USE OR APPLICATION OF: That ye may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all, to stand Eph. 6 13 3/3

2. Betroth thyself to Christ.  The covenant of grace is the jointure which God settles only upon Christ’s spouse.  Rebekah had not the jewels and costly raiment till she was promised to become Isaac’s wife, Gen 24:53.  ‘All the promises of God are yea’ and ‘amen’ in Christ.  If once thou receivest Christ, with him thou receivest them.  He that owns the tree hath right to all the fruit that is on it.  Now, that thou mayest not huddle up a marriage between Christ and thee, so as to be disowned of Christ, and it prove a nullity at last, it behoves thee to look to it, that there be found in thee what Christ expects in every soul that he espouseth.  First, therefore, consider whether thou canst heartily love the person of Christ.  Look wishly on him again and again, as he is set forth in all his spiritual excellences.  Are they such as thy heart can close with?  Doth his holy nature, and all those heavenly graces with which he is beautified, render him desirable to thee? or couldst thou like him better if he were not so precise and exactly holy?  Yea, is thy heart so inflamed with a desire of him, that thou canst love him with a conjugal love?  A woman may love one as a friend, whom she cannot love so as to make him her husband.  A friendly love may stand with a love of some other equal to it, yea, superior, but a conjugal love is such as will bear neither.  Canst thou find in thy heart to forsake all other, and cleave to Christ?  Does thy heart speak thee ready, and present thee willing, to go with thy sweet Jesus, though he carry thee from father, and father’s house? Is thy confidence such, of his power to protect thee from all thy enemies—sin, wrath, and hell—that thou canst resolvedly put the life of thy soul into his hands, to be saved by the sole virtue of his blood, and [by the] strength of his omnipotent arm; and of his care to provide for thee for this life and the other, that thou canst acquiesce in what he promiseth to do for thee?  In a word, if thou hast Christ, thou must not only love him, but for his sake all thy new kindred, which by thy marriage to him thou shalt be allied unto.  How canst thou fadge to call the saints thy brethren? canst thou love them heartily, and forget all the old grudges thou hast had against them?  Some of them thou wilt find poor and persecuted, yet Christ is not ashamed to call them brethren, neither must thou.  If thou findest thy heart now in such a disposi­tion as suits these interrogatories, I dare not but pro­nounce Christ and thee husband and wife.  Go, poor soul—if I may call so glorious a bride poor—go and comfort thyself with the expectation of the Bride­groom’s coming for thee; and when the evil day approaches, and death itself draws nigh, look not now with terror upon it, but rather revive, with old Jacob, to see the chariot which shall carry thee over unto the embraces of thy Husband, whom thou hearest to be in so great honour and majesty in heaven, as may assure thee he is able to make thee welcome when thou comest there.  Amongst the ‘all things’ which are ours by being Christ’s, the apostle forgets not to name this to be one, ‘Death is ours.’  And well he did so, or else we should never have looked upon it as a gift, but rather as a judgment.  Now soul, thou art out of any danger of hurt that the evil day can do thee.  Yet there remains something for thee to do, that thou mayest walk in the comfortable expectation of the evil day. We see that gracious persons may for want of a holy care, fall into such distempers as may put a sting into their thoughts of the evil day.  David, that at one time would not fear to ‘walk in the valley of the shadow of death,’ is so affrighted at another time when he is led towards it, that he cries, ‘Spare me,’ O Lord, ‘that I may recover my strength, before I go hence,’ Ps. 39:13.  The child, though he loves his father, may do that which may make him afraid to go home.  Now, Chris­tian, if thou wouldst live in a comfortable expectation of the evil day,

(1.) Labour to die to this life, and the en­joyments of it, every day more and more.  Death is not so strong to him whose natural strength has been wasted by long pining sickness, as it is to him that lies but a few days, and has strength of nature to make great resistance.  Truly thus it is here.  That Christian whose love to this life and the contents of it, hath been for many years consuming and dying, will with more facility part with them than he whose love is stronger to them.  All Christians are not mortified in the same degree to the world.  Paul tells us he died daily.  He was ever sending more and more of his heart out of the world, so that by that time he came to die, all his affections were packed up and gone, which made him the more ready to follow:^[7] ‘I am ready to be offered up,’ II Tim. 4:6.  If it be but a tooth to pull out, the faster it stands the more pain we have to draw it.  O loosen the roots of thy affections from the world, and the tree will fall more easily.

(2.) Be careful to approve thyself with diligence and faithfulness to God in thy place and calling.  The clearer thou standest in thy own thoughts concerning the uprightness of thy heart in the tenure of thy Christian course, the more composure thou wilt have when the evil day comes.  ‘I beseech thee, O Lord,’ saith good Hezekiah, at the point of death as he thought, ‘remember now, how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight,’ II Kings 20:3.  This can­not be our confidence, but it will be a better compan­ion than a scolding conscience.  If the blood be bad, the spirits will be tainted also.  The more our life has been corrupted with hypocrisy and unfaithfulness, the weaker our faith will be in a dying hour.  There is a great difference between two children that come home at night, one from the field, where he hath been diligent and faithful about his father’s work, and another that hath played the truant a great part of the day; the former comes in confidently to stand before his father, the other sneaks to bed and is afraid his father should see him, or ask him where he hath been.  O sirs, look to your walking.  These have been as trying times as ever came to England.  It has required more care and courage to keep sincerity than formerly.  And that is the reason why it is so rare to find Christians—especially those whose place and calling have been more in the wind of temptation—go off the stage with a plaudite—praise ye—of inward peace in their bosoms.

(3.) Familiarize the thoughts of the evil day to thy soul.  Handle this serpent often.  Walk daily in the serious meditations of it.  Do not run from them because they are unpleasing to the flesh; that is the way to increase the terror of it.  Do with your souls, when shy of and scared with the thoughts of affliction or death, as you used to do with your beast, that is given to bogle and start as you ride on him.  When he flies back and starts at a thing, you do not yield to his fear and go back, that will make him worse another time, but you ride him up close to that which he is afraid of, and in time you break him off that quality.  The evil day is not such a scareful thing to thee that art a Christian, as that thou shouldst start for it.  Bring up thy heart close to it.  Show thy soul what Christ hath done to take the sting out of it, what the sweet promises are that are given on purpose to overcome the fear of it, and what thy hopes are thou shalt get by it.  These will satisfy and compose thy spirit; whereas the shunning the thoughts of it will but increase thy fear, and bring thee more into bondage to it.

USE OR APPLICATION OF: That ye may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all, to stand Eph. 6 13 2/3

Use Third. This reproves those who—much against their will, and by reason of an awakened conscience, that is ever pinching of them, and preach­ing on Paul’s text before Felix to them, till it makes them tremble as he did—think indeed often of this evil day; yet such is the power of lust in their hearts, that it makes them spur on, notwithstanding all the rebukes conscience gives them, and affrighting thoughts they have of the evil day, yet they continue in their old trade of sin desperately.  These wretches are the objects of our saddest pity.  The secure sinner, that has broke prison from his conscience, is like a strong-brained drunkard, he swallows down his sin, as the other doth his drink, with pleasure, and is not stirred at all.  But here is a man that is stomach-sick, as I may say, his conscience is oft disgorging his sweet draughts, and yet he will sin, though with pain and anguish.  O consider, poor wretches, what you do! Instead of arming yourselves against the evil day, you arm the evil day against yourselves; you are sticking the bed with pins and needles, on which you must ere long be laid; you are throwing billets into that fiery furnace, wherein at last you shall be cast; and all this in spite of your consciences, which yet God mercifully sets in your way, that the prickings of them may be a hedge of thorns, to keep thee from the pursuit of thy lusts.  Know therefore, if thou wilt go on, that as thy conscience takes from the pleasure of thy sin at pres­ent, so it will add to the horror of thy torment hereafter.

Use Fourth. It reproves those who, though they are not so violent and outrageous in sin, [as] to make them stink above ground in the nostrils above others, yet rest in an unarmed condition.  They do not fly to Christ for covering and shelter against the day of storm and tempest, and the reason is, they have a lie in their right hand, they feed on ashes, and a deceived heart carries them aside from seeking after Christ.  It would make one tremble to see how confident many are with their false hopes and self-confidences. Daring to come up—as Korah with his censer, as un­dauntedly as Moses himself—even to the mouth of the grave, till on a sudden they are swallowed up with destruction, and sent to be undeceived in hell, who would not be beaten from their refuges of lies here. Whoever thou art, O man, and whatever thou hast to glory in, were it the most saint-like conversation that ever any lived on earth, yet if this be thy shelter against the evil day, thou will perish.  No salvation when the flood comes, but Christ; yea, being in Christ, hanging on the outside of the ark by a spe­cious profession, will not save.  Methinks I see how those of the old world ran for their lives, some to this hill, and others to that high tree, and how the waves pursued them, till at last they were swept into the de­vouring flood.  Such will your end be, that turn any other way for help than to Christ; yet the ark waits on you, yea, comes up close to your gate to take you in. Noah did not put forth his hand more willingly to take in the dove, than Christ doth to receive those who fly to him for refuge.  O reject not your own mercies for lying vanity.

Use Fifth. Let it put thee upon the inquiry, whoever thou art, whether thou beest in a posture of defence for this evil day.  Ask thy soul soberly and solemnly, ‘Art thou provided for this day, this evil day?’ how couldst thou part with what that will take away, and welcome what it will certainly bring? Death comes with a voider to carry away all thy carnal enjoy­ments, and to bring thee up a reckoning for them.  O canst thou take thy leave of the one, and with peace and confidence read the other?  Will it not affright thee to have thy health and strength turned into faint­ness and feebleness, thy sweet nights of rest into wa­king eyes and restless tossings up and down, thy voice that has so often chanted to the viol, to be now ac­quainted with no other tune but sighs and groans?  O how canst thou look upon thy sweet and dear rela­tions with thoughts of removing from them? yea, be­hold the instrument, as it were, whetting, that shall give the fatal stroke  to sever soul and body?  Think that thou wert now half dead in thy members that are most remote from the fountain of life, and death to have but a few moments' journey before it arrive to thy heart, and so beat thy last breath out of thy body. Possibly the inevitable necessity of these do make thee to harden thyself against them.  This might indeed, in some heathen, that is not resolved whether there be another world or no, help a little to blunt the edge of that terror, which otherwise would cut deeper in his amazed heart; but if thou believest another world, and that judgment which stands at death’s back, ready to allot thee thy unchangeable state in bliss or misery, surely thou canst not relieve thy awak­ened conscience with such a poor cordial.  O there­fore think what answer thou meanest to give unto the great God at thy appearing before him, when he shall ask thee, ‘What thou canst say, why the sentence of eternal damnation should not then be pronounced against thee?’  Truly we deal unfaithfully with our own souls, if we bring not our thoughts to this issue. If now you should ask how you should provide against the evil day, so that you may stand before that dread­ful bar, and live so in the meantime that you might not be under a slavish bondage through the fearful expectation of it, take it in a few directions.

1. If ever you would have a blessed issue of this evil day, so as to stand in judgement before the great God, rest not till thou hast got into a covenant-relation with Christ.  Dying David’s living comfort was drawn from the covenant God had made with him—this was all his desire, and all his salvation. How canst thou put thy head into the other world without horror, if thou hast not solid ground that Christ will own thee for his?  Heaven hath its heirs, and so hath hell.  The heirs of heaven are such as are in covenant with God.  The foundation of it was laid in a covenant, and all the mansions there are pre­pared for a people in covenant with him: ‘Gather my saints together that have made a covenant with me.’ But how mayest thou get into this covenant-relation? First break thy covenant with sin.  Thou art by nature a covenant-servant to sin and Satan.  May be thou hast not expressly in words, and formally, as witches, sealed this covenant, yet virtually, as thou hast done the work of Satan, and been at the command of thy lusts, accepting the reward of unrighteousness—the pleasure and carnal advantages they have paid thee in for the same—therein thou hast declared thyself to be so.  Now if ever thou wilt be taken into covenant with God, break this.  A covenant with hell and heaven cannot stand together.

USE OR APPLICATION OF: That ye may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all, to stand Eph. 6 13 1/3

Use First. It reproves those that are so far from providing for the evil day, that they will not suffer any thoughts of that day to stay with them.  They are as unwilling to be led into a discourse of this subject, as a child to carried into the dark, and there left.  It is a death to them to think of death, or that which leads to it.  As some foolishly think [that] they must needs die presently when they have made their will, so these think they hasten that sorrowful day by musing on it. The meditation of it is no more welcome to them, than the company of Moses was to Pharaoh.  There­fore they say to it as he to Moses, ‘Get thee from me, and let me see thy face no more.’  The fear of it makes them to butcher and make away all those thoughts which conscience stirs up concerning it. And at last they get such a mastery of their consciences, that they arrive at a kind of atheism.  It is as rare to have them think or speak of such matters, as to see a fly busy in winter.  Nothing now but what is frolic and jocund is entertained by them.  If any such thoughts come as prophesy mirth and carnal content, these, as right with their hearts, are taken up into the chariot to sit with them, but all other are commanded to go behind.  Alas, poor-spirited wretches! something might be said for you, if this evil day of death and judgement were such entia rationis—fictions of the imagination, as had no foundation or being but what our fancies give them.  Such troubles there are in the world, which have all their evil from our thoughts. When we are disquieted with the scorns and re­proaches of men, did we but not think of them, they were nothing.  But thy banishing the thoughts of this evil day from thy mind, will be a poor short relief. Thou canst neither hinder its coming, nor take away its sting when it comes, by thy slighting it.  Thou art like a passenger in a ship, asleep or awake thou art going thy voyage. Thou dost but like that silly bird, that puts her head into a reed, and then thinks see is safe from the fowler, because she sees him not.  Thou art a fair mark for God's vengeance; he sees thee, and is taking his aim at thee, when thou seest not him. Yea, thou puttest thyself under an inevitable necessity of perishing, by not thinking of this day.  The first step to our safety, is consideration of our danger.

Use Second. It reproves those who, if they think of the evil day, yet [do] so [only as so] far off, that it is to little purpose.  They will be sure to set it at such a distance from them, as shall take away the force of the meditation, that it shall not strike them down in the deep sense and fear of it.  That cannon which, if we stood at the mouth of it, would shatter limb from limb, will not so much as scare them that get out of its reach.  The further we put the evil day, the weaker impression it makes on us.  It is true, say sinners, it cannot be helped.  We owe a debt to nature; it must be paid.  Sickness will come, and death follow on that, and judgment brings up the rear of both.  But, alas! they look not for these guests yet, they prophesy of these things a great while hence to come.  Many a fair day they hope will intervene.  Thus men are very kind to themselves.  First, they wish it may be long before it comes, and then, because they would have it so, they are bold to promise themselves it shall be so; and when once they have made this promise, no won­der if they then live after the rate of their vain hopes, putting off the stating of their accounts, till the winter evening of old age, when they shall not have such al­lurements to gad abroad from the pleasures of this life.  O then they will do great matters to fit them for the evil day.  Bold man! who gave thee leave to cut out such large thongs of that time which is not thine but God's?  Who makes the lease, the tenant or the landlord? or dost thou forget thou farmest thy life, and art not an owner?  This is the device of Satan, to make you delay; whereas a present expectation of the evil day would not let you sit still unprepared.  O why do you let your souls from their work, make them idle and rest from their burdens, by telling them of long life, while death chops in upon you unawares?  

O what shame will your whorish hearts be put to—that now say, your husband is gone afar off, you may fill yourselves with loves—if he should come before he is looked for, and find you in bed with lusts?  And let me tell you, sudden destruction is threatened, espe­cially to secure ones.  Read that scripture where it is denounced against that sort of sinners, who please themselves with their Lord’s delaying his coming, [declaring] that ‘the lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour he is not aware of,’ Matt. 24:48,50,51.  Indeed God must go out of his ordinary road of dealing with sinners, if such escape a sudden ruin.  One is bold to challenge any to show a precedent in Scripture of any that are branded for security, that some remarkable, yea, sud­den judgement did not surprise.  [In the case of those in] Sodom, how soon after a sunshine morning the heavens thicken, and bury them in a few hours, by a storm of fire, in their own ashes?  Careless Laish is cut off before they almost think of it.  Agag, when he saw the clouds of his fears break, and fair weather was in his countenance, they return immediately upon him, and shut him up in death, he is presently hewn in pieces.  Amalek [is] slaughtered by David, before the triumph of their late victory was cold. Nebu­chadnezzar is strutting himself in his palace with this bravado in his mouth, ‘Is not this great Babylon that I have built?’ Dan. 4:30; and before he can get the words out of his throat, there is another voice falling from heaven, saying, ‘O king Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken, the kingdom is departed from thee.’ And, ‘the same hour was the thing fulfilled,’ ver. 32,33, and he sent to graze with the beasts.  Dives blesses himself for many years, and within a few hours the pillow is plucked from under his head, and you hear no more of him till out of hell he roar; yea, a whole world, few persons excepted, [is] drowned, and they ‘knew not till the day the flood came and swept them all away,’ Matt. 24:39.  And who art thou, O man, that promisest thyself an exemp­tion, when kings, cities, a whole world, have been ruined after this sort?

That ye may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all, to stand Eph. 6 13

   

The Argument with which he urgeth the Exhortation.

 ‘That ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand,’  Eph. 6:13.

We come to the argument with which the apostle urgeth the exhortation, and that is double.  FIRST. The first hath respect to the hour of battle—‘that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day.’  SECOND. The second to the happy issue of the war, which will crown the Christian thus armed, and that is certain victory—‘and having done all, to stand.’

                             First Argument—This hath respect to the Hour of Battle. ‘That ye may be able to withstand in the evil day.’

But what is this evil day?  Some take this evil day to comprehend the whole life of a Christian here below in this vale of tears, and then the argument runs thus:—Take to yourselves the whole armour of God, that you may be able to persevere to the end of your life, which you will find, as it were, one con­tinued day of trouble and trial.  Thus Jacob draws a black line over his whole life—‘few and evil have the days of the years of my life been,’ Gen. 47:9.  What day shines so fair that overcasts not before night, yea, in which the Christian meets not with some shower or other, enough to deserve the name of an evil day? Every day hath its portion, yea, proportion.  Suffi­cient is the evil of the day; we need not borrow and take up sorrows upon use of the morrow, to make up our present load.  As we read of ‘daily bread,’ so [also] of a ‘daily’ cross, Luke 9:23, which we are bid to take, not to make.  We need not make crosses for ourselves, as we are prone to do; God in his provi­dence will provide one for us, and we are bid to take it up, but we hear nothing of laying it down, till cross and we lie down together.  Our troubles and our lives are coetaneous; [they] live and die together here. When joy comes, sorrow is at its heel—staff and rod go together.  Job himself, that good man, whose pros­perity the devil so grudged, and set forth in all his bravery and pomp, Job 1:10, as if his sun had no shadow, hear what account he gives of this his most flourishing time, ‘I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet;’ Job 3:26.  There were some troubles that broke his rest; when his bed was, to thinking, as soft as heart could wish, even then this good man tosses and tumbles from one side to the other, and is not quiet.  If one should have come to Job and blessed him with his happy condition, and said, ‘Surely, Job, thou couldst be content with what thou hast for thy portion, if thou mightest have all this settled on thee and thy heirs after thee;’ he would have said, as once Luther, ‘that God should not put him off with these.’  Such is the saints’ state in this bottom, that their very life here, and all the pompous entertainments of it, are their cross, because they detain them from their crown. 

We need nothing to make our life an evil day, more than our absence from our chief good, which cannot be recompensed by the world, nor enjoyed with it.  Only this goodness there is in this evil, that it is short.  Our life is but an ‘evil day,’ it will not last long.  And sure it was mercy that God hath abridged so much of the term of man’s life in these last days—days wherein so much of Christ and heaven are discovered, that it would have put the saints’ patience hard to it, to have known so much of the upper world's glory, and then be kept so long from it, as the fathers in the first age were.  O comfort one another, Christians, with this: Though your life be evil with troubles, yet it is short—a few steps, and we are out of the rain.  There is a great difference between a saint in regard of the evils he meets with, and the wicked, just as between two travellers riding contrary ways—both taken in the rain and wet—but of whom one rides from the rain, and so is soon out of the shower, but the other rides into the rainy corner—the farther he goes, the worse he is. The saint meets with troubles as well as the wicked, but he is soon out of the shower—when death comes he has fair weather; but the wicked, the farther he goes the worse—what he meets with here is but a few drops, the great storm is the last.  The pouring out of God's wrath shall be in hell, where all the deeps of horror are opened, both from above of God’s righteous fury, and from beneath of their own accusing and tormenting consciences

Others take the phrase in a more restricted sense, to denote those particular seasons of our life wherein more especially we meet with afflictions and sufferings.  Beza reads it tempore adverso—in the time of our adversity.  Though our whole life be evil, if compared with heaven’s blissful state; our clearest day, night, to that glorious morning; yet one part of our life, compared with another, may be called good, and the other evil.  We have our vicissitudes here. The providences of God to his saints here, while on this low bottom of earth, are mixed and parti-coloured, as was signified by the ‘speckled’ horses, Zech. 1:8, in Zechariah’s vision—red and white, peace and war, joy and sorrow, checker our days.  Earth is a middle place betwixt heaven and hell, and so is our state here; it partakes of both.  We go up hill and down, till we get to our journey’s end, yea, we find the deepest slough nearest our Father’s house—death, I mean—into which all the other troubles of our life fall, as streams into some great river, and with which they all end, and are swallowed up.  This being the comprehensive evil, I conceive it is meant here, being made remarkable by a double article, that day, that evil day; not excluding those other days of tribulation which intervene.  These are but so many petty deaths, every one snatching away a piece of our lives with them, or like pages sent before to usher in this king of terrors that comes behind.

The phrase being opened, let us consider the strength of this first argument, with which the apostle reinforceth his exhortation of taking to ourselves the whole armour of God, and that consists in three weighty circumstances.

First.  The nature and quality of this day of af­fliction, it is an evil day.  Second. The unavoid­ableness of this evil day of affliction implied in the form of speech, ‘that you may withstand in the evil day.’  He shuts out all hope of escaping; as if he had said, You have no way to withstand, please not your­selves with thoughts of shunning battle, the evil day must come, be you armed or not armed.  Third. The necessity of this armour, to withstand.  As we cannot run from it, so [we cannot] bear up before it, and oppose the force which will be made against us, ex­cept clad with armour.  These would afford several points, but for brevity we shall lay them together in one conclusion.