Thomas Brooks emphasizes the futility of resisting God's will, illustrating that struggling against divine authority only leads to greater suffering. He warns that those who refuse to accept God's discipline will face harsher consequences, as seen in the story of Jonah. Brooks encourages believers to remain patient and trust in God's plan, as enduring trials with a calm spirit leads to healing and deliverance. He compares the human tendency to resist God to a worm attempting to withstand the Almighty's power, highlighting the absurdity of such defiance. Ultimately, he calls for a spirit of submission and trust in God's sovereignty.

It is fruitless and futile to strive, to contest or contend with God. No man has ever got anything, by muttering or murmuring under the hand of God—except it has been more frowns, blows, and wounds. Those who will not lie quiet and still, when mercy has tied them with silken cords—justice will put them in iron chains! If golden fetters will not hold you, iron fetters shall! If Jonah will vex and fret and fling; justice will fling him overboard, to cool him, and quell him, and keep him prisoner in the whale's belly until he is vomited up, and his spirit made quiet before the Lord. What you get by struggling and grumbling—you may put in your eye, and weep it out when you are done— "But am I the one they are provoking? declares the Lord. Are they not rather harming themselves, to their own shame? Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: My anger and My wrath will be poured out on this place, on man and beast, on the trees of the field and on the fruit of the ground, and it will burn and not be quenched." Jeremiah 7:19-20. "Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He?" 1 Cor. 10:22. Zanchy observes these two things from these words: 1. That it is foolish to be provoking God to wrath, because He is stronger than we. 2. That though God be stronger than we, yet there are those who do provoke Him to wrath. And certainly there are none who do more to provoke Him than those who fume and fret when His hand is upon them! Though the cup be bitter—yet it is put into your hand by your Father! Though the cross be heavy—yet He who has laid it on your shoulders will bear the heaviest end of it Himself! Why, then, should you mutter? Shall bears and lions take blows and knocks from their keepers; and will you not take a few blows and knocks from the keeper of Israel? Why should the clay contend with the potter, or the creature with his Creator, or the servant with his master, or weakness with strength, or a poor nothing creature with an omnipotent God? Can stubble stand before the fire? Can chaff abide before the whirlwind? Can a worm ward off the blow of the Almighty? A froward and impatient spirit under the hand of God will but add chain to chain, cross to cross, yoke to yoke, and burden to burden. The more men tumble and toss in their feverish fits, the worse they distemper; and the longer it will be before the cure be effected. The easiest and the surest way of cure, is to lie still and quiet until the poison of the distemper be sweat out. Where patience has its perfect work, there the cure will be certain and easy. When a man has his broken leg set, he lies still and quiet, and so his cure is easily and speedily wrought. But when a horse's leg is set, he frets and flings, he flounces and flies out, unjointing it again and again, and so his cure is the more difficult and tedious. Those Christians who, under the hand of God, are like the horse or mule—fretting and flinging—will but add to their own sorrows and sufferings, and put the day of their deliverance further off.