Use 4

USE IV.

Let it be a word of awakening to every one, especially to such as have been in God's Vineyard, and have not to this day closed in with Christ, or glorified God by believing in his Son, and giving themselves up to his service. You think it is no great matter; but you here see what an account God puts upon it: you please your selves that God can easily bear with you, especially, if you do not run out into these scandalous excesses that some others are overtaken withal: but you see here what is the brand that is set upon a tree that does not bear, meerly for that; not because it bears wild grapes, but because it bears no good fruit, it is a cumber: and one would think that should be enough to terrifie you, to think that you are so far from being profitable, that you are a burden to God. How loudly does it speak the dreadful peril that you are in? It tells you what you may every moment expect from him. Who would not ease himself of a load, and discharge his ground of a cumber! God gives this for a reason why this tree is to be cut down; and if you are so, it says that you are under the peril of this doom every day; and what is the voice of this conviction, but to stir you up to be no longer so? And let it also rouse the believers to more renewed endeavours after fruitfulness, considering that if no fruit makes one a cumber, little fruit is little better; and consequently that the way for you to become great blessings to the Church of God, and acceptable to God himself, and to enjoy a stable settlement of abode in his Church, and to do much good there in your generation, is to be abounding in the service of God, and deeply engaged in those works of holiness and righteousness, which he has required of his people. This will be the way to prevent excision, and to enjoy all merciful tillage, and the tender care of God for you.