Good Like a Medicine

This next look at Device and Remedies from Brooks concentrates on the ways Satan can convince believers to trivialize and excuse our sin by abusing God’s mercy in order to do what we want.

Device (5) - To present God to the soul as one made up all of mercy. Oh! saith Satan, you need not make such a matter of sin, you need not be so fearful of sin, not so unwilling to sin; for God is a God of mercy, a God full of mercy, a God that delights in mercy, a God that is ready to show mercy, a God more prone to pardon his people than to punish his people; and therefore he will not take advantage against the soul; and why then, saith Satan, should you make such a matter of sin?

Remedy (1) - Seriously consider, That it is the sorest judgment in the world to be left to sin upon any pretence whatsoever. O unhappy man! when God leaveth thee to thyself, and doth not resist thee in thy sins. Woe, woe to him at whose sins God does not wink… Ah Lord! this mercy I humbly beg, that whatever thou givest me up to, thou wilt not give me up to the ways of my own heart; if thou wilt give me up to be afflicted, or tempted, or reproached, I will patiently sit down, and say, it is the Lord; let him do with me what seems good in his own eyes. Do anything with me, lay what burden thou wilt upon me, so thou dost not give me up to the ways of my own heart.

“A me, me salva Domine; Deliver me, O Lord, from that evil man myself” (Augustine).

Remedy (2) - The second remedy against this device of Satan is, solemnly to consider, that God is just as he is merciful. As the Scriptures speak him out to be a very merciful God, so they speak him out to be a very just God (2 Peter 2:4, Matt. 27:46).

Remedy (3) - The third remedy against this device of Satan is, seriously to consider, that sins against mercy will bring the greatest and sorest judgments upon men’s heads and hearts. When mercy is despised, then justice takes the throne.

For as our Saviour prophesied concerning Jerusalem, ‘that a stone should not be left upon a stone,’ so it was fulfilled forty years after his ascension, by Vespasian the emperor and his son Titus, who, having besieged Jerusalem, the Jews were oppressed with a grievous famine, in which their food was old shoes, leather, old hay, and the dung of beasts. There [they] died, partly of the sword and partly of the famine…

You slight souls that are so apt to abuse mercy, consider this, that in the gospel days, the plagues that God inflicts upon the despisers and abusers of mercy are usually spiritual plagues; as blindness of mind, hardness of heart, benumbedness of conscience, which are ten thousand times worse than the worst of outward plagues that can befall you.

Oh! therefore, whenever Satan shall present God to the soul as one made up all of mercy, that he may draw thee to do wickedly, say unto him, that sins against mercy will bring upon the soul the greatest misery; and therefore whatever becomes of thee, thou wilt not sin against mercy.

Remedy (4) - Seriously consider, that though God’s general mercy be over all his works, yet his special mercy is confined to those that are divinely qualified…to them that love him and keep his commandments, to them that trust in him, that by hope hang upon him, and that fear him; and that thou must be such a one here, or else thou canst never be happy hereafter. (Exodus 34: 6,7, Exodus 20:6, Psalm 25:10, Psalm 32:10, Psalm 33:18, Psalm 103:11).

Remedy (5) - Seriously consider, that those that were once glorious on earth, and are now triumphing in heaven, did look upon the mercy of God as the most powerful argument to preserve them from sin, and to fence their souls against sin, and not as an encouragement to sin (Psalm 26:3-5). So Joseph strengthens himself against sin from the remembrance of mercy (Gen. 39:9). Satan knocked at the door, but the sight of mercy would not suffer him to answer to open. Joseph, like a pearl in a puddle, keeps virtue still.

So Paul: ‘Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid! How shall we that are dead to sin, live any longer therin?’ (Romans 6: 1-2).

So John: ‘These things I write unto you, that ye sin not’ (1 John 2: 1-2). What was it that he wrote? He wrote: ‘That we might have fellowship with the Father and his Son; and that the blood of Christ cleanseth us from all sin; and that if we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins; and that if we do sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.’ These choice favours and mercies the apostle holds forth as the choicest means to preserve the soul from sin, and to keep at the greatest distance from sin; and if this will not do it, you may write the may void of Christ and grace, and undone forever.

– Thomas Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices (pp. 50-53)