BOOK 1. THE SUBJECT.
CHAPTER 3.
1.3.4. Use of Exhortation.
Use of Exhortation.
Is inward experimental looking unto Jesus, a choice, and high gospel-ordinance? One use of exhortation. "I beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ," 2 Cor. x. 1. "I beseech you, by the mercies of God," Rom. xii. 1. "I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the love of the Spirit, to look unto Jesus" Rom. xv. 30. Or, if my beseechings will not prevail, why, yet look on me as an ambassador of Christ, consider as though "God did beseech you by me," I beseech, "I pray you in Christ's stead," 2 Cor. v. 28. It is a message that I have from God to your souls to look unto Jesus: and therefore "set your hearts to all the words that I testify to you this day, for it is not a vain thing, but it is for your lives," Deut, xxxii. 46.
O that I should need thus to persuade your hearts to look unto Jesus! What, is not your Jesus worthy of this? Why then, are your thoughts no more upon him? Why are not your hearts continually with him? Why are not your strongest desires, and daily delights in, and after the Lord Jesus? What is the matter? Will not God give you leave to approach this light? Will he not suffer your souls to taste and see? Why then are these words in the text? Why then doth he cry and double his cry, "Behold me, behold me?" Ah vile hearts! How delightfully and unweariedly can we think of vanity? How freely and how frequently can we think of our pleasures, friends, labours, lusts? Yea, of our miseries, wrongs, sufferings, fears? And what, is not Christ in all our thoughts? It was said of the Jews, that they used to cast to the ground, the book of Esther before they read it, because the name of God is not in it; and Augustine cast by Cicero's writings, because they contained not the name of Jesus. Christians! Thus should you humble and cast down your sensual hearts, that have in them no more of Christ: O chide them for their wilful or weak strangeness to Jesus Christ! O turn your thoughts from off all earthly vanities, and bend your souls to study Christ, habituate yourselves to such contemplations, as in the next use I shall present; and let not those thoughts be seldom or cursory, but settle upon them, dwell there, bathe your souls in those delights, drench your affections in those rivers of pleasures, or rather in the sea of consolation. O tie your souls in heavenly galleries, have your eyes continually set on Christ! Say not, "You are unable to do thus, this must be God's work only, and therefore all our exhortations are in vain." A learned divine can tell you, (Baxters Rest.) Though God be the chief disposer of your hearts, yet next under him you have the greatest command of them yourselves though "without Christ ye can do nothing;" yet under him you may do much: or else it will be undone, and you undone through your neglect; do your own parts, and yon have no cause to distrust whether Christ will do his. It is not usual with Christ to forsake his own people in that very work he sets them on. Oh but we can do nothing! how! nothing! What, are you neither spiritual nor rational creatures? If a carnal minister can make it his work to study about Christ through all his lifetime, and all because it is the trade he lives by, and knows not how to subsist without it: why then, methinks a spiritual Christian should do much more. If a cook can labour and sweat about your meat, because it is the trade that maintains him, though, perhaps he taste it not himself, methinks, you for whom it is prepared, should take the pains to taste its sweetness, and feed upon it. Christians! If your souls were sound and right, they would perceive incomparably more delight and sweetness, in knowing, thinking, believing, loving and rejoicing in Jesus Christ, than the soundest stomach finds in his food, or the strongest senses in the enjoyments of their objects. Now, for shame never say. You cannot reach it; "I can do all things (saith Paul) through Christ that strengtheneth me," Phil. iv. 13. Oh it is our sloth, our security, our carnal mind, which is enmity to God and Christ, that keeps us off. Be exhorted! Oh be exhorted in the fear of God.