Gods Waiting to be Gracious Unto His People, Sermon · Part 4
Motives to wait on God.
I Have now finish't both the Encouragements and Cautions which make up the first invitation or motive to wait on God. If it seem strange to any that I have dwelt so long on one motive let them consider, it was the maine designe of these sermons to cast in grounds of comfort to fill up the vallies of drooping and despairing spirits, Luke 3.5.that so I might help to prepare the way of the Lord, neither was there any place in this discourse more proper for this businesse than this, wherein I would faine bribe and tempt christians to wait on God by this argument of Gods owne making and using. I said not to the seed of Jacob seeke ye me in vaine. I the Lord speak righteousnesse; I mean as I speak. Isai. 45.19.I never intended they should loose their labour. God saith not to his people in England wait on me in vaine, for confident I am, if we can mannage these Encouragements with these Cautions, and by them engage our hearts to wait on God beleeveingly patiently, actively, we shall not be ashamed of our expectation, we shall see it is not in vaine to wait on God; This be sure of, if God bring not downe his will to ours, he will bring up our will to his, which will infinitely make us amends for all our patience and expectation.
There be two or three motives yet behind the brevity whereof shall recompence the length of this first.
Secondly, therefore study beleevingly, patiently, Second Motive to wait on God.actively to wait, for it will bring in abundance of sweet blessed setling peace and tranquillity into your soules. Thou wilt keepe him in perfect peace, Isai. 26.3.whose mind is staied on thee, because he trusteth in thee: in peace, peace (so the Hebrew reads it) which may be in erpreted a multiplyed peace; peace with God, peace with conscience, peace with the creature, Prov. 16.7.even peace with the enemies, when a mans wayes please the Lord, he will make even his enemies to be at peace with him. And no wayes of man can please the Lord more than when in the mid'st of their greatest exigences, fears and dangers, they have learned to wait beleevingly, Patiently, and seekingly upon God; we cannot honour God more than to trust in him, submit to him, wait on him? So Abraham gave glory to God by beleeving, or secondly peace peace, i. e. a renewed continued peace, peace to day, and peace to morrow, and the third day it shall be perfected: and so peace peace, that is, thirdly, (as it is translated) a perfect peace, a pure sheer peace, peace without any mixture of trouble or disquiet.
Obj. We see no such Peace here on earth; the best have their vicissitudes of peace and trouble, of peace and perplexitie.
Answ. It is because they have their vicissitudes of staying on God, and staying on the creature; of trusting in God, and distrusting of God; trusting in God, and trusting in man too; because they wait and wait not. If they have not a multiplied peace, it is, because they have not a multiplied trust, a multiplied stay in God, on God; If they have not a renued continued peace, it is, because they want a renued continued stay and trust, a continued waiting on God; If they have not a perfect unmixt peace, it is, because they have an unperfect mixt trust, if their peace be mixt with trouble, it is, because their trust is mixed with diffidence and impatience: This is certain so farre as a soul can stay on, and trust in God, so farre it enjoyes a sweet peace and tranquilitie of spirit; perfect trust is blessed with perfect peace. We have a famous instance of this in our Saviour, Luke 12.27.28. in these words of his, Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father save me from this houre, but for this cause came I to this houre. Father, glorifie thy Name. Mark ye, all the while the eye of Christs humanity was fixt upon deliverance from the houre of temptation, so long there was no peace nor rest in his soul, Deliver me from this houre; now is my soul troubled, because there he found not onelyonly uncertainty but impossibility; for this cause I came to this houre; I had not come into the world, but for this very purpose, to suffer death for the sinnes of the world: but when he could come to this, Father glorifie thy Name, that is, when he could wait on, and acquiesce in, and resigne to the will of his Father, we never hear of any more objections, nor fears, nor troubles; then his soule found an unchangeable rest and peace, because bottom'd on an unchangeable rock, the will and glory of God; and that is the reason of this perfect peace, which they finde that stay upon God, in the next vers. Verse 4.In the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength, or as the Heb. reads it, The Lord Jehovah is a rock of ages. Ages passe one after another, but the Rock remains unmoveable, unchangeable. And therefore cries David when his heart is overwhelmed with waves and Seas of troubles, Lead me to the rock that is higher than I; higher than I, and higher than the waves, and that is not all, God must not only lead him to the rock, but when he comes there, lift him up, Psal. 27.5.He shall set me upon a rock, there set and placed he enjoyes that sweet and blessed tranquillitie, that he can looke down upon the waves and sing, The Lord is my rock and my salvation, whom shall I fear? Psal. 27.1.the Lord is the strength of my life of whom shall I be afraid?
This is the second branch of their blessednesse that wait on God.
Thirdly, Third motive Isai. 40.30.31.They shall be blessed in the renuing of their strength, so the Prophet, Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, but they that wait upon the Lord shall renue their strength, they shall mount up with wings as Eagles, they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walke and not faint. The youths and the yong men, who be they? why you know youths and yong men are lusty and strong, their veins being full of bloud, and their bloud of spirits and their bones of marrow, active and vigorous; and for the most part as they are strong, so they trust in their strength, and glory in their owne vigour and ability. And so the Youths and yong men here, are your brave Gallants and Cavaliers of the world, who abounding in Creature-provisions, whether riches, honours, friends, policy, power, weapons of warre, or what ever it is which they call or count their strength and livelyhood, begin to stand on tiptoe, looke big, speak great things, Speak wickedly concerning oppression, Psal. 73.8.9.they speak loftily, set their mouth against the heavens, and their tongue walketh through the earth, from one Countrey to another, from one Kingdome to another, thinking to beat down all before them, and to share Cities and Kingdomes, even the whole earth among themselves; In a word such as in any kind trust and fortifie themselves in their Creature munition, even these for all their policy and power, and self-sufficiency shall faint and be weary, spend and tire and be non-plust, and be glad to betake themselves to their heels, if they were able to doe them any service, but no, they shall neither find hands nor legs, they shall be able when their strength is spent neither to fight nor fly, they shall not onelyonly faint and be weary, but they shall utterly fall; fall and fall utterly, not stumble only, but fall, not fall to recover themselves, but fall and lye by it, fall utterly, never to rise again. The reason is, because having once runne themselves out of breath, and spent their stock of Creature-strength, they know not whether to goe to renue their stock, to repaire their Lamps when they be out, but where they faint, they must fall, and where they fall, they must lie and perish for ever.
But now they that wait on God, it is otherwise with them, how poor, and weak, and simple, and inconsiderable soever they seeme to be. Indeed they may be weary, but they shall recover, they may spend their strength, but it shall be renued, they shall renue their strength; he doth not say their strength shall not wast or ebbe, but if it doe, it shall be renued; the reason is, because as the rivers that are fed from the Sea, though they have their ebbes sometimes, yet they have their fillings again from the fulnesse of the Sea, yea springtides come in and overflows their banks; so the people of God that wait upon him, when their Creature-strength is done, when all is ebb'd so low, that the channel is dry, yet there is a river that makes glad the Citie of God, there is an immense, boundlesse, bottomlesse Ocean of wisedome, power, counsell riches, all-sufficiency from whence they are fed and supplyed in all their failings and deficiencies. As long as God hath strength he that waits upon him beleevingly, patiently, actively, Verse 28.cannot want. The Everlasting God, the Lord, Creatour of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary, And he hath not this power and indeficiency for himself alone, but for those that wait on him, for so it follows, He giveth power (not onelyonly he hath, but he giveth power) to the faint, and to them that have no might he encreaseth strength; by virtue whereof when they that goe on foot, upon their owne legges, tire and lye downe, and are non-plust, when they meet with rocks, and rivers and quicksands, and quag-mires, or else venter, and sinke and perish; this generation of waiters are carried aloft on Eagles wings, they care no more for hedge and ditch, rocks and rivers and Seas (of difficulties) than the Eagle doth when she is on the wing, whose flight is swifter and higher than all other winged fowle under heaven; that is, they are carried up above the deepest dangers and highest difficulties, above policies, and above all disadvantages what ever, above Hosts of men, and Legions of Devils, above warre and above death, by the arme of an Almighty, never failing God, whereby they are caused to ride on the high places of the earth. Isai. 58.14.To run and not to be weary, to walk and not faint, lo this is the blessednesse of them that wait on God. Oh England if thou wouldst learn thus to wait on God, what mightest thou not doe? nothing should be able to stand before thee. I could easily multiply the discovery of these, as sweet and powerfull motives to perswade to wait on God, but I must conclude with this
Fourth and last, Fourth and last Motive.and highest and best, and never ending Blessednesse; They that wait on God shall be blessed with the fruition of God to all eternity: for since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the eare, neither hath the eye seen O God, besides thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him. So that when you have waited on God, and seen his salvation here, you may goe out of the world with good old Jacob, singing and triumphing, I have waited for thy Salvation, O Lord; and enjoy it for ever. Doe you study this, and I shall humbly desire to pray with the Apostle, 2 Thess. 3.5.The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for of Christ. AMEN.
FINIS.
End of the text · Thomas Case, Gods Waiting to be Gracious Unto His People (1642)