PART 1-Reproof To Such As Are Not True Wrestlers

  First.  This may reprove such as wrestle; but against whom? against God, not against sin and Satan.  These are bold men indeed, who dare try a fall with the Almighty; yet such there are, and a woe [is] pronounced against them, Isa. 45:9 ‘Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker.’  It is easy to tell which of these will be worsted.  What can he do but break his shins that dasheth them against a rock?  A goodly battle there is like to be, when thorns contest with fire, and stubble with flame.  But where live those giants that dare enter the list with the great God? What are their names, that we may know them, and brand them for creatures above all other unworthy to live?  Take heed, O thou who askest, that the wretched man whom thou seekest so to defy, be not found in thy own clothes itself.  Judas was the traitor, though he would not answer to his name, but put it off with a ‘Master, is it I?’  And so mayest thou be the fighter against God.  The heart is deceitful.  Even holy David, for all his anger, was so hot against the rich man, that took away the poor man’s ewe-lamb, that he bound it with an oath, [that] the man should not live who had done it, yet proves at last to be himself the man, as the prophet told him, II Sam. 12. Now there are two ways wherein men wrestle against God.  1. When they wrestle against his Spirit,  2. When they wrestle against his providence.

1. When the wrestle against his Spirit.  We read of the Spirit striving against the creature, ‘My spirit shall not always strive with man,’ Gen. 6:3, where the striving is not in anger and wrath to destroy them —that God could do without any stir or scuffle—but a loving strife and contest with man.  The old world was running with such a career headlong into their ruin, [that] he sends his Spirit to interpose, and by his counsels and reproofs to offer, as it were, to stop them and reclaim them; as if one seeing another ready to offer violence on himself, should strive to get the knife out of his hand, with which he would do the mischief; or one that hath a purse of gold in his hand to give, should follow another by all manner of en­treaties, striving with him to accept and take it.  Such a kind of strife is this of the Spirit's with men.  They are the lusts of men—those bloody instruments of death, with which sinners are mischieving themselves —that the Holy Spirit strives by his sweet counsels and entreaties to get out of our hands.  They are Christ's grace and eternal life [that] he strives to make us accept at the hands of God's mercy; and for repulsing the Spirit thus striving with them, sinners are justly counted fighters against God.  ‘Ye stiff­necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost,’ Acts 7:51.  Now there is a twofold striving of the Spirit, and so of our wrestling against it.

   (1.) The Spirit strives in his messengers with sinners.  They coming on his errand, and not their own, he voucheth the faithful counsels, reproofs, and exhortations which they give us as his own act. [What] Noah, that preacher of righteousness, said to the old world is called the preaching of the Spirit, I Peter 3:19.  The pains that Moses, Aaron, and other servants of God took in instructing Israel, is called the instruction of the Spirit, Neh. 9:20; so that when the word, which God's ministers bring in his name, is rejected, the faithful counsels they give are thrown at sinners' heels and made light of; then do they strive with the Spirit, and wrestle against Christ as really, as if he visibly in his own person had been in the pulpit, and preached the same sermon to them.  When God comes to reckon with sinners, it will prove so.  Then God will rub up your memories, and mind you of his striving with you, and your unkind resisting him.  They, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear, shall know here hath been a prophet among them, Eze. 2:5.  Now men soon forget whom and what they hear.  Ask them what was pressed upon their consciences in such a sermon.  They have forgot.  What were the precious truths laid out in another? —and they are lost.  And well were it for them if their memories were no better in another world; it would ease their torments more than a little.  But then they shall know they had a prophet among them, and what a price they had with them in their hands, though it was in fools’ keeping.  They shall know what he was, and what he said, though a thousand years past, as fresh as if it were done but last night.  The more zealous and compassionate, the more painful and powerful he was in his place, the greater shall their sin be found, to break from such holy violence of­fered to do them good.  Surely God will have some­thing for their sweat, yea, lives of his servants which were worn out in striving with such rebellious ones. May be yet, sinners, your firmament is clear, no cloud to be seen that portends a storm; but know, as you use to say, winter does not rot in the clouds; you shall have it at last.  Every threatening which your faithful ministers have denounced against you out of the Word, God is bound to make good.  He con­firmeth the word of his servant, and performeth the counsel of his messengers, Isa. 44:26, and that in judgment against sinners, confirming the threatenings, as well as in mercy performing the promises, which they declare as the portion of his children.  But it will be time enough to ask such on a sick-bed, or a dying hour, whether the words of the Lord delivered by their faithful preachers have not taken hold of them.  Some have confessed with horror [that] they have; as the Jews—‘Like as the Lord of hosts thought to do unto us, so hath he dealt with us,’ Zech. 1:6.