22 NOVEMBER (PREACHED 1770)
True comforts have a humbling nature
‘While he thus spake, there came a cloud, and overshadowed them: and they feared as they entered into the cloud.’ Luke 9:34
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Isaiah 6:1–7
By this you may try your comforts. Many sincere souls are fearful lest their spiritual comforts are not of the right kind. Such fears are often the fruit of unbelief. Yet it is a good sign to be cautious and unwilling to be deceived. There are such things as false comforts. One of the best marks of the true, is that they are of a humbling nature and tend to fill our hearts with a fear and reverence of the great God from whom they proceed. If people talk of the Lord’s presence and display a light, trifling, self-confident and careless disposition of spirit, I confess I do not understand them. The stony-ground hearers had a joy [Mark 4:5], but it was not of the right sort; it was not accompanied with gracious fruits and soon came to nothing. But if when you have most comfort, the sense of your sin is lively and your heart is led to bemoan and abase yourself before the Lord and to rejoice only in Christ, then you need not fear. What thus leads us to him undoubtedly comes from him.
FOR MEDITATION: Since there was so wonderful, so precious and expensive atonement for sin provided by God, it follows that there can be no other, no more cheap or easy way under heaven by which man may be saved: whatever schemes people may propose to themselves, it will appear at length that all who refuse to build upon the rock of salvation, Jesus Christ, are only setting up empty notions in express opposition to the work of infinite wisdom: for if any inferior satisfaction could have been sufficient, our blessed Lord would never have been manifested in so extraordinary a manner, and made a spectacle to angels and to men. Lord, impress these thoughts effectually on me.… grant me humility, charity and faith; and enable me carefully to study the pattern thou didst set me upon earth, as the only method by which I can attain the happiness thou reservest in heaven for such as shall approve themselves thy real disciples. Make me rich in good work and poor in spirit, and whatever blessings or attainments thou bestowest on me, give me grace therewith to subscribe myself less than the least of all thy mercies.
Diary, 1 February 1752
SERMON SERIES: ON THE TRANSFIGURATION, NO. 8 [5/5], LUKE 9:34
Milo 