The chief means in reference to the end designed, was a distrust of providence, and the subordinate means to bring on that distrust, was the failure of ordinary means of supply: for so he endeavoured to improve his hunger and want in the wilderness, as a manifest neglect of providence towards him, for which, as he tacitly suggests, there was no ground to wait or rely upon it any further, but to betake himself to another course. Hence note,
Obs. 13. That the failure of ordinary means of help is by Satan improved as his special engine to bring men to a distrust of providence, and from thence to an unwarrantable attempt for their relief in an extraordinary way.
That the failure of ordinary and usual supplies hath by the devil’s subtlety brought a distrust of providence, and run men beyond all hopes of help, is a thing commonly and notoriously known. When men are afflicted, and brought unto unusual straits, and the ordinary ways of relief are out of sight, they are soon tempted to distrust God and man; and to conclude they are cut off, and that their ‘hope is perished,’ and that ‘their eye shall no more see good.’ David distressed, proclaims ‘all men liars:’ concludes that he should at last ‘be cut off,’ Ps. cxvi. 11, xxxi. 22. Jonah, in the whale’s belly, thought that all hope was gone, and that he was cast out of God’s sight, chap. ii. 4. The church of Israel in captivity, ‘forgot prosperity,’ notwithstanding the promise of deliverance after seventy years, and thought no less than that ‘her hope and strength was perished,’ Lam. iii. 18. And from the scriptures mentioned, we may also see the strength and prevalency of the temptation, especially when it is reduced to particulars. As,
(1.) First, It is not a thing altogether of no weight that such a temptation should prevail against such persons; as David and Jonah, and the whole church of Israel, that the manifold experiences that some of them have had of God’s faithfulness in delivering, and the seasonableness of help at times of greatest hazard, the particular promises that all of them have had—how dismal and black soever things have seemed—have given the fullest assurances imaginable, that what he had spoken should certainly be performed; the gracious qualifications of such persons as eminently holy and skilled in the duties of trust, and in the ways of providence, and the special advantage which some of them, as prophets, have had above others, to enable them to improve that skill, experience, knowledge, and grace, to a firm adherence to such special promises: that all these things should not be sufficient to keep them off distrust, though at present the ways of deliverence were hid from them, seems strange.
(2.) Secondly, It is wonderful to what a height such a prevailing temptation hath carried some of them. David seems to be a little outrageous, and did upon the matter call God ‘a liar,’ when he said, ‘All men are liars;’ which however that some interpret[392] as if it had been David’s trust in God, and his confident avouchment of his enemies’ prognostications of his ruin, to be but lies, and that this he spake from his firm belief of the promise, ‘I believed, therefore have I spoken;’ yet the acknowledgment of his ‘haste,’ which, compared with Ps. xxxi. 22, is declared as his weakness, will force us to conclude it an ingenuous confession of his distrust at the first, when he was greatly afflicted, though he recovered himself afterwards to a belief of the promise; and that in that distemper he plainly reflected upon Samuel, and calls the promises of God given by him ‘a very lie.’
(3.) Thirdly, It is strange also that present instances of God’s providences working out unexpected deliverances should not relieve the hearts of his saints from the power of such distrust; that when they see God is not unmindful of them, but doth hear them in what they feared, they should still retain in their minds the impression of an unbelieving apprehension; and not rather free themselves from their expectations of future ruin by concluding, that he that hath and doth deliver will also yet deliver. David had this thought in his heart, that he should ‘one day perish by the hand of Saul,’ 1 Sam. xxvii. 1, even then when God had so remarkably rescued him from Saul, and forced Saul not only to acknowledge his sin in prosecuting him, but also to declare his belief of the promise concerning David. See chap. xxvi. One would have expected that this should have been such a demonstration of the truth of what had been promised, that he should cast out all fear; and yet, contrariwise, this pledge of God’s purpose to him is received by a heart strongly prepossessed with misgiving thoughts, and he continues to think that for all this Saul would one day destroy him.
(4.) Fourthly, The pangs of this distrust are also so remarkable, that after they have been delivered, and have found that the event hath not answered their fears, they have in the review of their carriage under such fears, recounted this their weakness among other remarkable things, thereby shewing the unreasonableness of their unbelief, and their wonder that God should pass by so great a provocation, and notwithstanding so unexpectedly deliver them. David in the places before cited was upon a thankful acknowledgment of God’s love and wonderful kindness, which be thought he could not perform without leaving a record of his strange and unworthy distrust; as if he had said, ‘So greatly did I sin, and so unsuitably did I behave myself, that I then gave off, and concluded all was lost.’
To open this a little further, I shall add the reasons why Satan strikes in with such an occasion as the want of means to tempt to distrust, which are these:—
[1.] First, Such a condition doth usually transport men beside themselves; puts them, as it were, into an ecstacy, and by a sudden rapture of astonishment and fear, forceth them beyond their settled thoughts and purposes. This David notes as the ground of his inconsiderate rash speaking: ‘It was my haste,’ I was transported, &c. Now as passion does not only make men speak what otherwise they would not, but also to put bad interpretations upon actions and things beyond what they will bear, and hasten men to resolves exceedingly unreasonable; so doth this state of the heart, under an amazement and surprise of fear, give opportunity to Satan to put men to injurious and unrighteous thoughts of the providence of God, and by such ways to alienate their minds from the trust which they owe him.
[2.] Secondly, Sense is a great help to faith. Faith then must needs be much hazarded when sense is at a loss or contradicted, as usually it is in straits.