Welcome to Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God, Volume 1 by Stephen Charnock. We are continuing to read at page 104 for this reading. This Reformation MP audio resource is a production of Stillwater's Revival Books. Many free resources as well as our complete online catalogue containing classic and contemporary Puritan and Reformed books, DVDs, CDs, digital downloads, mp3s and much more at great discounts are on the web at www.swrb.com. Also please consider praying up on the important truths found in the following quotation by Charles Spurgeon. As the Apostle says to Timothy, so also he says to everyone, give yourself to reading. He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves that he has no brains of his own. You need to read. Renounce as much as you will all like literature, but study as much as possible sound theological works, especially the Puritanic writers, an exposition to the Bible. The best way for you to spend your leisure is to be either reading or praying. And now to SWRB's reading of the existence and attributes of God, which we hope you find to be a great blessing, and which we pray draws you nearer to the Lord Jesus Christ, for he is the way, the truth and the life. And no man cometh unto the Father but by him. John 14 verse 6. 5. Men often seem desirous to be acquainted with the will of God, not out of any respect to His will, and to make it their rule, but upon some other consideration. Truth is scarce received as truth. There is more of hypocrisy than sincerity in the pale of the church, and attendance on the mind of God. The outward dowry of a religious profession makes it often more desirable than the beauty. Judas was a follower of Christ for the bag, not of any affection to the divine revelation. Men sometimes pretend desire to be acquainted with the will of God, to satisfy their own passions rather than to conform to God's will. Religion of such is not the judgment of the man, but the passion of the brute. Many entertain a doctrine for the person's sake, rather than the person for the doctrine's sake, and believe a thing because it comes from a manly esteem, as if his lips were more canonical than scripture. The apostle implies in the commendation he gives to the Thessalonians that some receive the word for human interest. not as it is in truth the word and will of God to command and govern their consciences by its sovereign authority, or else they have the truth of God, as St. James speak of the faith of Christ, with the respect of persons, and receive it not for the sake of the fountain, but of the channel, so that many times the same truth delivered by another is disregarded, which, when dropping from the pantheon of a man's own idol, is cried up as an oracle. This is to make, not God, but man the rule. For though we entertain that which materially is the truth of God, yet not formally as his truth, but as conveyed by one, we affect. And that we receive a truth, and not an error, we owe the obligation to the honesty of the instrument, and not to the strength and clearness of our own judgment. Wrong considerations may give admittance to an unclean, as well as a clean beast into the ark of the soul. that which is contrary to the mind of God may be entertained, as well as that which is agreeable. It is all one to such that have no respect for God, what they have, as it is all one to a sponge to suck up the foulest water or the sweetest wine when either is applied to it. 6. Many that entertain the notions of the will and mind of God admit them with unsettled and wavering affections. There is a great levity in the heart of man. The Jews that one day applaud our savior with Hosannas as their king, vote his crucifixion the next, and use him as a murderer. We begin in the spirit, and end in the flesh. Our hearts, like loop strings, are changed with every change of weather, with every appearance of a temptation. Scarce one motion of God in a thousand prevails with us before a settled abode. It is a hard task to make a signature of those truths upon our affections, which will ease press current with our understandings. Our affections will as soon lose them as our understandings embrace them. The heart of man is unstable as water. Some were willing to rejoice in John's light, which reflected a luster on their minds, but not in his heat, which would have conveyed a warmth to their hearts. And the light was pleasing to them, but for a season. while their corruptions lay as if they were dead, not when they were awakened. Truth may be admitted one day, and the next rejected. As Austen said of a wicked man, he loves the truth shining, but he hates the truth reproving. This is not to make God, but our own humour, our rule and measure. 7. Many desire an acquaintance with the law and truth of God with the design to improve some lust by it. to turn the word of God to be a pander to the breach of his law. This is so far from making God's will our own rule that we make our own vile affections the rule of his law. How many forced interpretations of scripture have been coined to give content to the lusts of men and the divine rule forced to bend and to be squared to men's loose and carnal apprehensions. It is a part of the instability or falseness of the heart to rest the scriptures to their own destruction, which they could not do if they did not first wring them to countenance from detestable error or filthy crime. In paradise the first interpretation made of the first law of God was point blank against the mind of the lawgiver and venomous to the whole race of mankind. Paul himself feared that some might put his doctrine of grace to sorely use has to be an altar and sanctuary to shelter their presumption. Romans 6, 1, 15. Shall we then continue in sin that grace may abound? Poisonous consequences are often drawn from the sweetest truths, as when God's patience is made a topic whence to argue against his providence, or an encouragement to commit evil more greedily, as though because he had not possessively a revenging hand, he had not an all-seeing eye, or when the doctrine of justification by faith is made of to depress a holy life, or God's readiness to receive returning sinners, an encouragement to defer repentance to the deathbed. A liar will hunt for shelter in the reward God gave the midwives that lied to Sparrow for the preservation of the males of Israel, and Rahab saving the spies by false intelligence. God knows how to distinguish between grace and corruption, that may lie close together, or between something of moral goodness and moral evil, which may be mixed. We find their fidelity rewarded, which was a moral good, but not their lie approved, which was a moral evil. Nor would Christ conversing with sinners be a plea for any to thrust themselves into evil company. Christ conversed with sinners as a position which did ease persons to cure them, not approve them, others with profligate reasons are persons to receive infection from them, not to communicate holiness to them. Satan's children have studied their father's art, who wanted not perverted scripture to second his temptations against our Saviour. How often do carnal hearts turn divine revelation to carnal ends as the fresh water into salt As men subject the precepts of God to carnal interests, so they subject the truths of God to carnal fancies. When men will allegorize the word, and make a humorous and crazy fancy, the interpreter of the divine oracles, and not the spirit speaking in the word, this is to enthrone our own imaginations as the rule of God's law, and depose His law from being the rule of our reason. This is to rifle truth of its true mind and intent. It is more to rob a man of his reason, the essential constitutive part of man, than of his estate. This is to refuse an intimate acquaintance with his will. We shall never tell what is the matter of a precept, or the matter of a promise, if we impose a sense upon it contrary to the plain meaning of it. thereby we shall make the law of God to have a distinct sense according to the variety of men's imaginations and so make every man's fancy a law to himself now that this unwillingness to have a spiritual acquaintance with divine truth is a disowning God as our rule and setting up self instead is evident because this unwillingness respects truth first as it is most spiritual and holy. A blessing mind is most contrary to a spiritual law, and particularly as it is a searching and discovering law that would dethrone all other rules in the soul. As men love to be without a holy God in the world, so they love to be without a holy law, the transcript and image of God's holiness in their hearts. And without holy men, the lights kindled by the Father of lights, As the holiness of God, so the holiness of the Lord. Most offends a carnal heart. Isaiah 30 verse 11. Caused the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us, prophesied to us right things. They could not endure God as a Holy One. Hearing God places their rebellion, rejecting Him as their rule, verse 9. Rebellious children that will not hear the law of the Lord. The more pure and precious any discovery of God is, the more it is disrelished by the world. As spiritual sins are sweetest to a carnal heart, so spiritual truths are most distasteful. The more the brightness of the sun any being conveys, the more offensive it is to a distempered eye. Second, as it doth most relate to, or lead to God, The devil directs his fiercest batteries against those doctrines in the word, and those graces in the heart, which most exalt God, debase man, and bring men to the lowest objection to their Creator. Such is the doctrine and grace of justifying faith. That men hate not knowledge as knowledge, but as it directs them to choose the fear of the Lord, was the determination of the Holy Ghost long ago. Proverbs 1.29, for that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord. Whatsoever respects God, clears up guilt, witnesses man's revolt to him, rouses up conscience, and moves to return to God, a man naturally runs from, as Adam did from God, and seeks shelter in some weak bushes of error, rather than appear before it. Not that men are unwilling to inquire into and contemplate some divine truths which lie farthest from the heart, and concern not themselves immediately with the rectifying the soul. They may view them with such a pleasure as some might take in beholding the miracles of our Saviour, who could not endure His search in doctrine. The light of speculation may be pleasant, but the light of conviction is grievous, that which gauze their consciences. and would affect them with a sense of their duty to God. It is not easy to perceive that when a man begins to be serious in the concerns of the honour of God and the duty of his soul, he feels a reluctancy within him, even against the pleas of conscience, which evidences that some unworthy principle has got footing in the hearts of men, which fights against the declarations of God without, and the impressions of the law of God within. at the same time when a man's own conscience takes part with it, which is a substance in the Apostles' discourse, Romans 7, 15, 16, etc. Close discourses of the honour of God and our duty to Him are irksome when men are upon a merry pin. They are like a damp in a mine that takes away their breath. They shuffle them out as soon as they can. Men are as unwilling to retain the speech of them in their mouths as the knowledge of them in their hearts. Gracious speeches, instead of bettering many men, distemper them, and sometimes sweet perfumes affect a weak head with aches. Third, as it is most contrary to self, men are unwilling to acquaint themselves with any truth that leads to God, because it leads from self. Every part of the will of God is more or less displeasing as it sounds harsh against some carnal interests men would set above God or as a mate with Him. Man cannot desire any intimacy with that law which he regards as a bird of prey to pick out his right eye or gnaw up his right hand, his lust dearer than himself. The reason we have such hard thoughts of God's will is because we have such high thoughts of ourselves. It is a harder matter to believe, or will, that which has no affinity with some principle in the understanding, and no interest in our will and passions. Our unwillingness to be acquainted with the will of God arises from the disproportion between that and our corrupt hearts. We are alienated from the life of God in our minds. Ephesians 4, 18-19. As we live not like God, so we neither think nor will as God. There is an antipathy in the heart of man against that doctrine which teaches us to deny ourselves and be under the rule of another. But whatsoever favours the ambition of lusts and profits of men is easily entertainable. Many are fond of those sciences which may enrich their understandings and grate not upon their sensual delights. Many have an admirable dexterity in finding out philosophical reasons, mathematical demonstrations, or raising observations upon the records of history, and spend much time in many serious and affectionate thoughts in the study of them. In those they have not immediately to do with God, their beloved pleasures are not impaired. It is a satisfaction to self, without the exercise of any hostility against it. But had those sciences been against self, as much as against the law and will of God, they had long since been rooted out of the world. Why did the young man turn his back upon the law of Christ because of his worldly self? Why did the Pharisees mock at the doctrine of our Saviour and not at their own traditions because of covetous self? Why did the Jews slight the person of our Saviour and put him to death after the readings of many credentials of his being sent from heaven? Because of ambitious self that the Romans might not come and take away their kingdom. If the law of God were fitted to the humus of self, it would be readily and cordially observed by all men. Self is the measure of a world of seeming religious actions. While God seems to be the object, and his law the motive, self is the rule and end. Zechariah 7.5. Did you fast unto me? etc. 2. As men discover their disowning the will of God as a rule by unwillingness to be acquainted with it, so they discover it by the contempt of it after they cannot avoid the notions and some impressions of it. The rule of God is burdensome to a sinner. He flies from it as from a frightful bugbear, an unpleasant yoke. Sin against the knowledge of the law is therefore called are going back from the commandment of God's lips Job 23.12 are casting God's word behind them as a contemptible thing fitter to be trodden in the dirt than lodged in the heart nay, it is a casting it off as an abominable thing for so the word signifies Hosea 8.3 Israel have cast off the thing that is good and that's a refusal of God Jemiah 44, 16. As for the word which thou hast spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we will not hearken. In the slight of his precepts, his essential perfections are slighted. In disowning his will as a rule, we disown all those attributes which flow from his will as goodness, righteousness and truth. As an act of the divine understanding is supposed to precede the act of the divine will, so is slight the infinite reason of God. Every law, though it proceeds from the will of the lawgiver, and doth formally consist in an act of the will, yet it doth presuppose an act of the understanding. If the commandment be holy, just, and good, as it is, Romans 7.12, if it be the image of God's holiness, a transcript of His righteousness, and the epilux of His goodness, then in every breach of it that is cast upon those attributes which shine in it, and the slight of all the regards he hath to his own honour, and all the provisions he makes for his own creature. This atheism, or contempt of God, is more taken notice of by God than the matter of the sin itself, as a respect to God in a weak and imperfect obedience is more than the matter of the obedience itself, because it is an acknowledgement of God. So a contempt of God in an act of disobedience is more than in a matter of disobedience. The creature stands in such an act not only in a posture of distance from God, but defiance of him. It was not the bare act of murder and adultery which Nathan charged upon David, but the atheistical principle which spirited those evil acts. The despising the commandment of the Lord was the venom of them. It is possible to break a law without contempt. But when men pretend to believe there is a God, and that this is the law of God, it shows a contempt of his majesty. Men naturally count God's laws too strict, his yoke too heavy, and his limits too straight. And he that liveth in a contempt of this law curseth God in his life. How can they believe there is a God? He despised him as a ruler. How can they believe him to be a guide? that disdain to follow him. To think we firmly believe a God without living conformable to his law is an idle and vain imagination. The true and sensible notion of a God cannot subsist with disorder, unaffected unrighteousness. This contempt is seen, one, in any presumptuous breach of any part of his law. Such sins are frequently called in scripture rebellion, which are a denial of the allegiance we owe to him. By a willful refusal of his right, in one part, we root up the foundation of that rule he doth justly challenge over us. His right is as extensive to command as in one thing, as in another, and if it be disowned in one thing, it is virtually disowned in all, and the whole statute book of God is contemned. James 2.10.11 Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, is guilty of all. A willing breaking of one part, though there be a willing observance of all the other points of it, is a breach of the whole, because the authority of God, which gives sanction to the whole, is slighted. The obedience to the rest is disassembled. For the love, which is the root of all obedience, is wanting. For the love is the fulfilling of the whole law. The rest are obeyed because they cross not carnal desire so much as the other, and so it is an observance of himself, not of God. Besides, the authority of God, which is not prevalent to restrain us from the breach of one point, would be, as is little thought with us, to restrain us from the breach of all the rest. Did the allurements of the flesh give us a stronger diversion from the one as from the other? And though the command that is transgressed be released in the whole law, yet the authority which enjoins it is the same with that which enacts the greatest. And it is not so much the matter of the command as the authority commanding which lays the obligation. 2. In the natural averseness to the declaration of God's will and mind, which may soever they tend, sin man affected to be as God, he desires to be boundless. He would not have fetters, though they be golden ones, and conduce to his happiness. Though the law of God be a strength to them, yet they will not, Isaiah 30, 15, in returning shall be your strength, and you would not. They would not have a bridle to restrain them from running into the pit, nor be hedged in by the law, though for their security. as if they thought it too slavish and low-spirited a thing to be guided by the will of another. Hence man is compared to a wild ass that loves to snuff up the wind in the wilderness of her pleasure, rather than come under the guidance of God. From whatsoever quarter of the heavens you pursue her, she will run to the other. The Israelites could not endure what was commanded, though in regard of the moral part agreeable to what they found written in their own nature, and to the observance whereof they had the highest obligations of any people under heaven, since God had, by many prodigies, delivered them from a cruel slavery, the memory of which pervades the Decalogue, Exodus 20 verse 2, I am the Lord thy God, which hath brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. They could not think of the rule of their duties, but they must reflect upon the grand incentive of it in their redemption from Egyptian thraudom. Yet this people were cross to God, which waysoever he moved. When they were in the brick kilns they cried for deliverance, and when they had heavenly manna they longed for their onions and garlic. In Numbers 14.3 they repent of their deliverance from Egypt, and talk of returning again to seek the remedy of their evils in the hands of their cruelest enemies and would rather put themselves into the irons since God had delivered them than believe one word of the promise of God for giving them a fruitful land. But when Moses tells them under God's order that they should turn back by the way of the Red Sea and that God had confirmed it by an oath that they should not see the land of Canaan they then run cross to this command of God and instead of marching towards the Red Sea when they had wished for before they will go up to Canaan as in spite of God and His threatening we will go to the place which the Lord hath promised, verse 40 which Moses calls a transgressing the commandment of the Lord, verse 41 they would presume to go up notwithstanding Moses prohibition and are smitten by the Amalekites When God gives them a precept, with a promise to go up to Canaan, they long for Egypt. When God commands them to return to the Red Sea, which was nearer to the place they longed for, they will shift sides and go up to Canaan. And when they found they were to traverse the solitudes of the desert, they took path against God, and instead of thanking Him for the late victory against the Canaanites, they reproach Him for His conduct from Egypt. and the manner wherewith he nourished them in the wilderness. They would not go to Canaan, the way God had chosen, nor preserve themselves by the means God had ordained. They would not be at God's disposal, but complain of the badness of the way, the likeness of the manner, empty of necessary juice to sustain their nature. They murmuringly solicit the will and power of God to change all that order which he had resolved in his counsel, and take another, conformable to their vain foolish desires. And they signified thereby that they would invade his conduct, and that he should act according to their fancy, which the psalmist called a tempting of God, and limiting the Holy One of Israel. Psalm 78, 41. To what point, however, the declarations of God stand, the will of man turns a quite contrary way. Is not the courage of this nation the best then in the world? A discovery of the depth of our natural corruption, how cross man is to God, and that charge God brings against him, may be brought against all men by nature, that they despise his judgments, and have a rooted abhorrency of his statutes in their soul. Leviticus 2643. No sooner had they recovered from one rebellion, but they revolted to another, so difficult a thing it is for man's nature to be rendered capable of conforming to the will of God. The courage of this people is but a copy of the nature of mankind, and is written for our admonition, 1 Corinthians 10.11. From this temper men are said to make to void the law of God, to make it of no obligation, and antiquate it the moth-eaten record. And the Pharisees, by setting up their traditions against the will of God, are said to make his law of none effect, to strip it of all its authority, as the word signifies, Matthew 15, 6. 3. We have the greatest slight of that will of God, which is mostly His honour and His greatest pleasure. It is the nature of man, ever since Adam, to do so, Hosea 6, 6 and 7. God desired mercy, and not a sacrifice, the knowledge of Himself more than burnt offering. But they, like men as Adam, have transgressed the covenant, invade God's rights, and not let Him be Lord of one tree. We are more curious observers of the fringes of the law than of the greater concerns of it. The Jews were diligent in sacrifices and offerings, which God did not urge upon them as principles, but as types of other things, but negligent of the faith which was to be established by Him. Holiness, mercy, pity, which concerned the honor of God as the governor of the world, and were limitations of the holiness and goodness of God, they were strangers too. This is God's complaint. Isaiah 1, 11, 12, chapter 16, verse 17. We shall find our hearts most averse to the observation of those laws which are eternal and essential to righteousness, such that he could not but command, as he is a righteous governor. in the observation of which we come nearest to him, and express his image more clearly, for those laws for an inward and spiritual worship, a supreme affection to him. God, in regard of his righteousness and holiness of his nature, and the excellency of his being, could not command the contrary to these, but this part of his will our hearts most swell against, our corruption doth most snarl at, whereas those laws which are only positive, and have no intrinsic righteousness in them, that depend purely upon the will of the lawgiver, and may be changed at his pleasure, which the other that have an intrinsic righteousness in them cannot, we better comply with, than that part of his will that express more the righteousness of his nature, such as the ceremonial part of worship, and the ceremonial law among the Jews. We are more willing to observe order in some outward attendances, and gladiating devotions, then discard secret affections to evil, crucify in with lusts and delightful thoughts. A hanging down the head like a bulrush is not difficult, but the breaking the heart like apostles vessel to shred and dust, a sacrifice God delights in, whereby the excellency of God and the vileness of the creature is owned, goes against the grain. To cut off an outward branch is not so hard as to hack at the root. What God most loathes, as most contrary to his will, we must love. No sin did God so severely hate, and no sin were the Jews more inclined unto than that of idolatry. The heathen had not changed their God, as the Jews had changed their glory, Jeremiah 2.11, and all men are naturally tainted with this sin. which is so contrary to the holy and excellent nature of God. By how much the more defect there is of purity in our respect to God, by so much the more respect there is to some idol within or without us, to humour, custom and interest, etc. Never did any law of God meet with so much opposition as Christianity, which was the design of God from the first promise to the exhibiting, the Redeemer, and from thence to the end of the world. All people drew swords at first against it. The Romans prepared yokes for their neighbours, but provided temples for the idols those people worshipped. For Christianity, the choicest design and most delightful part of the will of God never met with the kind of entertainment at first in any place. Rome, that entertained all others, persecuted this with fire and sword those sealed by greater testimonies from heaven than their own records could report in favour of their idols. 4. In running the greatest hazards and exposing ourselves to more trouble to cross the will of God than is necessary to be observant of it, it is a bane charge men bring against the divine precepts that they are rigorous, severe, difficult, when, besides a contradiction to our Saviour, who tells us His yoke is easy and His burden light, they thwart their own calm reason and judgment. Is there not more difficulty to be vicious, covetous, violent, cruel, than to be virtuous, charitable, kind? Does the will of God enjoin that this is not conformable to right reason, and secretly delightful in the exercise and issue And on the contrary, what does Satan and the world engage us in that is not full of molestation and hazard? Is it a sweet and comely thing to combat continually against our own consciences and resist our own light and commence a perpetual horror against ourselves as we ordinarily do when we sin? They in the prophet Micah 6-8 would be at the expense of thousands of rams and ten thousand rivers of oil if they could compass them. Yea, they would strip themselves of their natural affection to their firstborn to excavate the sin of their soul rather than to do justice, love, mercy and walk humbly with God. Things more conducible to the honour of God, the welfare of the world, the security of their souls and of a more easy practice than the offerings they wish for. Do not men then disown God when they will walk in ways hedged with thorns, wherein they meet with the arrows of conscience at every turn in their sights, and slide down to an everlasting punishment, sink under an intolerable slavery to contradict the will of God, when they will prefer essential satisfaction with a combustion in their consciences, violation of their reasons, nor in cares and weary travels before the honor of God, the dignity of their natures, the happiness of peace and health, which might be preserved at a cheaper rate than they are apt to destroy them. 5. In the unwillingness and awkwardness of the heart, when it is to pay God a service, men do evil with both hands earnestly, But do good with one hand faintly, no life in the heart, nor any diligence in the hand. What slight and loose thoughts of God doth this unwillingness imply? It is a wrong to his providence, as though we were not under his government, and had no need of his assistance. A wrong to his excellency, as though there were no abymals in him to make his service desirable, an injury to his goodness and power. as if he were not able or willing to reward the creature's obedience, or careless not to take notice of it. It is a sign we receive little satisfaction in him, and there is a great unsuitableness between him and us. 1. There is a kind of constraint in the first engagement. We are rather pressed to it than enter ourselves volunteers. What we call service to God is done naturally, much against our wills, It is not a delightful food, but a bitter potion. We are rather hailed than run to it. There is a contradiction of sin within us against our service, as there was a contradiction of sinners without our Saviour against His doing the will of God. Our hearts are unwieldy to any spiritual service of God. We are fain to use of violence with them sometimes. Hezekiah it is said walked before the Lord with a perfect heart, two cranes, 29. He walked. He made himself to walk. Man naturally cares not for a walk with God. If he hath any communion with him, it is with such a dullness and heaviness of spirit as if he wished himself out of his company. Man's nature, being contrary to holiness, hath an aversion to any act of homage to God, because holiness must at least be pretended. In every duty wherein we have a communion with God, holiness is requisite. Now as men are against the truth of holiness because it is unsuitable to them, so they are not friends to those duties which require it, and for some space divert them from the thoughts of their beloved lusts. The word of the Lord is a yoke, prayer a drudgery, obedience a strange element. We are like fish that drink up iniquity like water, and come not to the bank without the force of an angle. no more willing to do service for God than a fish is of itself to do service for man. It is a constrained act to satisfy conscience, and such are servile, not sun-like performances, and spring from bondage more than affection. The conscience, like a taskmaster, did not scourge them to duty, they would never perform it. Let us appeal to ourselves Whether we are not more unwilling to secret, closet, hearty duty to God than to join with others in some external service, as if those inward services were our going to the rack, and rather our penance than privilege. How much service hath God in the world from the same principle that vagrants perform in their tasks in bridewealth? How glad are many of evasions to back them in the neglect of the commands of God, of corrupt reasonings from the flesh to waylay an act of obedience, and a multitude of excuses to blunt the edge of the precept. The very service of God shall be a pretense to deprive him of the obedience due to him. Saul will not be ruled by God's will in the destroying of the capital of the Maritimes, but by his own. and will impose upon the will and wisdom of God, judging God mistaken in His command, and that the cattle God first thought fittest to be meat to the foals, were fitted with sacrifices from the altar. If we do perform any part of His will, it is not by our own ends to have some deliverance from trouble. Isaiah 26, 16, In trouble have they visited me. They called out a prayer when my chastening was upon them. In affliction, he shall find them kneeling in homage and devotion. In prosperity, he shall feel them kicking with contempt. They can pour out a prayer in distress, and scarce drop one when they are delivered. 2. There is a slightness in our service of God. We are loath to come into his presence, and when we do come, we are loath to continue with him. We pay not an homage to him heartily, as to our Lord and Governor. We regard him not as our Master, whose work we ought to do, and whose honour we ought to aim at. 1. In regard to the matter of service, when the torn, the lame, the sick, is offered to God, so thin and lean a sacrifice, that you may have thrown it to the ground with a puff, so some understand the meaning of, you have snuffed at him. Men have naturally such slight thoughts on the majesty of the law of God that they think any service is good enough for him and conformable to his law. The dullest and deadest time we think fit is to pray God at servicing. When sleep is ready to close our eyes and we are unfit to serve ourselves, we think it a fit time to open our hearts to God. How few morning sacrifices have God for many persons and families. men leap out of their beds to their carnal pleasures or worldly employments with any thought of their creator and preserver or any reflection upon his will at the rule of our daily obedience and as many reserve the dregs of their lives, their old age, to offer up their souls to God so they reserve the dregs of the day, their sleeping time, for the offering up their service to him How many grudge to spend their best time in the serving of God, and reserve for Him the sickly and rheumatic part of their lives, the remainder of that which the devil and their own lusts have fed upon? Would not any prince or governor judge a person a present, half eaten up by wild beasts, or that which died in a ditch, a contempt of his loyalty? A corrupt thing is too base and vile for so great a king as God is, whose name is dreadful. When by age men are weary of their own bodies, they would present them to God. Yet gradually, as if a tired body were too good for him, snapping at the command for service, God called for our best, and would give him the worst. 2. In respect of frame, we think any frame will serve God's term, which speaks our slight of God as a ruler. Man naturally performs duty with an unholy heart. whereby he becomes an abomination to God. Proverbs 28 verse 9. He that turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be an abomination to God. The services which he commands. He hates for the evil frames or corrupt ends. Amos 5 verse 21. I hate, I despise your feast days. I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. God requires gracious services and we give Him corrupt ones. We do not rouse up our hearts as David called upon his lute and harp to awake. Psalm 57 verse 8. Our hearts are not given to Him. We put Him off with bodily exercise. The heart is but ice to what it does not affect. 1. There is not that natural vigor in the observance of God which we have in worldly business. When we see a liveliness in men and other things, change the scene into a motion towards God, how suddenly doth their vigour shrink and their hearts freeze into sluggishness. Many times we serve God as languishingly, as if we were afraid He should accept us, and pray as coldly as if we were unwilling He should hear us, and take away that lust by which we are governed and which conscience forces us to pray against, as if we were afraid God should set up His own throne. and government in our hearts. How fleeting are we in divine meditation, how sleepy in spiritual exercises, but in other exercises active. The soul does not awaken itself and excite those animal and vital spirits which it will in bodily recreations and sports, much less the powers of the soul, whereby it is evident we prefer the latter before any service to God. Since there is a fullness of animal spirits, why might they not be excited in holy duties as well as in other operations, but that there is a reluctancy of the soul to exercise its supremacy in this case, and perform anything becoming a creature in subjection to God as a ruler? 2. It is evident also in the distractions we have in His service. How loath are we to serve God fixedly one hour, nay a part of an hour, notwithstanding all the thoughts of his majesty and the eternity of glory set before our eye. What man is there, since of all of Adam, that served God one hour without many wanderings and unsuitable thoughts, and fit for that service? How ready are our hearts to start out and unite themselves with any worldly objects that please us. 3. Weariness in it evidenceth it. To be weary of our dullness signifies a desire. To be weary of service signifies a discontent to be ruled by God. How tired are we in the performance of spiritual duties when in the vain triflings of time we have a perpetual motion. How will many willingly revel whole nights when their hearts will flag at the threshold of a religious service. like Dagon, lose both our hands to think and hands to act when the Ark of God is present. Some in the Prophet wished the new moon and the Sabbath over, that they might sell their corn and be busy again in their worldly affairs. A slight and weariness of the Sabbath was a slight of the Lord of the Sabbath. And now that freedom from the yoke and rule of sin which was signified by it The design of the sacrifices in the new moon was to signify a rest from the tyranny of sin and a consecration to the spiritual service of God. Servants that are quickly weary of their work are weary of the authority of their master that enjoins it. If our hearts had a value for God it would be with us as with a needle to the lodestone there would be upon his deck a speedy motion to him and a fixed union with him. When the judgments and affections of the states shall be fully refined in glory, they shall be willing to behold the face of God and be under his government to eternity without any weariness, as the holy angels have owned God as their sovereign nearly six thousand years without being weary of running on his errands. But alas, while the flesh clogs us There will be some relics of unwillingness to hear his injunctions, and weariness in performing them, though men may excuse those things by extrinsic causes, yet God's unhearing judgment calls it a weariness of himself. Isaiah 43, 22 Thou hast not called upon me, O Jacob, but thou hast been weary of me, O Israel. On this he taxes his own people. when he tells him he would have the beasts of the field, the dragons and the owls, the Gentiles, that the Jews counted no better than such, to honour him and acknowledge him in their rule in a way of duty. Verse 20, 21. 6. This contempt is seen in the deserting the rule of God when our expectations are not answered upon our service. When services are performed from carnal principles, they are soon cast off when carnal ends meet not with desired satisfaction. But when we own ourselves God's servants and God our Master, our eyes will wait upon Him till He have mercy on us. It is one part of the duty we owe to God as our Master in Heaven to continue in prayer, Colossians 4, 1 and 2, and by the same reason in all other service, and to watch in the same with thanksgiving, to watch for occasions of praise, to watch with cheerfulness for further manifestations of his will, strength to perform it, success in the performance, that we may from all draw matter of praise. As we are in a posture of obedience to his precepts, so we should be in a posture of waiting for the blessing of it, but naturally we reject the duty we owe to God. if He did not speed the blessing we expect from Him. How many do secretly matter the same as they in Job 21.15? What is the Almighty that we should serve Him? And what profit shall we have if we pray to Him? They serve not God out of conscience to His commands, but for some carnal profit. And if God make them to wait for it, they will not stay His leisure, but cease soliciting Him any longer. Two things are expressed. That God was not worthy of any homage from them. What is the Almighty that we should serve Him? And that the service of Him would not bring them in good revenue or any advantage of that kind they expected. Interest drives many men onto some kind of service. And when they do not find an advance of that, they would acknowledge God no more. but like some beggars if you give a knock upon their asking and calling you good master from blessing they will turn to cursing how often do men do that secretly practically if not plainly which Job's wife advised him to curse God and cast off that disguise of integrity they had ashamed Job 2.9 Just as still retain thy integrity curse God what a stir and pulling and crying his hair, cast off all thoughts of religious service, and be it daggers drawn with that God who for all thy service to him has made thee so wretched a spectacle to men and a banquet for worms. The like temper is deciphered in the Jews, Malachi 3.14. It is in vain to serve God, and what profit is it that we are kept to ordinances that we have walked mournfully before the Lord what profit is it that we have regarded his statutes and carried ourselves in a way of subjection to God as our sovereign when we inherit nothing but sorrow and the idolatrous neighbours swim in all kinds of pleasures as if it were the most miserable thing to acknowledge God men have not the benefits they expect they think God unrighteous in himself and injurious to them, in not conferring the favour they imagine they have merited. And if they have not that recompense, they will deny God that subjection they owe to Him as creatures. Grace moves to God upon a sense of duty, corrupt nature upon a sense of interest. Sincerity is encouraged by gracious returns, but it is not melted away by God's delay or refusal. Corrupt nature would not have God at its back, and steers a course of duty by hope of some carnal profit, not by a sense of the sovereignty of God. 7. This contempt is seen in breaking promises with God. One, while the conscience of a man makes vows of new obedience, and perhaps binds himself with many an oath, but they prove like Jonah's gourd, withering the next day after their birth. This was Pharaoh's temper. Under a storm he would submit to God and let Israel go. But when the storm is ended he will not be under God's control and Israel's slavery shall be increased. The fear of divine wrath makes many a sinner turn his back upon his sin and the love of his ruling lust makes him turn his back upon his true Lord. This is from the prevalence of sin that disputes with God for the sovereignty. When God has sent a sharp disease as a messenger to bind men to their beds and make an interruption of their sinful pleasures, their mouths are full of promises of a new life in hope to escape the just vengeance of God. The sense of hell which strikes strongly upon them makes them full of such pretended resolutions when they howl upon their beds. But if God be pleased in his patience to give them a respite, to take up the chains wherewith he seemed to be binding them for destruction, and recruit their strength, they are more earnest in their sins than they were in their promises of a reformation, as if they had got the mastery of God and had outwitted Him. How often does God charge them of not returning to Him after succession of judgments, so hard it is, not only to allure, but to scourge men, to an acknowledgement of God as their ruler. Consider then, are we not naturally inclined to disobey the known will of God? Can we say, Lord, for thy sake we refrain the thing to which our hearts incline? Do we not allow ourselves to be licentious, earthly, vain, proud, revengeful? though we know it will offend him? Have we not been previously crossed to his declared will? Run counter to him and there's laws which express most of the glory of his holiness? Is not this to disown him as our rule? Did we never wish there were no law to bind us? No precept to check our idols? What is this? But to wish that God would dispose himself from being our governor and leave us to our own conduct? or else to wish that he were as unholy as ourselves, or careless of his own laws as we are? That is, that he were no more a god than we, a god as sinful and unrighteous as ourselves? He whose heart rises against the law of God to allure it, rises against the author of that law to undeify him. He that cast contempt upon the dearest thing God hath in the world, that which is the image of his holiness, the delight of his soul, that which he hath given a special charge to maintain, and that because it is holy, just and good, will not stick to rejoice at the destruction of God himself. If God's holiness and righteousness in the beam he despised, much more will an immense goodness and holiness in the fountain be rejected. he that wisheth a being far from his eyes, because he defends and scorches him, can be no friend to the sun from whence that being doth issue. How unworthy a creature is man, since he only, a rational creature, is the sole being that withdraws itself from the rule of God in this earth. And how miserable a creature is he also, since, departing from the order of God's goodness, he falls into the order of his justice. And while he refuses God to be the rule of his life, he cannot avoid Him being the judge of his punishment. It is this, it is this is the original of all sin and the fountain of all our misery. This is the first thing man just owns, the rule which God sets him. Secondly, man naturally owns any other rule than that of God's prescribing. The law of God orders one thing. The heart of man desires another. There is not the basest thing in the world, but man would sooner submit to be guided by it, rather than by the holiness of God. And when anything that God commands crosses our own wheels, we value it no more than we would the advice of a poor, despicable beggar. How many are lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God? To make something which contributes to the perfection of nature as learning, wisdom, moral virtues, our rule, would be more tolerable. But to pay that homage to a swinish pleasure which is the right of God is an inexcusable contempt of Him. The greatest excellency in the world is infinitely below God. much more a bestial delight, which is both disgraceful and below the nature of man. If we made the vilest creature on earth our idol, it is more excusable than to be the slave of a brutish pleasure. The viler the thing is that doth possess the throne of our heart, the greater content it is of him who can only claim a right to it and is worthy of it. Sin is the first object of man's election, as soon as the faculty whereby he chooses comes to exercise his power, and it is so dear to man that it is, in the estimate of our Saviour, counted as the right hand and the right eye, dear, precious and useful members. 1. The rule of Satan is owned before the rule of God. The natural man would rather be under the guidance of Satan than the yoke of his Creator. Adam chose him to be his governor in Paradise. No sooner had Satan spoken of God in a way of derision, Genesis 3, 1, 5, Yea, hath God said, that man follows his counsel and approves of the staff, and the greatest part of his prosperity hath not been wiser by its law. but would rather ramble in the devil's wilderness than to stay in God's fold. It is by the sin of man that the devil has become the god of this world as if men were the electors of him to the government. Sin is an election of him for a lord and a putting his soul under his government. Those that live according to the course of the world and are loath to displease it are under the government of the prince of it. The greatest part of the works done in the world is to enlarge the kingdom of Satan. For how many ages were the laws whereby the greatest part of the world was governed in the affairs of religion the fruits of its usurpation and policy? When temples were erected to him, priests consecrated to his service, the rights used in most of the worship of the world were either of his own coining or the misapplying the rights of God had attained to himself under the notion of a God. whence the apostle calls idolatrous feasts, the table of devils, the cup of devils, sacrifice to devils, fellowship with devils. Devils being the real object of the pagan worship, though not formally intended by the worshipper, though in some parts of the Indies the direct and peculiar worship is to the devil that he might not hurt them. And though the intention of others was to offer to God and not the devil, Yet since the action was contrary to the will of God, he regards it as a sacrifice to devils. It was not the intention of Jeroboam to establish priests to the devil, when he consecrated them to the service of his calves, for Jehu afterwards calls them the servants of the Lord, 2 Kings 10.23. See if there be here none of the servants of the Lord to distinguish them from the servants of Baal, signifying that the true God was worshipped under those images, not Baal, nor any of the gods and the heathens. Yet the Scriptures couples the calves and devils together, and the scribes are worshipped giving to the one to be given to the other. He ordained him priests for the high places, and for the devils, and for the calves which he had made, so that they were sacrifices to devils, notwithstanding the intention of Jeroboam and his subjects that had set them up and worshipped them, because they were contrary to the mind of God and agreeable to the doctrine and mind of Satan, though the object of their worship and their intention were not the devil, but some deified man or some canonised saint. The intention makes not a good action. If so, when men kill the best servants of God with the design to do God's service, as our Saviour foretells, the action would not be murder. Yet who can call it otherwise, since God is wronged in the person of his servants? Since most of the worship of the world, which men's corrupt nature inclines them to, is false and different from the revealed will of God, is there a practical acknowledgement of the devil, as the Governor, by acknowledging and practicing those doctrines, which have not the stamp of divine revelation upon them, but were minted by Satan to depress the honour of God in the world. It doth concern them, then, to take good heed, that in their acts of worship they have a divine rule, otherwise it is an owning the devil as the rule. For there is no medium whatsoever is not from God, is from Satan, But to bring this closer to us, and consider that which is more common among us, men that are in a natural condition, and wedded to their lusts, are under the paternal government of Satan. John 8, 44. Ye are of your father, the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. If we divide sin into spiritual and carnal, which division comprehends all, The devil's authority is owned in both. In spiritual we conform to his example because those he commits. In carnal we obey his will because those he directs. He hacks the one and sets out a copy. He tempts the other and gives us a kind of precept. As man by nature being a willing servant of sin, his more desires to be bound in the devil's iron chain than in God's silken cords? What greater atheism can there be than to use God as if he were inferior to the devil? To take the part of his greatest enemy who drew all others into the faction against him? To pleasure Satan by offending God and gratifying our adversary with the injury of our Creator? Or a subject to take arms against his Prince with the deadliest enemy both himself and Prince, as in the whole world, adds a greater blackness to the rebellion. 2. The more visible rule preferred before God in the world is man. The opinion of the world is more our rule than the precept of God. And many men's abstinence from sin is not from a sense of the divine will, No, nor from a principle of reason, but from an affection to some man on whom they depend, or fear of punishment from a superior. The same principle would that in a ravenous beast who abstains from what he desires for fear only of a stick or club. Men will walk with the herds, go in fashion with the most, speak and act as the most do. While we conform to the world, We cannot perform a reasonable service to God, nor prove practically what the good and acceptable will of God is. The Apostle puts them in opposition to one another. This appears, one, in complying more with the dictates of men than the will of God. Men drew encouragement from God's forbearance to sin more freely against Him. But the fear of punishment for breaking the will of man lays a restraint upon them. The fear of man is a more powerful curb to restrain men in their duty than the fear of God. So we may please a friend, a master, a governor. We are regardless whether we please God or no. Men-pleasers are more than God-pleasers. Man is more advanced as a rule than God when we submit to human orders and stagger and dispute against divine. Would not a prince think himself slighted in his authority if any of his servants should decline his commands by the order of one of his subjects? And will not God make the same account of us when we deny or delay our obedience for fear of one of his creatures? In the fear of man, we as little acknowledge God for our sovereign as we do for our comforter. Isaiah 51, 12, 13 I, even I, am he that comforteth you. Who art thou that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that should not die, and forgettest the Lord thy Maker? We put a slight upon God as if he were not able to bear us out in our duty to him, and incapable to balance the strength of an arm This Reformation audio resource is a production of Stillwater's Revival Books. 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