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Originally from here.

Third Stratagem.  Satan endeavours to make the Christian throw away his breastplate, by scaring him with the contradictive opposition and feud which it brings from the world.  This is yet a third stumbling-block which Satan useth to lay in the way of a soul setting forth in this path of righteousness.  ‘O,’ saith Satan, ‘this is the ready way to bring thee under the lash of every tongue, to lose the love of thy neigh­bours, and contract the scorn, yea hatred, of all thou livest among.  And dost thou not desire to live friend­ly and peaceably with thy neighbours? canst thou bear to be hooted at, as Lot was among the Sodomites, and Noah amidst the old world, that were all of another way?  This holiness breeds ill blood wherever it comes.  Own that, and you bring the world’s fists about thy ears presently.’

Truly, though this be a sorry weak objection in itself, yet, where it meets with a soft temper, and a disposition tendered with a facility of nature, one in whom love and peaceful inclinations are predomin­ant, it carries weight enough to amount to a danger­ous temptation.  No doubt Aaron stumbled at this stone in the business of the golden calf.  He did not please himself, surely, in the thing; but it was an act merely complacential to the people, as appears by his apology to Moses, ‘Let not the anger of my lord wax hot: thou knowest the people, that they are set on mischief,’ Ex. 32:22.  As if he has said, ‘I did not know what they would have done to me upon my denial. What I did was to pacify them, and prevent more trouble from them.’  There is need we see to be armed against this temptation, which that thou may­est be, seriously weigh these two particulars.

Answer First.  Thy God, Christian, whom thou servest, commands the tongues, hands, yea hearts, of all men.  He can, when he pleaseth—without the least abating in thy holy course—give thee to find favour in the eyes of those thou most fearest.  ‘When a man’s ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him,’ Prov. 16:7.  Laban, in a fury, pursues Jacob, but God meets him in the way, and gives him his lesson how he should carry himself to the good man, Gen. 31:24; and, ver. 29, he doth in­genuously confess to Jacob what turned the wind into a warmer corner, and made him so calm with him, that set out so full of rage, ‘It is in the power of my hand to do you hurt: but the God of your father spake unto me yester-night,’ &c.  Thank him for nothing. He had power to hurt Jacob, but God would not let him.  Mordecai, one would have thought, took the readiest way to incur the king’s wrath, by denying Haman that reverence which all were, by royal com­mand, to pay him.  But the holy man’s conscience would not suffer his knee to bow.  And yet we see, when that proud favourite had done his worst to be revenged on him, he was forced himself to inherit the gallows intended for Mordecai, and leave Mordecai to succeed him in his prince’s favour.  Thus God, who hath a key to king’s breasts, on a sudden locked Ahasuerus’s heart against that cursed Amalekite, and opened it to let this holy man into his room.  O who would be afraid to be conscientious when God can, and doth so admirably provide for his people’s safety, while they keep close to him!

Answer Second.  Suppose thy holy walking stirs up the wrath of ungodly ones against thee, know that there may be more mercy in their hatred than in their love.  Commonly the saints get good by the wrath of the wicked against them, not so oft by their favour and friendship.  Their displeasure wakens their care, and makes them more accurate (thus David prayed God to ‘make his way plain for him,’ because of his observing enemies), whereas their friendship too oft lays it asleep, and proves a snare to draw them into some sinful compliance with them.  Jehoshaphat was wound in too far by his correspondence with Ahab, so hard is it to keep in with God and wicked men also. Luther professed he ‘would not have Erasmus’s hon­our for a world;’ indeed the friendship he had with, and respect he had from, the great ones of the world made him mealy-mouthed in the cause of God.  The Moabites could not give Israel the fall at arm’s length, but when they closed in alliances with the children of Israel, then they were too hard for them.  Not their curses, but their embraces did them hurt.  Again, we can never lose the love, or incur the wrath of men, upon better or more advantageous terms than for keeping our ‘breastplate of righteousness’ close to us.

1. When we lose for this any love from men, we gain God’s blessing instead of it.  ‘Blessed are ye, when all men speak evil of you falsely, for my name’s sake,’ Matt. 5:11.  God’s blessing is a good roof over our head to defend us from the storm of man’s wrath. O it is sad, when a Christian opens the mouths of the wicked, by some unholy action, to speak evil of him! No promise will open then its door to hide thee from the storm of their railing tongues.  Man reviles and God frowns.  Little welcome such a one has, when he returns home to look into his own conscience, or con­verse with his God; but when it is for thy holiness they hate thee, God is bound by promise to pay thee love for their hatred, blessing for their cursing.  And truly that courtier has little cause to complain, that for a little disrespect from others, that cannot hurt him, is advanced higher in his prince’s favour.

2. While thy holy walking loseth thee some love from the world, it gains thee the more reverence and honour.  They that will not love thee because thou art holy, cannot choose but fear and reverence thee, at the same time, for what they hate thee.  Let a saint comply with the wicked, and remit a little of his holi­ness to correspond with them, and he loses by the hand—as to his interest, I mean, in them—for by gaining a false love he loses that true honour which inwardly their consciences paid to his holiness.  A Christian walking in the power of holiness is like Samson in his strength, the wicked fear him; but when he shows an impotent spirit, by any indecency in his course to his holy profession, then presently he is taken prisoner by them, and falls under both the lash of their tongue and the scorn of their hearts. They can now dance about such a one, and make him their May-game, whose holiness even now kept them in awe.  It is not poverty, or the baseness of thy out­ward state in the world, that will render the contemp­tible, so long as thou keepest thy breastplate of righ­teousness on.  There sits majesty in the brow of holi­ness though clad in rags.  Righteous David commands reverence from wicked Saul.  The king himself does this homage to his poor exiled subject, ‘He wept, and said to David, Thou art more righteous than I,’ I Sam. 24:17.  Ay, this is as it should be, when carnal men are forced to acknowledge that they are outshot by the holy lives of Christians.  O Christians, do some singu­lar thing—what the best of your merely civil neigh­bours cannot do—and you sit sure in the throne of their consciences, even when they throw you out of their hearts and affections!  So long as the magicians did something like the miracles Moses wrought, they thought themselves as good men as he; but when they were nonplussed in the plague of lice, and could not, with all their art, produce the like, they acknowledged ‘the finger of God’ to be in it, Ex. 8:16.  Do not more than carnal men do, and you stand but level with themselves in their opinions of you, yea, they think themselves better than you, who pretend to holiness more than they.  It is expected that every one in the calling he professeth should more than a little exceed another that is not of that calling, which if he do not, he becomes contemptible.  We come to the applica­tion, in which we shall be the shorter, having sprink­led some­thing of this nature all along as we handled the doctrinal part.

APPLICATION.

[Use for information on two points as to holiness.]

Use First.  The information afforded in the preceding, bearing on those two particulars, viz. as to maintaining the power of holiness, and as to the pos­sibility of doing so.

1. If we are thus to endeavour the maintaining of the power of holiness, then sure there is such a thing as righteousness and unrighteousness—holiness, and sin that opposeth it.  Yet there is a generation of men that make these things to be mere fancies, as if all the existence they had were in the melancholy imagina­tions of some poor-spirited timorous men, who dream of these things, and then are scared with the bugbears that their own foolish thoughts represent to them.  Hence, some among us have dared to make it their boast and glorying that they have at last got from under the bondage of that tyrant conscience; they can now do that which we call swearing, lying, yea, what not, without being bearded and checked by an im­perious conscience; yea, they assert that there is no sin to any but him that thinks so.  These are worse fools than he the psalmist speaks of, Ps. 14:1.  He doth but ‘say in his heart there is no God;’ but these tell the world what fools they are, and cannot hide their shame.  I do not mention these os much to confute them—that were to as little purpose, as to go prove there is a sun shining in a clear day because a mad frantic man denies it—as rather to affect your hearts with the abominations of the times, ye holy ones of God.  O how deep asleep were men, that the enemy could come and sow such tares as these amongst us! Perhaps they thought such poisonous seed would not grow in our soil, that had so much labour and cost bestowed on it by Christ’s husbandmen; that such strong delusions would never go down with any that had been used to so pure a gospel diet!  But alas! we see by woeful experience that, as a plague when it hits into a city that stands in the purest air, oft rageth more than in another place, so when a spirit of delu­sion falls upon a people that have enjoyed most of the gospel, it grows most prodigious.  It makes me even tremble to think what a place of nettles England, that hath so long continued—without wrong to any other church Christ hath in the world—one of his fairest, fruitfullest garden‑plots, may at last become, when I see what weeds have sprung up in our days.  I have heard that reverend and holy Master Greenham say, he feared rather athe­ism than Popery would be Eng­land’s ruin.  Had he lived in our dismal days, he would have had his fears much increased.  Were there ever more atheists made and making in England since it was acquainted with the gospel, than in the com­pass of a dozen years last past?  I have reason to think there are not.  When men shall fall so far from profession of the gospel, and be so blinded that they cannot know light from darkness, righteousness from unrighteousness, are they not far gone in atheism? This is not natural blindness, for the heathen could tell when they did good and evil, and see holiness from sin without scripture light to show them, Rom. 2:14, 15.  No, this blindness is a plague of God fallen on them for rebelling against the light when they could see it.  And if this plague should grow more common, which God forbid! woe then to England!

2. If we be to maintain the power of holiness, then surely it is possible.  God would not command what he doth not enable his own peculiar people to do; only here, you must remember carefully the dis­tinction premised in the opening of the text, between a legal righteousness and an evangelical righteous­ness.  The latter of these is so far from being unat­tainable, that there is not a sincere Christian in the world but is truly holy in this sense, that is, he doth truly desire, and conscionably endeavour—with some success of his endeavour through divine grace assisting—to walk according to the rule of God’s word.  I confess all Christ’s scholars are not of the same form.  All his children are not of the same stature and strength.  Some foot it more nimbly in the ways of holiness than others, yet not a saint but is endued with a principle of life that sets him at work for God, and to desire to do more than he is able.  As the seed, though little in itself, yet hath in it virtually the bigness and height of a grown tree, towards which it is putting forth with more and more strength of nature as it grows, so in the very first principle of grace planted at conversion, there is perfection of grace contained in a sense;—that is, a disposition putting the creature forth in desires and endeavours after that perfection to which God hath appointed him in Christ Jesus.  And therefore, Christian, when­ever such thoughts of the impossibility of obtaining this holiness here on earth are suggested to thee, reject them as sent in from Satan, and that on a design to feed thy own distrustful humour—which he knows they will suit too well, as the news of giants and high walls, that the spies brought to the unbe­lieving Israelites, did them—and all to weaken thy endeavours after holiness, which he knows will surely prove him a liar.  Do but strongly resolve to be conscientious in thy endeavours, with an eye upon the promise of help, and the work will go on.  Thou needest not fear it, ‘for the Lord God is a sun and shield: the Lord will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly,’ Ps. 84:11.  Mark that ‘grace and glory,’ that is, ‘grace unto glory.’  He will still be adding ‘more grace’ to that thou hast, till thy grace on earth commenceth glory in heaven.

The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow of justice is aimed directly at your heart, and the bow quivers with pent-up power. And it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, an angry God, who owes you nothing, that keeps the arrow from getting drunk on your blood. Thus all of you whose hearts have never been softened by the Holy Spirit, all of you that have not been born again, and made new creatures, and raised from the dead in sin, are in the hands of an angry God. However you may have changed your ways, and maintained a religious façade, bringing your family to church on Sunday, and sitting in the house of God with your most pious Sunday face, it is nothing but God’s mere pleasure that keeps you this moment from being swallowed up in everlasting destruction. However unconvinced you may now be of the truth of what you are hearing, there is coming a time when you will be fully convinced. Those who have gone before you in similar circumstances can testify to that, for destruction came suddenly upon most of them, when they expected no such thing. And while they were saying, “Peace and safety,” they now sadly know that the things that they depended on for peace and safety were but thin air and shadows.

The God that holds you over the pit of hell like some spider or loathsome insect over a fire, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked. His wrath burns like fire and he considers you worthy of nothing else but fuel for the fire.  His holy eyes cannot bear to even look at you. You are ten thousand times more abominable in his sight than the most hated venomous snake is to us. You have offended him infinitely more than the most stubborn rebel ever did his earthly prince, and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you above the fire at every moment. There is no other explanation why you did not go to hell last night when you went to sleep. There is no other explanation why you were allowed to awake this morning, and no other reason why you have not dropped into hell since you arose this morning, but that God’s hand has held you up. There is no other reason why you have not gone to hell since you sat down in your pew in God’s house this morning, provoking his pure and holy eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yes, there is no other reason why you do not drop down this very moment into the depths of hell. 

Oh sinner, think about the fearful danger you are in. It is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath that you are held over in the hand of God, whose wrath is as provoked and incensed by you as any of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath licking about it, and ready at any moment to burn it in two. In spite of that you have no interest in Christ the Mediator, and nothing with which to save yourself, nothing to keep away the flames of wrath. Nothing of your own, nothing you have ever done, nothing you can ever do will induce God to spare you one moment. Now consider these four points very carefully: 

1. Whose wrath is it? It is the wrath of an infinite God. If it were only the wrath of man, even the most powerful man on earth, it would be insignificant by comparison. In the olden days that wrath of absolute monarchs was dreaded since they had the possessions and lives of their subjects completely in their power to do with as they wished. Proverbs 20:2 says, “A king’s wrath is like the roar of a lion; he who angers him forfeits his life.” Anyone who enrages the monarch is apt to suffer the most extreme torment the human mind can conceive and inflict. But the most powerful despot on earth, in his greatest majesty and strength and armed with his greatest tortures is but a feeble despicable worm in the dust compared to the great almighty Creator and King of the universe. All the worst kings of history are as grasshoppers before God…they are nothing…they are less than nothing. The wrath of the great King of kings is as much more terrible as his majesty is greater. Jesus tells us in Luke 12:4-5, “I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear:  Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.”

2. It is the fierceness of his wrath that you are exposed to. We often read of the fury of God, as in Isaiah 59:18. “According to what they have done, so will he repay wrath to his enemies…” And in Isaiah 66:15, “See, the Lord is coming with fire, and his chariots are like the whirlwind:  he will bring down his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire.” And, among many other places in the Bible, Revelations 19:15, “…He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty.” The words are exceedingly terrible. If it had only said, “the wrath of God,” the words would have implied something infinitely dreadful, but it says, “the fierceness and wrath of God.” The fury of God! The fierceness of Jehovah! How incomprehensibly dreadful must that be? Who can conceive what that means? But it also says, “the fierceness and wrath of ALMIGHTY God.” Oh, what will be the consequence? What will become of the poor worm who suffers such? To what dreadful, inexpressible, inconceivable depth of misery will the object of such wrath be sunk?

Please carefully consider this, you who are here today who are not saved. That God will execute the fierceness of his anger implies that he will inflict wrath without any pity. When God sees the indescribable agony you are in, and the torment that so vastly exceeds your ability to endure, and when he sees how your poor soul is crushed, he will have no compassion on you; he will not call off your torment, or even lighten it. There will be no moderation of mercy, but he will see to it that you will NOT SUFFER BEYOND WHAT STRICT JUSTICE REQUIRES. Nothing will be withheld because it is so hard for you to bear. God says in Ezekiel 8:18, “Therefore I will deal with them in anger:  I will not look upon them with pity or spare them. Although they shout in my ears I will not listen to them.” Today God stands ready to pity you. This is a day of mercy. You may cry now with some hope of receiving mercy. But once the day of mercy is past, your most lamentable and mournful cries and shrieks will be in vain. You will be forever lost and thrown away by God with no regard for your welfare. God will have no other use for you than to serve as a vessel for his wrath. He will be so far from pitying you that when you cry to him, he will only laugh and mock you as it says in Proverbs 1:26.

How awful are God’s words in Isaiah 63:3. “I have trodden the winepress alone…I trampled them in my anger and trod them down in my wrath; their blood spattered my garments and I stained all my clothing.” It is impossible to conceive of words that could carry any greater intensity of contempt, hatred, and fierceness of indignation. If you cry to him for pity, he will be so far from pitying you in your miserable condition that he will only step on you. And even though he knows that you cannot bear the weight of omnipotent God on you, he will crush you anyway under his feet without mercy. He will crush out your blood and make it fly and it will splatter on his robe and stain it red. He will not only hate you he will have the utmost contempt for you, and the only place fit for you will be under his feet, to be mashed down like mud on the streets.

Formerly in Israel, when a man went to inquire of God, he spoke thus: “Come, let us go to the seer”; for he who is now called a prophet was formerly called a seer.
–1 Samuel 9:9 (NKJV)–

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.
–1 John 2:15-16 (KJV)–

Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
–James 4:4 (KJV)–

Be not conformed to this world:
but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.
–Romans 12:2 (KJV)–

—

Lord, You’re everything I need
There’s nothing more I need
You’ve shined the light
From Heaven’s door

More and more, I worship You with tears
They’re all I have to give
To thank You for the life You gave

Jesus, You’re everything that I’ve ever wanted
The blood You shed at Calvary
Has made me clean
You’ve drawn me back to You

I would give everything
To be Yours forever
The sacrifice of love You shared
Has set me free
To sail away with You

–Scott Brenner, Vineyard Music, “Jesus, You’re Everything”–

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