Part 156 HOLINESS, the Only Way to Happiness
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Part 157 HOLINESS, the Only Way to Happiness
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[3.] Times of personal AFFLICTIONS are times wherein God calls aloud for holiness. When the rod of God is upon our backs, it highly concerns us to look that our wordsare full of grace, and that all our ways and works are full of holiness.
Now God looks that his people should be divinely fearful of offending him, and divinely careful in pleasing of him, and divinely willing to resign up themselves to him, and divinely patient in waiting on him, and divinely humble in submitting to him, and divinely wise in justifying of him, and divinely resolute in serving of him. Heb. 12:10, "God afflicts us for our profit, that we might be made partakers of his holiness."
Why, they were before partakers of his holiness, that is true; and these words declare that the great reach and design of God, in all the afflictions that he brings upon his people, is to make them more and more holy; and therefore for Christians to be proud under the rod, and carnal under the rod, and worldly under the rod, and froward under the rod, and stupid under the rod, and wanton under the rod, andwicked under the rod—is to cross and frustrate the great design of God in afflicting of them. In afflictions God looks that his people should shine brighter and brighter, and grow better and better, and holier and holier. Oh, there is nothing which pleases God more, which delights God more, which affects God more, or that wins upon God more—than to see his people a holy people in the days of their afflictions!
Jer. 2:2-3, "Go, and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, saying—Thus says the Lord—I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the desert, through a land not sown. Israel was holy to the Lord, the firstfruits of his harvest; all who devoured her were held guilty, and disaster overtook them." God was wonderfully affected and taken with the love of his people, and with the kindness of his people, and with the holiness of his people—when they were in their wilderness condition.
Look! as starsshine brightest in the darkest nights, and as torches are the better for beating, and spices the sweeter for pounding, and young trees the faster rooted for shakings, and vines the more fruitful for bleeding, and gold the more glittering for scouring; just so, God looks that his children's graces should shine brightest in the darkest nights of afflictions, he looks that his children should be the better for his fatherly beating, and the sweeter for being pounded in the mortar of affliction, and the faster rooted in grace and holiness, by all divine shakings, [Well waters are hottest in winter.] etc.
In times of affliction God looks that his children should be true salamanders, which live best in the fire. Where afflictions hang heaviest, he looks that there corruptions should hang loosest; he looks that that grace and holiness which lies hidden in nature, as sweet water does in rose leaves, should then be most fragrant, when the fire of affliction is put under, to distill it out, etc. But,
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