A Peculiar People 2
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But the path of the just is one in which spirituality at times breathes forth out of carnality, life at times enjoys blessed deliverance out of death, fruitfulness at times overcomes barrenness, light at times bursts forth out of darkness, mercy at times overcomes guilt, love at times casts out fear, and hope at times repels despondency. Here we come to that which is peculiar to the quickened elect--we touch upon peculiar workings, peculiar traces; here we begin to discern the stamp of the Holy Spirit, as distinct from all the religion of the flesh, and all the delusions and deceits of the wicked one.
But those who have no grace are very glad to hide themselves under the wing of a minister; and when they hear him speak of deadness, carnality, barrenness, unbelief, and doubt--"Ah!" say they, "he is tracing out my experience now; oh! I can come in there; there is a little nibble for me". But what is he tracing out? Not the work of God in the soul, not the work of the Spirit upon the conscience; but that carnality, barrenness, and death, which all men have--merely the work of the flesh, and not the work of the Spirit of God.
But God's people have also peculiar exercises under TEMPTATIONS. To have temptations is no mark of being a child of God, because men in the world have temptations. What makes the pick-pocket dip his fingers into the coat of the passer-by? Temptation to theft. What makes the drunkard steal into the gin palace? The love of drink. What brings the felon to the gallows? Temptation to murder.
Therefore the existence of temptation and the power of temptation is no proof of being a child of God; but the proof of being a child of God is what are the feelings and exercises of the soul under temptations, how the living principle is manifested by working against and under temptations. Is there any pain? Does temptation cause distress? Is there a sigh and cry to God for deliverance? Does the renewed spirit groan and heave exceedingly beneath the heavy weight of it? Are there occasional deliverances from it? Is mercy manifested in pardoning the soul that has been entangled in it? Is the grace of God blessedly glorified in healing the backslidings that temptations have caused? Is there a stretching forth of the arms of faith to embrace the cross of Christ as the only refuge from temptation? Now we come to life.
But if you conclude yourself to be a child of God because you are tempted, it is but a deceiving of yourself. It is a dreadful delusion of the devil to set up temptation as an evidence of grace, without the exercises of the soul under temptation, without the burdens of temptation, without the bitter sighs and cries under temptation, without deliverance out of temptation. To set up temptations in themselves as way-marks is nothing else but to obscure the road which the Holy Spirit has traced out in the Word of God, and which the Holy Spirit traces out in the consciences of the living family.
2. But again, these peculiar people have peculiar DELIVERANCES. And after all, friends, say what we may about doubts and fears, and convictions, and distresses, and sore temptations, and painful exercises, I am well convinced that the grand soul-satisfying evidence is deliverance.
Does the prisoner, when he is confined in the dark cell, feel an evidence that he shall come abroad by looking at the prison bars? Does the trembling criminal standing upon the gallows, and reaching forth his anxious eyes over the crowd, if he can see the king's messenger riding at full speed with a pardon in his hand, conclude that he shall be respited because he feels the halter pinching his neck? No; it is deliverance which is the testimony; it is the king's pardon which sets him free; it is the unrolling of the document signed by the hand of the king, that detaches the noose from his neck, and sends him forth once more among his fellows as a living man.
And so it is with a child of God that is exercised with distressing fears, that feels the agonizing throes of despair in his soul, that seems suspended over eternity by a hair. He needs deliverance, he needs pardon, he needs a testimony, he needs the manifestation of God's mercy to his soul. "Well," but say some, "if this be the case, if there is no evidence to be traced in doubts and fears, if sin and corruption and temptation are not marks of grace, what in the world makes you and other ministers preach them? Why do not you leave them all alone, and exalt a glorious Christ? and why not be done with all these temptations and corruptions?" I will tell you why.
Suppose that I had lost my way in going to a place which I very anxiously wished to reach, and I inquired of a person whom I can trust, which road leads to it. He tells me, and he says, "I will give you a mark to know the road by; it is very hilly, it is very rough, it is very rugged and stony; there are many pits and sloughs in it, and above all, the road is very dirty". I listen to his instructions; I thank him for his advice, and I start forth. But I come to a road as smooth as a bowling-green; I find not one large pebble on the road; everything is easy to my feet. I say to myself, "this cannot be the road; I was told the road had stones in it, and hills and pitfalls, and mud and mire--surely I must be out of the road". But if I find at last a road which is very hilly, and very rough and rugged, and I now and then sink up to my shoes in the mud and mire, and everything which I find in the road tallies with the description which my informant has given me, I say, "I am in the road now; it is just as I was told; here I am in the right road".
Well, the Word of God has traced out the road to heaven as a road of this nature, a rough and thorny road, full of difficulties, exercises, straits and temptations; and if you read the eleventh chapter of Hebrews you will have a description of the travelers there--what trials and temptations they pass through.
Then, mark this--the mud, the mire, the stones, the hills, the valleys, are not the road, but they lie in the road. Could they be swept away, the road would be the same; but they are there, and we must travel through them. So with the mud and mire of my heart, the unbelief, and pride, and presumption, and hypocrisy of my fallen nature, the sharp arrows that Satan shoots, the temptations that the world spreads, the opposition of professors, the persecution of the world, the doubts and fears of my own mind--if I am to walk in the strait and narrow path that leads to eternal life, I must pass through these.
These are not evidences, but still they are so inseparable from the road, that though they are not the road itself, they so lie in the road that if I walk in that road I must walk through them. Then that is the reason why those who desire to take the stumbling-blocks out of the way of God's people, and to be sons of consolation to the poor in Zion, talk of doubts, and fears, and exercises, and temptations, and griefs, and sorrows; that they may strengthen the living family who are struggling in this rough and miry road--for a living foot will toil on though in the mud, when a dead carcass would sink in it without a struggle.
For after all, deliverance is the grand evidence. To be sweetly blessed with a view of Jesus; to have the pardon of sin sealed upon the soul; to catch a sight of that glorious robe which covers and shrouds the guilty criminal; to have one's eye open to see Jesus; to look into His bosom; to see His tender heart beating with compassion; and to feel the atoning drops of His blood falling into our conscience, to purge it and to cleanse it from all guilt and sin--that is the evidence, that is the soul-satisfying testimony, and that which brings into the heart the peace of God which passes all understanding.
None but the elect can ever have this evidence, and I will tell you another thing, none but the elect ever desire to have it. I cannot believe in my conscience that anyone but a vessel of mercy that is quickened by the Holy Spirit ever pants with unutterable pantings after the sweet visitations of the love of God, after the revelation of Christ's presence, and the applications of His atoning blood. I am sure I never dreamt of such things, or cared for such things, and would have derided them as enthusiasm, and trampled them under foot, as nothing but the fanaticism of bigoted minds, until the Lord led me into these feelings, as I trust, by His own powerful and blessed teaching in my soul.
3. But again– this peculiar people will have peculiar marks stamped upon them EXTERNALLY, as well as have peculiar marks internally. They will be separate from the world; they will have no communion beyond what business requires, with the men of this life, who have no fear of God in their heart, no grace of God in their soul. They will be separated, as God from time to time calls them, from the 'dead profession' of the day; they will have no real fellowship or communion except with the spiritually taught family; they will bear an honest testimony against error of every shape and form; and they will obey strictly that precept, 'Come out from among them, and be separate says the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing.'
That is what I have been obliged to do from compulsion; not carnal compulsion, but from inward spiritual compulsion. Who has been wrapped up in stronger folds than I? cradled as it were in everything contrary to the truth of God, swathed round with the strongest swaddling bands of prejudice, steeped up to the lips in worldliness, pride, and ignorance; wrapped round with as many grave-clothes of death as an Egyptian mummy, so that nothing but the hand of God could tear away these folds upon folds, and bring me into anything like uprightness and integrity of heart, and separate me from all that I was entangled in, and from all that I was connected with.
I know, then, from personal experience, that there is an inward power communicated, whereby we obey the precept, 'Come out from among them, and be separate, and touch not the unclean thing', and prefer the reproach of Christ to all the riches of Egypt. When in my right mind, I would rather have the testimony of God in poverty and obscurity, than have the testimony of man with all that the world can bestow.
Again, in the peculiar people there will be HONESTY, UPRIGHTNESS, AND INTEGRITY. I am ashamed to say it (for it is a blot upon the professing Church), but say it I must, that I myself have known much more honesty and integrity, a truer sense of honor, more uprightness in worldly dealings, stricter punctuality and straightforwardness in all pecuniary matters, in men of the world who make no profession, than in some of those who pride themselves upon being the people of God. But I believe, wherever the grace of God is in a man's heart, it will make him honest, not merely before God, but honest before men. No shuffling, no evasion, no swindling, no cheating, can ever exist in a regenerate heart.
There is honesty, implanted by God Himself, who searches the heart and tries the thoughts in every conscience which He has made alive by breathing life into it out of Christ's fullness. It is a black mark against you to be dishonest. Lowliness, trickery, and evasion come not from God. He that dwells in the light which no man can approach unto, will communicate to your soul some measure of His own uprightness. Let us have common honesty, friends; let us have integrity. Let not the world say, "These professors of religion will cheat us if they can." Let us have something like honor and something like uprightness, that we may not bear the stigma which the world would be glad to throw upon us.
4. Again--where God Himself has stamped us as His peculiar people, there will be marks visible to the church of God; there will be a gentleness, a tenderness, a meekness, a contrition, a softness of spirit. There will not be a pouring forth of the venom and enmity of our carnal mind against all that oppose us; there will be no clambering to get to the topmost seat; there will be no elbowing and thrusting people here and there, that we may be admired and bowed down to; but there will be humility, and a meekness, and a contrition, and a yielding submission and tenderness of spirit, whereby we are willing to be anything so long as were are dear children of God. And we shall come sometimes to David's spot, when he said he would rather be a door-keeper in the house of the Lord, than dwell in the tents of wickedness.
Here is the mirror. Look into it. Can you see your features? You say, "I have no doubt of election?" Probably not. But has God certified you of your own election? You say, "I believe all the doctrines you preach; my father was a Calvinist; I was always brought up to Dissent, and I have received the doctrines of grace from infancy?" Very likely. But did God Himself ever seal and apply these truths with power to your soul? Those that are born of the Spirit, we read, are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God (John 1:13). Has He stamped His own mark upon your spirit, engraved His own likeness upon your soul, brought you into any measure of conformity to the Son of His love, and raised up in your heart some resemblance to Himself?
I believe many of God's people, if not most have much ado to make their calling and election sure (II Peter 1:10). They are not a people to take things for granted; they cannot sit at ease and say, "I have no doubt that I am a child of God"; they want something powerful, something applied, something spoken by the mouth of God Himself, and short of that they must be exercised with doubts and fears as to their state before Him. Now let conscience speak; let us turn over the leaves of conscience. What says that faithful witness? Has God spoken with power to your soul? Has He pardoned your sins? Has He given you a sweet testimony of your saving interest in the Son of His love? You say, "Why, I do not know that I can say all that, I do not know that God has pardoned my sins". Well, we will come a little lower then--if you cannot say that, we will take a little lower ground; can you say that you are sighing and groaning and crying at times--not always, but as the Lord works in you, for the sweet manifestations of the love of Jesus to your souls? Here is a door open for you--the door of hope in the valley of Achor. Can you come in here? Well, these are marks of being one of God's peculiar people. But you cannot be satisfied, short of God Himself making it known to you--you need an immediate testimony from His blessed mouth, and nothing but that can satisfy you; and when He sheds abroad His love in your soul, it will give you peace and comfort, and nothing short of that can.
But remember, there is no middle place. How glad thousands would be if there were a place between heaven and hell! O! could they but find purgatory to be true, and have some medium spot! "They are not good enough," they say, "for heaven; but surely they are not bad enough for hell!" O, could they but find some place between the two! But there is none. There is a great gulf fixed (Luke 16:26) between Abraham and Dives--there is no intermediate spot. It is either a peculiar people ordained to eternal glory, or a people foreordained to everlasting perdition; it is either being interested in the love and blood of the Redeemer, or it is being under the tremendous wrath and curse of God to all eternity; it is either standing complete in Christ, wrapped up in His righteousness and washed in His blood, or it is to howl in torments through endless ages; it is either to be blessedly caught up into the bosom of God, or thrust down into the habitations of the damned.
And therefore, there being such a tremendous gulf between the one and the other, it will make the child of God quake at times, and fear, and tremble to the center, whether he has an evidence that God is his Father, that Christ is his Elder Brother and that the Holy Spirit is his Teacher. But he will never get any solid satisfaction until God Himself drops a testimony from His own mouth, gives him the spirit of adoption to cry Abba, Father, unveils His face in Christ Jesus, and seals blood and love in his conscience. Then he enters into his rest, and feels the peace of God which passes all understanding, (Phil. 4: 7); he is sealed as an heir of God and joint heir with Christ (Rom. 8:17), and when he dies he will forever be with Him whom his soul loves.
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