2._ What it is to ' walk witli God ? '
First, What it is to ' come to God ? ' It is a usual phrase by which faith is set out in scripture. Coming and believing are all one : John yi. 35, ' He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth in me shall never thirst,'— where coming and believing are put as terms of the same import and signification. Now this coming to God implies several acts of the soul, which must be explained Avith analogy and respect to outward motion. In every motion there are two bounds and stages from which we come, and to which — Termimcs a quo, et ad quern.
1. That which we come from is the curse and misery of our natural condition, or else we can never please God ; as the apostle proveth Kom. viii. 8, ' They that are in the flesh cannot please God.' Mark the distmctness of the phrase,' eV aapKi ovre^, they that ' are in the flesh ; ' they that grow upon the old root, and are in tiieir unregenerate state and condition. There is a great deal of difference between being m the flesh, and having the flesh in us. The children of God, as long as they live in the world, have a mixed principle, they have flesh in them ; but they are not so properly said to be in the flesh, for that notes an absolute immersion in the carnal state, as being in the faith notes a state of believing: 2 Cor. xiii. 5, 'Examine yourselves whether you be in the faith ; ' so being in the flesh notes a corrupt and carnal state. Now they that are thus in the flesh can never please God, that IS, can never be accepted with him ; so that out of this state we must come if we would perform this great duty. Now this coming out of the flesh is done by several acts, several progresses and tendencies, by which the soul comes from the curse and misery of the carnal state.
^^ [!•] By a sensibleness of our distance from God in such a condition. There is no coming but presupposeth a sense of absence. Guilty creatures are at a vast distance from God. There is a 2:reat gulph between us and heaven, an unpassable gulph ; therefore the natural state is expressed by the prodigal's ' going into a far country,' Luke xv. 13. There is a distance and departure from God ; therefore it is said, Eph. ii. 13, ' You were sometimes afar ofi*, but now are made nigh by the blood of Christ;' afar off, not only out of the church, but out of the state of grace. Naturally we are all at a great distance in our mmds and affections from God, and God is at a great distance from us ; heaven is closed up against the access of a guilty creature. Among other things this is one of the fruits of Adam's fall and disobedience ; Adam did not only lose the image of God, but the fellowship of God ; therefore ever since, the soul and God are at great distance and elongation. So the psalmist expresseth it : Ps. Iviii. 3, ' The wicked are estranged from the womb, they go astray as soon as they be born,
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50 SERMONS UPON HEBREWS XI. [SeR. XXII.
speaking lies.' There is a strangeness between us and God, and we cannot come mutually to converse together. Now actual sins make the breach wider and greater : Isa, lix. 2, ' Your iniquities have separated between yon and yonr God ; ' they make us careless of communion with God, and they make God resolved against any fellowship, or having any communion with us. Fallen man, at length, is not only come to be like the beasts, but like the devils ; he puts on not only the brutish disposition of the irrational creatures, but the disposition of Satan himself ; for the devils cannot endure the thoughts of God — ' The devils believe and tremble,' James ii. 19. They hate their own thoughts of God ; therefore they cannot endure the presence of Christ, but cry out, Mat. viii. 29, ' Jesus, thou Son of God, art thou come to torment us before the time ?' This was the language of the devils ; the presence of God was a bondage and a torment to them. So it is with guilty sinners ; they cannot endure the presence of God, they speak just like the devil, Job xxi. 14, ' Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledfre of thv wavs.' Carnal men hate the thou^jhts of God. Xow the first work of the Holy Ghost is to make the soul to be sensible of this distance and alienation from God.
[2.] There must be also a sense of the misery of such a condition. Men care not for God till they are sore pinched and urged with their own wants. When the prodigal was in a far country (by which the state of nature is represented), there with riot he spent his substance ; but ' when he began to be in want,' then he thinks of retm-ning to his father, Luke xv. 14. Men do not desire to recover their communion with God till they are thoroughly bitten with a serious remorse ; God sends his hornet and stings their consciences, then they think of running to God. All the addresses to Christ in the days of his flesh, began in the want of the creatures ; the blind and lame and deaf, some possessed with devils, their maladies and miseries brought them to Christ, else there would not have been so great resort to him. So it is here ; men never come to Christ till they are displeased with their natural state. Look, as Joab neglected to give Absalom a visit till he bui-ned his cornfield, 2 Sam. xiv. 30, 31. Joab had never come if he had not set his barleyfield on tire ; so the Lord lets in some sensible displeasure into the soul, and they begin to see the misery of a state of distance and alienation from God ; and then they think of returning to God, and cry out, Oh, that they might be united to God ! Look, as it is with believers in point of heaven, where there is the nearest communion with God : — we are apt to neglect breathing and panting after heaven when it is well witli us in the world ; but when tlie world is crucified to us, a dead and useless thing, oh, then, woe is me that my pilgi'image is prolonged ! as David, when he was driven from his own palace, and was forced to wander up and down, then he snys, ' Woe is me that I sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar! ' Ps. cxx. 5 ; — so also it is w^ith sinners in point of communion with God in grace ; they do not think of returning to God and making up the breaches, and removing the distance between God and them, till God liath made them weary of their carnal state, by letting some sense of liis di.spleasure light upon their consciences.