VI. If you have met with the frowns of Providence, perhaps this has been the cause. When you have met with very sore rebukes and chastisements, that way of sin hath probably been your troubler. Sometimes God is exceedingly awful in his dealings with his own people n this world for their sins. Moses and Aaron were not suffered to enter into Canaan because they believed not God, and spake unadvisedly with their lips at the waters of Meribah. And how terrible was God in his dealings with David! What affliction in his family did he send upon him! One of his sons ravishing his sister, another murdering his brother, and having expelled his father out of his kingdom, openly in the sight of all Israel, and in the sight of the sun, defiling his father’s concubines on the top of the house, and at last coming to a miserable end? Immediately after this followed the rebellion of Sheba, and he had this uncomfortable circumstance attending the end of his life, that he saw another of his sons usurping the crown.
How awfully did God deal with Eli for living in the sin of not restraining his children from wickedness! He killed his two sons in one day, brought a violent death upon Eli himself, took the ark from him and sent it into captivity, cursed his house forever, and sware that the iniquity of his house should not be purged with sacrifice and offering forever, that the priesthood should be taken from him and given to another family, and that there should never be an old man in his family.
Is not some way of sin in which you live the occasion of the frowns and rebukes of Providence which you have met with? True, it is not the proper business of your neighbors to judge you with respect to events of providence. But you yourselves ought to inquire wherefore God is contending with you, Job 9:10.
VII. If death be terrible to you, perhaps this is the foundation of it. When you think of dying, you find you shrink back at the thought. When you have any illness, or when there is anything which seems any way to threaten life, you find you are affrighted by it. The thoughts of dying and going into eternity are awful to you. And that although you entertain a hope that you are converted. If you live in some way of sin, probably this is very much the foundation of it. This keeps your minds sensual and worldly, and hinders a lively sense of heaven and heavenly enjoyments. This keeps grace low, and prevents that relish of heavenly enjoyments which otherwise you would have. This prevents your having the comfortable sense of the divine favor and presence. And without that no wonder you cannot look death in the face without terror.
The way to have the prospect of death comfortable, and to have undisturbed peace and quiet when we encounter death, is to walk closely with God, and to be undefiled in the way of obedience to the commands of God. And that it is otherwise sometimes with truly godly persons, is doubtless frequently owing to their living in ways displeasing to God.
VIII. If you find by these things which have been proposed to you that you have lived in a way of sin, consider that if you henceforward live in the same way, you will live in known sin. Whether in time past it have been known sin or not, though you may have hitherto lived in it through ignorance or inadvertence, yet if now you be sensible of it, henceforward, if you continue in it still, it will not be a sin of ignorance, but you will be proved to be of that class of men who live in ways of known sin.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
