The Gospel’s Blessing of Peace PREPARES THE SAINT FOR TRIALS 2/2

           The Israelites when ready to take their march out of Egypt into a desolate wilderness, where they should be put to many plunges, and their faith tried to purpose; to prepare them the more for these, he entertains them at a gospel supper before they go forth—I mean the passover, which pointed to Christ. And no doubt the sweetness of this feast made some gracious souls among them, that tasted Christ in it, endure the hardship and hunger of the wilderness the more cheerfully.  And the same care and love did our Lord Jesus observe in the institution of his supper, choosing that for the time of erecting this sweet or­dinance when his disciples’ feet stood at the brink of a sea of sorrows and troubles, which his death and the consequences of it would inevitably bring upon them. Now the pardon of their sins, sealed to their souls in the ordinance must needs be welcome, and enable them to wade through their sufferings the more comfortably.  Indeed, the great care which Christ took for his disciples, when he left the world, was not to leave them a quiet world to live in, but to arm them against a troublesome world.  And to do this, he labours to satisfy their poor hearts with his love to them, and his father’s love to them for his sake; he bequeaths unto them his peace, and empties it in the sweet consolations of it into their bosoms; for which end he tells them, as soon as he got to heaven, he would pray his Father to send the Comforter to them with all speed, and sends them to Jerusalem, there to stay privately, and not go into the field, or openly contest with the angry world, till they received the strength and succour which the Spirit in his comforts should bring with him.  By all which it doth abundantly appear how powerful this gospel peace is to en­able the soul for suffering.

           Now I proceed to show how this peace doth prepare the heart for all sufferings.  And that it doth these two ways.  First. As it brings along with it, and possesseth the soul where it comes, with such glorious privileges as lift it above all danger and damage from any sufferings whatever from God, man, or devils.  Second. As it is influential unto the saint’s graces and affections, exciting them, and making them act to such a height, as lifts the Christian above the fear of trouble and suffering

The Gospel’s Blessing of Peace PREPARES THE SAINT FOR TRIALS 1/2

The peace which the gospel brings and speaks to the heart, will make the creature ready to wade through any trial or trouble that meets him in his Christian course.  He who enjoys in his bosom the peace of the gospel, is the person and the only person, that stands shod for all ways, prepared for all troubles and trials.  None can make a shoe to the creature’s foot, so as he shall go easy on a hard way, but Christ.  He can do it to the creature’s full content.  And how doth he {do} it?  Truly by no other way that by underlaying it, or, if you will, lining it, with the peace of the gospel.  What though the way be set with sharp stones? if this shoe go between the Christian’s foot and them, they cannot much be felt.  Solomon tells us that ways of wisdom,—that is, Christ—‘are ways of pleasantness.’  But how so, when some of them are ways of suffering?  The next words resolve it; ‘and all her paths are peace,’ Prov. 3:17.  Where there is peace—such peace as peace with God and conscience—there can want no pleasure.  David goes merry to bed when he hath nothing to supper but the gladness that God by this puts into his heart, and promiseth himself a better night’s rest than any of them all that are feasted with the world's cheer; ‘Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that their corn and their wine increased.  I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep,’ Ps. 4:7, 8.  This same peace with God enjoyed in the conscience, redounds to the comfort of the body.  Now David can sleep sweetly when he lies on a hard bed.  What here he saith he would do, he saith he had done: ‘I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the Lord sustained me,’ Ps. 3:5.  The title of the psalm tells us when David had this sweet night’s rest, not when he lay on his bed of downs in his stately palace at Jerusalem, but when he fled for his life from his unnatural son Absalom, and possibly was forced to lie in the open field under the canopy of heaven.  Truly it must be a soft pillow indeed that could make him forget his danger, who then had such a disloyal army at his back hunting of him.  Yea, so transcendent is the sweet in­fluence of this peace, that it can make the creature lie down as cheerfully to sleep in the grave as on the softest bed.  You shall say that child is willing that calls to be put to bed.  Some of the saints have de­sired God to lay them at rest in their beds of dust; and that not in a pet and discontent with their present trouble, as Job did, but from a sweet sense of this peace in their bosoms.  ‘Now let thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation,’ was the swan-like song of old Simeon.  He speaks like a mer­chant that had got all his goods on shipboard, and now desires the master of the ship to hoist sail and be gone homewards.  Indeed what should a Christian, that is but a foreigner here, desire to stay any longer for in the world, but to get this full lading in for heaven?  And when hath he that, if not when he is assured of his peace with God?  This peace of the gos­pel, and sense of the love of God in the soul, doth so admirably conduce to the enabling of a person in all difficulties, and temptations, and troubles, that ordin­arily before he calls his saints to any hard service or hot work, he gives them a draught of this cordial wine next their hearts, to cheer them up, and embolden them in the conflict.  God calls Abram out of his native country, Gen 12:1, and what so fit as a promise of Christ to bring his heart to God’s foot? ver. 2, 3.  A sad errand it was that sent Jacob to Padan-aram.  He fled from an angry wrathful brother, that had murdered him already in his thoughts, to an unkind, de­ceitful, uncle, under whom he should endure much hardship.  Now God comes in a sweet gospel vision to comfort this poor pilgrim; for by that ‘ladder, whose foot stood on earth, and top reached heaven,’ Christ was signified to his faith, in whom heaven and earth meet, God and man are reconciled; and, by the ‘moving up and down of the angels on the ladder,’ the ministry of the angels, which Christ by his death and intercession procures for his saints, that they shall tend on them, as servants on their master’s children. So that the sum of all is as much as God had said, ‘Jacob, thy brother Esau hates thee, but in Christ I am reconciled to thee, thy uncle Laban, he will wrong thee, and deal hardly by thee, but fear him not.  As I am in Christ at peace with thee so through him thou shalt have my especial care over thee, and the guardianship of the holy angels about thee, to defend thee wherever thou goest.’