Honey Out of the Rock

(First of a two-part series)

"He should have fed them also with the finest wheat: and with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee."

Pslams 81:16

Written by:

Thomas Wilcox

--- (1621 - 1687) ---

A word of advice to my own heart and yours.

            You are a religious person and partake of all the ordinances.  You do well; they are glorious privileges; but if you have not the blood of Christ at the root of your religion, it will wither, and prove but painted pageantry to go to hell in.

          If you retain guilt and self-righteousness under it, those vipers will eat out of the vitals of it at length.  Try and examine with greatest strictness every day, what ground your religion and hope of glory is built upon, whether it was laid by the hand of Christ.  If not it will never be able to endure the storm that must come against it; satan will throw it all down, and great will be the fall thereof (Matthew 7:27).

          You that glory in being a Christian, you shall be winnowed.  Every vein of your profession will be tried to purpose.  It is terrible to have it all come tumbling down, and to find nothing but itself to stand upon.

          You who pride yourself on being a Christian, see to your waxen wings, which now will melt with the heat of temptation.  What a misery is it to trade much, and be bankrupt at length, and have no stock, no foundation for your soul!

          You who pride yourself on the gifts you have, look to see there is no worm at the root that will spoil all your fine gourd, and make it die about you in a day of scorching (John 4:6-8),  Look over your soul daily, and ask: Where is the blood of Christ to be seen upon my soul?  What righteousness is it that I stand upon to be saved?  Have I got away from all my self-righteousness?  Many eminent religious people have come at length to cry out, in the sight of the ruin all of their duties, “Undone, undone, to all eternity!”

          Consider the greatest sins may be hid under the greatest duties, and the greatest terrors.  See that the wound that sin has made in your soul be perfectly cured by the blood of Christ, --- not skinned over with duties, humblings, and enlargements.  Apply what you will besides the blood of Christ, it will poison the sore.  You will find that in was never mortified truly, if you have not seen Christ bleeding for you upon the cross.  Nothing can kill it, but beholding Christ’s righteousness.

          Nature can afford no balsam fit for soul cure.  Healing from duty, and not from Christ, is the most desperate disease.  Poor, ragged nature, with all its highest improvements, can never spin a garment fine enough (without spot) to cover the soul’s nakedness.  Nothing can fit the soul for that use but Christ’s perfect righteousness.

          Whatever is of nature’s spinning must be all unraveled before the righteousness of Christ can be put on.  Whatever is of nature’s putting on, satan will come and plunder every rag away, and leave the soul naked and open to the wrath of God.  All that nature can do will never make up the least gram of grace that can mortify sin, or look Christ in the face one day.

          You are known as a Christian person, and go on hearing, praying, and receiving, yet miserable you may be.  Look about you: did you ever yet see Christ to this day, in distinction from all other excellencies and righteousness in the world, and all of them falling before the majesty of His love and grace (Isaiah 2:17)?

          If you have seen Christ truly, you have seen pure grace, pure righteousness in Him in every way infinite, far exceeding all sin and misery.  If you have seen Christ, you can trample upon all the righteousness of men and angels, so as to bring you into acceptance with God.  If you have seen Christ, you would not do a duty without Him for ten thousand worlds (1^st Corinthians 2:2).  If ever you saw Christ, you saw Him a Rock, higher than self-righteousness, satan, and sin (Psalms 61:2), and this Rock follows you (1^st Corinthians 10:4); and there will be continual dropping of honey and grace out of that Rock to satisfy you (Psalms 81:16).  Examine if ever you have beheld Christ as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14).  Be sure you have come to Christ, that you stand upon the Rock of Ages, and have answered His call to your soul, and have closed with Him for justification.

          Men talk bravely of believing, whilst whole and sound; but few know what it is.  Christ is the mystery of the Scripture; grace is the mystery of Christ.  Believing is the most wonderful thing in the world.  Put anything of your own to it, and you spoil it.  Christ will not so much as look at it for believing.  When you believe and come to Christ, you must leave behind you your own righteousness, and bring nothing but your sin ---- Oh, that is hard! --- leave behind all your holiness, sanctification, duties, humbling, and so on; and bring nothing but your wants and miseries, or else Christ is not fit for you, nor you for Christ.  Christ will be a pure Redeemer and Mediator, and you must be an undone sinner, or Christ and you will never agree.  It is the hardest thing in the world to take Christ alone for righteousness: that is to acknowledge Him Christ.  Join anything to Him on your own, and you un-Christ Him.

          Whatever comes in when you go to God or acceptance, besides Christ, call it anti-Christ; bid it be gone; make only Christ’s righteousness triumphant.  All besides that is Babylon, which must fall if Christ stand, and you shall rejoice in the day of the fall there-of (Isaiah 14:4).  Christ alone did tread the winepress, and there was none with Him (Isaiah 63:3).  If you join anything to Christ, Christ will trample upon it with fury and anger, and stain His raiment with the blood of it.  You think it’s easy to believe.  Was ever your faith tried with an hour of temptation, and a thorough sight of sin?  Was it ever put to grapple with satan, and the wrath of God lying upon the conscience, when you were in the mouth of hell and the m abgrave?  Then did God show you Christ as a ransom and righteousness?  Could you then say, “Oh, I see grace enough in Christ”?  You may easily say you believe, but it is the biggest word in the world.  Untried faith is uncertain faith.

          To believing, there must go a clear conviction of sin, and the merits of the blood of Christ, and of Christ’s willingness to save upon this consideration, merely, that you are a sinner; things all harder than to make a world.  All the power in nature cannot get up so high in a storm of sin and guilt as really to believe there is any grace, any willingness in Christ to save.  When satan charges sin upon the conscience, then for the soul to charge it upon Christ, that is Gospel-like; that is to make Him a Saviour.  He alone serves for that use.  His blood and merits alone are necessary for salvation.  That is the sum of the Gospel.  When the soul, in all duties and distress, can sa, “Nothing but Christ, Christ alone, for righteousness, justification, sanctification, redemption (1^st Corinthians 1:30) --- not humbling, not duties, not graces”; that soul has got above the reach of the billows.

          All temptations, satan’s advantages, and our complaining, are laid in self-righteousness, and self-excellency, God pursues these, by setting satan upon you, as Laban did Jacob for his images.  These must be torn from you, be as unwilling as you will.  These hinder Christ from coming in; and till Christ comes in, guilt will not go out; and where guilt is, there is hardness of heart; and therefore much guilt arues very little if anything of Christ.

          When guilt is raised up, take heed of getting it allayed in any way but by Christ’s blood: that will tend to hardening.  Make Christ your peace; “for He is our peace” (Ephesians 2:14), not your duties and your tears; Christ your righteousness, not your graces.  You may destroy Christ by duties, as well as by sins.  Look at Christ, and do as much as you will.  Stand with all your weight upon Christ’s righteousness.  Take heed of having one foot on your righteousness, another on Christ’s.  Till Christ come and sit on high upon a throne of grace in the conscience, there is nothing but guilt, terrors, secret suspicions, the soul hanging between hope and fear, which is an un-Gospel-like state. 

          He that fears to see sin’s utmost vileness, the utmost hell of his own heart, he suspects the merits of Christ.  Be you never such a great sinner (1^st John 2:1); try Christ to make Him your Advocate, and you shall find Him Jesus Christ the righteous.  In all doubting, fears, storms of conscience, look at Christ continually, do not argue with satan, he desires nothing better; bid him go to Christ, and He will answer him.  It is His office to be our Advocate (1^st John 2:1), His office to answer law as our surety (Hebrews 7:22), His office to answer justice as our Mediator (Galations 3:20; 1^st Timothy 2:5); and He is sworn to that office (Hebrews 7:20-21).  Put Christ upon it.  If you will do anything yourself, as to satisfaction for sin, you renounce Christ the righteous, who was made sin for you (2^nd Corinthians 5:21).

          Satan may bring forward and corrupt Scripture but he cannot answer Scripture.  It is Christ’s word of mighty authority.  Christ foiled satan with it (Matthew 4:7).  In all the Scripture there is not an ill word against a poor sinner stripped of self-righteousness.  No, it plainly points out this man to be the subject of grace of the Gospel, and none else.  Believe but Christ’s willingness, and that will make you willing.  If you find you cannot believe, remember it is Christ’s work to make you believe.  Put Him upon it; He works to will and to do of His good pleasure (Philippians 2:13).  Mourn for your unbelief, for unbelief is but a setting up of guilt in the conscience above Christ, and undervaluing the merits of Christ, accounting His blood an unholy, a common, and un-satisfying thing.