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change your garments: and let us arise, and go up to Bethel; and I will make there an altar unto God." " I will not engage," saith he, " in this great duty without a preparation for it ; and," saith he, " the preparation shall be suitable." Peculiar, special preparation (to ob- serve that by the way) for any ordinance, consists in the removal of that from us which stands in peculiar opposition to that ordinance, whatever it be. " I am to build an altar unto God ; put away the strange gods : " and accordingly he did so
When God came to treat with the people in that great ordinance of giving the law, which was the foundation of all following ordi- nances, Exod. xix. 10, 11, "The Lord said unto Moses, Go unto the people, and sanctify them to-day and to-morrow, and let them wash their clothes, and be ready against the third day : for the third day the Lord will come down upon mount Sinai" I will not insist on these typical preparations, but only say, it sufficiently proves the general thesis, that there ought to be such a preparation for any meeting with God, in any of his ordinances. Saith he, " Sanctify yourselves," etc., " and on the third day I will come." God is a great God, with whom we have to do. It is not good to have carnal bold- ness in our accesses and approaches to him ; and therefore he teaches us that there is a preparation due. And what weight God lays upon this, you may see, 2 Chron. xxx. 18-20. A multitude of people came to the sacrifice of the passover; but, saith he, " They had not cleansed themselves," — there was not due preparation : but " Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, The good Lord pardon every one that prepareth his heart to seek God, the Lord God of his fathers, though he be not cleansed according to the purification of the sanctuary. And the Lord hearkened to Hezekiah, and healed the people." Perhaps the people might have thought it enough that they had their personal qualification, — that they were believers, — that they had prepared their hearts to seek the Lord God of their fathers, — a thing most persons trust unto in this matter. No ; saith the king, in praying for them, " They did prepare their hearts for the Lord God of their fathers; but they were not prepared according to the purification of the sanc- tuary." There is an instituted preparation as well as a personal dis- position; which, if not observed, God will smite them. God had smote the people, — given them some token of his displeasure: they come with great willingness and desire to be partakers of this holy ordi- nance;" yet because they were not prepared according to the purifi- cation of the sanctuary, God smites them.
It was an ordinance of God that Paul had to perform, and we would have thought it a thing that he might easily have done with- out any great forethought; but it had that weight upon his spirit, Rom. xv. 30, 31, that, with all earnestness, he begs the prayers of
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others, that he might be carried through the performance of it: " Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God for me ; that my service which I have for Jerusalem may be accepted of the saints." He had a service to do at Jerusalem. He was gathering the contributions of the saints (an ordinance of God), to carry them up to the poor of Jerusalem ; and it was upon his heart that this his service might find acceptance with them ; therefore he begs with all his soul, " I beseech you, brethren," etc. : so great weight did he lay upon the performance of an ordinance that one would think might be easily passed over without any great regard.
The caution we have, Eccles. v. 1, is to the same purpose: " Keep thy foot when thou goest into the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools : for they consider not that they do evil." I shall not stand upon the particular exposition of any of these expressions; but it is a plain caution of diligent consi- deration of ourselves in all things we have to do in the house of God. A bold venturing upon an ordinance is but " the sacrifice of fools." " Keep thy foot," — look to thy affections ; " be more ready to hear," saith he, — that isr to attend unto the command, what God requires from thee, and the way and manner of it, — " than merely to run upon a sacrifice, or the performance of the duty itself."
I will name one place more, Ps. xxvi. 6, " I will wash mine hands in innocency : so will I compass thine altar, O Lord."
I have a little confirmed this general proposition, that all take for granted ; and I fear we content ourselves for the most part with the state and condition of those mentioned, who prepared their hearts to meet the Lord God of their fathers, not considering how they may be prepared " according to the purification of the sanctuary." You will ask, " What is that preparation?"