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I. THE WAYS BY WHICH GOD USUALLY PREPARES AND RIPENS A SINNER FOR CERTAIN DESTRUCTION.

1. By withholding the virtue and power of His ordinances; and when God seals up the influences of these conduits, no wonder if the soul withers and dies with drought. For, alas! what is a conduit by which nothing is conveyed! That which God uses as an instrument to save, meeting with the corruption of some obdurate hearts, is made a means to ruin: as it softens some, so it hardens others. As the same rain that, falling upon a tree or plant, makes it grow and flourish: falling upon wood cut down and dried, makes it rot and decay. He whom the very means of salvation did not save must needs perish.

2. By restraining the convincing power of His providences.

(1)  Common calamities.

(2)  Particular judgments.

(3)  Unexpected deliverances.

3. By delivering up the sinner to a stupidity or searedness of conscience. This hardness growing upon the conscience, is like a film growing upon the eyes: it blinds them. And that which makes the conscience blind to discern its duty makes it bold to venture upon sin.

II. WHAT SORT OF OBSTINATE SINNERS THOSE ARE THAT GOD DEALS WITH IN THIS MANNER.

1. Such as sin against clear and notable warnings from God. God sometimes hedges in a sinner's way, so that it is really very difficult for him to proceed, and not only more safe, but also more easy for him to return. How many men have gone to church with their hearts fully engaged in a resolution to pursue some secret, beloved sin; and there have been strongly arrested with the convincing force of some word, so seasonably and, as it were, purposely directed against that sin, that they have thought the preacher to have looked into their very hearts, and to have been as privy to their most inward thoughts and designs as their own consciences! Now, this is a manifest admonition and caution, cast in by God Himself; which, to baulk or break through, greatly enhances the sinner's guilt. Sometimes God warns a sinner from his course, by making strong impressions upon his mind of its unlawfulness and contrariety to the Divine will: which impressions are so strong and cogent that they overbear all the shifts and carnal reasonings that the subtlety of a wicked heart can make in the behalf of it. Again, sometimes God meets the sinner with some heavy threatening sickness, lays him upon the bed of pain and languishing, and scares him with the fears of an approaching death, and the weight of an endless confusion.

2. The other sort of sinners are such as sin against special renewed vows and promises of obedience made to God. The violation of these is more than ordinary sinful; not only from the necessity of the matter to which they oblige, but also from the occasion upon which they were made. For men seldom make such vows but upon extraordinary cases; as upon the receipt of some great endearing mercy, or some notable deliverance; which causes them, by way of gratitude, to bind themselves to God in closer and stricter bonds of obedience. Whereupon, such as make a custom of affronting God, by a frequent and familiar breach of these, are justly very odious to Him, and, from odious, quickly become unsupportable.

III. TWO QUESTIONS THAT MAY ARISE FROM THE FOREGOING PARTICULARS.

1. Whether the purpose of God passed upon an obstinate sinner (here expressed to us by God's swearing against him) be absolutely irrevocable. This is most certain; that both these propositions may, and are, and must be unalterably true; namely, That whosoever repents, and leaves his sins, shall be saved; and yet that he whosoever God has sworn shall never enter into His rest can never enter into it; and all pretences to the contrary are but harangue and declamation, and fit to move none but such as understand not the strength of arguments or the force of propositions.

2. Whether a man may know such a purpose to have passed upon him antecedently to its execution. Now, if any will pretend to gather the knowledge of such a purpose of God against him, it must be from some effects of it. Such, as I show, were God's withdrawing His grace, and that secret convincing power that operates in His word and in His providences; but this cannot immediately be known by any man; since it is (as we here suppose it to be) altogether secret. Or, further, he must gather this knowledge from some qualifications, or signs, accompanying those persons that are in such a wretched condition. Such, as I show, were sinning against particular warnings and admonitions from God; as also against frequently renewed vows and promises of amendment and obedience. But these I mentioned not as certain, infallible marks of such a forlorn estate, but only as shrewd signs of it. For besides that the Scripture declares no man absolutely and finally lost, as soon as these qualifications are found upon him, unless they continue so till his death; so it is further manifest that the grace of God is so strange and various in its working upon the heart of men that it sometimes fastens upon and converts old overgrown sinners, such as, to the eye of reason, were going apace to hell, and almost at their journey's end. From all which it follows, that no man, in this life, can pass any certain judgment concerning the will of God in reference to his own final estate; but ought, with fear and trembling, to attend God's precept and revealed will; and so gathering the best evidence he can of his condition from his obedience, with all humility to expect the issue of God's great counsels and intentions.

IV. Uses.

1. To exhort and persuade all such as know how to value the great things that concern their peace, to beware of sinning under sin-aggravating circumstances.

2. To convince us of the great and fearful danger of a daring continuance in a course of sin. Who knows what a day may bring forth, and what may be the danger of one hour's delay? This is most sure, that every particular repeated act of sin sets us one advance nearer to hell. And while we are sinning obstinately, and going on audaciously in a rebellious course, how can we tell but God may "swear in His wrath" against us and register our names in the black rolls of damnation?

(R. South, D. D.).

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KJV: Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest.

WEB: Therefore I swore in my wrath, "They won't enter into my rest."