Whosoever addresses himself to suffering saints is sure to have a large and attentive audience, for sorrow, suffering and trial are universal in this sinful world, and saints are no more immune than sinners.
This subject has a large place in the Word of God, and in meditating in what is written we may experience the “comfort of the Scriptures.”
GENERAL AFFLICTION
Scripture is plain as to the way testing comes to saint and sinner alike. The wise man wrote, “All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrifices not” (Eccl. 9:2).
We are in a world where certain laws as the result of the entrance of sin operate as part of God’s government, and these laws know no distinction between saint and sinner. There is no respect of persons. Saint and sinner are visited with strict impartiality. An epidemic rages. Christian and unbeliever alike fall victims. The use or abuse we make of our bodies help to make us immune from disease, or render us easy victims, and this is true of either saint or sinner.
But above these general laws we find Christians have a special place with God, and faith and prayer come in to help in this connection. God is a merciful Creator. We read, “We trust in the living God, who is the Saviour [literally Preserver as a Creator] of all men, SPECIALLY of those that believe” (1 Tim. 4:10). And further, “There has no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but GOD IS FAITHFUL, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way of escape, that ye may be able to bear it” (1 Cor. 10:13).
Of course temptation here has something special in view, but the general truth remains. Let the worst come, God can and will sustain, and even if He does not effect a way of escape from the trial, He does promise a way of escape in the trial, so that in the comfort of His support and the ministration of His grace, the trial may be borne to the glory of God. Even Job of old, with but a tithe of our light and blessing, could cry out, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him” (Job 13:15) and Hezekiah could say of his sore trial, “By these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit” (Isa. 38:16). Nature would say, “By these things men die,” but life, truly life, and blessing are but the outcome for the believer.
What a comfort to poor and suffering saints are the words:
“GOD IS FAITHFUL.”
The trial is sometimes very severe. For instance a fatal disease, throwing the patient into paroxysms of pain night and day, and making death a sure thing in the immediate future, is fairly testing to both the afflicted one, and to the relatives, who watch with breaking hearts the long-drawn-out agony, and in anticipation endure the bereavement. Often the cry is wrung from hearts, Why does God allow all this?
Paint the picture as black as you like, yet the limit of endurance is not reached, and never will be, for our text goes on to say, “GOD IS FAITHFUL, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way of escape, that ye may be able to bear it” (1 Cor. 10:13).
Mark, God does not promise a way of escape from the trial, but a way of escape in the trial for the deeply tried mind and heart, so that in this ministration of grace the trial may be borne to the glory of God. What a stay then for poor suffering saints are the words:
“GOD IS FAITHFUL.”
AFFLICTION is sometimes, alas! THE RESULT OF OUR OWN FOLLY. We constantly reap what we sow. And yet how graciously God can bring blessing out of even such circumstances. Where He does not directly rule, He can and does overrule for our blessing. God did not rule Peter’s fall, but He over-ruled it for signal blessing to His impulsive warm-hearted servant.
Our bodies are the Lord’s, and they should neither be pampered nor abused. One may push the body to breaking-down point; another may pamper it. Both are wrong, surely.
We have the class in our mind whose whole interest lies in their health. They have a cold; that is more serious than a European war. They bought a remedy; that is more important than famine in India. This picture is scarcely overdrawn. It is true of too many excellent Christian people.
And the other class. They defy the elements. They scoff at ordinary precautions. Sleep and food may be necessary to ordinary mortals, but not to them. For a time—it may be a long time—their strength holds out. But in the end collapse comes, and they can trace their afflictions to their own folly. And yet even in this case in the Lord’s tender mercy they will find His consolations abundant, and spiritual blessing will be reaped by them in the government of God.
I know one instance of a very promising servant of Christ, who wrecked his body by his excessive zeal in God’s service. For years he has been like an eagle with its wings clipped, where he might have served the Lord freely he is tied to a special climate and a restricted service.
Again, affliction may be the result of excesses committed before conversion.
All this has its place in God’s government. But whatever the circumstances, whether those which are ordinary to man, or alas, the result of our folly, we can trust our gracious God to use these circumstances in the best possible way that love can devise.
To what wonderful heights confidence in God can go, when Job, without a tithe of the spiritual advantages we have in this marvellous Christian era, could say, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him” (Job 13:15).
THE FATHER’S PURGING
This is a line that accounts for much of God’s ways with us. It does not stand in the light of punishment. It is rather the Father’s gracious design by which a fruitful branch in the true vine may bear more fruit; in other words, the way in which a fruitful Christian may become more fruitful.
The branch may be making too much wood, and the husbandman’s skilful hand purges the branch, and effects the desired result, more fruit. How often the Father has brought in some physical trouble, family bereavement, reverse in circumstances, etc., and the result has been the weaning in spirit from the world, greater devotedness to Christ, greater zeal in His blessed service, more abundant fruit for God.
How the Father knows just the way to take, the right time, and the right method, and how sweet it is to take all our circumstances from His hand, or by exercise get the desired result.
GOD’S CHASTENING HAND
Hebrews 12:5-11 gives us information as to this line of things. “Chastening” however, carries with it the general thought of discipline and training, including punishment, but that is only a part of it, and possibly a small part of it.
The discipline of an army includes its whole training and system of which punishment is a last resource. Our passage, in way of illustration, speaks of the discipline or training our fathers in the flesh gave us.
It is the disposal of circumstances by God in such a way as to train us with the result that we may be partakers of His holiness.
At the moment such chastening is not joyous but grievous. Take as an illustration the training of a hedge or a tree. It means clipping and pruning and restraining luxuriant growth. If the tree could feel and express its feelings, it would tell us such training was not joyous but grievous.
Now there are two dangers in connection with us, either (1) despising the chastening of the Lord, or (2) fainting at His rebuke. To make light of circumstances, and not to be exercised as to what is meant, is to court severe discipline, and it may be in the end punishment. To faint under it is caused by a lack of confidence in God, to fail to benefit by the support He surely gives to those who are truly exercised.
The path of safety and ultimate happiness is that of godly exercise, carrying us through the grievous discipline in confidence of soul before God, and in a right concern to know God’s will and mind in these things. Happy is the result, even the peaceable fruits of righteousness.
SUFFERING THE RESULT OF TESTIMONY
One has only to mention this line of suffering to carry the reader’s conviction. The life of the blessed Lord, the life of the apostle Paul, illustrate it Joseph’s discreet conduct, testifying to his walking in the fear of God, entailed many a grievous day of suffering in prison. Paul and Silas with bleeding backs in the Philippi prison, Daniel in the den of lions, the three Hebrew children in the fiery furnace, are cases in. point. Happy and honourable is this form of suffering.
Missionaries often entail years of suffering, and shorten their lives by labouring in unhealthy climates. One can only stand in thankfulness before devotedness of this high order.
WHAT IS THE SIN UNTO DEATH? (1 John 5:16)
This is no particular sin, but sin of such a nature, having in view the person who commits it, and the circumstances leading up to it. We have instances of it in Scripture. For instance, Moses by uttering a few hasty words sinned to death. Many of the Israelites uttered hasty words and it did not constitute a sin to death in their case, but the peculiar position of Moses and the circumstances in which he uttered these hasty words, led his action to be treated as “a sin to death,” and debarred him from entering the promised land. Samson’s letting out the secret of his strength to Delilah, the prophet turning aside to eat bread and water, when expressly told not to do so; Ananias and Sapphira telling a lie to the Holy Ghost; the unrepented-of intemperance of some of the Corinthian saints at the Lord’s supper, constituted “a sin to death.”
But even in this gravely serious case we can discern the love of the hand, which removes the saint, judged to be unfit to maintain a godly testimony on earth. If unfit by his own sin for earth, he is fit for heaven through the grace of God and the efficacy of the atoning work of Christ, and government does not shrink in love from removing such an one from the sphere of his failure, and bringing him into the presence of the Lord on high Solemn way to get there, but oh, the grace that puts him, or any one of us, there.
Very briefly and simply we have put forward a few thoughts in connection with the suffering of saints. May God be graciously pleased to use them for instruction and encouragement.