Personal and National Reformation

A Sermon by Thomas Boston

The second of two parts of a sermon preached in 1716, reprinted, slightly abridged, from Boston’s Works, vol 3. In the first part, printed last month and entitled “The Salvation of the Jews”, he spoke on his first doctrine: “A day is coming in which there shall be a national salvation of the Jews . . .”. The change of title for this part reflects the change of subject.

Zechariah 12:12. And the land shall mourn, every family apart, the family of the house of David apart, and their wives apart; the family of the house of Nathan apart, and their wives apart.

Doctrine 2. The outpouring of the Spirit will make a blessed change on the case of a people or person otherwise hopeless.

“The land shall mourn.” Strong is the grace of God, and it will prevail when it enters the lists with corruption, whatever be the advantage on its side.

I will illustrate this from the case to which the text refers. Consider here these things shining in this case:

(1.) Grace can bring them back whose corruptions have carried them quite off the foundation. So are the Jews who despise Christ as a mere man. Such a case is absolutely hopeless in itself but grace can bring one out of it. He that hath made the rejected stone the Head of the corner can make of the rejecters lively stones built up upon Him (Compare 1 Pet 2:5 with 1 Pet 1:1).

(2.) Grace can overcome the strongest, and root out the deepest, prejudices against religion. No people in the world are so deeply prejudiced against Christianity as the Jews. But an outpouring of the Spirit will totally carry away their prejudices. When the eye is ill affected, things appear in quite the wrong colours; but the Spirit will cure the eye, and then the beauty of religion will recommend itself (Song 5:9 and 6:1).

(3.) Grace can draw men out of the way in which an erring conscience fixes them. The bond of conscience, right or wrong, is one of the strongest ties of the soul; therefore publicans and harlots entered into the kingdom of God before the scribes and Pharisees. The gospel had readier access into the hearts of pagans than of Jews. When sin is held fast as a part of religion, it is fixed as with bars of iron. Satan is most successful when he drives a wedge of God’s wood. This he does with the Jews at this day, who oppose Christ from a blinded conscience of the honour of God and His law. But grace will reach them; it did so most effectually with Paul, who verily thought that he ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth.

(4.) There is no authority against the grace of God. By means of unbelief, Satan has had 1700 years’ possession of that people as his slaves. The fathers have taught the children from generation to generation to reject Jesus Christ. Yet grace will recover them after all from the fraudulent possessor, though he had so long kept possession.

(5.) Grace will do what the heaviest strokes of judgement could not do. The sin of the Jews in crucifying Christ was without a parallel; so their punishment also was a matchless punishment. It was such “great tribulation, as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be”. They are under the weight of it till this day. But it has done them no good. O, hopeless case! But hopeless as it is, an outpouring of the Spirit will make a blessed change.

(6.) It will put an end to a national hardness. When a nation is blessed with light and they abuse it, God is provoked to plague them with judicial hardness and blindness. Such has been the case of the Jews for 1700 years (Rom 11:8-10). Fearful case! But an outpouring of the Spirit unlooses these bands of death.

Uses:

1. Behold here the freedom and power of the grace of God. It is matchlessly free; it shines like the sun without hire and blows where it listeth. O what wide steps free grace makes to catch a lost creature, what mountains it skips over! It steps over even Paul’s injuries and blasphemies. O the power of it! It is the wind of the Lord’s Spirit that blows down cedars by the roots, rends the rocks and makes the iron gates of the devil’s prison give way. The strong chains wherewith he binds his prisoners become like tow that the fire has kindled upon. It tames the sinner that has long been wild, melts the heart of adamant and makes them mourn as doves who, like the leviathan, count darts as stubble and laugh at the shaking of a spear.

2. You that would fain have Christ and His grace, be not faithless but believing. Whatever your case, do not conclude it is hopeless with respect to the Physician. I think there always is a secret despair of grace, and more than we are aware of. They say there is no hope. Some think Satan’s bonds on them are so strong that there is no breaking of them; their plague sore has run so very long that it will never heal now; God has so much given up with them that He will never more look near them. And if they be praying that the Lord would break these bonds, Satan steps forward to them and whispers in their ear, as in Mark 5:36, “Thy daughter is dead; why troublest thou the Master?” But, in verse 36, Jesus saith, “Be not afraid, only believe”.

3. If you would ever see a reformation in the land, trust more to an outpouring of the Spirit on the land than to judgement, were it ever so severe. It is a folly to be fond of a national stroke; that is the effect of a bitter spirit, not of the Spirit of God. Jeremiah said, “As for me, I have not hastened from being a pastor to follow Thee: neither have I desired the evil day, Thou knowest”. The most tremendous judgements will not reform a nation without an outpouring of the Spirit, but an outpouring of the Spirit will do it without any outward calamity at all. Our country has had a heavy stroke within these few months, and many a family are mourning under the weight of it this day. But are we any nearer reformation than we were? The Lord has made death ride in triumph among us of late. Our kirk door is beset with new graves; burials have followed fast at the heels of one another. But who considers how far people are from being bettered by these dispensations of providence, may justly fear the time cometh when deaths shall be more frequent but burials more rare (Amos 6:7-11).

4. Yet despair not of the reformation of the land or of particular persons, but pray for an outpouring of the Spirit. O wrestle with God and lift up a cry for it. That is a sovereign remedy that would cure all our diseases at once: “Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: Thou hast the dew of Thy youth”. The work of reformation has long been like corn in a great drought, yellow at the root. A shower of the Spirit would make all green again and grow fast.

As much as we are divided, this would unite us. As bold-faced as wickedness and profanity are, this would stop their mouths. As little good as the gospel does, this would make a convincing, converting and confirming work more frequent and give ministers of the gospel as much to do with broken hearts as they now have with hard and impenitent ones. As great as lifelessness and untenderness are among ministers and people, this would purify the sons of Levi and make the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem pleasant to the Lord, as in former years. It would restore our judges as at the first and our counsellors as at the beginning, and make nobles cease from building Babel and pulling down the church and religion; it would put holiness to the Lord on the bells of their horses, and they would willingly set their shoulder to the work of the Lord. O pray for this. And let not your hopelessness and uncharitableness as to any ranks of people in the land, whether because of their profanity, apostasy, formality, deadness, enmity to religion and hurtfulness to the Church, shuffle them out of your prayers for good. But cry mightily for the outpouring of the Spirit, so that the whole land may mourn.

Doctrine 3. They that share in the outpouring of the Spirit, will bring home public, national guilt to their own doors and mourn for it.

The cause of this mourning, in the text, is the crucifying of Christ (v 10). Their fathers did it, and many generations have since passed; but when the time comes that the Spirit is poured out, the then generation shall cry out, Guilty, guilty, and mourn for it, in families and alone, each by himself, as if they had been the persons that embraced their hands in His blood.

Reasons:

1. They will find then that they have smarted under it, and borne in their own persons the marks of God’s indignation against the national guilt. In the mean time they will be persuaded of the justice and holiness of God’s procedure, saying, Our fathers have sinned and are not; and we have borne their iniquities (Lam 5:7). In the natural body, if one member suffer, the rest suffer with it; so it is in the political body. When God is angry with our mother, the children cannot escape a share of the frowns. Children will therefore be affected with the offence, as if they had given it themselves.

2. However unbroken hearts may justify themselves as to national guilt, especially that wherein they had no active hand, yet the light of God’s Spirit shining into the heart will bring in the soul guilty in that point – there being so many ways by which one person’s sins may become another’s, which a tender soul will not dare to purge itself of. They each say with Isaiah: “Woe is me! For I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts” (Is 6:5). He who hath been among the infected would have much to do (if of a tender conscience) to swear himself clean; so hard it is, if not impossible, for sinful men to be members of a nation and not some way or other to be tinctured with the national guilt.

3. God deals with those of a nation or church as one collective body, and tender souls, seeing themselves to be of a guilty body, will each take it home to himself. Hence the holy men of God make confession of national guilt as their own, being themselves of the body, and are affected with it as their sin in particular (Dan 9:5-19).

Uses:

1. This shows us the acknowledgement of national guilt that is acceptable in the sight of God, namely, when people bring it home to their own doors, and lay it before the Lord, as that of which they cannot cleanse themselves, but need the blood of Christ to take away their share of the guilt. He that looks through the land this day and beholds the profanity, apostasy and crying sins of the land, in former and the present generations, and takes up the stone to throw at the guilty, even in respect of those very sins in which he had no active hand, as the murder of the saints and the like, hath very little, if any, of the Spirit of God. They are not of the spirit of Phinehas the son of Eleazar, nor disposed to say with Jeremiah: “The crown is fallen from our head; woe unto us that we have sinned!” (Lam 5:16). It will never be our complaining of national guilt only as the sin of others before God, but bringing it home to our own doors, that will be accepted.

2. This shows what will bring all to admit their own part in the causes of wrath against the land. There is a great complaint which all ranks of persons have against one another this day: everyone hides his sin and will not admit his guilt, whereby the anger of the Lord is caused to go out against us. But if there were an outpouring of the Spirit on the generation, it would make a loosening among us as ever there was in the frozen waters by a thaw. It would set all hearts a-mourning, eyes a-weeping, tongues a-confessing. Each one a-crying, What have I done? It would pull off the fig leaves wherewith people now cover their nakedness, and the patches wherewith they cover their loathsome sores. O pray for the blessed day.

Doctrine 4. Family and personal humiliation and reformation, spreading through a land, is true national humiliation and reformation.

Consider:

1. The nation is really nothing but so many families united in one body; therefore as the curing of a man’s body is nothing but the restoring of health to its several members, so national reformation is nothing but personal and family reformation grown universal, or at least general. Many talk of national reformation who are little solicitous about these, whether their own or their neighbours’. Deceit is wrapped up in fair generals. But it is as great a blunder in religion as it would be in medicine to tell the physician you would have him cure your body, but he may let the members be as they are.

2. Is the humiliation of the several parts not the humiliation and reformation of the whole? Would a number of reformed persons not make a reformed family? Would reformed families not make a reformed congregation? Would reformed congregations not make a reformed national Church? How was the world corrupted? Did one man not poison the whole? Was it not wickedness, spreading from one to another, that sunk the world in wickedness. We must begin at the fountain if we would stop the stream. When a house is on fire, the fire takes hold on one part and spreads through the rest; when it is quenched, one runs with his bucket to one part, another with his bucket to another part, and so it is put out. Even so must it be in the case before us.

3. In what way does the influence of magistrates, ministers and other church officers reach to national reformation but as it reaches to families and particular persons? If they do not endeavour to reform these and yet pretend to national reformation, it is a contradiction; it is building a castle in the air. If the disease be grown so strong that their endeavours can do nothing to reform particular persons and families, how is national reformation possible?

4. If one has a mind to reform his family, how can he do it but by reforming himself and the particular members of his family – by setting up and keeping up the pure worship of God, maintaining unity and peace, and exciting the several members of it to the duties of piety, righteousness and sobriety, and curbing sin in himself and them. Even so it is with national reformation. Therefore, both the National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant condescended upon personal and family reformation as that without which national reformation cannot subsist.

5. Though public humiliation in public assemblies be necessary, yet real humiliation and reformation lies here. Apart from this, all public humiliations are but a hypocritical show (Is 58:5,6). If ever the Lord will pour His Spirit in a notable measure on this Church and nation, such public humiliations will be grounds of public and personal humiliation afterwards and really mourned over, as that whereby God has been dishonoured, insofar as personal, family and national reformation has not been joined with them.

6. Personal and family reformation is the bond of reformation, in respect of the truth and ordinances of God. Where that is lacking, church reformation cannot last; however pure it may be, it is a flower set in the ground without a root, that quickly withers. What a good reformation there was in Hezekiah’s days, but in the days of his son all goes (2 Chr 33:9,10). So it was also in Josiah’s days, but immediately afterwards all goes to wreck. How could this be, but that real personal religion was still far off? But on the other hand, family and personal reformation would make people duly concerned for obtaining truth and purity and would cause it to be retained.

Uses:

1. This teaches us that there is no true national reformation without family and personal reformation. In vain do we pretend to the one without the other. If a nation have never so much purity of truth and ordinances, God will never count them pure without reformation of life. Nay, the purity of ordinances will aggravate their condemnation. The more light there is, while there is little holiness in a Church or nation, the more terrible will their judgement be. Laodicea’s hypocrisy was her ruin (Rev 3:16). The church of Ephesus was very zealous against error (Rev 2:6). Discipline was vigorously exercised against the erroneous (Rev 2:2). Yet, alas, she had lost the vigour of real holiness; therefore unless she speedily repented and returned to her first works, she was to be visited with the heaviest judgements (Rev 2:4,5).

2. As many persons in the land as will not amend their ways, so many hinderers there are of national reformation. If these things were considered, many persons would be found guilty of preventing national reformation who think they are very far from being chargeable with it. Consider your own sins impartially and remember that, so far as you are deficient in personal holiness and reformation, so far are you guilty before God of hindering the reformation of the land. How should the land mourn? Is it not every family apart? While the house is on fire, you are chargeable with the ruin of it if you do not use your bucket to put out the flame in the place nearest you.

3. Let none say they can do nothing towards a national reformation, for every person can do something for it if they will. What we call our cannot, God calls our will not. His command is: “Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions; so iniquity shall not be your ruin” (Ezek 18:30). But, says He, “Ye will not come to Me, that ye might have life” (John 5:40). But it is not easy to get our corrupt hearts to comply with what God calls us to. If people would keep their zeal for reformation and increase it, it might do much good to warm those that are more indifferent (2 Cor 11:2). Everyone in their own sphere must set about reformation. What can we do? Reform yourselves and your families, and labour to spread it among them whom you can converse with. Your own eternal interest, and that of others, require this of you; and it might be of good use to the Church:

(1.) Set about personal reformation in heart and life. Thus we find in Nehemiah 3 that everyone laboured in repairing the wall over against his own house. Though you cannot repair the whole wall, yet will you not repair over against your own chamber? “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God?” Look into the house and you will see it stands much in need of cleansing. There are buyers and sellers within that heart of thine that need to be driven out in the practice of mortification. Cleanse the outer court of thy life, thy words and actions. See well to the inner court, the hidden man of the heart.

(2.) Set about family reformation. Every Christian family is, or should be, a church in the house (1 Cor 16:19). True doctrine should be maintained and propagated in it by reading the Word and instructing the members of the family. Saith God, “These words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart; and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up” (Deut 6:6,7). There should be pure worship of prayers and praises; and holy discipline and good government, for the encouragement of piety and suppressing of sin in the family (Ps 101). And to advance these, everyone is to hold hand, as they would have the Lord to dwell in the family.

(3.) Help forward the reformation of other persons and families, and particularly of the congregation whereof you are members. It is to the commendation of the Tekoites (Neh 3:5-27) that they were resolved not to be idle while there was anything to do. They had less encouragement than others from their nobles, but they were not the more slack as a result. Everyone is our neighbour, and we have a relation to all, to engage us to be useful to them as far as we can. “As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially to them that are of the household of faith” (Gal 6:10). Thus you may be useful for national reformation two ways:

[1.] That part of it falling to your share is done, and so it is not all lying behind. God will notice who puts his hand to the work as well as who stands back from it. Nay, He notices how everyone works (Neh 3:20). Your labour shall not be in vain. God reckons him a Christian who repents of all his known sins; and he that in his sphere does what he can towards national reformation, God will reckon him one that would have reformed the whole land if he could.

[2.] Your example will have a tendency to stir up others. The flame that burns the house must rise in some place, and some person must take the lead in reformation. O but that is an honourable post! Paul speaks most affectionately of Epaphras as the first-fruits of Achaia unto Christ, and tells us that the zeal of the Corinthians provoked very many. When the first-fruits come, the whole harvest follows. Though it would not have that effect, yet it will be your best testimony against your defection and the apostasy of the day.

To excite you to family and personal reformation, consider that this is always very necessary, especially at this time when God is pleading with us in such a manner, many families mourning for the loss of their relations. And we do not know how soon the cup may come to ourselves, if the Lord do not stay His hand. It is an ordinary excuse for doing nothing that we cannot do all; but it is insufficient. In Ezra’s days, the building of the temple was interrupted for many years, yet they built the altar (Ezra 3:2). Though we cannot reform the land, we may do something towards it.

Though you cannot stop the flood of iniquity and apostasy through the land, yet you may put a stop to that part of it which is in your own course and life. You might do something to stop it in your family and neighbourhood. But the commons are as the nobles; they will not put their shoulder to the Lord’s work. They are not their brother’s keepers; though they can speak well enough in their own cause, they have not a mouth to open for the cause of God. We are all persuaded public oaths have done much mischief to this church and nation. This we cannot help, but may we not reform the common profane swearing among us, that no one imposes. They need a brow of brass that will pretend a zeal against the former and yet use profane swearing in their own conversation, or are at no pains to reform it in others.

Though we cannot get the land to mourn, yet we may mourn over our own family and its case. Though we cannot get national humiliations for all that we judge to be sins of the land, yet we may get personal and family fasts and humiliations for them. In these we may be as particular as we please. And if they put us to this course, it would be good evidence that the sins of the land are not merely a matter of discourse with us, but of solemn seriousness.

Through unbelief, we are prone to think of God as removed to a great distance from us, whereas we ought to have the impressive conviction that we are in His immediate presence, and that He is the witness of all the desires and emotions of our hearts. In nothing is there a greater difference between our theoretical and practical belief than in regard to the omnipresence of God.

Archibald Alexander