Doct. He that is a servant of God may seek and expect grace from him.
Here I shall show —
VeR. 38.] SERMONS UPON PSALM CXIX. 405
1. Who is God's servant.
2. Why we must use this plea when we come to have promises accomplished.
1. AVho is God's servant? I answer — He that dedicates himself to God's use, and he that lives under a sense and conscience of his dedication.
[1.] He that dedicates himself to God's use. We are God's servants by covenant and voluntary contract. It is true our service is due to him upon other accounts, but we enter into it by contract. It is due by virtue of creation, for he made us out of nothing ; therefore we owe him all that we have, and thus all creatures were made for God's service: Ps. cxix. 91, 'They continue this day according to thine ordinances ; for all are thy servants.' Heaven and earth, and sun and moon, and stars, and beasts, and every creeping thing, and every plant and herb, they all serve God according to the ends for which they were made. But especially men and angels ; they were made for God's use immediately. Other things were made ultimately and terminately for God; man immediately for God, Ps. ciii. 21. The angels are his ministers, and so is man God's servant. And then by the right of redemption ; we are bound to serve him as the captive was to serve the buyer ; he that bought another out of slavery, all his time and strength belonged to him : 1 Cor. vi. 20, ' Ye are bought with a price, there- fore glorify God with your souls and bodies.' But this shows only de jure what we ought to be ; we ought all to be God's servants, as he created us, and redeemed us by the l^lood of Christ. But de facto none are his servants but those who resign and yield up themselves to his use : Kom. vi. 13, ' Yield up yourselves to the Lord.' God will have his right and title confirmed by our consent, and therefore he that is a servant of God one time or other hath entered into covenant with God, he hath consented to yield up himself to walk with God in a strict obedience. All that thus yield up themselves to be God's servants they do it with shame ; they are ashamed they did no sooner think of their creator, in their youth, at their first coming to the use of reason, and think of him that bought them by his blood : 1 Peter iv. 3, ' For the time past of our lives may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles,' &c. They have too long dishonoured God, destroyed their own souls, and kept their creator out of his right. And they do it too with a sense of God s love, in the new title he hath by redemption: 2 Cor. v. 14, 15, 'For the love of Christ constrains us,' &c.
[2.] He is one liveth under a sense and conscience of his dedication, not as his own, but God's When you have given up yourselves to God's service, you must not walk as you list, but as your master pleas- eth. Aristotle makes it the property of a servant to be one that can- not live as he would, that hath no will of his own, but hath given up himself to be commanded and directed by another, and sometimes con- trary to his own inclination. They are rebels and not servants that said ' Our tongues are our own,' Ps. xii. 3. Your tongues are not your own to speak what you please, nor your hearts your own to think what you please, nor your hands your own to do what you please. You are God's servants, therefore must be wholly at his will. The angels, that
406 SERMONS UPON PSALM CXIX. [SeR. XLIII.
are God's ministers, wlien they are described, they ' do his pleasure,' Ps. ciii. 21. So your business is to do the will of God ; not to please yourself, men or the flesh, but to please God, to do the will of God, without any respect to your own inclinations and worldly interests ; and therefore your hearts will rise against sin upon this account, when you are tempted to do anything that is contrary to the will of God : Oh ! I am not ray own ; these members are Christ's. You look upon every- thing as God's, to be employed to his service.
2. Those that would have the word to be established, why must they be servants of the Lord ?
[1.] God doth not look to the work, but to the qualification of the per- son. God will not accept a man for one good work, one prayer ; but he looks to the qualitication of his person. ' The prayer of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord,' Prov. xxviii. 9. How is that ? Not only when it is managed in a careless fashion, when a wicked man prays wickedly. No ; let him do his best ; for it is said, Prov. xxi. 27, ' The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination ; how much more when he bringeth it with a wicked mind ? ' At best it is an abomination ; God will not accept of a sacrifice at his hands ; and therefore the quali- fication of the person is to be regarded when we pray for a blessing promised, James v. 16. There is the qualification of the prayer ; it must be ' fervent, effectual ; ' a prayer driven with life and motion, that hath spirit and life. Ay ! but it must be of ' a righteous person.' As naturalists speak of a jewel which, if put into a dead man's mouth, loseth all its virtue and efficacy, so prayer in the mouth of a wicked carnal man loseth its efficacy with God. When one that had revolted from the Eomans sent gifts to the Eoman general, he made him this answer, He should first return to his obedience to the state of Kome. So God saith to wicked men, first let them be God's servants, and then they shall have the blessing of his promises.