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{Since the Heavenly Trade Is the Best Trade…
Exhortation to Good Traders in Christianity
Advice: Lay In for Bad Times
Times When God Withdraws the Sense of His Presence from You}
Times when God appears to desert you are times of spending, during which you will need a full stock. This is when the Lord hides His face and withdraws the sense of His love and the influence of His enlivening presence. The Lord may do this, and has done it. He has left people who are dearly beloved by His soul and gone from His habitation [with them]. He has wrapped Himself in a cloud and left His children in darkness as those who have been long dead. Mr. Cooper said, “God is just to deny us the comfort of our graces when we deny Him the glory of them.” “Truly You are God, who hide Yourself, O God of Israel, the Savior!” (Isaiah 45:15 NKJV). “Behold, I go forward but He is not there, And backward, but I cannot perceive Him; When He acts on the left, I cannot behold Him; He turns on the right, I cannot see Him” (Job 23:8–9 NASB). “But Zion said, ‘The Lord has forsaken me, And the Lord has forgotten me’” (Isaiah 49:14 NASB). This was one of the greatest sufferings of Christ: His apprehension that His Father had forsaken Him. “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’”(Matthew 27:46 NKJV). Here was a total and final desertion that our Lord Jesus came under as to His sense, and the effects of it.1529 He saw nothing of the comforts of the divine presence to the last breath of His life, but died in darkness. “And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit” (Matthew 27:50 NASB). He yielded up His spirit and had no comfort to the last minute of His life. And if God has done so to the green tree, how much more may he do it to the dry tree. If He can forsake His natural and only beloved Son, He may surely hide Himself from His adopted sons, even to their dying hour. And this is a condition full of consternation and terror. The loss of God and all good is thought to be a far greater punishment to the damned in Hell than all the punishments of sense and torment. Oh, the dreadful apprehensions that good souls have had about God’s forsaking them! It is a Hell on earth and the beginning of the second death to be under a real sense of God having removed Himself from the soul. Oh, the amazing dread and consuming terror that Job, Asaph, Heman,1530 and others were filled with by such apprehensions of God having withdrawn from them and of His wrath lying hard on them! Soul, although it is now a time of light with you, the candle of the Lord shines on you, you walk in the light of His face, lie in His bosom, are dandled on His knee—the days of darkness may be many and your soul lie in the shadow of death and under real apprehensions of the Lord’s departure from you and displeasure against you. It is then that you will need all the cordials,1531 light, and hope imaginable. Oh, lay in sure and unquestionable satisfaction about this great case: that God is really and inseparably yours, and under all your clouds, fears, and guilt, think well of God. Someone said, “It is hard to think ill of ourselves and well of God at the same time.” Store up for yourselves promises and past experiences [of God’s goodness to you], with faith, hope, patience, and every grace that may bear you up in such a trial and be a cordial to your fainting heart under such dangerous fainting spells. Someone said, “If God should damn me, I have two arms, one of faith and one of love, with which I would embrace Him and carry Him with me, and His presence would make Hell itself a Heaven to me.”
1529The editor begs to disagree with Ashwood here. Christ did not merely sense a desertion by His Heavenly Father, but He was, as man, actually deserted by His Heavenly Father because our Lord Jesus, as the Last Adam, took the punishment due to believers upon Himself. Although God is omnipresent, including in Hell, those in Hell have none of the beneficial or good presence of God, but will only experience the pure wrath of God, being otherwise deserted by God.
1530Ashwood, by mentioning these last two names, may have been referring to the Psalms of which they appear to have been the human authors, according to the titles. Asaph appears in the titles of Psalms 50 and 73 through 83. Heman appears in the title of Psalm 88, which begins, “O Lord, God of my salvation, I have cried out day and night before You. Let my prayer come before You; Incline Your ear to my cry. For my soul is full of troubles, And my life draws near to the grave” (Psalm 88:1–3 NKJV).
1531cordial: anything that comforts, gladdens, and stimulates, often a drink such as a peppermint cordial.
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