2. Christ was about to suffer bitter things from the hand of God, and yet he calleth him Father. In afflictions, we must still look upon God as a Father, and behave ourselves as children. Christ felt him a judge, yet counts him a father. God, as a judge, was now about to lay on him the sufferings of all the elect, yet Christ calls him Father, to declare his obedience and trust. The hour was come in which the whole weight of God's displeasure was to be laid upon him ; yet, in this relative term, he acknowledgeth his Father's love, and manifesteth his own obedience. We should do so in all our afflictions : — (1.) Maintain the comfort of adoption ; (2.) Behave ourselves as children.
1. Maintain the comfort of adoption. It is the folly of the children of God to question his love because of the greatness of their afflictions, as if their interest did change with their condition, and God were not the God of the valleys as well as the God of the hills. We have more cause to discern love than to question it. Bastards are left to a looser discipline : Heb. xii. 8, ' If ye are without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards and not sons.' To be exempted
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from the cross is to be put out of the roll of children. The bramble of the wilderness is suffered to grow wild, but the vine is pruned. The stones that are designed for a noble structure or building are hewed and squared when others lie by neglected.
2. Behave ourselves as children, Avith patience and hope.
[1.] With a submissive patience. ' Father' is a word that implietli authority and love and care, all which are arguments of patience. Fathers have a natural right to rule ; we must take it quietly and patiently at their hands. Isaac yielded to his father when he went to be sacrificed. It is said, Gen. xxii. 8, ' They both went together ;' which noteth his quiet submission. But fatherly acts are not only managed with authority, but with love and care. Slaves may be corrected out of cruelty and hatred by their masters, but fathers do not deal so with children : Heb. xii. 9, 10, ' Furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence ; shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits, and live ? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure ; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.' The apostle argueth a minori ad majus. None can be such a father as the Lord, so wise as he, so loving as he. God putteth on all relations: he hath the bowels of a mother, the wisdom of a father. He is a mother for tenderness of love : Isa. xlix. 15, ' Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb ? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.' A father for wisdom and care : Mat. vi. 31, 32, ' Take no thought, saying. What shall we eat ? &c., for your heavenly Father knoweth that you have need of all these things.' Eartlily parents sometimes chastise their children out of mere passion, at least there is some mixture of corruption ; but the Lord's dispensations are managed with much love and judgment. Therefore say, as Christ, John xviii. 1] , ' The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink of it ? ' It is a bitter cup, but it cometh from the hand of a father : our Father gave it us, and our elder brother began it to us. We should love the cup the better ever since Christ's lips touched it.
[2.] With hope. When we are perplexed, we should not be in despair, but sustain ourselves under our great hopes : 1 John iii. 2, ' Now we are the sons of God, but it doth not yet apjjear what we shall be.' We have the right of children, though afflicted ; our estate and patrimony is in the heavens. An heir in his nonage is under tutors and governors ; he is born to a great possession, but kept under a severe discipline.
The hour is come, t] wpa, that hour.
1. That hour which was defined in God's decree, set down and appointed by the council of the Trinity ; not by fate, or any necessity of the stars, but by God's wise providence and ordination. No man could take Christ till his hour was come : John vii. 30, ' Then they sought to take him ; but no man laid hands on him, because his hour was not yet come.' But when this hour was come, the Son of God was brought under the power of men, and liable to the assaults of devils. Therefore he saith, Luke xxii. 53, ' This is your hour, and the power of darkness. No calamity can touch us without God's will.
118 SERMONS UPON JOHN XVII. [SeR. I.
The hour, the measure, all the circumstances of sufferings, fall under the ordination of God. It is not only a general ordinance that we shall sufier affliction ; the apostle mentioneth that, 1 Thes. iii. 3, ' Let no man be moved by this affliction ; for yourselves know that you were thereunto appointed.' It is the ordinance of God that the way to heaven should lie through a howling wilderness. All the saints in heaven knew no other road ; afflictions seem one of the waymarks. But we speak now of another appointment, of determining all the circumstances of the affliction, the time, the measure, the instruments. It is the comfort of a christian that notliing can befall him but what his Father wills : ' A sparrow cannot fall to the ground without our heavenly Father,' Mat. x. 29. The wise Lord hath brewed our cup, and moulded and shaped every cross. All the ounces of gall and wormwood are weighed out by a wise decree, and our cup is tempered by God's own hand. We storm many times because of such and such accidents, and circumstances of the cross, as if we would have God ask our vote and advice, and as if our opinion were a better balance wherein to weigh things than divine providence. Providence reacheth to every particular accident. Your doom was long since written : such a vessel of mercy shall be thus and thus broached and j^ierced ; every wound and sorrow is numbered.