Argument. IV. As the covenant sorts and ranks all your troubles into their proper classes and places
is; and nothing can be so advantageous to you, as God's projects and contrivance, which you are so uneasy under, and dissatisfied about.
Argument. IV. As the covenant sorts and ranks all your troubles into their proper classes and places of service, so it secures the special, gracious presence of God with you in the deepest plunges of distress that can befal you; which presence is a full relief of all your troubles, or else nothing in the world is or can be so.
The very heathens thought themselves well secured against all evils and dangers, if they had their petty household-gods with them in their journeys: but the great God of heaven and earth hath engaged to be with his people, in all their afflictions and distresses. As a tender father sits up himself with his sick child, and will not leave him to the care of a servant only; so God thinks it not enough to leave his children to the tutelage and charge of angels, but will be with them himself, and that in a special and peculiar way: so run the express words of the covenant, Jer. 32:40. "I will not turn away from them to do them good, but I will put my fear into their hearts; and they shall not depart from me." Here he undertakes for both parts, himself and them. I will not, and they shall not.
Here is the saints security for the gracious presence of God with them, a presence which dispels all the clouds of affliction and sorrow, as the sun scatters the morning mists. The God of all consolation is with you, O poor dejected believers, and will not such a presence turn the darkness into light round about you? There is a threefold presence of God with his creatures.
1. Essential, which is common and necessary to all.
2. Gracious, which is peculiar to some on earth.
3. Glorious, which is the felicity of heaven.
The first is not the privilege here secured; for it is necessary to all, good and bad: In him we all live, and move, and have our being. The vilest men on earth, yea, the beasts of the field, and the very devils in hell, are always in this presence of God, but it is their torment, rather than their privilege. The last is proper to the glorified saints and angels. Such a presence embodied saints cannot now bear; but it is his special gracious presence which is made over and secured to them in the covenant of grace; and this presence of God is manifested to them two ways.
1. Internally, by the Spirit.
2. Externally, by Providence.
1. Internally, by the Spirit of grace dwelling and acting in them, this is a choice privilege to them in the day of affliction: for hereby they are instructed and taught the meaning of the rod, Psal. 94:12.
"Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, and teachest him out of thy law." O it is a blessed thing to be taught so many lessons by the rod, as the Spirit teacheth them! Surely they reckon it an abundant recompense of all that they suffer. "It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn thy statutes," Psal. 119:71. Yea, he refreshes as well as teaches, and no cordials revive like his. "In the multitude of the thoughts I had within me, thy comforts delight my soul," Psal. 94:19.
Yea, by the presence and blessing of his Spirit, our afflictions are sanctified to subdue and purge out our corruptions. "By this shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged, and this is all the fruit to take away sin,"
Isa. 27:9. Now, if a man be instructed in the ends and designs of the rod, refreshed and comforted under every stripe of the rod, and have
his sins mortified and purged by the sanctification of the Spirit upon his afflictions; then both the burdensomeness and bitterness of his afflictions are removed, and healed by the internal presence of the Spirit of God with his afflicted ones.
2. Besides this, God is providentially present with his people, in all their troubles, in a more external way; ordering all the circumstances of their troubles to their advantage. He orders the degree and extent of our afflictions, still leaving us some mercies and comforts to support and refresh us, when others are cut off. In measure doth he debate with his covenanted people, staying the rough wind in the day of the east-wind, Isa. 27:8. He might justly smite all our outward comforts at once, so that affliction should not rise up the second time: for what comfort soever hath been abused by sin, is thereby forfeited into the hand of judgment. But the Lord knows our inability to sustain such strokes, and therefore proportions them to our strength. We have some living relations to minister comfort to us when mourning over our dead: He makes not a full end of all at once.
Yea, and his providence supports our frail bodies, enabling them to endure the shocks and storms of so many afflictions, without ruin.
Surely there is as much of the care of Providence manifested in this, as there is in preserving poor crazy leaking barks, and weatherbeaten vessels at sea, when the waves not only cover them, but break into them, and they are ready to founder in the midst of them.
O what a singular mercy is the gracious presence of God with men! even the special presence of that God, "who is above all, and through all, and in you all," as the apostle speaks, Eph. 4:6. Above all, in majesty and dominion; through all, in his most efficacious providence; and in you all, by his grace and Spirit. As he is above all, so he is able to command any mercy you want, with a word of his mouth; as he is through all, so he must be intimately acquainted with
all your wants, straits, and fears; and as he is in you all, so he is engaged for your support and supply, as you are the dear members of Christ's mystical body.
Objection. But methinks I hear Gideon's objection rolled into the way of this sovereign consolation: "If God be with us, why is all this evil befallen us?"
Solution. All what? If it had been all this rebellion and rage against God, all this apostasy and revolting more and more, all this contumacy and hardness of heart under the rod; then it had been a weighty and stumbling objection indeed: but to say, If God be with us, why are all these chastening corrections and temporal crosses befallen us? why doth he smite our bodies, children or estates? is an objection no way fit to be urged by any that are acquainted with the scriptures, or the nature and tenor of the covenant of grace. Is afflicting and forsaking all one with you? must God needs hate, because he scourgeth you? I question whether Satan himself hath impudence enough to set such a note or comment upon Heb. 12:6.
"For whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth."
No, no, Christian, it is not a chastening rod, but the denying of such a favour, and suffering men to sin with impunity, and go on prosperously in the way of their own hearts, that speaks a rejected man, as the next words, ver. 7 inform you. As he never loved you the better for your prosperity, so you may be confident he loves you never the less for your adversity: and will not this close and heal the wounds made by affliction? What, not such a promise as this, I will be with him in trouble, Psal. 91:15. Will not such a presence revive thee? What then can do it! Moses reckoned that a wilderness with God, was better than a Canaan without him, "If thy presence go not