Use 3. 'Strengthen the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees. Say to them that are of a fearful heart. Be strong, fear not : behold, your God will come with vengeance, even your God with a recompence ; he will come and save you ;' Isa. xxxv. 3, 4. Let the most weak and fearful, the fainting heart, the trembling spirit, and the doubting mind know, that full anr- plenary security, perfect peace, attends the upright in the ways of God. You that are in God's way, do God's work, and take this cordial for all your dis- tempers, return not to former provoking ways, and he will make you ' a fenced brazen wall.'
" See the appendix about Toleration.
190 RIGHTEOUS ZEAL ENCOURAGED
And SO I come to the third thing, which I proposed to consider.
III. The opposition which men cleaving to the Lord in all his ways shall find, with the issue and success of it : ' They shall fight against thee, but shall not prevail.'
The words may be considered either as a prediction de- pending on God's prescience of what will be; or a commi- nation from his just judgment, of what shall be.
In the first sense the Lord tells the prophet, from the corruption, apostacy, stubbornness, of that people, what would come to pass. In the second, what for their sins and provocations, by his just judgment, should come to pass. Time will not allow me to handle the words in both accep- tations, wherefore I shall take up the latter only, viz. That it is a commination of what shall be for the farther misery of that wretched people ; they shall judicially be given up to a fighting against him.
Observation. God oftentimes gives up a sinful people to a fruitless contention, and fighting with their only supporters, and means of deliverance.
Jeremiah had laboured with God for them, and with them for God, thatif possible, peace being made, they might be delivered, and to consummate their sins, they are given up to fight against him.
I cannot now insist upon particular instances ; consult the history of the church in all ages, you shall find it con- tinually upon all occasions verified. From the Israelites opposing Moses, to the Ephraimites' contest with Jephthah, the rejecting of Samuel, and so on to the kings of the earth, giving their power to the beast to wage war with the Lamb, with the inhabitants of the world combining against the wit- nesses of Christ, is this assertion held out. In following story, no sooner did any plague or judgment break out against the Roman empire, but instantly, ' Christianos ad leones,' their fury must be spent upon them, who were the only supporters of it from irrecoverable ruin.
Now the Lord doth this,
1 . To seal up a sinful people's destruction. Eli's sons heark- ened not, because the Lord would slay them ; 1 Sam. ii. 25, When God intends ruin to a people, they shall walk in ways that tend thereunto. Now is there a readier way for a man
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to have a house on his head, than by pulling away the pil- lars whereby it is supported? If by Moses standing in the gap, the fury of the Lord be turned away; certainly if the people contend to remove him, their desolation sleepeth not. When therefore the Lord intends to lay cities waste without inhabitant, and houses without men, to make a land utterly desolate, the way of its accomplishment is by making the hearts of the people fat, and their ears heavy, and shut- ting their eyes that they should not see, and attend to the means of their recovery, Isa. vi. 10, 11. so gathering in his peace and mercies from a provoking people ; Jer. xvi. 15.
2. To manifest his own power and sovereignty in main- taining a small handful, ofttimes a few single persons, a Moses, a Samuel, two witnesses against the opposing rage of a hardened multitude. If those who undertake his work and business in their several generations, should have withal the concurrent obedience and assistance of others, whose good is intended, neither would his name be so seen, nor his ways so honoured, as now, when he bears them up against all opposition. Had not the people of this land been given up (many of them) to fight against the deliverers of the nation, and were it not so with them even at this time, how dark would have been the workings of providence, which now by wrestling through all opposition are so con- spicuous and clear? When then a people, or any part of a people, have made themselves unworthy of the good things intended to be accomplished by the instruments of righ- teousness and peace, the Lord will blow upon their waves, that with rage and fury they shall dash themselves against them, whom he will strengthen with the munition of rocks, not to be prevailed against. So that God's glory and their own ruin lie at the bottom of this close working of pro- vidence, in giving up a sinful people to a fruitless contend- ing with their own deliverers, if ever they be delivered.
Obj. But is not a people's contending with the instru- ments by whom God worketh amongst them, and for them, a sin and provocation to the eyes of his glory? How then can the Lord be said to give them up unto it?