John Owen · 43 of 157
Sermon V. Hebrews xii. 27. · Part 4
Use 3. Wonder not, when the heaven is shaken, if you see the stars fall to the ground. We had some who pretended to be church stars, that were merely fixed, to all men’s view and by their own confession, in the political heavens. The first shaking of this nation shook them utterly to the ground. If others also tremble like an aspen leaf, and know not which wind to yield unto, or sail backwards and forwards by the same gale, wonder not at that neither. When men lay any other foundation than the immovable corner-stone, at one time or other, sooner or later, assuredly they will be shaken.
Use 4. Let the professing people that are amongst us look well to themselves: “The day is coming that will burn like an oven.” Dross will not endure this day: we have many a hypocrite as yet to be uncased. Take heed, you that act high, if a false heart, a defiled heart be amongst you, there shall be no place for it in the mountain of the Lord’s house. “The inhabitants of Zion shall be all righteous,” Isa. lx. 21. Many that make a great show now upon the stage, shall be turned off with shame enough. Try and search your hearts; force not the Lord to lay you open to all. The spirit of judgment and burning will try you. Tremble, I pray; for you are entering the most purging, trying furnace that ever the Lord set up on the earth.
Use 5. Be loose from all shaken things:— you see the clouds return after the rain, — one storm in the neck of another. Thus it must be, until Christ hath finished his whole work. “Seeing that all these things must be dissolved, what manner of persons ought we to be in all manner of holy ?” Let your eyes be upwards, and your hearts be upwards, and your hands be upwards, that you be not moved at the passing away of shaken things. I could here encourage you by the glorious issue of all these shakings, whose foretaste might be as marrow to your bones, though they should be appointed to consumption before the accomplishment of it; but I must close.
Use 6. See the , folly, madness of such as labour to oppose the bringing in the kingdom of the Lord Jesus. Canst thou hinder the rain from descending upon the earth when it is falling? Canst thou stop the sun from rising at its appointed hour? Will the conception for thee dwell quietly in the womb beyond its month? Surely thou mayest with far more ease turn and stop the current and course of nature than obstruct the bringing in of the kingdom of Christ in and peace. comes it to pass that so many nations are wasted, destroyed, spoiled, in the days wherein we live? — that God hath taken quietness and peace from the earth? Doubtless from hence, that they will smite themselves against the “stone cut out of the mountain without hands.” Shall not “the decree bring forth?” Is it not in vain to fight against the Lord? Some are angry, some troubled, some in the dark, some full of revenge; but the truth is, whether they will hear or forbear, Babylon shall fall, and all the glory of the earth be stained, and the kingdoms become the kingdoms of our Lord Jesus Christ.
