The Fountain of Life Opened Up

How can you neglect prayer, as others do, while the Spirit, by divine pulsations, is awakening and rousing up your sluggish hearts, with such inward motions and whispers, as Psalm 27, verse 8, Seek ye my face. Yea, while you feel, during your omissions of duty, something within that bemoans itself, and as it were, cries for food, and will not let you be quiet, till it be relieved. How can you give your hearts to the world, as other men do, when all the while your spirit is restless, and aches like a bone out of joint? And, you can never be at ease, till you come back to God, and say, as Psalm 116, verse 7, Return unto thy rest, O my soul. Is it not hard, yea, naturally impossible, to fix a stone, and make it abide in the fluid air? Doth not all matter, in a reckless motion, tend to its proper center, and desire its own perfection? So doth this new creature also. You see how the rivers in their course will not be checked, but bear down all the obstacles in their way. A stop doth but make them rage the more, and run the swifter afterwards. There is a central force in these material things, which never ceases to act, and such is the impulse of a renewed soul. It shall be in him a well of water springing up, John 4, 14. And is it not hard for you to keep it down, or turn its course? Was it not so with David and Jeremiah? If you do not live holy lives, you must cross your own new nature, and violate the law that is written in your heart. Till you were converted, says one, the flesh was predominant, and therefore it was impossible for you to live any other than a fleshly life. For everything will act according to its predominant principle. Should you not then live a spiritual life? Should not the law of God written in your hearts be legible in your lives? O, should not your lives be according to the tendency of your heart? Doubtless this is no small advantage to practical holiness. But, number two, besides this principle within, you have no small assistance for purity of life by the excellent patterns before you. The path of holiness is no untrodden path. Christ and his servants have beaten it before you. The life of Christ is your copy, and it is a fair copy indeed, without a blot. O, what an advantage is this, to draw all the lines of your actions according to his example. This glorious, grand example is often urged for your imitation. Looking unto Jesus, Hebrews 12 verse 2. He hath left you an example that ye should follow his footsteps, verse Peter 2, 21. His life is a living rule to his people. And besides Christ's example, you have a cloud of witnesses, and these men of like passions, temptations, and constitutions with you, who have gone before you in exemplary holiness. The Holy Ghost, intending therein your special help and advantage, hath inspired many to write the lives of the saints, and preserve for your use their holy sayings and heavenly actions. He bids you take them for an example. James 5.10 O, what excellent men have gone before you, what renowned worthies have led the way. Men whose conversation was in heaven, while they tabernacled on earth. While this lower world had their bodies, the world above had their hearts and affections. Their actions and their designs were for heaven. Men that improved troubles and comforts, losses and gains, smiles and frowns, and all for heaven. Their hearts, their language, and their lives were full of heaven. O, what singular help is this! Where they followed Christ and kept the way, they are set before you for your imitation. And where any of them turned aside, you have a mark set upon that action for your caution and prevention. Does any strange or unusual trial befall you? Here you may see the same affliction accomplished in your brethren. 1 Peter 5.9 Here is a store of good company to encourage you. Do the world and the devil endeavor you to turn from your duty by loading it with shameful scoffs or suffering? You may look to Jesus, who despised the shame, and to your brethren, who counted it their honor to be dishonored for the name of Christ. Acts 5.41 Is it a dishonor to thee to be ranked with Abraham, Moses, David, and such as were the glory of the age in which they lived? Art thou at any time in discouragement and ready to despond under any burden? O, how mayst thou be animated by such examples! Some sparks of their holy courage cannot put steel into thy breast, while thou considerest them. In them God hath set before thee the possibility of overcoming all difficulties. Thou seest men of the same mold, who had the same trials, discouragements, and fears, that now thou hast, and yet overcame all. How is thy unbelief checked when thou sayest, O, I shall never reach the end, I shall one day utterly perish? Why dost thou say so? Why may not such a poor creature as thou art be carried through as well as they? Had not they the same temptations and corruptions with you? Were they not all troubled with an evil heart, an ensnaring world, and a busy devil as you are? Alas, when they put on the divine, they did not put off the human nature, but complained and feared as you do, and yet were carried through all. O, what an advantage have you in this respect! They that first trusted in Christ had not such helped. You have the benefit of their experience. You in these last times have certainly the best helps to holiness, and yet will you not live strictly and purely? Will you take the name and profession of Christians, and yet be lofty in your spirit, earthly in your designs, negligent of duty, vain in your communications? Pray, from which of all the saints did you learn to be proud? Did you learn it from Christ, or any of His? From which of His saints did you learn to be earthly and covetous, passionate and censorious, overreaching and crafty? If you have read of such sins committed by them, have you not also read of their shame and sorrow, their repentance and reformation? If you have found any such blots in their lives, they were left there designedly to prevent the same in yours. O, what a help to holiness is this! 3. You have not only a principle within you and a pattern before you, but you have also an omnipotent assistant to help and encourage you throughout your way. Are you feeble and infirm? Is every temptation, even the weakest, strong enough to turn you out of the way of your duty? Lo, God has sent His Spirit to help your infirmity. Romans 8.26 No matter then how weak you are, how many and mighty your difficulties and temptations, as long as you have such an assistant to help you, great is your advantage for a holy life in this respect. When a temptation to sin presses sore upon you, he pleads with your conscience within, while Satan is tempting without. How often hath he brought such scriptures to your remembrance, as have saved you out of temptation. If you attend to his voice, you may hear a voice within you, O do not this abominable thing which I hate. Jeremiah 44.4 Thine eyes shall behold thy teachers, and thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left. Isaiah 30.20-21 Here you have a twofold help to holiness, the outward teaching of the word, verse 20, and the inward teachings of the Spirit, verse 21. When you walk holily and closely with God in duty, and the Spirit encourages you by these inward comforts, feelings, and joys you have from Him at such times, how often does he refresh your spirits in public ordinances and in private duties, with his hidden manna, with morrow and fatness, with incomparable and unspeakable comforts, and all this to strengthen and encourage you in your way. When you are indisposed to duty and find your hearts empty and dry, he is ready to fill, quicken, and raise them, so that often the beginning and end of your prayers, hearing, or meditations are as unlike as if one man had begun and another ended the duty. O then, what assistances for a holy life have you? Others indeed are bound to resist temptation as well as you, but alas have no special assistance from the Spirit. What can they do? It may be they reason with temptation a little while, and in their own strength resolve against it. But how easy a conquest does Satan make, where he meets no greater opposition than this. Others are bound to hear, meditate, and pray as well as you, else the neglect of these duties would not be their sin. But alas, what pitiful work do they make of it, being left to the hardness and vanity of their own hearts. When you spread your sails, you have a gale, but they lie wind-bound, heart-bound, and can do nothing spiritually in the way of duty. 4. You have a further advantage to this holy life by all the chastisements with which God visits you. I might show you in many particulars the benefits you thus receive, but will now present only three. By these he prevents your strain and wandering. Others may wander even as far as hell, and God employ no sanctified rod upon them to reduce or stop them, but say, Let them alone. Hosea 4.17 But if you wander out of the way of holiness, he will send some trial to keep you within bounds. Lest I should be lifted up, a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, was sent to buffet me. 2 Corinthians 12.7 So, David, before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I have kept thy word. Psalm 119.67 Afflictions are used by God as thorns by husbandmen, to stop the gaps and keep you from breaking out of God's way. I will hedge up her way with thorns, and build a wall, that she shall not find her path. Hosea 2.6 Basil was sorely afflicted with an invertebrate headache, and often prayed for its removal. At last God removed it, but in the room of it he was sorely exercised with temptation, which when he perceived, he heartily desired his headache again, to prevent a worse evil. You little know the ends and use of many of your afflictions. Are you exercised with bodily weakness? It is a mercy you are so, and if these pains and infirmities were removed, these clogs taken off, you might with Basil wish for them again, to prevent worse evils. Are you poor? With that poverty God hath clogged your pride. Are you reproached? With these reproaches God hath clogged your ambition. Corruptions are prevented by your afflictions. And is not all this a merciful help to a holy life? By your afflictions your corruptions are purified. By these God dries up and consumes that spring of sin that defiles you. By this therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged, and this is all the fruit to take away his sin. Isaiah 27.9 God orders your wants to kill your wantonness, and makes your poverty slay your pride. When they fall by the sword, and by famine, and by captivity, and by spoil, it is to try them, and to purge them, and to make them white. Daniel 11.33-35 Others have the same afflictions that you have, but they are not sanctified to them. To you they are as fire for purging, and water for cleansing, and yet shall not your lives be clean. It is true as one well observes, Christ's blood is the only fountain to wash away sin. But in the virtue and efficacy of that blood, sanctified afflictions also purify us. A cross without Christ never made any man better, but with Christ saints are much the better for the cross. Hath God put you so many times into the furnace, and yet is not the dross consumed? The more afflictions you have suffered, the more assistance you have had for this life of holiness. By all your troubles, God hath been sundering your affections from the world, and drawing out your souls to a more excellent life and state than this. He makes your sorrows in this life give a luster to the glory of the next. Be sure He will never give you rest here, and all that you may long more ardently for that to come. He often makes you groan, being burdened, earnestly desiring to be clothed with your house from heaven. 2 Corinthians 5 verses 2 and 4 And yet will you not be weaned from the lusts, customs, and sins of this world? O what manner of persons should you be in heavenly and holy conversation? You stand upon the higher ground. You have, as it were, the wind and tide with you. None are assisted for this life as you are. Put all this together and see what this second argument contributes to constrain you to a holy life. Have you received a supernatural principle fitting you for and inclining you to holy actions, resisting and holding you back from sin? Hath God also set before you such imminent patterns to encourage and quicken you in your way? Doth the Spirit Himself stand ready in so many ways to help you in all your difficulties? And hath God hedged up the way of sin with the thorns of affliction to prevent your wandering? And yet will you turn aside? Will you offer violence to your own principles and new nature? Refuse to follow such leaders as have beaten the way before you. Resist or neglect the gracious assistance of the Blessed Spirit, which He offers you in every need. And venture upon sin, though God hath hedged up your way with affliction. O how can you do such great wickedness and sin against such grace as this? Roman numeral 3 Another irresistible motive to a godly life appears in the great and manifold uses God will make of the visible holiness and purity of your lives, both in this world and that to come. Among these are, number one, to win souls to Christ and bring them in love with religion. Practical holiness is lovely, attractive, and constraining. If the heathen could say of moral virtue that were it visible to human eyes, all men would adore it and fall in love with it, how much rather may we so say of true holiness made visible in the lives of saints. So much of God as appears in men, so much excellency there is in them to draw men to Him. And this is the apostle's argument, that ye may have fellowship with us. 1 John 1.3 Why, what is there in fellowship to invite men to you? Truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ, who can but covet the company of them who keep company every day with God. Great is the efficacy of visible holiness upon the hearts of men, either working in fellowship with the word or working solitarily without the word. Where God is pleased to afford the word unto men, there the practical holiness of saints is of great use in enforcing it upon their hearts. When the lives of Christians speak to the eyes of men what the gospel does to their ears, when we so preach and you so believe and live, when we draw men by our doctrines and you draw with us by your example, when we hold forth the word of life doctrinally and you hold it forth practically, as Philippians 2.16, where is the heart that can stand before us? Oh, when the plain and powerful gospel pierces the ears of men and at the same time the visible holiness of professors so shines that they must acknowledge that God is in you of a truth, then it will take effect upon the souls of men. Then will Christ see of the travail of his soul daily. Yea, if God deny the word to men, yet this practical holiness may be to them an ordinance for conversion. In this way souls may be won to Christ without the word, as the apostle speaks, 1 Peter 3.1. Though pulpits should be silent and vision fail, yet if our lives but preach the reality, excellency and sweetness of Jesus Christ in his ways, if you in this way preach down the love of the world and let men see what poor vanities these are, and preach up the necessity and beauty of holiness, surely you, even you may be honored to bring many souls to Christ, to turn many to righteousness and cause many to bless God on your behalf in the day of visitation. This is the use God hath for the holiness and purity of our lives, and doth not this constrain you? What, not when it may prove the means of eternal life to others? Surely if you have any bowels of mercy, you cannot hide from others that whereby they may be saved. How can you, instead of holding forth the word of life, which is your manifest duty, visibly hold forth the works of death before men? Have you been blessed by the faithfulness of others? And shall none be helped by you towards heaven? Dare you say, let others shift as well as they can, find the way to heaven by themselves as they can, they shall have no benefit of your light. If such be the language of your heart or life, you are Christians of a different stamp and spirit from any we find described in scripture. Should you not rather say as the lepers did, Do we well to hold our peace? While others are perishing? If the lips of ministers are silenced, shall the lives of Christians be also silent? Shall poor sinners neither hear anything from us, nor see anything from you that may help them to Christ? The Lord have mercy then upon the poor world, and pity it, for its case is desperate. O put on, as the elect of God, bowels of mercy. Destroy not by the looseness of your conversation so many souls. For your scandalous falls are like a bag of poison put into the spring which supplies the whole city with water. 2. Another use God makes of the holy lives of his children is to recover the credit of religion, which by the apostasies of hypocrites and scandalous falls of careless professors is wounded and exposed to contempt. Much reproach by this means is brought upon religion, and how shall that reproach be rolled away but by your strictness and purity? By this the world must be convinced that all are not so. Though some be a blot to the name of Christ, yet others are his glory. The more others disgrace religion, the more God expects you to honor and adorn it. I remember Christosone brings in the persecutors speaking to two renowned martyrs after this manner. Why are you so nice and scrupulous? See you not that others of your rank and profession have done these things? To which they returned this noble answer, For that very reason we will stand out like men, and will never yield to sin. There is a holy impulse in the zeal of a Christian which makes it the more bright in the midst of obstacles, as fire burns more vehemently in the coldest weather. If men make void God's law, therefore will David love his commandments above gold. Psalm 119 verse 127 Number 3 God makes your holy living an encouragement to his ministers. And indeed it is of no small use to refresh their hearts and strengthen their hands in your painful work. Now we live, saith the apostle, if ye stand fast in the Lord. 1 Thessalonians 3 verse 8 He speaks as if his very life lay at the mercy of the people, because so much of its joy and comfort consisted in their regularity and steadfastness. God knows what a hard duty his poor ministers have, and how many discouragements attend them in their work. Hear how one of them expresses it, Ministers would not be gray-headed so soon, nor die so fast, notwithstanding their great labors, if they were but successful. But this cuts to the heart and makes us bleed in secret, that though we do much, yet it comes to nothing. Our work dies, therefore we die, not so much that we labor, as that we labor in vain. A quote from Lockyer on Colossians Christians, you hear our case, you see our work. Know a little to cheer our spirits in the midst of our hard and killing labors. God sends us to you for a little refreshment, that by beholding your holy and heavenly conversation, your cheerful obedience and sweet agreement in the ways of God, we may be comforted in all these troubles. 2 Thessalonians 1 verses 3 and 4 4 God hath further use for the holiness of your lives, in smiting the consciences of his and your enemies. 5 There is awful majesty and holiness, and when it shines upon the conscience of a wicked man, it makes him stoop and do obeisance to it, which turns to a testimony for Christ and his ways before the world. 6 Thus Herod was overawed by the strict and holy life of John. He feared him, knowing that he was a just and holy man. 7 That bloody tyrant was convinced in his conscience of the worth and excellence of this servant of God, and was forced to reverence him for his holiness. 8 How much is it to the honor of holiness that it conquers its very persecutors and makes them stoop to the meanest servant of God? 9 It is said of Henry II of France that he was so daunted by the heavenly majesty of a poor tailor who was burnt before him, that he went home sad and vowed that he would never be present at the death of such men any more. 10 When Valens the emperor came in person to apprehend Basil, he saw such majesty in his very countenance that he reeled at the sight of him, and had fallen backward to the ground had not his servants supported him. 11 O holiness, holiness, thou art a conqueror. 12 So much, O Christians, as you show of it in your lives, so much you preserve your interest in the consciences of your enemies. Cast off this, and they presently despise you. 5 God will use the purity of your walk to judge and convince the world in that great day. 6 It is true the world shall be judged by the gospel, but your lives shall also be produced as a commentary upon it. 7 And God will not only show them by the word how they ought to have lived, but bring forth your lives and ways to stop their mouths by showing how others did live. 8 This, I suppose, is intended in that text, the saints shall judge the world, yea, we shall judge angels. 1 Corinthians 6, verses 2 and 3 That is, our examples are to condemn their lives and practices. As Noah, in Hebrews 11, verse 7, is said to condemn the world by building the ark. That is, his faith in the threatening and obedience to the command condemned their supineness, infidelity, and disobedience. 2 They saw him every day about the work, diligently preparing for a deluge, and yet were not moved with fear. This left them inexcusable. 3 So when God shall say in that day to the careless world, Did you not see the care and diligence, the holy zeal, watchfulness, and self-denial of my people who lived among you? 4 How many times have they been watching and praying when you have been drinking and sleeping? 5 Was it not easy to reflect when you saw their pains and diligence? Have not I a soul to be saved as well as they, a heaven to win or lose as well as they? 6 O how speechless and inexcusable will this render wicked men! Yea, it shall not only be used to judge them, but angels also. 7 How many shocks of temptations have poor saints stood whereas angels fell without a tempter? 8 They stood not in their integrity, though created with such excellent natures. 9 How much then are you concerned on this account to walk blamelessly? If not, instead of judging them, you shall be condemned with them. 10 Thus you see what use shall be made of your lives and actions. 11 O then, since you are under such obligations to a holy life, and are so wonderfully assisted in it, and since God employs the holy living of his people for such admirable ends, both here and in the world to come, see that ye be holy in all manner of conversation. 12 See that, as ye have received Christ Jesus the Lord, ye so walk in him, always remembering that for this very end Christ hath redeemed or delivered you out of the hands of your enemies, that ye might serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness all the days of your lives. Luke 1 verses 74 and 75 To how little purpose will be all that I have said and you have heard of Christ, if it be not converted into practical godliness? This is the scope and design of it all. And now, reader, thou art come to the last leaf of this treatise of Christ. It will be but a little while, and thou shalt come to the last page or day of thy life, and thy last moment in that day. Woe to thee, woe in the last forever, if an interest in this blessed Redeemer be then wanting. The world affords not a sadder sight than a poor, Christless soul shivering upon the brink of eternity. To see the poor soul that now begins to awake out of its long dream and its entrance into the world of realities, shrink back into the body and cry, O I cannot, I dare not die. Lord, what will become of me? O what shall be my eternal lot? This, I say, is as sad a sight as the world affords. That this may not be thy case, reflect upon what thou hast read in these discourses. Judge thyself in the light of them. Obey the calls of the Spirit in them. Let not thy slight, informal spirit float upon the surface of these truths like a feather upon the water, but get them deeply fixed upon my spirit by the Spirit of the Lord, turning them into life and power upon thee, and so animating the whole course and tenor of thy conversation by them, that it may proclaim to all that know thee that thou art one who esteemed all to be but droth, that thou mayest win Christ. This is the end of the book. This Reformation audio track is a production of Stillwater's Revival Books. SWRB makes thousands of classic Reformation resources available, free and for sale, in audio, video, and printed formats. Our many free resources, as well as our complete mail-order catalog, containing thousands of classic and contemporary Puritan and Reform books, tapes, and videos at great discounts, is on the web at www.swrb.com. We can also be reached by email at swrb.com, by phone at 780-450-3730, by fax at 780-468-1096, or by mail at 4710-37A, Edmonton, Alberta, abbreviated capital A, capital B, Canada, T6L3T5. You may also request a free printed catalog. And remember that John Calvin, in defending the Reformation's regulative principle of worship, or what is sometimes called the scriptural law of worship, commenting on the words of God, which I commanded them not, neither came into my heart. From his commentary on Jeremiah 731, God here cuts off from men every occasion for making evasions, since he condemns by this one phrase, I have not commanded them, whatever the Jews devised. There is then no other argument needed to condemn superstitions than that they are not commanded by God. For when men allow themselves to worship God according to their own fancies, and attend not to His commands, they pervert true religion. And if this principle was adopted by the Papists, all those fictitious modes of worship in which they absurdly exercise themselves would fall to the ground. It is indeed a horrible thing for the Papists to seek to discharge their duties towards God by performing their own superstitions. There is an immense number of them, as it is well known, and as it manifestly appears. Were they to admit this principle, that we cannot rightly worship God except by obeying His word, they would be delivered from their deep abyss of error. The Prophet's words, then, are very important, when he says that God had commanded no such thing, and that it never came to His mind. As though He had said that men assume too much wisdom when they devise what He never required, nay, what He never knew.