Meditations the Parable of the Prodigal Son, Chapter 20
CHAP. XX.
Representeth, How much it is in the nature of man, when convicted of sin, to have recourse to any thing, though never so vain, for ease, rather than unto God. Several Reasons or Causes from whence this comes to pass. The Application informing us, That Conviction is but a partial Conversion; and of what nature are all false Refuges. With divers Considerations moving us to beware of them; from the first Clause of the fifteenth Verse, And he went and joyned himself to a Citizen of that Countrey.
HAVING Considered the sinners misery, let us next see the course he takes for his relief, in the fifteenth Verse; And he went and joyned himself to a Citizen of that Countrey, and he sent him into his fields to feed Swine.
And here we have two things to be considered: 1. The project of this Prodigal for his relief in his great strait, He went and joyned himself to a Citizen of that Countrey. 1 Cor. 6.17. foreign in the Text foreign.The Greek word signifieth to glue together; so that he did, as it were, put himself as an Apprentice to him; the same word as is used to express our union with Christ. He that is joyned to the Lord, is one spirit.
2. There is the imployment the Citizen set him to, He sent him into his fields to feed Swine: mean and base service.
As to the first, you'l say, Who is meant by this Citizen?
It may be the Devil, Stella in Luc. James 3.15.or carnal Reason, which is from the Devil. So St. James speaks of wisdom that is sensual and devilish. The Devil is called the Prince of this world, John 4.30. 2 Cor. 4.4.and the God of this world. He is the Chief of this far Countrey; and to his service carnal and wicked men devote themselves: John 8.44.Ye are of your Father the Devil, and his lusts ye will do. The Devil hath wicked men at his beck; 2 Tim. 2.26.They are taken captive by him at his will.
2. Rom. 8.7.The carnal mind, which is enmity against God, sensual wisdom, which is of the Devil, James 3.15. This sent him not home to make his peace with his Father, but kept him in this far Countrey, though labouring under Famine. As Israel had rather return to Egypt, Numb. 14.4.that had been to them a house of Bondage, than go forward to Canaan, the good Land of Promise.
2. As to his imployment this Citizen set him about, it was base, He sent him into his fields to feed Swine; which was intolerable to a Jew, Lev. 11.7.to whom Swine were an abomination. It imports the drudgery that Satan puts natural men upon; they are his Vassals; he imployes them in very base work, 2 Tim. 2.….to do his lusts. As Turks do Christians who are their slaves, but with this difference; these are drudges against their will, those very willingly, Isa. 10.7.though they think not so; as it's said in another case of the Assyrians.
The scope and spiritual meaning of this part of the Parable is this; It sets forth 1. the sorry shifts that men under Conviction and pangs of Conscience, as to their sinful state, do commonly make to get any peace, and prevent their returning to God; any quiet from a brawling Conscience keeps them off from seeking peace with God. So that this is the first Doctrine, Doctr. That when natural men come under troublesome Convictions of sin, and sense of wrath, their way is to fly to any vain and sorry shifts for ease, and not to God. It's the use of such to make lies their refuge: It runs in the heart-veins of natural men: We have made lies our refuge; Isa. 28.15.and under falshood have we hid our selves. Like a man that is fallen into the water, he'l catch at any thing that is next to help him, though it do him no good.
If a meer Moralist fall under these Convictions at any time, Matth. 19.his sanctuary is, All these have I kept from my youth. If a Pharisee's Conscience check him, Luke 18.as it seldome does, his refuge is, I thank God I am not as other men, or as this Publican. If an ignorant Creature's conscience grumble, he betakes himself to his good meanings, 1 Sam. 6.as the Philistines did, when they sent away the Ark that plagued them upon a new Cart. If the Conscience of a prophane man slie in his face, he slies to hereafter Repentance; or God is merciful; or Jesus Christ died for sinners in the lump. And thus natural men, when against their will they are convinced of their woful condition, think thus to skin over the sore for present.
And this is the reason why we have many convinced sinners, but few converted, because their convictions send them to false refuges, and not to God. This Prodigal, when he was in want, and met with a mighty famine in a far Countrey, he speaks not a word as yet of his returning home to his Father; but he hires himself to a Citizen of that far Countrey. So long as a sinner can make any shift to be quiet in his sinful state, he thinks not of his return to God. As it's said of Ephraim, when he saw his sickness, Hos. 5.13.he went to the Assyrian, not to God, though he missed there of healing for his wound.
We have much experience how apt men are to ward off the blows of the Word from their Consciences: And if a blow do light there, and hurt, their plaister is some worldly diversion; some deceitful lust in their heart asks them, as Jonadab did Amnon, Why art thou so lean from day to day? 2 Sam. 13.4.or they think to wear it out in time, as some hardy men do by bodily distempers.
It's the practice of men in their sins to keep off their doom, as long as they can, by Apologies for themselves, having been taught it from the beginning; The Serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. Gen. 3.The woman which thou gavest me, gave me, and I did eat. When John terrified the Pharisees and Sadduces with, O generation of Vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? They immediately slie to their imaginary City of Refuge; We have Abraham to our Father.Matth. 3.
What a Catalogue of Pleas had Paul for himself before his Conversion? He had his birth, Phil. 3.4, 5, 6.and his sect, and his unblamable life, and his zeal in his way: but when he had obtained mercy and grace to be a Convert, he was ashamed of all those plausible shifts he had made to keep and nussle himself in his natural, sinful estate; he cast them all off as dross and dung, Phil. 3.7, 8, 7.when he came to know the necessity and excellency of Jesus Christ by experience; here he saw was a convicted sinners City of Refuge indeed.
Poor sinners have their bushes to stand under when a shour comes, till there come a storm indeed, that forceth them out to seek a safer place. When a sinner is ready to fall, then Satan puts a Reed in the shape of a Staff into his hand; he represents to him an imaginary mercy of God, such as cannot be found in the holy Scripture; such a mercy as would destroy God's Justice, and Truth, and Holiness; such mercy as incourageth in sin, Rom. 6.1.to sin that grace may abound. And if he be beaten off from this mercy, then he catches at hereafter Repentance, or at some negative goodness: He thinks in himself, he is not guilty of such and such sins as many are, and some of the godly in Scripture. I am the fuller in this case, because men are so full of shifts, when under convictions of sin, to hold them off from through Conversion to God.
Reasons of the Doctrine.
The Reasons why men, when under Convictions of Conscience have recourse to false Refuges, are
1. From their ignorance: when they feel their wound, they are ignorant of a certain remedy, and therefore make many experiments: They are as men affrighted out of their sleep, that know not on the sudden where they are, or what to do. Mens Ignorance of the Covenant of Works, and Grace, and of the state of nature and grace; or of the nature of sin and grace; this ignorance makes them so fouly mistake in their Sanctuaries, when their sin finds them out, and the curse of the Law pursues their souls: Hos. 4.6.My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. A blind man could not hit the way to any of the Cities of Refuge among the Jews: So poor ignorant souls, when they fall under terrour of Conscience, through their blindness they cannot hit their way to Christ, the appointed remedy. Satan drives on a great design in blinding the minds of them that believe not, 2 Cor. 4.4.lest they should believe, and be healed: As the Philistines carried on their design to destroy Sampson by putting out his eyes.
2. A second Reason is mens unwillingness to venture on Christ upon Scripture terms: Sinners would have Christ, but on their own terms; his are too high for them; to forsake all, Matth. 10.37, 38— Luke 14.26. Gen. 12.11. Heb. 8. Matth. 19.21.even their sweetest lusts, take up his Cross and follow him, not knowing whether they go, as Abraham did his own Kindred and Countrey; therefore they take up with cheaper stuff. Others, besides that rich man, think Christ's terms too hard. Jesus Christ is a City of Refuge to none that would have him and their lusts too: Indeed they may bring their sins to him, when they come themselves, but as their sores, of which they would be healed. But it's as hard for a natural man to leave his lusts, to follow Christ, as it was for that rich man to leave his great estate.
But doth not God offer Christ, and Christ himself freely, and without terms? Isa. 55.1.— buy wine and milk without money, and without price. Yes; but this invitation is to such as thirst; Ho every one that thirsteth come— And this thirst of the sinner comes through the Consciences labouring under the burden of sin, and sense of Divine wrath: Matth. 11.28.Come unto me all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
And yet Christ's terms, he propounds to a sinner, hinder not the terms of the gift. It is but as if a man should bid you cast the stones out of your hand, that you may take an handful of silver or gold; for so the sinner is bid to cast his lusts out of his heart, that there may be room for Christ; Ezek. 18.31.Cast away from you all your transgressions— Now rather than a natural man will do this, he will close with any sorry shift to get his Conscience quiet.
3. A third Reason is, because it is ease, and not grace, or Christ himself, that the sinner troubled in Conscience first desires and seeks. The troubled sinner does not naturally look out after grace, but ease; the soul is as eager of ease as the body. When the body is in great pain, a Countrey man will take any slip-sawce, as they say, for some ease, rather than he will go to the Physician; this is costly; he is for any thing that will stupifie the part grieved, and minds not to take away the cause of the grief.
Thus doth the soul of a natural man, when he is in pain; there any thing that will give him present ease is welcome: He'l stop Cerberus his mouth with a Crust. David must play away Saul his Evil Spirit with his Harp. Yea, there is many a man, when in Soul-trouble for sin, and sense or fear of wrath, will fall to prayer and reading, and resolving, &c. to get some quiet within; but so soon as it is got, his Devotion is laid aside, as a man plucks off the plaister when he thinks the sore is well. When the Lord slew Israel, then they sought him, and enquired early after God; Psal. 78.34, 36, 41.yet they did but flatter him; they turned back. A man in a storm will into his Neighbours house, not to dwell there, but for shelter, till the storm be over. So is it with natural men, when Conscience is affrighted, they are for good prayers, and good books, and good company; but when the pain is past, they are as they were afore.
Application.
1. This informs us, that a sinner, who is convinced of his sinful and miserable estate, is but half converted: Indeed this is but the least part of his conversion; to drive him out of his secret places, to keep him off from false refuges and self-shiftings, and to get him to Christ upon Christ's terms, and to stick there, is the better part of the work. To convince of sin is the Spirit's first work; John 16.8, 9.but to convince of righteousness is the harder: What to keep him from false Sanctuaries on the one hand, and from despairing reasonings on the other, this is the more difficult business. Either a man is sullen, and will not hearken to a remedy for the wound, as Cain was; Gen. 4.6, 7.Why is thy countenance fallen? saith God to him: If thou doest well shalt thou not be accepted? or else he betakes himself to the next hedge he meets with for shelter, and there he thinks himself as safe as the Jebusites in their strong hold, when they sent this message to David; 2 Sam. 5.6.Except ye take away the blind and the lame, ye shall not come in hither. The strong man in the sinner, that is Satan, will not be disarmed, Luk. 11.21, 2….till a stronger than himself do the work, that is, the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul's considence in his stock, Acts 9.and sect, and legal righteousness, were a great prejudice to his conversion, so that he was converted in a miracle.
2. Ʋse 2 This may put us upon examination of our selves in the case; and
1. Observe your aptness or aversness to apologize for sin, or for your selves in sin. Men hard to be convinced of sin, will easily take up with false Refuges when they are convinced: Most natural men withstand conviction as long as they can; John 9.Are we also blind? And when they are convinced, and come under the lash of Conscience, they will shark any where for present ease: Gen 4.as Cain, when he was driven out of the presence of the Lord, full of terrour in his Conscience for his sin, he strove to make diversions, in seeking a pleasant situation, and building a City for his safety, thinking (it may be) to drown the howlings of his Conscience; as the Italians of old were wont to do by Thunder, in ringing their great Bells, and shooting off their great Canon.
2. Observe whether the Sanctuary you haste to upon conviction of sin, be a Scripture Refuge, or some forged apprehension of your own phansie. It is the Word rightly understood, and so applied, that is an easing plaister for a disturbed Conscience at sin. What saith the Scripture? Rom. 4.3.It is the word of Christ that cures the sores of Conscience: Matth. 9.2.Son, be of good chear, thy sins are forgiven thee. It's the office of the Word to wound, and search the sinners Conscience, Heb. 4.12. How did the Word make Felix tremble? Acts 24.25.God smites the Earth with the rod of his mouth; Isa. 11.4. Hos. 6.5.I have hewed them by the Prophets; I have slain them by the words of my mouth.
And it is also the office of the Word to heal a wounded Spirit; Isa. 50.4.The Lord hath given me the tongue of the learned, to speak a word in season to him that is weary. Luke 4.18.And, The Lord hath sent me to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the Captives. O when convinced and grieved sinners put their own wits to it for ease, it's a poor Medicine! Medicina est morbo imbecillior; the Potion is too weak for the Disease. A sinner must follow the Word for his guide in all Soul-straits, as the Israelites did the Cloud in the Wilderness; and look up to Jesus Christ for healing their stung Consciences, John 3.14, 15.as they did to the brazen Serpent for their stung Bodies.
3. If the Sanctuary that a troubled Conscience takes to, leave or keep him in his sinful state, and loath to come out of it, as Lot's wife out of Sodom, this man makes lies his Refuge; he believes a lie; 2 Thess. 2.11.a judgment on the followers of the man of sin. The true Sanctuary of a grieved sinner is the free and rich grace of God in the Gospel, which is a great enemy to sin, Tit. 2.11. yea, though a man be willing to part with some particular sins, if he be not willing to part with his sinful state, he leans but on a broken Reed if he charm his troubled mind with this.
4. If a sinners Refuge in trouble of Conscience be injurious to the Attributes of God, his Mercy, his Justice, his Holiness, &c. this man deceives himself. How many, how many Conscience-galled sinners lick themselves whole with an imaginary mercy and grace in God? such a mercy as God hath not declared in his Word?
David supposeth in that prayer of his, Psal. 49.5, that there are sinners to whom God will not be merciful. Numb. 15.30.There was no SAcrifice in the Law for presumptuous sinners. As the Jews phansie to themselves a strange Messias, which the Scripture knows not; so do many sinners, yea convinced sinners, phansie to themselves a strange mercy in God; such a mercy as is injurious to his justice and holiness; such mercy as separates between the pardoning and purging of the sinner; whereas it's plain in the Word of Truth, that sin is nauseous, when the sinner obtaineth mercy and grace: grace and sin are greater contraries than fire and water; because the Divine Nature is infinitely opposite to natural corruption. It is infinitely so in God, and everlastingly so in his Saints.
3. This Doctrine is useful to exhortation to all that have, or may have trouble of Conscience for sin. Take heed of false Sanctuaries, they will fail you at last, Psalm.as Achitophel did David, who seemed to be his bosome friend.
It's not enough for you to know your lost condition, but you must seek the way to be found, as this Prodigal at length did: You must know your Cure, as well as your Disease. And your only cure is Jesus Christ. The brazen Serpent in Numb. 21. was a famous Type of this. John 3.14, 15. Let the sense of sin, and sorrow for it, send you to Christ; and you wrong him much, if you say or think he cannot, or will not help you.
He that cometh unto me, John 6.37.I will in no wise cast out. You'l find all other things Physicians of no value: and as Job said of his friends, Job.miserable comforters. O then come to Christ, and stick not in the way, but come home to him, Matth. 11.28.and he'l ease your Conscience of it's burden; come to Christ on his own terms, and you are made for ever.
Take heed of carnal reasonings, when you would have ease in your Consciences. As John said to the Pharisees, Matth. 3.Think not to say in your selves we have Abraham to our Father: So think not to say within your selves, God is merciful, and Christ died for sinners, meerly to quiet Conscience, that you may sin with ease. This is the way of the wisdome of the flesh to befool you. The wisdome of the flesh bids you apply your own Plaisters, and take your own Receipts, and not go to the Chirurgion or Physician, and so many convinced sinners perish in their carnal reasonings about the way of peace; Rom. 3.17.The way of peace they have not known.
Alas, what can imaginary shelters advantage you in real dangers? Will the shadow of a House keep you from wett in a storm? This is the case of many troubled sinners. Be jealous of Sanctuaries. Better to endure your pain, than to accept of false ease: Though there be danger in despair, yet there is more in presuming. 1 Sam.That it may be hath killed its thousands, but the other its ten thousands; as the woman said of Saul and David.
To take you off from carnal reasonings in this case; Consider
1. 1 Cor. 2.14.That carnal reason is blind in the ways of God with lost sinners. This is seen in natural men of the greatest parts and attainments, as in Nicodemus a Doctor in Israel; John 3.yet how simply did he reason and discourse Jesus Christ in the point of Regeneration?
2. The wisdom of the flesh is deceitful as well as blind: It hath of the Serpent in it, 2 Cor. 11.3.which beguiled Eve through his subtilty. The wisdome of the flesh presents spiritual and eternal things to a man as they are not indeed: It puts a fair gloss of pleasure and profit on sin; but represents the ways of God unlovely, as it did by Christ; Isa. 53.There is no comeliness in him, why we should desire him. It makes the way to Heaven wider than the Scripture doth; and the way to Hell narrower; else how could any man say in his heart, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imaginations of my own heart?Deut. 29.19.
3. Carnal reason, or the wisdome of the flesh is enmity against God, Rom. 8.7.and against his holy will: It maintains argument stiffly against many duties God requireth; and it vitiates the mind and judgment about spiritual things, as a foul stomack doth the palate.
4. All carnal reasonings do but skin over the sores of Conscience, they will break out again: They may muzzle Conscience for a while; but it will awake, though at present it may be in a dead sleep, and like Sampson, will break all Cords and Wyths, and lay about it at the sinner, as Sampson did at the Philistines. O consider how the holy Scriptures speak enough, and enough again, against mens deluding confidences: Jer. 2. ult.The Lord hath rejected thy confidences, and thou shalt not prosper in them. Isa. 28.17.The hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies. And, Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass your selves about with the sparks, Isa. 50.11.walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled: This shall ye have at mine hand, ye shall lie down in sorrow.
All carnal reasonings about your estate towards God are but foundations of Sand, that a showr or storm will wash away; and like that building with untempered morter, Ezek. 13.10, 11.which the Hail-stones did rend. God will at length so shake and shatter the Consciences of such sinners, that all their leaning-stocks for ease shall fall, and they with them.
5. While a man is under the sense of sin and wrath, there is some hopes; there are some hopes of his conversion, for he is in God's way to it: But when he betakes himself to consult with flesh and blood, the case is more desperate. It's a harder thing to overcome Souldiers in a Garison, than in the open Field; so is it harder to convert a sinner to God, when he hath fortified himself with opinionative shifts and bullwarks, than when his conviction of sin lays him open to the fear of God's wrath. The Pharisee's own righteousness kept them from Jesus Christ; so do a sinners own carnal reasonings.
6. It is Satan's way, when he sees a sinner wearied with Conscience-conflicts, Judges 4.to allure him into his tents, as Jael did Sisera, and there sooths him with carnal reasonings for some ease and quiet, till the opportunity come, and then slays him.
Quest. But what kind of reasonings have men to get loose from disquieting Consciences?
Answ. Very many: I'le speak of some.
1. The heart reasons thus; There are thousands, yea millions, that walk and live as I do. But to this men should reply; Exod. 23.2.Follow not a multitude to do evil: we know the whole world lyeth in wickedness, 1 John 5.19. Matth. 7.14.& few there be who find the way to life.
2. Some times men may reason thus; Very many of the great and learned men of the world, the Christian world, tread the pathes that I do, and if they be not saved, who can? As they said, Matth. 19.23, 24, 25.when Jesus said a rich man shall hardly enter into the Kingdom of heaven, who then can be saved? say his Disciples. This is like their reasoning in John 7.58. Have any of the Rulers of the Pharisees believed on him? But to this reply that of the Apostle to the Corinthians, 1 Cor. 1.26.Brethren, ye see your calling, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called.
3. Some argue thus in themselves; This is an easie way I am in; my Conscience would let me have no quiet before, and I see there is nothing but trouble and melancholy in a stricter and preciser course; Why should I travel forty years through a wearisome Wilderness to Canaan, as some do? I, but to this reply; This carnal ease and pleasure is the Devil's Paradise: And what comfort is it to the Bee to be drowned in honey? Remember Father Abraham's words to that Dives, Luke 16.25.Remember, that thou in thy life time receivedst thy good things, but now thou art tormented.
O for Moses his faith, Heb. 11.who chose rather to suffer afflictions with the people of God, than to injoy the pleasures of sin for a season. And for David's mind, Psal. 84.who esteemed a day in Gods Courts better than a thousand elsewhere.
In a word, when any of you come under rebukes and terrours of Conscience for sin, make use of the weapon that hath wounded, for healing, i. e. the Sword of the Spirit, the Word of God; and then to Jesus Christ, he is the only City of Refuge for a sinner to fly to from the Pursuer of blood. So much for the first Doctrine from the first Clause of the fifteenth Verse.