Doctrine: Sinners are engaged in a wearisome labour while out of Christ.
If you were condemned to row in the galleys, chained to the oars, or to dig in mines and never see the light of the sun – until you forsake your lusts – it is not to be compared to this wearisome labour while out of Christ. If sinners do not feel it, it is because they are not at all themselves. It is a truth, though a sad one (Is 55:2), that they “labour for that which satisfieth not”; they labour to weariness. “The labour of the foolish wearieth every one of them; because he knoweth not how to go to the city” (Ecc 10:15).
In discoursing on this point, we may consider: (1.) What sinners out of Christ are labouring for. (2.) Why men out of Christ labour for happiness and satisfaction. (3.) What sort of labour they have in these things. (4.) Why sinners labour in these things for satisfaction and do not come to Christ. (5.) Some practical application.
1. What sinners out of Christ are labouring for.
No man engages in labour but for some end that he proposes to himself. Though the devil is the foreman of these labourers, he does not make them go like clocks, without some purpose. Every one that labours proposes some profit to himself by his work, and so do these men; there is always something, either really or seemingly good, that men seek in all their labours. It is happiness and satisfaction that they, as well as the godly, are labouring for.
Consider:
(1.) The desire for happiness and satisfaction is natural to man.
It is not the desire for what may satisfy that makes the difference between the godly and the wicked, but the different ways they take: “There be many that say, Who will show us any good? Lord, lift Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon us. Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that their corn and their wine increased” (Ps 4:6,7). Whatever situation a man is in on earth, in heaven or hell, this is his desire; and he must cease to be a man before he can cease desiring to be happy. This desire is good in itself. The Lord supposes this in the text and therefore He promises to them what they are seeking – rest – if they will come to Him.
(2.) This desire is the chief of all: all other things are desired for it.
All men’s desires, however different, meet here, as all the rivers meet in the sea though their courses may be quite different. The devil has some labourers at his coarse work, others at what is more fine, but they all meet in their end.
(3.) Defects and needs are interwoven with the very nature of the creature; and the rational creature finds that he cannot be self-sufficient.
Hence he seeks his happiness from outside himself, to satisfy these natural desires.
(4.) Seeing man’s happiness is from outside himself, it must be brought in – which cannot be done without labour.
It is proper to God to be happy in Himself; but every creature must needs go out of himself to find happiness; rest cannot be found but in the way of action and labour, and it is wearisome labour because sinners are not in the right way.
2. How men out of Christ labour for happiness and satisfaction.
Here it is impossible for us to reckon up particulars, because,
(1.) There are varied opinions about what may make a man happy.
It is true that Christianity has fixed this point in principle, but only overcoming grace can fix it in practice. The whole body of Christless sinners are like the Sodomites at Lot’s door; all were for reaching the door, but they grasped one part or another of the wall instead, but not one of them found it. The world is as the air on a summer day, full of insects; and natural men are like a company of children, each one running to catch one or another, while none of the insects is worth the effort.
(2.) Men still alter their opinions about it, as they meet new disappointments.
Like a man in a mist seeking a house in a wilderness, when every bush and tree deceives him till, by coming near, he is undeceived. The man thinks, If I had such and such a thing, I would be well. Then he begins to labour for it; maybe he never gets it, but he ever pursues it. If he gets it, he finds it will not do, for big as it seemed afar off, it will not fill his hand when he grips it. But it must be filled or he will have no rest; hence new labour only brings forth a new disappointment: “We have been with child, we have been in pain, we have as it were brought forth wind” (Is 26:18).
(3.) They cannot tell what they wish for.
Their starving souls are like the hungry infant that weeps and sucks every thing that comes near its mouth, but cannot tell what it wants, but is still restless till the mother sets it to the breast. It is regenerating grace that does this to the soul. The Hebrew word for believing comes from a root that signifies to nurse, as if faith was only laying the soul on the breasts of Christ, in whom “dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead”. Scripture speaks of Him as the mother that bore them; hence His people are called the fruit of “the travail of His soul” (Is 53:11). He also nourishes them; He says, “I have nourished and brought up children” (Is 1:2). The breasts of the Church (Is 66:11), at which they are to suck and be satisfied, are no other than Christ. But where do men out of Christ go to draw out their happiness. Observe two things:
(1) It is not to God; go to as many doors as they will, they never go to the right door. Hence it follows that they labour to draw their satisfaction out of created things: Having “forsaken . . . the fountain of living waters”, they hew out to themselves “cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water”.
(2) They are seeking to find good things in these cisterns, though for the most part they call evil good, and good evil. All good is either profitable, pleasurable, or honest; these are all that they are seeking – not from God, but from themselves or other created things. The former two, profit and pleasure, relate to men’s desires, the latter to the law. Seeing it is not in God that they seek their happiness and satisfaction, I infer that all outside Christ are labouring for their happiness and satisfaction in one or both of these ways, either from their lusts or from the law. I take this to be the labour meant in the text. For which consider these three things:
First. All natural men have two principles in them: (1) corruption, (2) conscience. Both crave satisfaction: “Which show the work of the law, written in their heart, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another” (Rom 2:15). Hence, because those labouring do not mortify their lusts, these principles must be fed or they will give no rest; therefore they labour to satisfy their lusts. Then, because they do not flee to Christ to satisfy their conscience, they go to the law.
Second. Most natural men in the world – Jews, Pagans and Christians – have been of two sorts: (1) profane; (2) formal – the former labouring most in lusts, the latter in the law.
Third. Adam left us with two yokes on our necks: (1) of lusts, (2) of the law. God placed the latter, but He gave strength to bear it; Adam took away the strength, but God left on this yoke and also put on a yoke of lusts. In opposition to these yokes, Christ bids us come and take on His yoke, which is easy, and His burden, which is light (Mt 11:29).
As to the labour these men have in their lusts, they run after them. The infernal devils in the heart drive the swine of this world into the sea of perdition; indeed they turn the soul itself into a very sea that cannot rest: “The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt” (Is 57:20). They labour like madmen to satisfy their lusts and have no calm, no rest, till the soul comes to Christ.
1. They labour hard in the lusts of profit:
“All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.” (1 Jn 2:16). The profits from the world are the cisterns they squeeze for satisfaction; these profits bewitch the hearts of those that have them and those that lack them; they fly after them with the pains and labour with which the ravenous bird goes after its prey: “Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven” (Prov 23:5). The strength of men’s desires and the cream of their affections are spent on them; their happiness depends on its smiles, their misery on its frowns; if gone, their god is gone. Hence “the people shall labour in the very fire, and the people shall weary themselves for very vanity” (Hab 2:13), like a poor fool running to catch a shadow. They have hard labour in how to get them and to keep them but, hardest of all, how to squeeze satisfaction out of them; they labour in the very fire.
They labour also in things that profit unlawfully. The soul is empty; lusts do not guide aright; conscience must be stretched now and then to satisfy lusts; and the man will leap over the hedge, though the serpent will bite him: “They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Tim 6:9,10). Like a blind mole, the carnal man’s constant labour is in the earth, and he never opens his eyes till he is dying. He has his load of thick clay on his back (Hab 2:6), the result of labouring in the fire. There is thus a labouring and heavy-laden party. Others take the world in their hand as a staff; they tread on it as the dirt and get it as a burden on their back. And guilt – many times contracted in getting it, whether by oppression, cheating, or neglecting the soul for it – is like a sore back, under the load, that makes them ready to throw it away in despair, but they do not know how to exist without it.
2. They labour in lusts of pleasure;
they go about as the bee, extracting sweetness out of created things for their own satisfaction. Profits and pleasures usually go together; they are the world’s two great baits, toward which all natural men are constantly leaping till they are caught by the hook and flung out into the fire of wrath: “Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not that the dead are there, and that her guests are in the depths of hell” (Prov 9:17,18). Pleasure is a necessary ingredient in happiness, and man cannot but seek it; hence God proposes it to men in Himself, who is the fountain of all sweetness: “Thou wilt show me the path of life: in Thy presence there is fullness of joy, at Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps 16:11).
But blind man makes enjoyment of created things his idol, and puts it in the place of God; for they are “lovers of pleasures [in this sense] more than lovers of God” (2 Tim 3:4). It is no fault to seek profit; for we are to have “respect unto the recompense of the reward” (Heb 11:26). Nor is it a fault to seek what may be pleasant to the soul, for we may wish our souls to be “satisfied as with marrow and fatness” (Ps 63:5). But the natural man’s misery and sin is that he forsakes God and fastens on the breasts of created things for what he wants.
Now, there are two breasts of the created things which men may suck:
** (1.) Lawful comforts.** Natural men fall on these, not the breasts of God’s consolations, and labour in vain to squeeze out happiness and satisfaction, with the greatest eagerness. They are lawful in themselves, but they often press so hard that they draw out blood instead of milk. They are like men working at a flinty rock to bring out water, but instead fire flashes in their face.
** (2.) Unlawful comforts.** “Stolen waters are sweet” (Prov 9:17). Many seek satisfaction in things which they should not even desire, and fill themselves with what God forbids them even to taste. O the misery of Christless sinners, to whom both lawful and unlawful comforts are effectual snares for ruin. Like mad beasts, if they stay within the hedge, they tear up everything, which does not satisfy them. But they most usually break out over all the hedges, because created things can never fully answer their desires. Yet, after all, they will not come to Christ that they may have rest.
These breasts of created things have many springs – divers lusts and pleasures (1 Tim 3:3). These are served; men must labour in them as a servant at his master’s work. I shall reduce them to these two points, mentioned in Ephesians 2:3: “the desires of the flesh and of the mind”.
1. They labour for satisfaction and happiness in the pleasures of the flesh.
** (1) In sensuality.** This was the door man first went to, after he had left God. Since the world was turned upside down by that means, the soul has lain lowest and the flesh uppermost, so they are all sensual that have not the Spirit, as Jude says (v 19), and the soul is made a drudge of the body. The belly is a god, and the pleasures of the flesh are squeezed for satisfaction; all the senses are set working for it and yet can never do enough: “All the labour of man is for his mouth, and yet the appetite is not filled” (Ecc 6:7). Many arts and trades are found out to bring this to perfection, though all in vain; and there is no end of these things, which are only of use to please the flesh, which, like the grave, never says it has enough.
** (2) In ease, sloth and quiet – a negative kind of sensuality.** The rich man said, “Soul, thou hast goods laid up for many years; take thine ease” (Lk 12:19), all to please the flesh. This often costs the soul hard labour; conscience gets many a throw for liking this idol – by neglect of duties, by rejecting light, as if men’s happiness consisted in quietly enjoying themselves.
2. In the desires of the mind and its pleasures.
If these went out to right objects and were sought in a right manner, it would be well, for our true happiness consists in the soul’s enjoyment of God, but in the natural man all is confusion.
** (1.) There is much labour in seeking happiness in the pleasures of the intellect.** This is the snare of thinking, graceless men; this was among the first doors men went to when they turned from God: “Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:5). There is hard labour to punish that: “I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven; this sore travail God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised therewith” (Ecc 1:13). And what does it come to at length? To no rest, “for in much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow” (Ecc 1:18).
Here is fulfilled: “The labour of the foolish wearieth every one of them, because he knoweth not how to go to the city” (Ecc 10:15). Whereas, if they would go to Christ, they would be in a fair way to get what they are seeking; for “this is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent” (Jn 17:3). “In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col 2:3).
** 2. There is labour in pleasures of the imagination.** What are the lusts of the eye, all the abundance of riches for which men labour so much? “When goods increase, they are increased that eat them; and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes?” (Ecc 5:11). All they can think or say is, These are mine. What is honour and the like but a tickling of our imagination with the imagination of others about us, adding nothing to real worth? How busy the soul often is in that, but “better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the desire: This is also vanity and vexation of spirit” (Ecc 6:9). What satisfaction is sought in imagination, sins, lust, revenge and the like! What restlessness is there! “Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin” (2 Pet 2:14). How often the soul is busy imagining wealth and the like, as if, when it had tried all other means in vain, it would try to dream itself happy while awake! “My purposes are broken off, even the thoughts of my heart,” says Job (17:11).
3. The other thing in which natural men labour for rest is the “law”;
compare the text (Mt 11:28) with verses 29 and 30. That labour is emphatically described: “being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness” (Rom 10:3). To “go about” signifies seeking, like an academic debater, or a tormenter of someone on the rack, to establish, or to make it stand itself alone – as men that will have a stone to stand on end which is ever coming down on them again. Why all this? Because it is their own: they “have not submitted”. Christ offers a righteousness; but to take it is to them submission, against which they labour, as the bullock against the yoke. They will never let it be put on till God will break the iron sinew of their neck (Is 48:4).
To confirm this, consider: (1.) All men desire to be happy, and no man can get his conscience quite silenced any more than he can get the idea of God quite erased from his mind: they “are a law unto themselves . . . their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another” (Rom 2:14,15). Peace of mind is a natural desire, which none can get rid of. Hence men cannot but seek inward peace; and though they may set themselves to murder conscience to obtain peace, they cannot totally succeed; so they must take some other way. There always were but two ways, either Christ or the law. The former they reject, therefore they follow the latter. Let us view this in three sorts of natural men:
[1.] In the profane person, who has not even a form of godliness; it is hardest to find it in them. But none is so profane but one will readily find they have some good thing or other about them, and sometimes they will compliment their consciences by refusing to satisfy their lusts, which is so much harder a labour for them, as they are under the greater power of lusts. They do not do this to make themselves miserable, but happy that their consciences may excuse them (Rom 2:15) – excusing even those that are most at the devil’s will, taken captive as hunters take their prey alive (2 Tim 2:26). This still implies a conscience labouring in the law; though lusts, being stronger, prevail for the most part.
[2.] In the formal, natural man. Some of them labour in the duties of morality, others in those of religion; they are at no small travail in the law, but it is all for nothing. Like the Pharisee (Lk 18:11) they do not take the gospel way, yet they labour in the law. Lusts remain in them in their life and vigour. It surely costs labour so far to restrain them.
[3.] In the awakened sinner. I am not for excluding those from the text, but only that it be not restricted to them: “Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter, and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?” (Acts 2:37). These often labour so to keep the law that they are both by themselves and by others taken for saints of the first magnitude; yet it is still but labouring in the law, till converting grace will come and cut them off from the old root.
(2.) It is natural for men to labour in the law for happiness, and therefore men will not stop doing so till nature is overcome by grace. The law was Adam’s covenant; he, with his children, were to work and to win heaven by their works. Though they have lost their father’s strength, yet they want to keep their father’s trade; though their stock is small, yet they will keep trading for heaven, seeking to give God good works for good wages. See nature speaking out of the rich young ruler: “Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?” (Mt 19:16). And it often happens that they who have fewest good works lay the greatest stress on them.
(3.) This practice has been formed into principles, in the face of the sun of the gospel. Never was an error expressed in principle but it complied with some corruption of the heart; therefore it is given as a characteristic of true doctrine that it is “according to godliness” (1 Tim 6:3). No sooner was the gospel preached than Cain set up works in opposition to faith. “And the Lord had respect to Abel and to his offering; but unto Cain and his offering He had not respect” (Gen 4:4,5). Paul gives the reason: “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain” (Heb 11:4). When Israel were in Egypt, most of them knew nothing else. They had so curtailed the law, as all that labour in it do, that they thought they kept it all very well: “Until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law” (Rom 5:13). So God gave them the law, as in Exodus 20. The law “was added because of transgressions” (Gal 3:19).
(4.) They turn the gospel into law, as unclean vessels sour the sweetest liquor that is put in them. The ceremonial law was a real gospel to the Jews, holding up blood, death, and transfer of guilt to the substitute, every day before their eyes in their sacrifices. But their very table – that is, their altar, as it is called in Malachi 1:12 – became a snare (see Rom 9:11) and they went about these things as if by them they would have made up what was lacking in observing the moral law. Thus it has been in Romanism – and, alas, among Protestants – to whom the gospel is the law; and faith, repentance and new obedience are the fulfilling of the law. But would to God that it stood in principles only; but as surely as every unrenewed man is out of Christ, so surely in these natural men, whose heads are right on this point, the very gospel is turned into law in their hearts and their practice, and their obedience, faith and repentance, such as it is, are put in place of Christ. For practice, when traced back, will show the principles from which it proceeds.
(5.) Though all would be saved, natural men are enemies to the gospel way of salvation: it is “unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness” (1 Cor 1:23). Adam’s sons must then be in love with the law; indeed, they so cleave to it that nothing but death can part them from it, even a violent death in a day of God’s power (Ps 110:3): “Ye also are become dead [or deadened, killed, put to death] to the law” (Rom 7:4). As long as a soul sees how to get on without Christ, it will never come to Him; further, the godly find the remains of this principle in them to struggle against. Self-denial is the first lesson Christ gives, but they are learning it all their days. If it is thus in the green tree, what shall it be in the dry?