The following is a production of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. For more information about the seminary, visit us online at gpts.edu. Thank you for the gracious welcome and invitation to be with you all this morning. It's really just a delight to be with you, to worship together with you, to learn together with you down here in Greenville. Well, this morning we're going to spend some time together looking at both a great theologian and a great Christian classic on the doctrine of man. And that's Thomas Boston's The Fourfold State, which Dr. McGoldrick just held up and I know is for sale back in the book room. So hopefully, as you taste a little bit of it today, the end result will be you're going to plunge into that book and take it up and read it. This book, which I want to introduce to you, I want to introduce it and really weave it in with the life of Thomas Boston himself. I believe it's really helpful to understand the man who's writing on the doctrine of man in this great book. So we're going to begin with an introduction to Thomas Boston and then turn to the Fourfold State in some greater detail and analysis. It's a book of about 500 pages. So in our 45 minutes, we're just going to give you a taste. Well, who was Thomas Boston? Step back with me in history. Back to Scotland under Charles II. Days of harassment and persecution for those who are Presbyterians in Scotland. Those who could not accede to the imposition of Episcopalianism. on the church by the state. The year was 1676, and a woman named Alison Trotter of Dunnes, Scotland, the wife of John Boston, a tradesman, gave birth to her seventh and last child, Thomas. John and Alison were devout Presbyterians In fact, while Thomas was still a young boy, his father John, a tradesman, was arrested and imprisoned for refusing to conform to government impositions on church life, to accede to them. And young Thomas, as a small boy, distinctly would remember all his life going to visit his father in prison. During the period he was there in prison. And we know that during these years, as a young boy, Boston went to school close to his home. And he reflects on this in his memoirs. He says that his schoolmistress treated him kindly and often expressed her hope of seeing me in the pulpit. And so this teacher, this lady, as a young boy already, was expressing her hope that he would go into the ministry. At a young age, we know Boston had a love for the scriptures. He says, by the time I was seven years old, I read the Bible and I had delight in reading it. I got the Bible sometimes into bed with me and read there. Well, in 1648, he went on to grammar school in the town. He loved to play soldiers. We know this, again, from his memoirs, and he would line up the boys and do mock military exercises. With as much energy, he said, as sometimes I have preached the gospel. Yet, despite Bible reading and a godly environment, we know from his memoirs, his own self-reflection, that Boston was in some ways really unconcerned about the state of his own soul until about the year 1687. That was the year when he was 11 years old and the Lord really awakened him. He became personally aware of the extent of his own sin. He said, my lost state by nature and my absolute need of Christ was discovered to me and I began to pray in earnest. and listen more carefully to the preached word. Thomas's father, John, by this point had been released from prison and in 1687 also marked a year where Presbyterians were now allowed to hold worship services in homes. And so John took his son, his family, along to a home in a nearby town where a man named Henry Erskine, the father of Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine, was preaching They were holding worship services in this home. And both his father John, Thomas' father John, and Henry Erskine would really be a lifelong influence on Thomas, as long as they lived. Well, after completing his grammar school studies, Boston went through several very difficult years in his life. He wanted to go on and study. He wanted to go to university, but a lack of money kept him from his desires for further education. His father simply couldn't afford it. His father wanted it as well, but they had no money to do this. And then secondly, the young Thomas was just hard hit when an older minister who he had respected, a close family friend, was caught in adultery. It just shook him to the core. It left him deeply disappointed. And then third, in this window of two years, Boston recounts, it pleased the Lord to remove my mother by death. She became sick suddenly, violently ill. She died very quickly. And her death was a blow to the whole family. Boston went with his siblings, his brothers and sisters, to his mother's funeral at the church down the street. His father John was sick with the same illness in bed, couldn't make it to the funeral. And on the way back from the burial, one of his friends, in a way that only a friend sometimes can do, said to young Thomas as they were walking back, I expect Your father's going to die soon, too." Thomas ran away up the street into his home, and he threw himself on his bed, weeping, broken, shaken, grieving, and recounts that his older brother came in to comfort him. A few days later, Boston contracted the same illness, and both he and his father were seriously ill for quite a number of days and then eventually recovered. Well, finally, At the age of 15, after these trials, Thomas's father, John, managed to get him hooked up with a lawyer, financially opening the way for his entrance to the University of Edinburgh. And he reflected, the Lord in my setting out into the world dealt with me, obliging me to have recourse to himself for this very thing, to do it for me. He brought me through many difficulties. to the utmost point of hopelessness. He seemed to be laying the gravestone on my hope at the time of my mother's death. Yet after all that he brought to pass, and that has been the usual method of providence with me all along, he has opened the way in a marvelous manner." Well, returning, going on to university, he studied there for a number of years. He returned home. He came under care as a student for the ministry, under the care of his presbytery. And this period of his life was marked, again, by the blessing of being mentored by older believers, again, including his father. And all the while, Boston's desire to preach increased. But at the same time, he really wrestled. He struggled with the thought of the call to the ministry. He hesitated to take his trials, his presbytery exams, In fact, he was struggling with the assurance of his salvation. In 1697, now nearly 21 years old, he recounted that he found himself now helped in prayer to a particular trust and confidence that God would actually grant what I sought. And he preached his student sermon. He was examined, and that day he was licensed to preach the gospel as a probationer for the holy ministry. Boston now began to preach regularly in various churches. Again, he felt profoundly burdened by this. And at one point he went off to talk to an older minister friend and he said, I feel this great strain, this great weight under preaching the word. And the minister said to him, but if you entered on preaching Christ, you would find it very pleasant. Boston says he took this to heart. This had an effect on me that immediately I did somewhat change my strain where I had occasion to enter on a new text. I've often since that time remembered the word of Mr. Dysart, this older minister, as the first hint given to me by the good hand of my God towards the doctrine of the gospel. Why did Boston have these struggles? In part, they were certainly simply signs of his own spiritual life and growth. But there was also the negative influence, a tendency in the Church of Scotland towards a hyper-Calvinism and a legal preparationism. The idea that Christ was to be offered only to those who evidenced election through a certain depth of conviction of sin, the sensible sinner. the state of the sensible sinner became viewed as a necessary precursor, without which individuals were not to be pointed to Christ. And so you can imagine how he's wrestling through this himself. And yet, at the same time, the context of Boston's youth was marked by a rich heritage of Reformed orthodoxy, a profound concern for genuine conversion and heart piety, But yet it was not uncommon for the preaching of the gospel, the gospel offer, to be restricted and the sufficiency of Christ really to be constrained. Well, mulling over as a young man, as a licentiate, what to preach, the now 23-year-old Thomas Boston decided to preach on the state of man by nature. He decided this a few months before he was called and ordained to his first ministerial charge in a small Scottish town called Cimprin, where he was ordained in December 1699. In his memoirs, Boston states this, I intend to begin with preaching to them, that is a congregation, the doctrine of man's natural state. judging the sense and sight thereof to be the foundation of all true religion, and minding to take it in parcels, for the more clear discovery of it, both in the sinfulness and misery of it, I began my study of it that Sabbath, on the guilt of Adam's first sin, original sin imputed." As clear as Boston embarked on this preaching, series of sermons on a state of man by nature, that he was not thinking of the full-orbed, fourfold state of man yet. Instead, he was beginning with a particular doctrine, really the doctrine of sin, man and sin, which he saw as foundational to the spiritual life of his parishioners. In somewhat Puritan-esque fashion, Boston went on preaching man's natural state for nearly eight months straight. up to August of 1700, prior to turning to entering a series on Christ, the remedy for man's misery. Boston would note that this sermon series on man's natural state really weighed on him during this period, undoubtedly as it should in a sense. Yet he felt that aside from occasional interruption, he couldn't waver from this ordinary. It's interesting, he recounts in his memoirs that He found himself using every opportunity when he could preach in another church to try to preach sermons which displayed more of the person and work of Christ. He also continued to struggle himself personally with assurance in how to preach the gospel. In his memoirs, Boston says this, The bent of my heart to preach Christ continued all along, but for a considerable time, I met with rubs in my way. As for the doctrine of grace, how the Lord was pleased to give my heart a set toward preaching Christ, I had several convictions of legality in my own practice. I think that among the first rays of light was a notion that the sins of believers in Christ, even while not yet actually repented of, did not make them, being in a state of grace, liable to eternal punishment. Well, it was the same year, in 1700, that he was on a pastoral visit to an elderly veteran, an elderly Scottish war vet of the English Civil War, and he noticed on this man's bookshelf the English Puritan work, The Marrow of Modern Divinity. His work explaining the relationship of the law and the gospel and guarding against both legalism and antinomianism. While Boston borrowed this book, he read it and he was transformed. He says, I found it to come close to those points I was in quest of and to show consistency of these which I could not reconcile before so that I rejoiced in it as a light which the Lord had seasonably struck up to me in my darkness. Well, despite this, Boston still had a ways to go. He would come to realize that he was confused, indistinct, and hampered in the free, open, and unhampered access of sinners to Christ, a condition he reflected as really having negatively impacted his preaching until at least somewhere between 1702 and 1704. Well, Boston's transformation through reading the marrow, through the influence of some godly men challenging him, was really concurrent with his preaching in Simpron. And it initiated a steady deepening and growth in his preaching of the gospel. One example of this is in one of his sermons on the necessity of repentance in his later period here at Simpron. He says this, It is not gospel doctrine that Christ will receive none but true penitence or none but such have a warrant to come to Christ by faith. The evil of this doctrine is that it sets sinners to spin repentance out of their own bowels and to fetch it with them to Christ instead of coming to him by faith to get it. Boston said this hinders sensible sinners from coming to Christ, keeping them back till they're persuaded that they have true repentance. For those who are sensible sinners think that they dare not and ought not to believe. They ought not to embrace Christ till they be more deeply humbled and do more thoroughly repent of their sins. In a word, be more fit to receive him. And Boston said, this is but a gilded deceit, a trick of the false heart to make the soul stay long in the place of the breaking forth of children and die there at length. The scripture says, behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come to him and sup with him. and he with me." Boston went on to say, all that hear the gospel may and ought to come. Be their case what it will. Although he was an opponent to a legal preparationism that he saw in his ecclesiastical context, it's important to realize that Boston was not opposed to a scriptural doctrine of preparatory grace. nor of exhorting unbelievers to be aware of their sin, of their need of Christ, and to run to Him. What he was opposed to was constraining the free offer, constraining the sufficiency of Christ to his hearers. Two years later, after his season of preaching in Simpron, Boston accepted a call to a church in Ettrick. where he had remained to his death, another town in the southern part of Scotland. This was a town of about 400 to 500 people, perhaps several hundred more living in the immediate countryside around it. And as Boston landed there in his new ministerial charge, mulling over what to preach, he decided to take up those first themes that he had first preached on in his first couple years of ministry in Simpron. Now, however, he made some substantial changes. What did he do? Well, he significantly expanded his sermon series on the natural state of man and the state of grace into what he now called the Sermons on the Fourfold State. The revisions he made this time around are intriguing. I think they appear really to parallel his own growth in understanding the right way of preaching Christ. Well, what did Boston add to create what became this volume that we have? Well, he added, first of all, the state of innocence. And on the other side, he added the eternal state. And then as well, he revised some of the materials in between, adding material on the mystical union between Christ and believers. And this new material, even in its most soberly warning, challenging, convicting sections that really richly and freely reflected the offer of the gospel, the promises of grace in Christ, the full sufficiency of Jesus Christ as Savior. In ordering this new series, which he preached through for quite a period of time, Boston really followed sort of a systematic theological outline. Following this four-fold state of man, as something that was rooted and had a long heritage in Christian theology. You trace it all the way back to the patristic period. I think of Augustine's four-fold state of man, able not to sin. Adam, prior to the fall. Then after, fallen man, not able not to sin. The believer, able to sin and not to sin. And then the believer in glory, not able to sin. So there's this four-fold state, and Boston, what he does is he really expands on that because he traces it not simply for the believer, but for both believer and unbeliever, really in seeking to pastorally challenge the hearers that he's preaching to. And so Boston follows this theological outline of a sermon series, and then he preaches various scripture texts as he goes through. really exposits those and then jumps off into other scripture passages to deal with these doctrines. All of this was done at a very popular level. Boston was committed to preaching in the common day-to-day language of the people. And in fact, this really troubled his publisher. He sent off this manuscript. He makes an arrangement with a publisher in the 17-teens. It won't be until 1720 that this work is first published, The publisher, when he receives this manuscript, he says, this is way too earthy. It'll be nauseous to the polite world. It'll make people sick. He said, you really need a higher literary style and greater eloquence. Well, Boston refused to make significant alterations. He said, my work is not for theologians. It is not for the elite in society. It is for the flock. It's interesting, one of Boston's real local concerns and passions as a Church of Scotland minister at this point was that there were some who had not rejoined the Church of Scotland, the Covenanting Societies, those who had refused to join. And he knew there were a number of these folks in the area of his own church parish. And one of his hopes was that in publishing this work, that they would read it. They would use it in their gatherings. They didn't have pastors yet, so they're in a sense even without organized worship services. But he knew they were using written books and reading them and having elders shepherd these little groups. And so Boston hoped that it would be for them as well as for his own people. Well, the window of 1708, 1709 was Boston's last time preaching through this series. And over the following 20 years, he continued to come back to the manuscripts of these, editing them, revising them, preparing them for publication, getting into tussles with his publisher over what ought to be changed and what ought not to be changed. Now, this led, of course, to the window of the Merrill Controversy, 1717, It was right in the thick of the Merrill Controversy that Boston's Fourfold State came out for the first time. It became a very popular work very quickly, and 1729 would be the second edition. Well, let's now turn to walk through the Fourfold State itself to look at some of its content and its themes. Well, Boston opens this work by saying this. There are four things very necessary to be known by everyone who would see heaven. First, what man was in that state of innocence as God made him. Second, what he is in that corrupt nature as he has unmade himself. Third, what he must be in the state of grace as created in Christ Jesus unto good works if he ever be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints of the light. And fourth, what he will be in his eternal state, as made by the judge of all, either perfectly happy or completely miserable, and that forever." Well, Boston went on to state why he invested so much energy and passion into preaching and writing on these themes. Boston said, these are weighty points that touch the vitals of practical godliness from which most men and even many professing Christians in these dregs of time are quite estranged. So Boston was concerned about what he saw sort of as a broad nominalism. You could say a cultural Christianity in his day. You know, sometimes we look back and we think, wow, if I could live in the days of Thomas Boston, we saw the city of the Puritans, this glowing, wonderful age. The reality was, it wasn't like that. It had just come out of persecution, struggling with errors in the midst of Reformed orthodoxy and their theology, their preaching of the Word, battles going on on that front. And Boston said, these are the dregs of time. When he looked around his congregation, he would lament many of the folks in the winter. They just had one service in the winter because people had to walk through the snow. And he said many of them didn't even bother to come. He said the snow was too much. Then he'd see them during the week trekking off with their wagons and busy all over the place and not able to attend and worship. And so he had a deep concern for the hearts of the people. in his congregation and in his town and the surrounding countryside. Well, Boston begins with the State of Innocence. In each of these sections that I mentioned before, as well as a subsection, Boston often takes a particular scripture text and starts by expositing that. He opens the State of Innocence with Ecclesiastes 729. See, this alone I found, that God made man upright. But they have sought out many schemes. After theologically explaining man's original righteousness, the righteousness of the state wherein man was created, Boston turned to describe the happy concomitance and consequences of it. He said this, man in his state of innocence was then a very glorious creature. Man had a lightsome, a pleasant countenance, a picture of just being radiant and at peace and happy. There was no darkness of sin in him at all. The Apostle said this, surely that spiritual attractiveness or beauty which the Lord put upon man and his creation made him a very glorious creature. Oh, how did light shine in his holy conversation to the glory of the Creator. There was no impurity to be seen. No squint look in the eyes after any unclean thing. The tongue spoke nothing but the language of heaven. Man was the favorite of heaven. He shone brightly in the image of God, who cannot but love his image wherever it appears. His communion and fellowship were with God in that immediately. Man had a life of pure delight and unalloyed pleasure in this state. Rivers of pleasure ran through it. The earth and the produce thereof was now in its glory. Nothing had yet come in to mar the beauty of the creatures. Man's delights were pure. His pleasures refined. Wisdom had entered into his heart. Knowledge was pleasant to his soul. But how much more exquisite pleasure Adam had when his eyes read the book of God's works. And above all, his knowledge was of God, and that as his God. And the communion he had with him couldn't but afford him the most refined and exquisite pleasure in the innermost recesses of the heart. While Boston, in his section on the state of innocence as he lays before us, just the beauty, the wonder, of the state of innocence, the glory of it. He concludes with some applications, and this is what he does in each section of his work. He says, a right understanding of man's state of innocence leads to the awareness that not God, but man himself is the cause of his ruin. God made man upright, citing Ecclesiastes. Man threw himself down. When we understand this, Boston says, We will grieve the fall. And Boston uses a couple of analogies to press this home. He says, here was once a stately building, man carved like a fair palace, but now lying in ashes. Let us stand in the ruins and drop a tear. Could we avoid weeping if we saw? our country ruined and turned by the enemy into a wilderness? If we saw our houses on fire and our property perishing in the flames? But all of this comes far short of this dismal sight, man fallen as a star from heaven. How the faithful city has become a whore. Once the dwelling of righteousness, but now a den of murderers. How we are fallen. Nevertheless, Boston encourages as he concludes, there is hope concerning this. Come then, O sinner, look to Jesus Christ, the second Adam. Quit the first Adam. Come over to the mediator and surety of a new and better covenant. On his second section on the state of nature, Boston delves into and considers our fallen condition. He opens by saying, We have seen what man was as God made him a lovely and happy creature. Let us now view him as he has unmade himself, and we will see him a sinful and miserable creature. Boston would work through Genesis 6, 5, and other passages. You consider these three themes, the sinfulness of man's natural state, the misery of man's natural state, and then man's utter inability. to recover himself. Again, we see that as much as the Fourfold State is a theological treatise in this section, we see that it's a sermon series. It's a godly preacher by grace shepherding the souls of his flock. And he uses just very practical applications, proofs of the sinfulness of man's natural state. Here's one of them. He says, When God is speaking to men by his word, or they are speaking to him in prayer, doesn't the mind often leave them before the Lord? Like so many idols that have eyes and see not, and ears but hear not. Also said the carcass is laid down before God, but the world gets away the heart. Though the eyes are closed, the man sees a thousand vanities. The mind, in the meantime, is like a bird gotten loose out of a cage, skipping from bush to bush, to the effect that man never comes to himself until he is gone from the presence of the Lord. Boston went on to really probe the hearts of his hearers. Don't say that it's impossible to get the mind fixed. It's hard indeed, but not impossible. Grace from the Lord can do it. Psalm 108.1, and agreeable objects will do it. A pleasant speculation can arrest the minds of the inquisitive. The worldly man's mind is in little hazard of wandering when he's contriving his business, figuring out his accounts, or counting his money. Boston said people have no problem fixing their minds on anything but God. He says, if you talk to a worldly man who's busy in his own thoughts, he doesn't answer you at first. He tells you he didn't hear you. He was busy. His mind was fixed. Were we admitted into the presence of a king to petition for our lives, we would be in no hazard of gazing through the chamber at his presence. But here lies the case. The carnal mind employed about any spiritual good is out of its element. and therefore it cannot fix. However hard it is to keep the mind on good thoughts, it sticks like glue to that which is evil and corrupt like itself." Another quote, what pain and difficulty men often find in bringing their hearts to religious duties. It's a pain to the carnal heart to leave the world, but a little to come before God. Men are soon wearied of well-doing, for holy duties are not agreeable to their corrupt nature. He talks about the Sabbath. How heavily, how slowly, tediously does it pass? Well, a prayer, a sermon, or a Sabbath lasts. The Lord's Day is the longest day of the week for many. There, therefore, they have to sleep longer in the morning and go to bed sooner at night than they ordinarily do, so that the day might be made a tolerable length. And then he says, when the duty of worship is over, they are like men, eased of a burden. How easily men are led to sin. Boston didn't hesitate to thoroughly challenge his congregation head on. He said, I have a charge against every unregenerate man and woman, young and old, to be proved by the scripture and their own consciences. whether professing Christians or profane, seeing that they are not born again. They are heart enemies to God, to the Son of God, to the Spirit of God, to the law of God. Hear this, you careless souls that live at ease in your natural state. You are enemies of God in your mind, in your hearts. As an unholy creature, you cannot love the unspotted holiness of God. As he reflects on the enmity of a heart against Christ. Speaking to believers he says this, let none of us think lightly of sin which lays the sinner open to the wrath of God. Let not the sin of our nature seem a small thing in our eyes. Fear the Lord because of his dreadful wrath. Tremble at the thought of sin against which God has such fiery indignation. Admire the matchless love which brought you out of the state of wrath. It was no easy work to purchase the life of a condemned sinner, but he gave his life for your life." Well, Boston concludes this state of nature reflecting on the utter inability of man to deliver himself from his estate of sin and misery. It then turns to the third section, the state of grace. Here, Boston opens up by describing God's sovereign, gracious work of regeneration. And Boston notes this, a really beautiful contrast with the fallen, dead condition of man. It says, by the regenerating power of the spirit accompanying the word, a change takes place. in the former spiritually dead, hard-hearted, rebel sinner. A multi-faceted, supernatural change. He's born of the Spirit. He's given a new heart. It's a change into the likeness of God. A gracious change is a thorough change. But, though every part of the man is renewed, there is no part of him yet perfectly renewed. Among other aspects of this change, Boston notes this, now the man is illumined in the knowledge of God. He's enlightened in the knowledge of sin. He's instructed in the knowledge of himself. He's enlightened in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, in the vanity of the world. His will is renewed. The Lord takes away the stony heart and gives a heart of flesh. Regenerating grace is powerful and efficacious. It gives the will a new turn. Indeed, it doesn't force it, but sweetly yet powerfully draws it so that his people are willing in the day of his power. The will is cured of its utter inability to will what is good. And there's created in the will a fixed aversion to evil and a new inclination, a bent, a propensity to good. In regeneration, there's also a happy change made on the affections. They're now regulated. They're rectified. The conscience is renewed. The memory is bettered. The use of the body itself is changed. And there's even a change, Boston notes, in the company that we keep, in the company of the man. All through this marvelous, supernatural work of regeneration by the Spirit. He goes on to say, by what is said, you might try whether you're in the state of grace or not. You will say, how shall we know? I say to you, were you to ask me if the sun was risen and how you should know whether it was risen or not, I would ask you to look into the heavens and see it with your own eyes. He goes on and he calls the hearers to examine their hearts. Do you have these inclinations? Do you have these desires? Is your heart changed? Do you sorrow over sin? Do you hate evil? Do you love Jesus Christ? Do you love God? Do you love, do you hunger for what is holy? Where are your affections? Where is your will? Where is your mind? And he pastorally walks through a number of different cases he deals with indwelling sin in the heart. Really walks through a number of excellent pastoral advices. It's really rich material here for us to read, to reflect on in relation to our own hearts. Well, Boston also deals with, of course, union with Christ, and he talks about the change from union with Adam to union with Christ. He really goes on in this section as well to tenderly and pastorally deal with questions that his hearers might have. He calls his hearers to join with him in wonder and worship to consider the benefits of union with Christ. He begins with justification. Being united to Christ, the Christian has communion with him in his righteousness. We receive pardon of sin, personal acceptance as being righteous in God's sight. Then Boston goes on to describe the further benefits of union with Christ. Peace with God, peace of conscience, adoption as the sons of God. sanctification, growth in grace, fruitfulness, and the acceptance of fruits of believers before the Lord. Other benefits of union with Christ include what Boston calls establishment. By that he means really perseverance. The Christian perseveres because he is preserved. And the benefits of what he calls the benefits of support. He talks about how if you're a branch now engrafted into Christ, it is Christ who supports you, who bears you. He talks about how Christ supports his people in their outward troubles and their inner discouragements and difficulties. A final benefit of union with Christ is what Boston calls the special care of the husbandman or the farmer, the vine dresser. And he cites, I am the true vine. My father is the husbandman. Every branch that bears fruit, he prunes, that it may bear more fruit." And Boston goes on to say, this is done especially by the word, the ministry of the word, but also through crosses or afflictions. And Boston sees this as a benefit of union with Christ, that we also take up our own cross as we follow Christ. Boston sees the cross of the individual believer both as a pursuit of self-denial in love to Christ and love to God, as well as God's use of providences to cause sins in our lives to be put to death. From the state of grace, Boston now turns to the eternal state. As I mentioned earlier, Boston really widened his approach from the typical four-fold state of the Christian to the four-fold state of man. Why he calls it the fourfold state of man. This is what he does in the eternal state as well. Here he begins with death. He really confronted his hearers who suffered from the perennial human condition that we too easily ignore death. We forget this reality. He takes Job 30.23 as his text. For I know you will bring me down to death. to the place appointed for all the living. As he preaches through this section, it's no doubt with his own scenery in mind, the fast running and suddenly plunging brooks of the Scottish hill country. Boston said this, man's life is a stream, running and then plunging into death's devouring depths. just suddenly flowing along quickly and suddenly plunging off the precipice. Those who live in palaces must quit them and go to this house, the house of death. Those who have nowhere to lay their heads will here have a house at last. It's appointed for all by him whose counsel shall stand. It's a long time since death began to transport men into another world and vast multitudes are gone there already, yet the work is still going on. Death is carrying off new inhabitants daily to the house appointed for all living. The bold and the daring can't outbrave it, nor can the faint-hearted be discharged from this war." Again, in pastoral Christian fashion, Boston really presses his hearers to improve on this knowledge, to make use of the awareness of impending death, of our impending deaths, as a gracious means to alter the way we think and live, a means of sanctification for the believer. And he also applies it to challenge false notions of permanence and idolatries of self-serving in the sinful heart. Boston turns to Proverbs 14.32. He says, When calamity comes, the wicked are brought down, but even in death the righteous have hope. And here he begins to pull apart the difference between the righteous and the wicked in their death. He says, The life of the wicked is brought to a forcible stop by God. Death commonly comes on the wicked unexpectedly. It seizes them and surprises them as the flood surprised the old world. It always seizes them unprepared. Death hurries them away in a moment to destruction. Death drags away the unrepentant like an unwilling criminal to execution. Death will take no refusal. It will not admit of any delay, even though a man thinks by his own computation that he hasn't lived half his days. Boston presses that having lived as enemies to God, the wicked die in a state of enmity with God. Death for the wicked is utter hopelessness. utter hopelessness. And so Boston challenges us, take heed that you entertain no hope of heaven except what is built on a solid foundation. Now he turns to comfort the believer. He turns to note that the state of the godly in death is full of hope. The believer, as a trusty good friend before him in the other world. Jesus Christ, their best friend, is the Lord of the land to which death carries them. Their judge is their advocate. 1 John 2, 1. We have an advocate with the Father Jesus Christ, the righteous. Therefore, you who trust in Christ, Boston says, you need not fear falling into condemnation. Even better, Boston says, your advocate He's your Redeemer. You're redeemed with the precious blood of Christ. When he pleads for you, he is pleading his own cause. The Redeemer is your head. You are a member of his body. And he speaks of how when the believer dies, the soul is immediately carried into the presence of the Lord in glory. The believer has the Lord of the land's safe conduct. His pass through death is sealed with the blood of Christ. The blessed covenant is the saint's deathbed comfort. Who can harm them? He says, it is safe to ride through death in Christ's chariot. Death can do them no harm. It cannot even hurt their bodies. Though it separate the soul from the body, it cannot separate even the body from the Lord Jesus Christ. The bodies continue members of Christ, though in the grave their dust is precious dust. Laid up in the grave is in the Lord's cabinet. They lie in the grave mellowing as precious seed to be brought forth at the resurrection. The farmer has corn in his barn and corn in the ground. The latter is more precious to him. Even so, the dead bodies of saints are valued by the Savior. They are sown in corruption to be raised in incorruption, sown in dishonor to be raised in honor. Boston goes on to say, Our Lord Jesus Christ has abolished death for his people. The soul and life of it is gone. For his people it is but a shadow. It may cause fear to them, but it cannot hurt them. They will have a joyful entrance into the other world. The dying day of the saints is a good day. Yes, it is his best day. It is a better day than the day of his birth. or the most joyous day that he ever had on earth. It is the day of pilgrims coming home, the day when they enter the Father's house. Much as in other sections of his work, Boston goes on to pastorally deal with cases where death is hard, where it's difficult for the child of God. He notes three in specific. He says first if death seizes us when we're in the guilt of unrepented sin. And that's on our conscience. That's a difficult death for a saint. If it happens suddenly in a state of backsliding or when the believer has lost sight of the free and full sufficiency of Christ. Salvation in Christ in each case Boston really tenderly and at times firmly gives counsel. It's just a great section. I just think we should be reading this. We should be giving this to those who we love and know who are facing death. Encouraging them or taking this, meditating on it, using it as pastoral counseling material to encourage one another and to search our hearts. Are you, am I, ready for the day that we breathe our last breath, that we pass through the veil, to stand in the glorious presence of Jesus Christ. Well, from death, Boston turns to the last things, and we don't have time to cover them in detail, but he goes through the resurrection, the general judgments of the saints and of the reprobate, and he speaks of the kingdom of heaven And then he ends with speaking of hell. And he does that particularly because of the passages, scripture passages that he was expositing. He ends with that. He ends very soberly on that note. Now Boston's not above critique. Philip Ryken has noted, and rightly so, that in Boston's sermons on hell at times he gets rather illustrative beyond what's revealed in scripture. But again, Certainly he is expounding scripture. At times he uses some graphic descriptions, which may be true, but are not revealed. But yet he probes and he warns and he challenges. And reading this section on hell is a sober, sober check for ourselves. And I think ought to stir up our hearts to have a greater compassion for the lost around us. as we start to see this world again in light of eternal realities rather than, as Boston mentioned, so quickly forgetting altogether about death and what lies beyond us and what is coming very, very quickly towards us and towards our neighbors and our friends and our co-workers. We do not have time to touch on all the details of this this morning, but let me close with Boston's closing words on the eternal state. Boston says this, If you would be saved from the wrath that is to come, and never go into the place of torment, to hell, take no rest in your natural states. Believe the sinfulness and misery of it, and labor to get out of it quickly by fleeing to Jesus Christ in faith. Sin in you is the seed of hell. And if the guilt and reigning power of it are not removed in time, they will bring you to a second death in eternity. There is no way to get this seed of hell removed, by receiving Christ as he is offered in the gospel for justification and sanctification. And he is now offered to you with all his salvation. Behold, I come quickly, and my reward is with me, to give every man according to what he has done. And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him who hears say, Come. and let him who is thirsty come. And whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely. Jesus Christ is the mediator of peace and the fountain of holiness. He is the one who delivers us from the wrath to come. There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. The terrors of hell and the joys of heaven stand before you to stir you up, to receive Him with all His salvation, to receive Him who is the second Adam, and to direct you to the way of faith and holiness. Amen. Let's pray together. Our Father in heaven we thank you for the riches of your grace. We thank you and praise you for the way that you've used men in the past, the way that you've transformed them by the supernatural work of your word and spirit. We thank you for the way that you use Thomas Boston and his generation to preach your word, to warn, to challenge, to expose. to encourage, to love, to direct men, women, and children to you, to your dear son as the only Savior and Redeemer and as the willing Savior and Redeemer. Oh God, we pray that each one of us here would by your grace be men, women, children who are resting in you, who are looking to you, who are living by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Lord if any of us aren't if we deceived ourselves in some way or were nominal we pray that you would use this message the other messages to wake us up to make sure that we are right with you. We are in union with your son. Lord we pray that you would encourage those of us who can, by your grace, see and say, yes, Lord, come quickly. Lord, what a supernatural work of your grace, what a marvel it is, what a wonder it is that you have graciously brought us out of our state of sin and misery and death to a state of grace and that there is so much more yet to come. Lord, we thank you and praise you. Pray that you would bless us, that you would make us all the more zealous and delighted and thankful and joyful and happy in serving you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.