The Works of John Bunyan, vol 3 by John Bunyan (summer books .TXT) 📕

She shall be glad for them that they are taken away from her and placed far away, for then no lion shall be there nor any ravenous beast; yea, it is the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass, with reeds and rushes, as it is, Isaiah 35. And now ‘the lame man shall leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing; for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.’ Read the whole chapter.

For that the desert and wilderness is thus mentioned, and that to express the state of the church in trouble by, it is clear that Lebanon is not excluded, nor the thing that is signified thereby, which, I say, is the church in her low estate, in her forest, or wilderness condition.

4. ‘I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the shittah-tree, and the myrtle, and the oil-tree; I will set in the desert the fir-tree, and the pine, and the box-tree together’ (Isa 41:19).

Can any think that trees are the things taken care of here? They are the men that Antichrist has murdered in his heat and rage against Christ, the which God will restore again to his church, when Antichrist is dead and buried in the sides of the pit’s mouth. And that you may the better understand he meaneth so, he expresseth again the state of the church as like to a wilderness condition, and promiseth that in that very church, now so like a wilderness, to plant it again with Christians, flourishing with variety of gifts and graces, signified by the various nature and name of the trees spoken of here.

5. ‘Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert. The beast of the field shall honour me, the dragons and the owls: because I give waters in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people, my chosen’

(Isa 43:19,20). Here God alludes to the condition of the children of Israel in the wilderness of old, and implies they shall be in a wilderness again; and as then he gave them water, and delivered them from serpents, cockatrices, vipers, dragons, so he will do now, now to his people, his chosen.

6. ‘The Lord shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody’ (Isa 51:3).

See here are Zion’s waste places, Zion’s wilderness, forest, or Lebanon. Next here is a promise that he will comfort her; and what doth this suppose but that she was in her wilderness state, uncomfortable at least as to her outward peace, her liberty, and gospel privileges and beauties? Then here is the comparison, by which he illustrates his promise as to what degree and pitch he will comfort her. ‘He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord.’ The effects of all which will be she will have joy and gladness; she will be thankful, and be melodious in her voice, in her soul to the Lord. This, I say, will follow upon her deliverance from her desert, her wilderness, her desolate, and comfortless state: all which is more fully expressed by her repeated hallelujahs (Rev 19:1-6). Which hallelujahs there are the effect of her deliverance from the rage of the beast and great whore, of whose greatness and ruin you read in the two foregoing chapters. Now, I say, since the church was to be in a wilderness condition under the gospel; and since we have this house of the forest of Lebanon so particularly set forth in the Scriptures; and also since this house, its furniture, its troubles, and state, do so paint out this church in this wilderness state, I take it to be for that very thing designed, that is to say, to prefigure this church in this her so solitary and wilderness state.

[CONCLUSION.]

We will now therefore here make a brief conclusion of all.

First. This may inform us of the reason of the deplorable state of a professing people. It is allotted to them in this world to be so. The world, and men of the world, must have their tranquility here, and must be possest of all; this was foreshown in Esau, who had of his sons many that were dukes and kings before there was any king in Israel (Gen 36:31). God so disposing of things that all may give place when his Son shall come to reign in Mount Zion, and before his ancients gloriously, which coming of his will be at the resurrection, and end of this world, and then shall his saints reign with him; ‘when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory’ (Col 3:4).

Let not therefore kings, and princes, and potentates be afraid; the saints that are such indeed, know their places, and are of a peaceable deportment; ‘the earth God hath given to the children of men,’ and his kingdom to the sons of God (Psa 115:16; Matt 25:34; Luke 12:32).

I know there are extravagant opinions in the world about the kingdom of Christ, as if it consisted in temporal glory in part, and as if he would take it to him by carnal weapons, and so maintain it in its greatness and grandeur; but I confess myself an alien to these notions, and believe and profess the quite contrary, and look for the coming of Christ to judgment personally, and betwixt this and that, for his coming in Spirit, and in the power of his word to destroy Antichrist, to inform kings, and so give quietness to his church on earth; which shall assuredly be accomplished,[23]

when the reign of the beast, the whore, the false prophet, and of the man of sin is out (2 Thess 2:8; Isa 49:23, 52:15, 60:3,10,11,16, 62:2; Rev 21:24).

Second. Let this teach men not to think that the church is cursed of God, because she is put in a wilderness state. Alas, that is but to train her up in a way of solitariness, to make her Canaan the more welcome to her. Rest is sweet to the labouring man. Yea, this condition is the first step to heaven; yea, it is a preparation to that kingdom. God’s ways are not as man’s. ‘I have chosen thee,’

saith he, ‘in the furnace of affliction.’ When Israel came out of Egypt, they were led of God into the wilderness; but why? That he might have them to a land, that he had espied for them, that he might bring them to a city of habitation (Eze 20:6; Psa 107:1-7).

The world know not the way of the Lord, nor the judgment of our God. Do you think that saints that dwell in the world, and that have more of the mind of God than the world, would, could so rejoice in God, in the cross, in tribulations and distresses, were they not assured that through many tribulations is the very roadway to heaven (Acts 14:22).

Let this then encourage the saints to hope, and to rejoice in hope of the glory of God, notwithstanding present tribulations. This is our seed-time, our winter; afflictions are to try us of what mettle we are made; yea, and to shake off worm-eaten fruit, and such as are rotten at core. Troubles for Christ’s sake are but like the prick of an awl in the tip of the ear, in order to hang a jewel there.

Let this also put the saints upon patience: when we know that a trial will have an end, we are by that knowledge encouraged to exercise patience. I have a bad master, but I have but a year to serve under him, and that makes me serve him with patience; I have but a mile to go in this dirty way, and then I shall have my path pleasant and green, and this makes me tread the dirty way with patience. I am now in my rags, but by that a quarter of a year is come and gone, two hundred a year comes into my hand, wherefore I will wait, and exercise patience. Thus might I multiply comparisons.

Be patient then, my brethren; but how long? to the coming of the Lord. But when will that be? the coming of the Lord draws nigh.

‘Be patient,’ my brethren, be long patient, even ‘unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh’ (James 5:7,8).

FOOTNOTES:

1. The second month in the Hebrew calendar began April 7.—Ed.

2. A common expression for difference.—‘What’s the odds between us?’—Ed.

3. The churches of Christ have suffered under bitter persecution, and been in a wilderness state, from the primitive times, through Popish days, and under the relentless cruelties suffered by the Covenanters and Nonconformists from the Church of England. As the gospel spreads, it humanizes and softens the hearts even of the rebellious. The dread fire no longer consumes the cedars of Lebanon.

Still there remains the contemptuous sneer, the scorn, the malice of the soul, against Christ and his spiritual seed. Not many years since the two daughters of an evangelical clergyman, a D.D., came out, from strong and irresistible conviction, and united with one of the straitest sects of Dissenters—the Plymouth Brethren. The unhappy parent could not brook the insult to his order, and died insane.—Ed.

4. Bunyan not only experienced the richest enjoyments in jail, but it is very probable that his life was saved for a few years by his having lain in prison during the violent heat and storm of persecution which raged in the early part of the reign of Charles II. Thus God mysteriously restrains the wrath of man, and makes it to praise him. The damp unwholesome dungeon, intended for his destruction, crowned him with peculiar honour, because, as in his Patmos, he there wrote his immortal book.—Ed.

5. Pill, to rob; poll, to exact, to extort. ‘The church is pilled and polled by its own flocks.’—South, Ser. 11. v. 5.—Ed.

6. Maundrel measured a cedar which was thirty-six feet six inches in girth, and one hundred and eleven feet in the spread of its boughs; the foliage is ever green, and it mounts up to an enormous height.—Ed.

7. It is one of the strongest proofs that the human mind is disordered by sin, that man is by nature senseless to the sublime truths of Christianity—the beam, the truth which saves the world from utter moral desolation. What wonders open before the eyes of the young convert, stretching far away into that heavenly and eternal felicity which had been shut out from his vision by the gloom of death! Life and immortality is brought to light. His life, and all other things, become but dross, that he may win Christ, and maintain his cause in the world.—Ed.

8. All men have the same Bible, but all have not sought for spiritual discernment. The Beast, whether of Rome, Greece, or England, that looks through the Word to find some plausible means of tyrannising over the soul, by preventing man from using his own eyes in seeking salvation, whether it be by church canons or acts of Parliament interfering with the exercise of private judgment, is an enemy