A Journey Toward Heaven

Men act as though they depend on another day. They will do so if they set their hearts on the enjoyments of this life. I mean not, if they have any manner of affection to them. We may have some affection to the enjoyments of this world; otherwise they would cease to be enjoyments. If we might have no degree of rejoicing in them, we could not be thankful for them. Persons may in a degree take delight in earthly friends and other earthly enjoyments, but by setting our hearts on these things, by placing our happiness on them and letting out the current of our affections after them by turning and fixing our inclinations so much upon them that we cannot well enjoy ourselves without them, so that very much of the strength of the faculties of our minds is employed and taken up about these things, we show that we have our dependence on another day. The man who does this acts as though he depended on another day, yea many other days, in the world; for it is most evident that if the enjoyments of this world be of such a nature that they are not to be depended on for one day more, they are not worth the setting of our hearts upon them or the placing of our happiness in them. We may rejoice in the enjoyments of the world, but not in such a manner as to place the rest of our souls in them. We should conduct ourselves as those who have not the foundation of their joy shaken, though some appurtenances have failed. Our happiness as to the body of it, if I may so speak, should yet stand as on an immovable foundation.

From “Procrastination, or The Sin and Folly of Depending on Future Time,” p. 238

There is naturally in men an exceeding insensibility of their dependence on God and a great disposition to ascribe those things that they enjoy to themselves or to second causes. This disposition reigns in natural men. They are wholly under the power of it. Therefore they need to be taught their own helplessness, utter insufficiency, and utter unworthiness. Otherwise, if hope and comfort should be bestowed upon them, they would surely ascribe all to themselves, or the creature, and so would be lifted up by it and would not give God the glory. Therefore it is God’s manner first to humble sinners before He comforts them. And all this self-confident disposition is not extirpated out of the hearts of the godly, and especially when they get into ill frames does it prevail. And it is very requisite that, before any remarkable comfort is bestowed upon them, they should be the subjects of renewed humbling. They need renewably to see what helpless creatures they are, that so, when light is bestowed, they may be sensible how it is owing to God, and not to themselves or any other; and that they may, by their troubles and humblings, be prepared the more to admire God’s power and mercy and free and rich grace to them. While men are continued in fullness in a fruitful land, they will not learn their own helplessness, and therefore God will cast them out of this fullness into a wilderness.

From “Hope and Comfort Usually Follow Genuine Humiliation and Repentance,” p. 845

The Scripture declares that God will bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it is good or whether it is evil. It is fit that all the concerns and all the behavior of mankind, both public and private, should be brought at last before God’s tribunal and finally determined by an infallible judge. But it is especially requisite that it should be thus, as to affairs of very great importance. Now the mutual concerns of a Christian minister and his church and congregation are of the vastest importance: in many respects, of much greater moment than the temporal concerns of the greatest earthly monarchs and their kingdoms or empires. It is of vast consequence how ministers discharge their office and conduct themselves toward their people in the work of the ministry and in affairs appertaining to it. It is also a matter of vast importance how a people receive and entertain a faithful minister of Christ and what improvement they make of His ministry. These things have a more immediate and direct respect to the great and last end for which man was made and the eternal welfare of mankind, than any of the temporal concerns of men, whether private or public. And therefore it is especially fit that these affairs should be brought into judgment and openly determined and settled, in truth and righteousness, and that to this end ministers and their people should meet together before the omniscient and infallible Judge.

From “Farewell Sermon,” p. 202

The exaltation of Christ is given Him in reward for His humiliation and sufferings. This was stipulated in the covenant of redemption, and we are expressly told in Philippians 2:8–11 that it was given Him in reward for His sufferings: “And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” God sees that He who appeared in such a low estate among mankind, without form or comeliness, having His divine glory veiled, should appear among men a second time, in His own proper majesty and glory, without a veil, to the end that those who saw Him here at the first, as a poor, frail man, not having anywhere to lay His head, subject to much hardship and affliction, may see Him the second time in power and great glory, invested with the glory and dignity of the absolute Lord of heaven and earth; and that He who once tabernacled with men and was despised and rejected of them may have the honor of arraigning all men before His throne and judging them with respect to their eternal state!

From “The Final Judgment, or the World Judged Righteously by Jesus Christ,” p. 193

It is the will of God that men should have true hope and comfort conferred upon them in no other way than by Jesus Christ. It is only by Him that sinners have comfort at their conversion, and it is by Him only that the saints have renewed hope and comfort after their declensions. And therefore the way to obtain this comfort is to look to Him, to fly for refuge to Him. And in order to do this, persons have need to be brought to a sense of their necessity of Him. And that they may be so, it is needful that they should be sensible of their calamity and misery, that they should be in trouble and be brought to see their utter helplessness in themselves. And not only natural men, but Christians also, who are fallen into sin and are in a dead and senseless frame, need something to make them more sensible of their necessity of Christ. Indeed, the best are not so sensible of their need of Christ but that they need to be made more sensible; but especially those who are in ill and dead frames and a declining state need trouble and humbling to make them sensible of their need of Christ and to prepare their minds for a renewed confiding application to Christ as their only remedy. The godly in such a case are sick with a sore disease, and Christ is the only physician who can heal them; and they need to be sensible of their disease, that they may see their need of a physician. They, as well as natural men, need to be in a storm and tempest to make them sensible of their need to fly to Him who is a hiding place from the wind and a covert from the tempest.

From “Hope and Comfort Usually Follow Genuine Humiliation and Repentance,” p. 844

Men in a natural condition may have convictions of the guilt that lies upon them and of the anger of God and their danger of divine vengeance. Such convictions are from the light of truth. That some sinners have a greater conviction of their guilt and misery than others is because some have more light, or more of an apprehension of truth, than others. And this light and conviction may be from the Spirit of God. The Spirit convinces men of sin, but yet nature is much more concerned in it than in the communication of that spiritual and divine light. It is from the Spirit of God only as assisting natural principles, and not as infusing any new principles. Common grace differs from special in that it influences only by assisting of nature, and not by imparting grace or bestowing anything above nature. The light that is obtained is wholly natural, or of no superior kind to what mere nature attains to, though more of that kind is obtained than would be obtained if men were left wholly to themselves. Or, in other words, common grace only assists the faculties of the soul to do more fully what they do by nature, as natural conscience or reason will by mere nature make a man sensible of guilt and will accuse and condemn him when he has done amiss. Conscience is a principle natural to men, and the work that it does naturally, or of itself, is to give an apprehension of right and wrong and to suggest to the mind the relation that there is between right and wrong, and a retribution. The Spirit of God, in those convictions that unregenerate men sometimes have, assists conscience to do this work in a further degree than it would do if they were left to themselves.

From “A Divine and Supernatural Light,” p. 13

The heart of man is naturally prone to sin; the weight of the soul is naturally that way, as the stone by its weight tends downward. And there is very much of a remaining proneness to sin in the saints. Though sin is mortified in them, yet there is a body of sin and death remaining; there are all manner of lusts and corrupt inclinations. We are exceedingly apt to get into some ill path or other. Man is so prone to sinful ways that without maintaining a constant strict watch over himself, no other can be expected than that he will walk in some way of sin. Our hearts are so full of sin that they are ready to betray us. That to which men are prone, they are apt to get into before they are aware. Sin is apt to steal in upon us unaware. Besides this, we live in a world where we continually meet with temptations; we walk in the midst of snares; and the devil, a subtle adversary, is continually watching over us, endeavoring, by all manner of wiles and devices, to lead us astray into by-paths: “I am jealous over you…. I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety; so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ” (2 Cor. 11:2–3); “Be sober; be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour”

(1 Peter 5:8). These things should make us the more jealous of ourselves.

From “Christian Cautions, or the Necessity of Self-Examination,” p. 175

Happiness and rest are what all men pursue. But the things of the world, wherein most men seek it, can never afford it; they are laboring and spending themselves in vain. But Christ invites you to come to Him and offers you this peace, which He gives His true followers, and that so much excels all that the world can afford (see Isa. 55:2–3). You that have hitherto spent your time in the pursuit of satisfaction in the profit or glory of the world or in the pleasures and vanities of youth have this day an offer of that excellent and everlasting peace and blessedness that Christ has purchased with the price of His own blood. As long as you continue to reject those offers and invitations of Christ and continue in a Christless condition, you never will enjoy any true peace or comfort but will be like the prodigal, who in vain endeavored to be satisfied with the husks that the swine did eat. The wrath of God will abide upon you, and misery will attend you wherever you go that you never will be able to escape. Christ gives peace to the most sinful and miserable that come to Him. He heals the broken in heart and binds up their wounds. But it is impossible that they should have peace while they continue in their sins (see Isa. 57:19–21). There is no peace between God and them, for as they have the guilt of sin remaining in their souls and are under its dominion, so God’s indignation continually burns against them, and therefore there is the reason why they travail in pain all their days.

From “The Peace Which Christ Gives His True Followers,” p. 92

It may be a matter of great comfort that you are to spend your eternity with the saints in heaven where it is so much their work to praise God. The saints know what cause they have to praise God and oftentimes are ready to say they long to praise Him more and that they never can praise Him enough. This may be a consolation to you, that you will have a whole eternity in which to praise Him. They greatly desire to praise God better. This, therefore, may be your consolation, that in heaven your heart will be enlarged and you will be enabled to praise Him in an immensely more perfect and exalted manner than you can do in this world. You will not be troubled with such a dead, dull heart with so much coldness, so many clogs and burdens from sin, and from an earthly mind; with a wandering, unsteady heart; with so much darkness and so much hypocrisy. You will be one of that vast assembly that praise God so fervently that their voice is “as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings” (Rev. 19:6). You long to have others praise God, to have everyone praise Him. There will be enough to help you and join you in praising Him and those that are capable of doing it ten thousand times better than the saints on earth. Thousands and thousands of angels and glorified saints will be around you, all united to you in dearest love, all disposed to praise God, not only for themselves but for His mercy to you.

From “Praise, One of the Chief Employments of Heaven,” p. 917

God tells us that He will look upon what is done in charity to our neighbors as done unto Him and what is denied unto them as denied unto Him: “He that hath pity on the poor lendeth to the LORD” (Prov. 19:17). God has been pleased to make our needy neighbors His receivers. He in His infinite mercy has so interested Himself in their case that He looks upon what is given in charity to them as given to Himself; and when we deny them what their circumstances require of us, He looks upon it that we rob Him of His right. Christ teaches us that we are to look upon our fellow Christians in this case as Himself, and that our giving or withholding will be taken as if we so behaved ourselves toward Him. Christ says to the righteous on His right hand, who has supplied the wants of the needy, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matt. 25:40). In like manner He says to the wicked who did not show mercy to the poor, “Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me” (Matt. 25:45). Now what stronger enforcement of this duty can be conceived? Is it possible that Jesus Christ looks upon our kind and bountiful, or unkind and uncharitable, treatment of our needy neighbors as such a treatment of Himself?

From “Christian Charity,” p. 166