all the essays that are used with them, and dishonor God by so doing, and now they are fit for nothing else. The sentence was out before, it was only stopped upon this trial; and after all it avails not; what else is there to be done, but to give it scope? Hence that (John 3:18): he that believes not, is condemned already. We find therefore that God upon this very ground, enters into a solemn deliberation with these (Hosea 6:4): Oh Ephraim, what shall I do to you, &c. And (Jeremiah 5:7): How shall I pardon you for this?

4. And this abuse of his patience must needs heighten the provocation, for now it is reduced to this exigence, that there is no other course remains to be taken. When upon trial made, men prove hopeless; things are brought to that pass, that there is nothing else not be done; and not only so, but all that has been thus done for them, would else be wholly lost, and God should have no glory at all by it there is so much more guilt added as there have been means used, and neglected offers of grace made and despised. If therefore sinners in the world must perish, for their falling short of the glory of God; sinners in the visible Church much more for offering abuse and contempt to these essays that have been used with them, to bring them to repentance. It is certain that such though they have outward privileges above them, yet in reality they are to God esteemed no better than Heathen (Amos 9:7): Are you not as children of the Ethiopians to me? Oh Israel! says the Lord. Those wild, thievish, cursed inhabitants of Arabia were as good as they: no, these are worse, because they have sinned against greater mercies.

3. Wherein the dreadfulness of this destruction may be discovered.

A. That the destruction of all sinners is a fearful thing, must be acknowledged by all such as have any acquaintance with the nature of the threatening of the law, and the curse which is contained therein; but the ruin of those that have had the privilege of the Gospel, and a room in the vineyard, and are there cut down, is more peculiarly amazing and terrible, as having some aggravations in it which the other has not, especially if we consider;

1. That God has threatened these with more intolerable punishments: and he stands concerned for it in point of honor, that so he may be no loser in the end by any of his creatures, which he should be, if he should not make such to be more eminent and observable instances of his displeasure. This therefore is the doom which Christ has passed upon the places where he had been most conversant, and those with whom he had taken the greatest pains (Matthew 11:20, &c.). If then they that suffer the easiest hell, suffer beyond our conception, how much more astonishing must the suffering of these be?

2. That those have more to lose than others. The punishment of loss, is no little part of the misery of sinners; and indeed that makes way for the punishment of sense, which is introduced and greatly aggravated by it. The higher men have been lifted up the greater is their fall, now these have been exalted to Heaven (Matthew 11:23). The vineyard privileges we have seen to be many and great, all these are lost at once when the sinner is cut down. They were taken near to God, they were under his peculiar favors, they were not far from the kingdom, they had fair and good hopes set before them; and all helps to have brought them to life and salvation; but now they are thrown out of all; they are little things that others lose, in comparison with what these are cut off from.

3. That hence they have more to torment them with the thought of when they are cut down. No little part of the misery of the damned consists in those reflections of conscience, which as a never dying worm will be gnawing upon them, and the more will it torment the man. How much then will this man's conscience have to afflict him withal in the place of miseries? There to remember that he was once near salvation he had all the opportunities for it, all the tenders of grace made to him, and the strivings of the Holy Spirit following of him, so many days of patience waiting upon him; all of which he negligently, yes wilfully slighted; Christ would have gathered him, and he would not; God would have saved him, and he rejected it; heaven and happiness waited upon him to be made his, and he scorned them. These though poor Heathen will not be acquainted withal. There is no wood will burn so fiercely and make so hot a fire, as that of a barren fig-tree, when it is cut down, and cast into unquenchable flames.