Exhortation To Get On This Shoe Of Preparation

         

    Use Second. Be exhorted all you that take the name of Christ upon you, to get this shoe of preparation on, and keep it on, that you may be ready at all times to follow the call of God's providence, though it should lead you into a suffering condition.  Take but two motives.

1. Motive.  Consider, Christian, suffering work may overtake thee suddenly, before thou art aware of it; therefore be ready shod.  Sometimes orders come to soldiers for a sudden march; they have not so much as an hour’s warning, but must be gone as soon as the drum beats.  And so mayest thou be called out, Christian, before thou art aware, into the field, either to suffer for God or from God.  Abraham had little time given him to deal with his heart, and persuade it into a compliance with God, for offering his son Isaac.  A great trial, and short warning, ‘Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac,’ Gen. 22:2, not a year, a month, a week hence, but now.  This was in the night, and Abraham is gone ‘early in the morning,’ ver. 3. How would he have entertained this strange news, if he had been then to gain the consent of his heart? But that was not now to do.  God had Abraham’s heart already, and therefore he doth not now dispute his order, but obeys.  God can make a sudden alteration in thy private affairs, Christian; how couldst thou in thy perfect strength and health, endure to hear the message of death?  If God should, before any lingering sickness hath brought thee into some ac­quaintance with death, say no more, but ‘Up and die,’ as once to Moses, art thou shod for such a journey?  Couldst thou say, ‘Good is the word of the Lord?’ What if one day thou wert to step out of honour into disgrace, to be stripped of thy silks and velvets, and, in vile raiment, called to act a beggar’s part?  Couldst thou rejoice that thou art made low, and find thy heart ready to bless the Most High?  This would speak thee a soul evangelically shod indeed.

           Again, God can as soon change the scene, in the public affairs of the times thou livest in, as to the gos­pel and profession of it.  May be, now, authority smiles on the church of God; but, within a while it may frown, and the storm of persecution arise.  ‘Then had the churches rest throughout all Judea,’ Acts 9:31. This was a blessed time.  But how long did it last? Alas! not long, see Acts 12.  There is sad news of a bloody persecution in the first verse of it.  ‘Now about that time Herod the king stretched forth his hands to vex certain of the church.’  In this persecution James the brother of John lost his life by his cruel sword; and Peter we find in prison, like to go to the same shambles.  The entire church, indeed, is driven into a corner to pray in the night together, ver. 12.  O what a sad change is here!  Now in blood, who even now had ‘rest’ on every side.  It is observed that in islands the weather is far more variable and uncertain than in the continent.  Here you may know, ordinarily, what weather will be for a long time together; but in islands, in the morning we know not what weather will be before night.  We have ofttimes summer and win­ter in the same day.  And all this is imputed to the near neighbourhood of the sea that surrounds them. The saints in heaven, they live, as I may so say, on the continent.  A blessed constancy of peace and rest is there enjoyed.  They may know by what peace and bliss they have at present, what they shall have to eternity.  But here below, the church of Christ is as a floating island, compassed with the world —I mean men of the world—as with a sea; and these [i.e. men of the world] sometimes blow hot, and sometimes cold; sometimes they are still and peaceable, and sometimes enraged and cruel, even as God binds up or lets loose their wrath.  Now, Christian, doth it not behove thee to be always in a readiness, when thou knowest not but in the next moment the wind may turn into the cold corner, and the times which now favour the gospel, so as to fill the sails of thy profession with all encouragement, on a sudden blow full on thy face, and oppose it as much as it did before countenance it?

2. Motive. Consider, if thy feet be not shod with a preparation to suffer for Christ here on earth, thy head cannot be crowned in heaven.  ‘If children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ,’ Rom. 8:17.  Now mark the following words, ‘If so be that we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified togeth­er.’  It is true, all the saints do not die martyrs at a stake; but every saint must have a spirit of martyrdom, as I may so call it—a heart prepared for suffering.  God never intended Isaac should be sacri­ficed, yet he will have Abraham lay the knife to his throat. Thus God will have us lay our neck on the block, and be, as Paul said of himself, ‘bound in the spirit,’ under a sincere purpose of heart to give up ourselves to his will and pleasure, which is called ‘a presenting our bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God,’ Rom. 12:1.  The end in view is, that as the Jew brought the beast alive, and presented it freely before him, to be done withal as God had commanded, so we are to present our bodies before God, to be disposed of as he commands, both in active and passive obedience.  He that refuseth to suffer for Christ, refuseth also to reign with Christ.  The putting off of the shoe among the Jews was a sign of a man’s putting off the right of an inheritance, Deut. 25:9, 10.  Thus did Elimelech’s kinsman, when he renounced and disclaimed any right that he might have in his estate—he drew off his shoe, Ruth 4:7, 8.  O Christian, Talk heed of putting off thy gospel shoe!  By this thou dost dis­claim thy right in heaven’s inheritance.  No portion is there laid up for any that will not suffer for Christ. The persecutions which the saints endure for the gos­pel, are made by Paul an evident token to them of salvation, and that of God, Php. 1:28.  Surely then the denying Christ, to escape suffering, is a sad token of perdition.  O sirs, is not heaven’s inheritance worth enduring a little trouble for it?  Naboth’s vineyard was no great matter, yet rather than he would—not lose it, but—sell it to its worth, or change it for a bet­ter in another place, chose to lay his life at stake by provoking a mighty king.  Thou canst, Christian, ven­ture no more for thy heavenly inheritance, than he paid for refusing his petty patrimony of an acre or two of land—thy temporal life I mean.  And besides the odds between his vineyard on earth and thy paradise in heaven —which is infinite, and suffers no proportion, thou hast this advantage also of him in thy suf­ferings for Christ.  When Naboth lost his life, he lost his inheritance also that he so strove to keep; but thy persecuting enemies shall do thee this friendly office against their wills, that when they dispossess thee of thy life, they shall help thee into possession of thy inheritance.