Exhortations To The Sinner To Embrace This Peace With God Offered, In The Gospel 3/5

(1.) In his contriving a way for reconciling sinners to himself.  What men strongly desire, they stretch their wits to the utmost how to accomplish. ‘The liberal man deviseth liberal things,’ Isa. 32:8.  It shows the heart exceeding large in charity, when a man shall sit down and study how he may find out ways for the exercise of his charity; whereas, most men, alas! beat their brains how they may save their purses and escape with giving as little as may be to the poor.  O what a rare invention hath God found out for showing mercy, which hath so many mysterious passages in it, that angels themselves are put hither to school, that by studying this mystery of God’s reconciling sinners to himself by Christ, they might know ‘the manifold wisdom of God!’ Eph. 3:10.

           (2.) By the early discovery he made of this to the sons of men.  He would go among us, for no sooner had man broken the peace, and taken up rebellious arms against his Maker, but the Lord's heart relented towards him, and could not let the sun go down on his wrath against him, but must, in the very same day that he sinned, let him hear of a Saviour, by preaching peace to him, in ‘the seed of the woman,’ Gen 3:15. Little did Adam think that God had such a message in his mouth for him, when he first heard him coming towards him, and for fear ran his head into a bush, meditating a flight from him, if he had known whither to have gone.  O, that ‘Adam, where art thou?’ sounded, no doubt, in his guilty ears, like the voice of an avenging God calling him, a malefactor, to execution!  But it proved the voice of a gracious God, com­ing, not to meet man in his way returning to him, but to seek him out, who had lost all thoughts of him, that he might give some ease to his own gracious heart, now full of mercy to his poor creature, by dis­closing to him the purposes of grace which he had there conceived towards him.  Surely his heart was very full, or else this would not have burst out so soon.

           (3.) The great ordinance of the gospel-ministry, which God hath set up in the church, on purpose to treat with sinners upon a peace, speaks his deep affection to the work, II Cor. 5:18.  One would have thought it had been enough to print his thoughts and purposes of mercy in the Scripture, though he had done no more.  Princes, when they put out a statute or law, expect all their subjects should inquire after it, and do not send one to every town, whose office shall be to give notice thereof, and persuade people to sub­mit to it.  Yet this the great God doth.  The minister’s work from one end of the year to the other, what is it but to beseech sinners to be reconciled to God?  And in this observe,

           (a) The persons he sends to preach.  Not angels, foreigners to our nature, who, though they wish us well, yet are not so intimately concerned in man’s fall, as to give them the advantage of preaching with those melting bowels, that God would have them filled with who go on his errand.  No, he sends men, with whom he may converse familiarly, creatures of like passions—whose nature puts them under the same depravation, temptation, condemnation with ourselves—who can, from the acquaintance they have with their own hearts, tells us the baseness of ours —from the fire of God’s wrath, which hath scorched them for their sins, [can] tell us the desert of ours, and the danger we are in by reason of them—as also, from the sweet sense that the taste of God’s love in Christ hath left on their souls, can commend the cheer and feast they invite us to upon their own knowledge.  Did not God, think you, desire good speed to his embassage when he chose such to carry it?

           (b) Observe the qualifications required in those he employs as ambassadors to offer peace to sinners.  ‘The servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves,’ II Tim. 2:24, 25.  O how careful is God that nothing should be in the preacher to prejudice the sinner’s judgment, or harden his heart, against the offer of his grace.  If the servant be proud and hasty, how shall they know the master is meek and patient?  God would have them do nothing to make the breach wider, or hinder a happy close betwixt him and them.  Indeed, he that will take the bird must not scare it.  A froward peevish messenger is no friend to him that sends him.  Sinners are not pelted into Christ with stones of hard provoking language, but wooed into Christ by heart-melting exhortations.