And when Judah looked back behold the battel was before and behind and they cried unto the Lord and the Priests sounded with the Trumpets Then the men of Judah gave a shout and as the men of Judah shouted it came to pass that God smote Jeroboam and all Israel before Abijah and Judah When Zerah the Ethiopian came out against Asa King of Judah with an Host of a thousand thousand he cried unto the Lord for help and succour and obtained help from him 2 Chron. 14.11 And Asa cried unto the Lord his God and said Lord it is nothing with thee to help whether with many or with them that have no power Help us O Lord our God for we rest on thee and in thy Name we go against this multitude O Lord thou art our God let not Man prevail against thee So the Lord smote the Ethiopians before Asa and before Judalâ— and the Ethiopians fled When Jehoshaphat prayed unto the Lord for help against his Enemies the Moabites and Ammonites and they of Mount Seir the Lord wrought a great deliverance for him and the Jews and set their Enemies to destroy themselves and left them nothing to do but to gather the Spoil and return God thanks for the great Salvation that he granted them 2 Chron. 20.3 When Sennacherib King of Assyria sent to Hezekiah and was coming against Jerusalem with his Army Hezekiah and Isaiah prayed unto the Lord and obtain'd help and succour from him against their Enemies and God sent an Angel to destroy them 2 Chron. 32.20 For this cause Hezekiah the King and the Prophet Isaiah the Son of Amoz prayed and cried to Heaven And the Lord sent an Angel which cut off all the Mighty men of Valour and the Leaders and Captains in the Camp of the King of Assyria so he returned with shame of face to his own Land And when he was come into the House of his God they that came forth of his own bowels slew him there with the Sword And the Angel of the Lord slew an hundred fourscore and five thousand as it is in 2 Kings 19.35 And this was the command of the King of Nineveh when the Prophet had proclaimed the Judgment of God against them That they should cry mightily to God Jonah 3.8 But let man and beast be covered with Sackcloth and cry mightily to God And we see that they did obtain pardon and mercy By these and many more Examples we may see how men have cried to Almighty God in their distress and when they lay under the apprehensions of great dangers and miseries and have obtained mercy and help from him And these do farther teach us to do the like and shew it to be our duty to supplicate his Divine Majesty and Goodness in an extraordinary manner whensoever we apprehend a dreadful Day of Vengeance to be coming upon us But to qualifie us for such a calling upon Almighty God and to make way for an access of our Prayers to him we must first clear our hands and our hearts from all Sin and Wickedness and set upon a Righteous and Holy Life as I have shewed otherwise we may expect that God will not hear our Prayers when we cry to him in the day of Trouble We must first make satisfaction to our Brother for all the injuries that we have done him before we can offer any Sacrifice or Prayer to God to attone him and procure his favour and mercy Matth. 5.23 Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the Altar saith our Saviour and there remembrest that thy Brother hath-ought against thee leave there thy gift before the Altar and go thy way first be reconciled to thy Brother and then come and offer thy gift This is the course that our blessed Lord hath appointed to be taken And the Psalmist shews that so long as our hearts are inclined to wickedness the Lord will not hear us Psal 66.18 If I regard iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear me And no more will he hear us except we withdraw our hearts from it And saith Job of the Hypocrite Job 27.9 Will God hear his cry when trouble cometh upon him Hereby intimating to us that there is no likelihood that God will then hear him And saith Wisdom Prov. 1.24 Because I have called and ye refused I have stretched out my hand and no man regarded But ye have set at nought all my counsel and would none of my reproof I also will laugh at your calamity I will mock when your fear cometh When your fear cometh as desolation and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind when distress and anguish cometh upon you Then shall they call upon me but I will not answer they shall seek me early but they shall not find me for that they hated knowledge and did not chuse the fear of the Lord And so may we expect to be dealt with if we do not now hearken to Wisdom's voice and follow her blessed Instructions and amend and set upon a pious and holy Life If we will now stop our Ears at her Charming and cast the fear of God behind our backs we may justly expect that he will laugh at our Calamity and mock when our fear cometh And God declares to the Jews that he would not hear their Prayers because they were defiled and polluted with blood and wickedness and had not cleansed themselves Isa 1.15 And when ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you yea when ye make many prayers I will not hear your hands are full of blood Wash ye make you clean This is to be done first or else our Prayers are not like to be heard And saith God to the Prophet Jeremiah 11.10 11. They are turned back to the iniquities of their forefathers which refused to hear my words and they went after other Gods to serve them the house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken my covenant which I made with their fathers Therefore thus saith the Lord behold I will bring evil upon them which they shall not be able to escape and tho' they shall cry unto me I will not hearken unto them And saith the Man that was born blind John 9.31 We know that God heareth not sinners By these and such places we may see that there is an absolute necessity for Men to leave their Sins and become Righteous before they are in any fit capacity to address themselves to Almighty God and to pray to him for mercy and help in the needful time of trouble It is needful also at such a time that we place our trust and confidence in Almighty God and do not make any Idols to our selves that God may not say to us as he did to the Jews Judg. 10.13 14. Ye have forsaken me and served other gods wherefore I will deliver you no more Go and cry unto the gods which ye have chosen let them deliver you in the time of your tribulation It behoves us to make no
And v. 17. Spare thy people O Lord and give not thine heritage to reproach that the heathen should rule over them And v. 20. But I will remove far off from you the northern Army and will drive him into a land barren and desolate These places make it probable that this Day of the Lord was a Judgment and Destruction upon their Land by the Assyrians and Chaldeans And it seems probable to me that both the Captivity of the ten Tribes and also of the Kingdom of Judah were hereby threatned if they were not the chief things here intended by this day of the Lord the Prophet Joel as most affirm living before them both And this was a very sore and terrible day of the Lord to them indeed when they were invaded and domineer'd over by foreign Armies when they were driven from their own Habitations and rooted out of their own Land and their whole Polity and Government was destroyed when they were driven from Jerusalem their beloved City and the City of the great King the Lord of Hosts and their magnificent Worship at the Temple was quite extinguished and the Temple it self burnt down and destroyed when they were carried away like Slaves into a strange Land from whence the greater Part of them never returned again and the other Part underwent a Servitude of seventy Years before they returned and came back into their own Land again This was a very sore and terrible day of the Lord to them indeed And some do refer this Prophecy of Joel to all the Miseries and Destructions that were brought upon them by the Chaldeans Persians Grecians Syrians and Romans And it seems clear to me that the Prophet's great and terrible Day of the Lord Joel 2.31 is to be understood of that dreadful destruction of the Jewish Nation by the Romans about 38 or 39 years after the Death of our Saviour when they were most miserably destroyed when Sword and Famine both raged horribly among them The great effusion of the Spirit was to be before this day as we may see here in Joel 2.28 And this S. Peter tells us was fulfilled upon the day of Pentecost and afterwards Acts 2.16 which makes it more than probable that by this terrrible day was meant that heavy destruction by the Romans From hence then I shall farther shew that God doth often threaten and inflict very sore and terrible Judgments and Calamities upon Cities and Nations for the great Wickedness of them when it is grown ripe for such a temporal Punishment First We may see that God doth often threaten to send very terrible and grievous Judgments and Destructions upon Cities and Nations for the great Wickedness and Provocations of the Inhabitants of them when they are guilty of such With Sword Famine and Pestilence evil and noisome Beasts and the removing of his Word and Gospel and other such Plagues and Judgments doth God threaten those that abuse his Mercies and rebel against him and the light of his Word and wax bold and presumptuous in Sin and Wickedness Moses hath spent the greatest part of Deut. 28. in telling the Jews what plagues and judgments of God should light upon them if they should forsake God and fall to Idolatry and such grievous Wickedness how they should be cursed every way till they were consumed Deut. 28.20 The Lord shall send upon thee cursing vexation and rebuke in all that thou settest thine hand unto for to do until thou be destroyed and until thou perish quickly because of the wickedness of thy doings whereby thou hast forsaken me The Lord shall make the pestilence cleave unto thee until he have consumed thee from off the land whether thou goest to possess it The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption and with a fever and with an inflammation and with an extream burning and with the sword and with blasting and with mildew and they shall pursue thee until thou perish And much more to this purpose as you may see there The Prophet Samuel tells them after that if they went on in Wickedness they should be consumed 1 Sam. 12.23 But if ye shall still do wickedly ye shall be consumed both ye and your King And the Prophets do often warn the Jews and others that a day of the Lord's Vengeance was coming upon them in their days Isa 13.6 saith the Prophet concerning the Burthen of Babylon Howl ye for the day of the Lord is at hand it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty And saith God to the Prophet Ezekiel 14.13 Son of man when a land sinneth against me by trespassing grievously then will I stretch out my hand upon it and will break the staff of the bread thereof and will send famine upon it and will cut off man and Beast from it And Sword and Pestilence are threatned too as we may see in the following Verses And Ezek. 30.2 Son of man prophesie and say thus saith the Lord Howl ye wo worth the day For the day is near even the day of the Lord is near a cloudy day it shall be the time of the beathen And the sword shall come upon Egypt and great pain shall be in Ethiopia when the slain shall fall in Egypt and they shall take away her multitude and her foundations shall be broken down And saith the Prophet Zephaniah 1.7 8. Hold thy peace at the presence of the Lord God for the day of the Lord is at hand for the Lord hath prepared a sacrifice he hath bid his guests And it shall come to pass in the day of the Lord's sacrifice that I will punish the Princes and the Kings children and all such as are cloathed with strange apparel And v. 14. The great day of the Lord is near it is near and hasteth greatly even the voice of the day of the Lord the mighty man shall cry there bitterly And saith the Prophet Zechariah 14.1 Behold the day of the Lord cometh and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee For I will gather all Nations against Jerusalem to battle and the city shall be taken and the houses rifled and the Women ravished Then shall the Lord go forth and sight against those Nations as when he fought in the day of battel By these and such places we may see that God hath oft threatned to bring a Day of Vengeance and Wrath upon the Jews and others and to visit them with some Judgment or other for their Wickedness when it was grown great We may see that such Judgments and Plagues and Calamities are not meerly casual and come not upon Men by blind Chance that they are not the Effects of an inevitable Fate farther than Men make them so themselves and that they are not to be ascribed to such Causes as worldly and carnal Men are too ready to ascribe them But that they are the Orderings and Disposals of divine Providence and the Rods and Scourges of the Just and Righteous Governour of all the World who
no more and the other was kept in Captivity for the space of seventy Years as we may see in the end of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles And as our blessed Lord had told them when they were fallen to great wickedness again That except they repented they should perish as the Galileans did so for want of their repentance and amendment did God send a most heavy Judgment upon them about 38 or 39 Years after our Saviour's Death and the Romans did destroy and root them out of their own Land in the end The Sword of the Enemy without and Famine and Pestilence and intestine Broils within did make most miserable havock of them The Famine was so sharp in Jerusalem that they eat their own Children through extream hunger as Moses long before had told them And the slaughter of the Jews of all sorts that died first and last in the compass of a few Years by Sword Famine and Pestilence was so great that there perished above fourteen hundred Thousand Persons as it is reported By these and the like Examples we may see that God hath often sent very sore and heavy Judgments and Calamities upon the Inhabitants of the World for their great Sin and Rebellion against him And now as for our selves we can plead no exemption from such Judgments of God We have no cause to believe that our Age and our Nation should be free from the Scourges of Divine Providence and the Lashes of God's Rod when others have smarted so sorely under it and been punished in this dreadful manner if we commit Sin and Wickedness as they have done When our sins grow clamorous towards Heaven and ascend up like the Cry of Sodom and call for Judgment upon us we may well expect that God will hear the cry of them and be moved to wrath and come down in vengeance upon us We are to know that our condition is the same with others and that these menaces and threatnings of Judgments and Calamities to others are to be such to us when our sins and transgressions grow great as theirs did and wax ripe for punishment And these Judgments and Plagues that have fallen upon others are to be Warnings to us what we are to expect if we become great transgressors like them as the Apostle sheweth 1 Cor. 10 5-11 Now all these things happened unto them for Examples and they are written for our Admonition upon whom the ends of the World are come And the 2 Pet. 2.6 And if we do but seriously mind how black and dark our Land is grown with all kind of wickedness and how little Light appears in it how bold and daring Sin and Profaneness is grown and what high Affronts and Provocations are offered against Heaven we may well conclude that the righteous God above will not always keep silence but that his patience and forbearance will be tyred out and that he will come in wrath to revenge himself and to still such Clamors and hideous cries that will not let him rest and to ease himself of his Adversaries and to vindicate his Honour and Worship and Dread here among Men. We may see that the unprofitable Husbandmen were to be destroyed and the Vineyard to be let out to such Husbandmen as should render the Fruits thereof Mat. 21.41 And if we observe how little the blessed word of God is regarded how some have not patience enough to hear it and that others lay it but little to heart and let it have but little influence upon their lives to lead them accordingly we may justly fear that God will not suffer his blessed Word to be so slighted and contemned by us but will remove our Candlestick and his blessed Word and Light from us and leave us to grope in the dark a while that we may know the better how to value such a Mercy when we have suffered a while for want of it And if we do not repent but proceed on in wickedness and add new sins to our old ones if besides our former transgressions and provocations we fall to that gross Idolatry which is in the Roman Church which God declares he so much detests and abhors we may well expect that the Beesom of Destruction will sweep us away in the end and that the Sword or some other Instrument of Divine Vengeance will cut us off at the last And what Judgments soever befall us we are to know that the hand of God is therein and that he suffers them to light upon us for our sin and wickedness And that Men may be prepared against such dreadful Judgments of God and not surprized with them that they may repent and provide for their escape and security at such a time is Warning usually given and so we see it is here II. Here we see that Warning was to be given in the Church and among his People that this dreadful Day of the Lord was coming and nigh at hand to them Blow ye the Trumpet in Zion and sound an Alarm in my holy Mountain for the Day of the Lord cometh for it is nigh at hand Here the Prophet useth Metaphorical Expressions alluding to the Camp and Military Affairs as I conceive when he bids the Trumpet to be blown and an Alarm to be sounded The Trumpet indeed was used among the Israelites for other purposes besides Martial Affairs viz. to assemble the Congregation for the worship of God and for Consultations c. But here the Prophet having joined the Alarm with it he seemeth to allude to Martial and Military Affairs when the Trumpet is blown and an Alarm is sounded at the sudden and unexpected approach of an Enemy that they might put themselves into as good a posture of defence as is possible for the reception of them that they might be able to stand valiantly against them and not be overcome by such a sudden Assault and be beaten and routed by them And so here the Prophet sheweth that as the Trumpet is to be blown and a loud Alarm to be founded at the unexpected coming of an Enemy so was Proclamation to be made and Warning to be given at the approach and coming of this dreadful Day of the Lord. And this was to be done in Zion that is in Jerusalem the chief City of the Jews for Zion was a part of this Renowned City and in God's Holy Mountain that is where the Sacred Temple of his Worship stood or rather in the Land of Judea where God's peculiar People dwelt which seems here to me to be called God's Holy Mountain From hence I shall endeavour to shew how God doth usually give Warning to all but especially to such as will hearken to his voice and take Warning when such a Day of Judgment and Tribulation and Destruction is coming upon Men that they may prepare for it and for their own safety and security in it Such is the wonderful Love of God to Mankind that he desires not the death of sinner but is earnest with them