5. If hitherto you have been quite strangers to God, such providences may be an occasion to begin the relation before they are over, as they are helps to repentance and recovery. Ui)on the serious working of your souls, the Lord may be found as a father, and admit you into his family. It is said, ' The Lord loveth whom he chasteneth,' Heb. xii. 6. There is a twofold love in God — the love of benevolence, and the love of complacency ; the one while we are sinners, the other after he hath made us amiable. Some God chooseth in the fiie or furnace of affliction : Isa. xlviii. 10, ' Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver ; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.' The hot fur- nace is God's workhouse ; the most excellent vessels of honour are formed there ; Manasseh, Paul, the jailer in the Acts ; when the pro- digal began to be in want, he thought of returning to his father, Luke XV. 17-19. if our ears be o})ened to discipline, we can own God in the humbling, though not the comfortable way : ' Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.' Many that were never serious before are brought to bethink themselves in their afflictions : 1 Kings viii. 47, 48, ' Yet if they shall bethink' themselves in the land whither they were carried captives, and repent, and make supplications unto thee in the land of them that carried them captives, saying, We have sinned, and have done per- versely, we have committed wickedness ; and so return unto thee with all their heart and with all their soul.' The doors of God's family
SERMON UPON JOHN XVIII. 11. 11
are always open to believing penitents, and it is a fatherly providence at last.
Secondly, What an advantage is it to patience and submission to God.
1. God's fatherly relation showeth his love to us ; and so we know that by all his chastisements he doth but seek our spiritual and eternal good : Heb. xii. 9, 10, ' We have had fathers of our flesh, which cor- rected 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.' Children, though they take it ill to be beaten by others, yet they take it patiently when beaten for their faults by their parents, who, under God, are the cause of their being and maintenance, and ever in correcting seek their good ; much more should we submit to our heavenly Father. Earthly parents may err, wanting wisdom, or being blinded with passion, and so their chastise- ments are arbitrary and irregular ; but there is more of compassion than passion in God's rod ; all cometh from purest love, and is regulated by perfect wisdom, and tendeth to the highest end, even our holiness and happiness.
2. It inferreth great love from us to God again. No owning of God is allowed but the practical owning of him ; and therefore none own God as a father but those that love him as a father. Now love God once, and nothing that he doth will be grievous to us; for as love sweeteneth duties, so it sweeteneth providences. It cometh from my Father ; that doth not only bespeak reverence or submission (Num. xii. 14, ' If her father had but spit in her face, should she not be ashamed seven days?') but welcome; anything should be well taken at his hand.
III. It well becometh his people to endure willingly whatever God calleth them unto.
1. From God. His sovereignty and power ; he is too great to be questioned : Job ix. 12, ' Behold he taketli away, who can hinder him ? Who will say unto him, What doest thou ? ' His justice ; he is too just to do us wrong : Job xxxiv. 23, ' For he will not lay upon man more than is right, that he should enter into judgment with God.' There is guilt enough in every one to silence us : Ps, cxix. 137, ' Kighteous art thou, 0 Lord, and upright are thy judgments.' His goodness ; he is too good to do us harm ; he knoweth how to recom- pense us : Ps. cxix. 71, ' It is good for me that I have been afflicted.' Nothing but good can come from him who is goodness and love itself. His wisdom and faithfulness ; he will afflict us no more than need re- quireth, or will exceed our strength : 1 Peter i. 6, ' Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season (if need be) ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations ; ' 1 Cor. x. 13, ' There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man ; but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above what you are able, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.'