Every true believer hath peace of conscience in promisso—in the promise. And that we count as good as ready money in the purse, which we have sure bond for, Ps. 29:11. ‘The Lord will bless his people with peace.’ He is resolved on it, and then who shall hinder it? It is worth your reading the whole psalm, to see what weight the Lord gives to this sweet promise, for the encouragement of our faith in expecting the performance thereof; nothing more hard to enter into the heart of a poor creature—when all is in an uproar in his bosom, and his conscience threatening nothing but fire and sword, wrath and vengeance, from God for his sins—than thoughts or hopes of peace and comfort. Now, the psalm is spent is showing what great things God can do, and that with no more trouble to himself than a word speaking. ‘The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty,’ ver. 4. ‘It breaketh the cedars; it divideth the flames; it shaketh the wilderness; it maketh the hinds to calve.’ This God that doth all this, promiseth to bless his people with peace, outward and inward. For without this inward peace, though he might give them peace, yet could he never bless them with peace as he here undertakes. A sad peace, were it not, to have quiet streets, but cutting of throats in our houses? yet infinitely more sad is it to have peace both in our streets and houses, but war and blood in our guilty consciences. What peace can a poor creature taste or relish, while the sword of God’s wrath lies at the throat of conscience—not peace with God himself? Therefore Christ purchased peace of pardon, to obtain peace of conscience for his pardoned ones; and accordingly hath bequeathed it in the promise to them. ‘Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you,’ John 14:27. There, you see, he is both the testator to leave and the executor of his own will—to give out with his own hands what his love hath left believers; so that there is no fear, but his will shall be performed to the full, seeing himself lives to see it done.
Every believer hath this inward peace in semine—in the seed. ‘Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart,’ Ps. 97:11. Where sown, but in the furrows of the believer’s own bosom, when principles of grace and holiness were cast into it by the Spirit of God? Hence it is called ‘the peaceable fruit of righteousness,’ Heb. 12:11. It shoots as naturally from holiness as any fruit in its kind doth from the seed proper to it. It is indeed most true, that this seed runs and ripens into this fruit sooner in some than it doth in others. This spiritual harvest comes not alike soon to all, no more than the other that is outward doth. But here is the comfort, whoever hath a seedtime of grace pass over his soul, shall have his harvest-time also of joy. This law God hath bound himself to, as strongly as for the other; which are 'not to cease while the earth remaineth,’ Gen. 8:22; yea, more strongly, for that was to the world in general, not to every particular country, town or field in these, which may want a harvest, and yet God keep his word; but God cannot perform his promise, if any one particular saint should everlastingly go without his reaping time. ‘He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him,’ Ps. 126:6. And therefore you who think so basely of the gospel and the professors of it, because at present their peace and comfort is not come, know it is on the way to them, and comes to stay everlastingly with them; whereas your peace is going from you every moment, and is sure to leave you without any hope of returning to you again. Look not how the Christian begins, but ends. The Spirit of God by his convictions comes into the soul with some terrors, but it closeth with peace and joy. As we say of March, ‘It enters like a lion, but goes out like a lamb.’ ‘Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace,’ Ps. 37:37
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