0:00
0:00
Chapter 10
All saints enjoy a heaven when they leave this earth. Some saints enjoy a heaven while they are here on earth. From Joseph Carroll, 1653.
End of the footnote. Number three. I pass on to the third thing of which I spoke.
I will give some reasons why an assured hope is exceedingly to be desired. I ask special attention to this point. I heartily wish that assurance was more sought after than it is.
Too many among those who believe begin doubting and go on doubting, live doubting and die doubting, and go to heaven in a kind of mist. It would ill become me to speak in a sliding way of hopes and trust, but I fear many of us sit down content with them and go no further. I should like to see fewer pure adventurers in the Lord's family and more who could say, I know and am persuaded, or that all believers would covet the best gift and not be content with less.
Many miss the full tide of blessedness the gospel was meant to convey. Many keep themselves in a low and starved condition of soul while their Lord is saying, eat and drink abundantly, O beloved. Ask and receive that your joy may be full.
Canticles 5.1 and John 16.24 1. Let us remember then for one thing that assurance is to be desired because of the present comfort and peace it affords. Doubts and fears have power to spoil much of the happiness of a true believer in Christ. Uncertainty and suspense are bad enough in any condition, in the matter of our health, our property, our families, our affections, our earthly callings, but never so bad as in the affairs of our souls.
And so long as a believer cannot get beyond, I hope and I trust, he manifestly feels a degree of uncertainty about his spiritual state. The very words imply as much. He says, I hope, because he dares not say, I know.
Now assurance goes far to set a child of God free from this painful kind of bondage and thus ministers mightily to his comfort. It enables him to feel that the great business of life is a settled business, the great debt a paid debt, the great disease a healed disease, and the great works a finished work, and all other business, diseases, debts, and works are then by comparison small. In this way assurance makes him patient in tribulation, calm under bereavement, unmoved in sorrow, not afraid of evil tidings, in every condition content, for it gives him a fixedness of heart.
It sweetens his bitter cups. It lessens the burden of his crosses. It smooths the rough places over which he travels.
It lightens the valley of the shadow of death. It makes him always feel that he has something solid beneath his feet and something firm under his hands, a sure friend by the way and a sure home at the end. Footnote.
It was a saying of Bishop Latimer to Ridley. When I live in a settled and steadfast assurance about the state of my soul, methinks then I am as bold as a lion. I can laugh at all trouble.
No affliction daunts me. But when I am eclipsed in my comfort, I am of so fearful a spirit that I could run into a very mouse hole. Quoted by Christopher Love, 1653.
Assurance will assist us in all duties. It will arm us against all temptations. It will answer all objections.
It will sustain us in all conditions into which the saddest of times can bring us. If God be for us, who can be against us? Bishop Reynolds on Hosea, chapter 14, 1642. We cannot come amiss to him that hath assurance.
God is his. Hath he lost a friend? His father lives. Hath he lost an only child? God hath given him his only son.
Hath he scarcity of bread? God hath given him the finest of the wheat, the bread of life. Are his comforts gone? He hath a comforter. Doth he meet with storms? He knows where to put in for harbor.
God is his portion, and heaven is his haven. Thomas Watson, 1662. End of the footnote.
Assurance will help a man to bear poverty and loss. It will teach him to say, I know that I have in heaven a better and more enduring substance. Silver and gold have I none, but grace and glory are mine, and these can never make themselves wings and flee away.
Though the fig tree shall not blossom, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. Habakkuk 3, verses 17 and 18. Assurance will support a child of God under the heaviest bereavement, and assist him to feel it is well.
An assured soul will say, Though beloved ones are taken from me, yet Jesus is the same and is alive forevermore. Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more. Though my heart be not as flesh and blood could wish, yet I have an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure.
2 Kings 4, 26. Hebrews 13, 8. Romans 6, verse 9. And 2 Samuel 23, 5. Assurance will enable a man to praise God and be thankful even in prison, like Paul and Silas at Philippi. It can give a believer songs even in the darkest night, and joy when all things seem going against him.
Job 35, verse 10. And Psalm 42, verse 8. Assurance will enable a man to sleep with the full prospect of death on the morrow, like Peter in Herod's dungeon. It will teach him to say, I will both lay me down in peace and sleep, for thou, Lord, only makest me to dwell in safety.
Psalm 4, verse 8. Assurance can make a man rejoice to suffer shame for Christ's sake, as the apostles did when put in prison at Jerusalem. Acts 5, verse 41. It will remind him that he may rejoice and be exceeding glad.
Matthew 5, 12. And that there is in heaven an exceeding weight of glory that shall make amends for all. 2 Corinthians 4, 17.
Assurance will enable a believer to meet a violent and painful death without fear, as Stephen did in the beginning of Christ's church. And as Cranmer, Ridley, Hooper, Latimer, Rogers, and Taylor did in our own land. It will bring to his heart the text, Be not afraid of them which kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.
Luke 12, 4. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Acts 7, verse 59. These were Bradford's words in prison shortly before his execution.
I have no request to make. If Queen Mary gives me my life, I will thank her. If she will banish me, I will thank her.
If she will burn me, I will thank her. If she will condemn me to perpetual imprisonment, I will thank her. This was Rutherford's experience when banished to Aberdeen.
How blind are my adversaries who sent me to a banqueting house, and not to a prison or a place of exile. My prison is a palace to me, and Christ's banqueting house. From his book on letters.
These were the last words of Hugh McHale on the scaffold at Edinburgh, 1666. Now I begin my intercourse with God, which shall never be broken off. Farewell, Father and Mother, friends and relations.
Farewell, the world and all its delights. Farewell, meat and drinks. Farewell, sun, moon, and stars.
Welcome, God and Father. Welcome, sweet Lord Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant. Welcome, blessed Spirit of grace, and God of all consolation.
Welcome, glory. Welcome, eternal life. Welcome, death.
O Lord, into thy hands I commit my spirit, for thou hast redeemed my soul, O Lord God of truth. End of footnote. Assurance will support a man in pain and sickness, make all his bed, and smooth down his dying pillow.
It will enable him to say, If my earthly house fail, I have a building of God. 2 Corinthians 5.1 I desire to depart and be with Christ. Philippians 1.23 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Psalm 73, verse 26 The strong consolation which assurance can give in the hour of death is a point of great importance. We may depend on it, we shall never think assurance so precious as when our turn comes to die. In that awful hour there are few believers who do not find out the value and privilege of an assured hope, whatever they may have thought about it during their lives.
General hopes and trusts are all very well to live upon while the sun shines and the body is strong. But when we come to die we shall want to be able to say, I know and I feel. The river of death is a cold stream and we have to cross it alone.
No earthly friend can help us. The last enemy, the king of terrors, is a strong soul. When our souls are departing there is no cordial like the strong wine of assurance.
There is a very beautiful expression in the prayer book service for the visitation of the sick. The Almighty Lord, who is the most strong tower to all them that put their trust in Him, be now and evermore thy defense and make thee know and feel that there is none other name under heaven through whom thou mayest receive health and salvation but only the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. The compilers of that service showed great wisdom there.
They saw that when the eyes grow dim and the heart grows faint and the spirit is on the eve of departing there must then be knowing and feeling what Christ has done for us or else there cannot be perfect peace. These were Rutherford's words on his deathbed. O that all my brethren did know what a master I have served and what peace I have this day.
I shall sleep in Christ and when I awake I shall be satisfied with His likeness. 1661 These were Baxter's words on his deathbed. I bless God I have a well grounded assurance of my eternal happiness and great peace and comfort within.
Towards the close he was asked how he did. The answer was almost well. 1691 The least degree of faith takes away the sting of death because it takes away guilt but the full assurance of faith breaks the very teeth and jaws of death by taking away the fear and dread of it.
Phil Clough's Sermon in the Morning Exercises. Number 2 Let us remember for another thing that assurance is to be desired because it tends to make a Christian an active working Christian. None generally speaking do so much for Christ on earth as those who enjoy the fullest confidence of a free entrance into heaven and trust not in their own works but in the finished work of Christ.
That sounds wonderful I dare say but it is true. A believer who lacks an assured hope will spend much of his time in inward searchings of heart after his own estate. Like a nervous hypochondrical person he will be full of his own ailments his own doubtings and questionings his own conflicts and corruptions.
In short you will often find he is so taken up with his internal welfare that he has little leisure for other things and little time to work for God. But a believer who has like Paul an assured hope is free from these harassing distractions. He does not vex his soul with doubts about his own pardon and acceptance.
He looks at the everlasting covenant sealed with blood at the finished work and never broken word of his Lord and Savior and therefore counts his salvation a settled thing. And thus he is able to give an undivided attention to the work of the Lord and so in the long run to do more. Footnote Assurance would make us active and lively in God's service.
It would excite prayer, quicken obedience. Faith would make us walk but assurance would make us run. We should think we could never do enough for God.
Assurance would be as wings to the bird as weight to the clock to set all the wheels of obedience of running. Thomas Watson Assurance will make a man fervent constant and abundant in the work of the Lord. When the assured Christian has done one work he is calling out for another.
What is next Lord? says the assured soul. What is next? An assured Christian will put his hand to any work. He will put his neck in any yoke for Christ.
He never thinks he has done enough. He always thinks he has done too little. And when he has done all he can he sits down saying I am an unprofitable servant.
Thomas Brooks End of footnote Take for an illustration of this two English immigrants and suppose them set down side by side in New Zealand or Australia. Give each of them a piece of land to clear and cultivate. Let the portions allotted to them be the same both in quality and quantity.
Secure that land to them by every needful legal instrument. Let it be conveyed as freehold to them and theirs forever. Let the conveyance be publicly registered and the property be made sure to them by every deed and security that man's ingenuity can devise.
Suppose then that one of them shall set to work to clear his land and bring it into cultivation and labour at it day after day without intermission or cessation. Suppose in the meanwhile that the other shall be continually leaving his work and going repeatedly to the public registry to ask whether the land really is his own, whether there is not some mistake, whether after all there is not some flaw in the legal instruments which conveyed it to him. The one shall never doubt his title but just work diligently on.
The other shall hardly ever feel sure of his title and spend half his time in going to Sydney or Melbourne or Auckland with needless inquiries about it. Which now of these two men will have made most progress in a year's time? Who will have done the most for his land? Got the greatest breadth of soil under tillage? Have the best crops to show? Be altogether the most prosperous? Any one of common sense can answer that question. I need not supply an answer.
There can only be one reply. Undivided attention will always attain the greatest success. It is much the same in the matter of our title to mansions in the skies.
None will do so much for the Lord who bought him as the believer who sees his clear title and is not distracted by unbelieving doubts, questionings and hesitations. The joy of the Lord will be that man's strength. Restore unto me, says David, the joy of thy salvation.
Then will I teach transgressors thy ways. Psalm 51 verse 12 Never were there such working Christians as the apostles. They seemed to live to labor.
Christ's work was truly their meat and drink. They counted not their lives dear to themselves. They spent and were spent.
They laid down ease, health, worldly comfort at the foot of the cross. And one grand cause of this, I believe, was their assured hope. They were men who could say, We know that we are of God and the whole world lieth in wickedness.
1 John 5.19 Number 3 Let us remember for another thing that assurance is to be desired because it tends to make a Christian a decided Christian. Indecision and doubt about our own state in God's sight is a grievous evil and the mother of many evils. It often produces a wavering and unstable walk in following the Lord.
Assurance helps to cut many a knot and to make the path of Christian duty clear and plain. Many of whom we feel hoped that they are God's children and have true grace, however weak, are continually perplexed with doubts in points of practice. Should we do such and such a thing? Shall we give up this family custom? Ought we to go into that company? How shall we draw the line about visiting? What is to be the measure of our dressing and our entertainments? Are we never under any circumstances to dance, never to touch a card, never to attend parties of pleasure? These are a kind of questions which seem to give them constant trouble and often, very often, the simple root of their perplexity is that they do not feel assured that they themselves are children of God.
They have not yet settled the point which side of the gate they are on. They do not know whether they are inside the ark or not. That a child of God ought to act in a certain decided way, they quite feel.
But the grand question is, are they the children of God themselves? If they only felt they were so, they would go straight forward and take a decided line. But not feeling sure about it, their conscience is forever hesitating and coming to a deadlock. The devil whispers, perhaps after all you are only a hypocrite.
What right have you to take a decided course? Wait till you are really a Christian. And this whisper too often turns to scale and leads on to some miserable compromise or wretched conformity to the world. I believe we have here one chief reason why so many in this day are inconsistent, trimming, unsatisfactory and half-hearted in their conduct about the world.
Their faith fails. They feel no assurance that they are Christ and feel a hesitancy about breaking with the world. They shrink from laying aside all the ways of the old man because they are not quite confident that they have put on the new.
In short, I have little doubt that one secret cause of halting between two opinions is want of assurance. When people can say decidedly, the Lord, He is the God, their course becomes very clear. 1 Kings 18.39 Let us remember finally that assurance is to be desired because it tends to make the holiest Christians.
This too sounds wonderful and strange, yet it is true. It is one of the paradoxes of the gospel, contrary at first sight to reason and common sense, and yet it is a fact. Cardinal Bellarmine was seldom more wide of the truth than when he said, Assurance tends to carelessness and sloth.
He that is freely forgiven by Christ will always do much for Christ's glory, and he that enjoys the fullest assurance of this forgiveness will ordinarily keep up the closest walk with God. It is a faithful saying and worthy to be remembered by all believers. He that hath this hope in him purifies himself, even as he is pure.
1 John 3.3 A hope that does not purify is a mockery, a delusion, a snare. Footnotes The true assurance of salvation, which the Spirit of God hath wrought in any heart, hath that force to restrain a man from looseness of life, and to knit his heart in love and obedience to God, as nothing else hath in all the world. It is certainly either the want of faith and assurance of God's love, or a false and carnal assurance of it that is the true cause of all licentiousness that reigns in the world.
Hildur Sam, on the 51st Psalm None walk so evenly with God as they who are assured of the love of God. Faith is the mother of obedience, and sureness of trust makes way for strictness of life. When men are loose from Christ, they are loose in point of duty, and their floating belief is soon discovered in their inconsistency and unevenness of walking.
We do not, with alacrity, engage in that of the success of which we are doubtful, and therefore, when we know not whether God will accept us or not, when we are off and on in point of trust, we are just so in the course of our lives, and serve God by fits and starts. It is the slander of the world to think assurance an idle doctrine. Manton's Exposition of James, 1660 Who is more obliged, or who feels the obligation to observance more cogently? The son who knows his new relation, and knows his father loves him, or the servant that hath great reason to doubt it? Fear is a weak and impotent principle in comparison of love.
Terrors may awaken, love enlivens. Terrors may almost persuade, love overpersuades. Sure am I that a believer's knowledge that his beloved is his, and he is his beloved's.
Canticles 6.3 Is found by experience to lay the most strong and cogent obligations upon him to loyalty and faithfulness to the Lord Jesus. For as to him that believes Christ is precious, 1 Peter 2.7 So to him that knows he believes Christ is so much the more precious, even the chiefest of ten thousand. Canticles 5.10 Sir Claus Thurman in Morning Exercises 1660 Is it necessary that men should be kept in continual dread of damnation in order to render them circumspect and ensure their attention to duty? Will not the well-grounded expectation of heaven prove far more efficacious? Love is the noblest and strongest principle of obedience.
Nor can it be but that a sense of God's love to us will increase our desire to please him. Robinson's Christian System. End of footnote.
None are so likely to maintain a watchful guard over their own hearts and lives as those who know the comfort of living in close communion with God. They feel their privilege and will fear losing it. They will dread falling from the high estate and marring their own comforts by bringing clouds between themselves and Christ.
He that goes on a journey with little money about him takes little thought of danger and cares little how late he travels. He on the contrary that carries gold and jewels will be a cautious traveler. He will look well to his roads, his lodgings and his company and run no risks.
It is an old saying, however unscientific it may be, that the thick stars are those which tremble most. The man that most fully enjoys the light of God's reconciled countenance will be a man tremblingly afraid of losing its blessed consolations and jealously fearful of doing anything to grieve the Holy Ghost. I commend these four points to the serious consideration of all professing Christians.
Would you like to feel the everlasting arms around you and to hear the voice of Jesus daily drawing nigh to your soul and saying, I am thy salvation? Would you like to be a useful laborer in the vineyard in your day and generation? Would you be known of all men as a bold, firm, decided, single-eyed, uncompromising follower of Christ? Would you be eminently spiritually minded and holy? I doubt not some readers will say, these are the very things our hearts desire. We long for them, we pant after them, but they seem far from us. Now has it never struck you that your neglect of assurance may possibly be the main secret of all your failures? That the low measure of faith which satisfies you may be the cause of your low degree of peace? Can you think it a strange thing that your graces are faint and languishing when faith, the root and mother of them all, is allowed to remain feeble and weak? Take my advice this day.
Seek an increase of faith. Seek an assured hope of salvation like the Apostle Paul's. Seek to obtain a simple, childlike confidence in God's promises.
Seek to be able to say with Paul, I know whom I have believed. I am persuaded that he is mine and I am his. You have very likely tried other ways and methods and completely failed.
Change your plan. Go upon another tack. Lay aside your doubts.
Lean more entirely on the Lord's arm. Begin with implicit trusting. Cast aside your faithless backwardness to take the Lord at His word.
Come and roll yourself, your soul, and your sins upon your gracious Savior. Begin with simple believing and all other things shall soon be added to you. Footnote.
That which breeds so much perplexity is that we would invert God's order. If I knew, say some, that the promise belonged to me and Christ was a Savior to me, I could believe. That is to say I would first see and then believe.
But the true method is just the contrary. I had fainted, says David, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord. He believed it first and saw it afterwards.
Archbishop Layton It is a weak and ignorant but common thought of Christians that they ought not to look for heaven nor trust Christ for eternal glory till they be well advanced in holiness and meekness for it. But as the first sanctification of our natures flows from our faith and trust in Christ for acceptance, so our further sanctification and meekness for glory flows from the renewed and repeated exercise of faith in Him. From Trail.
End of footnote. 4. I come now to the last thing of which I spoke. I promise to point out some probable causes why an assured hope is so seldom attained.
I will do it very shortly. This is a very serious question and ought to raise in all of us great searchings of heart. Few certainly of Christ's people seem to reach up to this blessed spirit of assurance.
Many comparatively believe but few are persuaded. Many comparatively have saving faith but few that glorious confidence which shines forth in the language of St. Paul. That such is the case I think we must all allow.
Now why is this so? Why is a thing which two apostles have strongly enjoined us to seek after a thing of which few believers have any experimental knowledge in these latter days? Why is an assured hope so rare? I desire to offer a few suggestions on this point with all humility. I know that many have never attained assurance at whose feet I would gladly sit both in earth and heaven. Perhaps the Lord sees something in the natural temperament of some of his children which makes assurance not good for them.
Perhaps in order to be kept in spiritual health they need to be kept very low. God only knows. Still, after every allowance I fear there are many believers without an assured hope whose case may too often be explained by causes such as these.
Number one one most common cause I suspect is a defective view of the doctrine of justification. I am inclined to think that justification and sanctification are insensibly confused together in the minds of many believers. They receive the gospel truth that there must be something done in us as well as something done for us if we are true members in Christ and so far they are right.
But then without being aware of it perhaps they seem to imbibe the idea that their justification is in some degree affected by something within themselves. They do not clearly see that Christ's work not their own work either in whole or in part either directly or indirectly is alone the ground of our acceptance with God. That justification is a thing entirely without us for which nothing whatever is needful on our part but simple faith and that the weakest believer is as fully and completely justified as the strongest.
Footnote. The Westminster Confession of Faith gives an admirable account of justification. Those whom God affectionately calleth he also freely justifieth.
Not by infusing righteousness into them but by pardoning their sins and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous not for anything wrought in them or done by them but for Christ's sake alone not by imputing faith itself the act of believing or any other evangelical obedience to them as their righteousness but by imputing the obedience and righteousness of Christ unto them they receiving and resting on him and his righteousness by faith. End of footnote. Many appear to forget that we are saved and justified as sinners and only sinners and that we never can attain to anything higher if we live to the age of Methuselah.
Redeemed sinners justified sinners and renewed sinners doubtless we must be but sinners sinners sinners we shall be always to the very last. They do not seem to comprehend that there is a wide difference between our justification and our sanctification. Our justification is a perfect finished work and admits of no degrees.
Our sanctification is imperfect and incomplete and will be so to the last hour of our life. They appear to expect that a believer may at some period of his life be in a measure free from corruption and attain to a kind of inward perfection. And not finding this angelic state of things in their own heart they at once conclude there must be something very wrong in their state and so they go mourning all their days oppressed with fears that they have no part or lot in Christ and refusing to be comforted.
Let us weigh this point well. If any believing soul desires assurance and has not got it let him ask himself first of all if he is quite sure he is sound in the faith if he knows how to distinguish things that differ and if his eyes are thoroughly clear in the matter of justification. He must know what it is simply to believe and to be justified by faith before he can expect to feel assured.
In this matter as well as many others the old Galatian heresy is the most brutal source of error both in doctrine and in practice. People ought to seek clearer views of Christ and what Christ has done for them. Happy is the man who really understands justification by faith without the deeds of the law.
Number two another common cause of the absence of assurance is about growth and grace. I suspect many true believers hold dangerous and unscriptural views on this point. I do not of course mean intentionally but they do hold them.
Many appear to think that once converted they have little more to attend to and that a state of salvation is a kind of easy chair in which they may just sit still, lie back and be happy. They seem to fancy that grace is given them that they may enjoy it and they forget that it is given like a talent to be used, employed and improved. Such persons lose sight of the many direct injunctions to increase to grow, to abound more and more, to add to our faith and the like.
And in this little doing condition this sitting still state of mind I never marvel that they miss assurance. I believe it ought to be our continual aim and desire to go forward and our watch word on every returning birthday and at the beginning of every year should be more and more. 1 Thessalonians 4.1 More knowledge, more faith, more obedience, more love.
If we have brought forth thirtyfold we should seek to bring forth sixty. If we have brought forth sixty we should strive to bring forth a hundred. The will of the Lord is our sanctification and it ought to be our will too.
Matthew 13.23 and 1 Thessalonians 4.3 One thing at all events we may depend upon there is an inseparable connection between diligence and assurance. Give diligence says Peter to make your calling and election sure. 2 Peter 1.10 We desire says Paul that every one of you do show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end.
Hebrews 6.11 The soul of the diligent says Solomon shall be made fat. Proverbs 13.4 There is much truth in the old maxim of the Puritans faith of adherence comes by hearing but faith of assurance comes not without doing. Is any reader of this paper one of those who desires assurance but has not got it? Mark my words you will never get it without diligence however much you desire it.
There are no gains without pains in spiritual things any more than in temporal. The soul of the sluggard desireth and hath nothing. Proverbs 13.4 Footnote Whose fault is it that thy interest in Christ is not put out of question? Were Christians more in self-examination more close in walking with God and if they had more near communion with God and were more in acting of faith this shameful darkness and doubting would quickly vanish.
Trail A lazy Christian shall always want four things that is comfort content confidence and assurance. God hath made a separation between joy and idleness between assurance and laziness and therefore it is impossible for thee to bring these together that God hath put so far asunder. Thomas Brooks Are you in depths and doubts staggering and uncertain not knowing what is your condition nor whether you have any interest in the forgiveness that is of God? Are you tossed up and down between hopes and fears and want peace, consolation and establishment? Why lie you upon your faces? Get up, watch, pray fast, meditate offer violence to your lusts and corruptions.
Fear not startle not at their crying to be spared. Press unto the throne of grace by prayer, supplications importunities restless requests. This is the way to take the kingdom of God These things are not peace are not assurance but they are part of the means God hath appointed for the attainment of them.
Owen 130th Psalm End of footnote Number 3 Another common cause of a want of assurance is an inconsistent walk in life With grief and sorrow I feel constrained to say that I fear nothing more frequently prevents men attaining an assured hope than this The stream of professing Christianity in this day is far wider than it formerly was and I am afraid we must admit at the same time it is much less deep Inconsistency of life is utterly destructive of peace of conscience. The two things are incompatible They cannot and they will not go together If you have you'll be setting sins and cannot make up your minds to give them up. If you will shrink from cutting off the right hand and plucking out the right eye when occasion requires it, I will engage you, you will have no assurance A vacillating walk A backwardness to take a bold and decided line.
A readiness to conform to the world A hesitating witness for Christ A lingering tone of religion A flinching from a high standard of holiness and spiritual life All these make up a pure receipt for bringing a blight upon the garden of your soul. It is vain to suppose you will feel assured and persuaded of your own pardon and acceptance with God unless you count all God's commandments concerning all things to be right and hate every sin whether great or small. Psalm 119 verse 128 1 Achan allowed in the camp of your heart will weaken your hands and lay your consolations low in the dust You must be daily sowing to the Spirit if you are to reap the witness of the Spirit.
You will not find and feel that all the Lord's ways are ways of pleasantness unless you labor in all your ways to please the Lord. Footnote Lest thou have thy hope strong then keep thy conscience pure thou canst not defile one without weakening the other The godly person that is loose and careless in his holy walking will soon find his hope languishing All sin disposes the soul that tempers with it to trembling fears and shakings of heart. Gernal One great and too common cause of distress is the secret maintaining some known sin.
It puts out the eye of the soul or dimmeth it and stupefies it that it can neither see nor feel its own condition But especially it provokes God to withdraw himself his comforts and the assistance of his spirit. Baxter Saints rest The stars which have least circuit are nearest the pole and men whose earths are least tangled with the world are always nearest to God and to the assurance of his favor. Worldly Christians remember this You and the world must part or else assurance and your souls will never meet Thomas Brooke End of the footnote I bless God that our salvation in no wise depends on our own work.
By grace we are saved, not by works of righteousness, through faith without the deeds of the law But I never would have any believer for a moment forget that our sense of salvation depends much on the manner of our living Inconsistency will dim our eyes and bring clouds between us and the sun. The sun is the same behind the clouds but you will not be able to see its brightness or enjoy its warmth and your soul will be gloomy and cold It is in the path of well doing that the day spring of assurance will visit you and shine down upon your heart The secret of the Lord says David is with them that fear him and he will show them his covenant Psalm 25 To him that ordereth his conversation aright will I show the salvation of God Psalm 100 23 Great peace have they which love thy law and nothing shall offend them Psalm 119 verse 165 If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another 1 John 1 7 Let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth and hereby we know that we are of the truth and shall assure our hearts before him 1 John 3 18-19 Hereby we do know that we love him if we keep his commandments 1 John 2 3 Paul was a man who exercised himself to have always a conscience void of offense toward God and toward man Acts 24 verse 16 He could say with boldness I have fought the good fight I have kept the faith I do not therefore wonder that the Lord enabled him to add with confidence henceforth there is a crown laid up for me and the Lord shall give it to me at that day If any believer in the Lord Jesus desires assurance and has not got it, let him think over this point also Let him look at his own heart look at his own conscience look at his own life look at his own ways look at his own home and perhaps when he has done that he will be able to say there is a cause why I have no assured hope I leave the three matters I have just mentioned to the private consideration of every reader of this paper. I am sure they are worth examining May we examine them honestly and may the Lord give us understanding in all things Number one And now in closing this important inquiry, let me speak first to those readers who have not yet given themselves to the Lord, who have not yet come out of the world, chosen the good part and followed Christ I ask you then to learn from this subject the privileges and comforts of a true Christian I would not have you judge of the Lord Jesus Christ by his people The best of servants can give you but a faint idea of that glorious master Neither would I have you judge of the privileges of his kingdom by the measure of comfort to which many of his people attain.
Alas we are most of us poor creatures 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 Reformed books, tapes, and videos at great discounts is on the web at www.swrb.com www.swrb.com We can also be reached by email at swrb 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.