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Behind a Frowning
Providence
By John J. Murray
Introduction
One of the best known hymns
is William Cowper's "GOD MOVES IN A MYSTERIOUS WAY, HIS WONDERS TO PERFORM".
Cowper was subject to melancholy and knew more about the darker side of
Christian experience than the brighter. It was out of heart-felt
experience that he composed his hymn and presented in it so many precious
gems of truth such as the oft-quoted lines,
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.
What is meant by a "frowning
providence"? Is this something that we are to expect in the Christian
life? If so, how do we cope with it?
Like you, I have sought
answers to these questions. Some of them I hope to share in the
following.
1. There is a Providence
Providence is an old
fashioned word and has a strange ring to modern ears. Yet when we break it
down into its parts the meaning becomes clear. It comes from the Latin
video ‘to see’ and pro ‘before’, meaning ‘to see beforehand’. In
our lives we plan beforehand but we do not see what is going to happen. God
has planned everything for His creation and because He is the sovereign God
everything will come to pass as He purposed. Providence is that marvelous
working of God by which all the events and happenings in His universe
accomplish the purpose He has in mind.
The Scriptural doctrine
that God ‘works all things according to the
counsel of his will’ is clearly set out in the Westminster
Confession of Faith’s definition of God’s Eternal Decree:
God from
all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will,
freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as
thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the
will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second cause
taken away, but rather established. (Chap III, 1)
The Shorter Catechism asks
the question: ‘How does God execute his decrees? And answers ‘God
executes his decrees in the works of creation and providence’ (Q. 8).
What about redemption? It is included in the work of providence! It is the
supreme work of providence.
In it God sent His Son
into this world for the purpose of redeeming a people. He set His love on
hell-deserving sinners and chose them in Christ before the foundation of the
world. Those He foreknew He predestined that they might be
‘conformed to the image of his Son’
(Romans 8:29). God has a plan for His Church that stretches from
eternity to eternity.
In relation to that grand
purpose, ‘God has’, according to Thomas Boston, ‘by an eternal decree,
immovable as mountains of brass (Zechariah 6:1), appointed the whole of
every one’s lot, the crooked parts thereof, as well as the straight.’ As Job
said in the midst of his sufferings: ‘He
performeth the thing that is appointed for me’ (Job 23:14)
The plan of God extends to
every detail in my life. There are several important things that can be
said of it:
1
The plan is perfect. Everything
that God does is perfect. It may not appear to me at times to be perfect
but it is, because it will ultimately lead to the greater glory of God.
2
The plan is exhaustive. It
includes everything. It is worked out in a situation where everything is
under the control of God. It extends to the smallest and most casual
things. ‘The very hairs of your head are all
numbered’ (Matthew 10: 30).
3
The plan is for my ultimate good.
Everyone who loves God has the assurance that ‘all
things work together for good’ (Romans 8:28). If God is for me
who can be against me? The opposition does not count. The gracious purpose
of God will certainly be accomplished in my life.
4
The plan is secret. God alone
knows what is going to happen in advance because He has purposed it all.
Every detail is fixed before I was born. God hides it from me until it
happens. I discover it day by day as the plan unfolds. This is the
unfolding of His secret will for my life.
Although God has only one
will we often speak about His secret will and His revealed will. The latter
is made known in the Scriptures and is the rule of our duty. The former is
made known in His providence and is to be submitted to and observed.
This teaching is clearly
set out in the words of Thomas Boston:
Whoever
would walk with God must be due observers of the Word and Providence of God
for by these in a special manner He manifests himself to His people. In the
one we see what He says; in the other what He does. These are the two books
that every student of holiness ought to be much conversant in. They are both
written with the one hand and they should both be carefully read by those
who would have not only the name of religion but the thing. They should be
studied together if we would profit by either for being taken together they
give light one to the other; and as it is our duty to read the Word, so also
it is our duty to observe the work of God.
These words are taken from
a sermon on Psalm 107:43:
‘Whoso is wise and will observe these things, even they shall understand the
loving-kindness of the Lord’. If we are to fulfill the duty of
observing ‘these things’ the qualification required is wisdom but the benefit
is that we will understand the loving-kindness of the Lord. We know how a
human being stands related to us by his or her behavior. If we study God’s
behavior towards His children we will see His love. Providence has its own
language.
We need to observe the
different kinds of providences. There are uncommon providences, such as
miracles, and there are what might be called common providences, like the
refreshing rain. There are great providences, like the crossing of the Red
Sea and there are what seem small providences, like a king not being able to
sleep at night. There are favorable or smiling providences and there are
what appear to be dark, cross or frowning providences.
If, as we believe, a
frowning providence comes from the hand of the same Father as a smiling
providence, how can we reconcile these things? How can we justify the ways
of God with us?
2. There are Dark
Providences
It is the presence of the
dark providences in the universe and in our lives that go a long way to make
up what John Flavel called ‘the mystery of providence’. Thomas Boston
addressed himself to the same problem in a series of sermons on Ecclesiastes
7:13: ‘Consider the work of
God: for who can make that straight which he hath made crooked’.
They were published after his death under the title The Crook in the Lot.
When adversity comes into
our lives we tend to react in one of two ways. We may say that it is from a
source other than God and He has not power to stop it; or we may say it is
an evidence of God’s anger against us. Either way we are guilty of casting
aspersions on the character of our Father and consequently of perverting our
attitude to Him. ‘A just (right) view of afflicting incidents’, says
Boston in the opening sentence of his work, ‘is altogether necessary to a
Christian deportment under them’. He continues: ‘That view is to be
obtained only by faith, not by sense; for it is the light of the Word alone
that represents them justly, discerning in them the work of God, and
consequently designs becoming the Divine perfections’.
The Christian, although he
is justified, remains a sinner in the midst of a fallen world. He is
subject to ‘all the ills that flesh is heir to’. Some of the
consequences of his past sins affect his life. He is subject to the
discipline of his Heavenly Father. Satan concentrates his attack on him.
The world under the control of the evil one is hostile to him. His
sufferings are compounded because he is a Christian.
‘In the world’, our
Lord warned his disciples, ‘you will have
tribulation’. (John 16:33)
The Bible leaves us in no
doubt that suffering is a normal part of the true Christian life. Hebrews
chapter 11 portrays the suffering witnesses of the Old Testament. The New
Testament presents us with our great Example who was
‘made perfect through sufferings’
(Hebrews 2:10), and also with the many followers who
‘became partakers’ in
His sufferings (1 Peter 4:13). The whole emphasis in the teaching of the
early church was on ‘rejoicing in the midst of sufferings.’ It is
‘through much tribulation’ that we
enter the kingdom. (Acts 14:22)
The Westminster Confession
of Faith contains in its chapter on Providence this judiciously-worded
paragraph on God’s dealings with His own children:
The most
wise, righteous and gracious God, doth oftentimes leave for a season his own
children to manifold temptations, and the corruption of their own hearts, to
chastise them for their former sins, or to discover unto them the hidden
strength of corruption and deceitfulness of their own hearts, that they may
be humbled; and to raise them to a more close and constant dependence for
their upon himself, and to make them more watchful against all future
occasions of sin, and for sundry other just and holy ends.
Sadly such teaching seems
far removed from the outlook that prevails in large parts of the Church
today. The impression is given that the purpose of the Christian life is
enjoyment. Everything that stands in the way of that is to be eliminated.
People are looking for a problem-free Christianity. The health, wealth and
success gospel is having a field day. Purveyors of such a gospel look the
part. Unfortunately, the hollowness of such views becomes apparent when
suffering sorrow or disappointment comes. Then it becomes clear that we
need a faith that is grounded in God’s Word.
3. God’s Designs in
Dark Providences
Having seen that trials or
dark providences are part of the Christian way we must now inquire into
their purpose. While it is always wrong to react in rebellion and anger
against God’s dealings with us, it is right to consider why they are part of
our lot. There is a right and wrong way of asking ‘Why?’ We must reflect
on what God is doing. What is the Lord seeking to teach us through these
unpleasant experiences? Here are some of the designs that God has in our
sufferings:
1.
SUFFERINGS ARE TO TRY US
‘The crook in the lot’,
says Boston, ‘is the great engine of providence for making men appear in
their true colors’. C. S. Lewis once referred to sufferings as
‘blockades on the road to hell’. The same sun that melts the ice also
hardens the clay. Says Andrew Fuller, ‘Afflictions refine some, they
consume others’. The test of a person’s Christianity is what happens in
the storm, when the house is battered in the winds of affliction.
The faith of the Christian
is tried and tested, wrote Simon Peter (I Peter 1: 3-7). It is the trial
that determines the authenticity of our faith. Peter reminds the Christians
to whom he writes of the great hope they have, although for the present they
are grieved by the many trials. The reason for this is that God is sitting
as a refiner of gold. He wants to bring out the pure gold of naked trust in
Himself. When all the dross of self-trust is purged out then faith will be
to the praise, honor and glory of Jesus Christ.
Abraham was a man of faith
and he endured the trial of faith. God commanded him to leave his
comfortable life in Ur and go out on the strength of a promise that he would
give him a land and a seed. But the promise never seemed to be fulfilled. There
was no sign of an heir. In the impatience of unbelief Abraham tried to do
it his way. Hagar’s son Ishmael was the result, but God will have none of
it. Ishmael must go. Another eleven years later and the son of
promise is born. But Isaac must be laid on the altar. Until God had Isaac
He did not have all of Abraham that there was. God speaks as if He
had newly discovered the faith of Abraham: ‘Now
I know that you fear God’ (Genesis 22:12). Abraham had come
through the test. His faith was pure gold.
When
through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie,
My grace all-sufficient shall be thy supply;
The flame shall not hurt they; I only design
Thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine.
2.
SUFFERINGS ARE TO EXPOSE OUR SINS
When we set off on the
Christian pathway we do not know much about our true selves. It is even
possible to enter the Christian ministry without much knowledge of the
deceitfulness of the heart. ‘We are on too good terms with ourselves’,
said Dr. Lloyd-Jones. ‘We don’t know much about dust and ashes’. We
pray sincerely for growth in grace, for increase in faith, but the answer
comes in a way we did not expect. John Newton was the one who made the
painful discovery:
I asked the
Lord that I might grow
In faith and love and every grace,
Might more of his salvation know,
And seek more earnestly his face.
‘Twas he
who taught me thus to pray;
And he, I trust, has answered prayer;
But it has been in such a way
As almost drove me to despair.
I hoped
that, in some favored hour,
At once he’d answer my request,
And by his love’s constraining power
Subdue my sins, and give me rest.
Instead of
this, he made me feel
The hidden evils of my heart,
And let the angry powers of hell
Assault my soul in every part.
Robert Murray M’Cheyne
confessed that the seed of every known sin was to found in his heart. What
latent corruption there is within! We are like a petro-chemical plant. It
takes only a spark to set us alight. Think of the break-out of sin in the
lives of so many of the saints. Abraham with his deceit; Job with his rash
words; Moses with his anger; Asaph with his murmuring; Paul with his pride.
Job could say, ‘I abhor myself and repent in
dust and ashes’ (Job 42:6). Asaph had to say, ‘I
was foolish and ignorant, I was as a beast before thee’ (Psalm
73:22).
Such discoveries make us
think less of ourselves and therefore lead us to think more of the Lord
Jesus Christ. They bring new depths of repentance and a recovery of a true
sense of our own sinfulness.
3.
SUFFERINGS ARE TO BUILD CHARACTER
Whatever else we may have,
if we do not have character we have nothing. It is character that
determines destiny. The only failure that matters in the end is the failure
to build character. In ordinary life character is formed by overcoming
difficulties. The state of our society today militates against character
building. Even in the church young people are not exposed to the influences
that will build character. No wonder so many remain spiritual babes.
We see a renowned athlete
winning a gold medal. He may make it look easy on the day, but victory
could not have been achieved without painstaking training and meeting
increasing tough opposition. The process by which God builds character is
outlined in Romans 5: 1-5. Paul says that
‘We glory in tribulation’. The Greek word translated
‘tribulation’ comes from the verb ‘to press’. The word is used
to describe the crushing of the grapes and olives. The figure suggests the
heavy pressures of outward trouble or inward anguish. Tribulation produces
‘patient endurance’ – the ability to stay with it and not fall
apart. This brave endurance in turn produces what the Authorized (King
James) Version translates a experience but which is more accurately
translated as ‘character’ – the character which results from a
process of trial.
We might be tempted to ask
whether God can build character without suffering. That is a hypothetical
question. He has not chosen to do so. Young Joseph gave every indication
that he was spoiled. He was not fit to be a leader. It took the pit and
the prison and twenty-two years of preparation before he was ready to do the
work God intended him to do. In the prison he was laid in irons (Psalm
105:18). Variant readings are ‘the iron
entered into his soul’ and ‘his
soul entered into iron’. It was more than Joseph’s flesh that
felt the iron.
God prepares us as if
there were no one else to prepare. A sculptor working at a piece of marble
when asked: ‘what are you doing?’ replied, ‘I am chipping away
everything that does not look like a horse’.
4.
SUFFERINGS BRING US TO KNOW GOD BETTER
Sufferings teach us
lessons that we cannot learn in College. We may have been to College or
Seminary and have a string of letters after our name; we may have read all
the great classics in theology and be able to argue on the finer points of
divinity; and yet our knowledge may be largely theoretical. It is one thing
to know about God; it is another thing to know God. The essence of eternal
life is ‘that they may know thee the only
true God’ (John 17:3). Paul’s ambition was
‘that I may know Him’ (Philippians
3:10).
Many Christians can
testify that they have learned more about God in the furnace of affliction
than in all their previous experiences. Job is a classic example. The Lord
said of him, ‘There is none like him on
earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil’
(Job 1:8), so God put on display one of the trophies of His grace. Satan is
given leave to afflict Job. The real question is: What kind of a person is
Job? Does he fear God for nothing? (Job 1:9). Is his religion only one of
self-interest? Ignorant of the battle going on in the heavenly realms Job
has many questions to ask. The interesting thing is that he does not get
specific answers. What he gets is a revelation of God which at length
brings him to confess, ‘I have heard of thee
by the hearing of the ear but now my eye sees thee. Therefore I abhor myself
and repent in dust and ashes’ (Job 42: 5-6).
There are areas of the
Word of God that we cannot comprehend until we have experienced suffering.
For thirty years of my Christian life I neither understood nor was
particularly drawn to the book of Job. Along with a particular time of
suffering came the help to understanding it. Martin Luther had a similar
testimony: ‘Affliction is the Christian’s theologian’; ‘I never
knew the meaning of God’s Word until I came into affliction’; ‘My
temptations have been my masters in divinity’; ‘No man, without trials and
temptations, can attain a true understanding of the Holy Scriptures’.
I walked a
mile with pleasure,
She chatted all the way,
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.
I walked a
mile with sorrow
And ne’er a word said she,
But oh the things I learned from her,
When sorrow walked with me.
5.
SUFFERINGS PRODUCE FRUIT IN OUR LIVES AND PREPARE US FOR USEFULNESS
In John 15 our Lord
compares Christians to branches in a vine. He is the vine and His Father is
the vinedresser. The Father looks for fruit from the branches in the vine.
Such fruit is dependent on union with Christ but its quality is also related
to the Father’s pruning. Sometimes the pruning can be drastic. The cutting
knife can be sharp. But the whole purpose is spiritual fruit for the glory
of God.
No doubt there will be
many humble believers in ‘glory’ whose names were hardly known on
earth but who will be laden with fruit. Perhaps they carried such sorrows
in this world that they could not share with others and persevered at God’s
throne of grace where they became mighty warriors for the kingdom. Said
Phillips Brooks, ‘Wherever souls are being tried and ripened in whatever
commonplace and homely way, there God is hewing out the pillars of his
temple’. Thomas Boston reminds us, ‘There is never an act of
resignations to the will of God under the cross, nor an act of trust in Him
for His help, but they will be recorded in heaven’s register as good works.’
Sufferings can bring a new
dimension of fruitfulness into our lives. It can produce a new gentleness
and a tenderness. This was evident in the life of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
and never more so than in his later years. During his own sufferings he
remembered others who suffered. In the last year of his life our daughter
became seriously ill and died at the age of thirteen. As soon as he heard
he wrote us a most comforting letter. Within three months he himself
entered glory. Mrs. Lloyd-Jones later shared with us the tenderness of his
concern: ‘I wish you could have heard his prayers for your little
daughter’s illness and death. He never forgot and had such tender concern
for her and for you all in your sorrow and mourning. It is a glorious thing
to belong to the family of God. We really feel for each other.’
We often see sorrows
leading to increased usefulness in the lives of God’s servants. ‘God’,
says Spurgeon, ‘gets his best soldiers out of the highlands of
affliction’. He was an outstanding example of this himself. He says:
‘I do not know whether my experience is that of all God’s people; but I
am afraid that all the grace I have got at any of my comfortable and easy
times and happy hours might almost be on a penny. But the good I have
received from my sorrows, and pains and griefs is altogether incalculable’.
Thomas Boston who had an abundant share of sorrows remarked, ‘It is the
usual way of providence with me that blessing comes through several iron
gates’. ‘The tools the great Architect intends to use much’, J. C. Ryle
wrote in the same vein, ‘are often kept long in the fire to temper them
and fit them for the work’.
Examples of this truth
abound in Scripture and in Church history and are too numerous to mention.
We may think of Paul and his painful affliction,
‘a thorn in the flesh’, and the
purpose for which it was sent: Most gladly
will I glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest on me’
(II Corinthians 12:7-9). We may think of Rutherford banished to the cold –
physical and spiritual – of Aberdeen where
... in my
sea-beat prison
My lord and I held tryst.
From that place of
affliction there poured forth the Letters full of the fragrance of
Christ that have enriched the Church down the centuries. We may think of
John Bunyan cast into prison for refusing to keep silence, his usefulness
seemingly curtailed. But God multiplied his usefulness through his pen in
the writing of Pilgrim’s Progress. Then we have Thomas Boston
suffering from poor health, with his children sick and dying, his wife
crippled by mental illness, dealing difficult parishioners, engaged in
ecclesiastical wrangles, laboring in relative obscurity; yet out of it all
have come writings that have brought untold blessing to multitudes. No
wonder John Flavel wrote: ‘Oh the blessed chemistry of heaven to extract
such mercies out of such miseries!’
6.
SUFFERINGS LEAD US TO MAKE GOD OUR ALL AND TO PREPARE US FOR GLORY
Sufferings drive us to
God. We set out in service thinking God needs us. We soon find out that we
need Him. ‘When God lays men on their backs, then they look up to
heaven’, says Thomas Watson. We cry to God for blessings but we do not
really want Him. He has to teach us that He is the greatest blessing
of all.
This was the discovery
made by John Newton in his hymn ‘Prayer Answered by Crosses’, already
quoted. He goes on:
Yea, more,
with his own hand he seemed
Intent to aggravate my woe,
Crossed all the fair designs I schemed,
Blasted my gourds, and laid me low.
Lord, why
is this? I trembling cried;
Wilt thou pursue this worm to death?
This is the way, the Lord replied
I answer prayer for grace and faith.
These
inward trials I now employ
From self and pride to see thee free,
And break thy schemes of earthly joy,
That thou may’st seek thy all in me.
In Psalm 73 Asaph recounts
his experience of nearly falling: ‘my steps
had nearly slipped’ (Psalm 73:2). While the wicked were
prospering he was being plagued and chastened. He was perplexed and baffled
until he went into the sanctuary of God. There he saw things in their true
light. The outcome was that he confessed:
‘Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire
beside thee’ (Psalm 73:25). God had become the all-sufficient
portion of his soul.
In this way God prepares
us for glory. If we lived for nothing but a life of comfort and ease here
there would be no desire for the blessedness to come. ‘God will have his
people sigh and groan on the way to glory,’ writes Maurice Roberts.
Thomas Watson emphasizes the same lesson: ‘The vessels of mercy are first
seasoned with affliction and then the wine of glory is poured in’.
4. Our Comfort in
Dark Providences
1. THERE IS ALWAYS A
PURPOSE OF LOVE BEHIND DARK PROVIDENCES
One of the most difficult
things to do when the road is rough or when the billows are passing over us
is to feel that God still loves us. It is the last thing we can accept.
But we are not called to feel; we are called to believe. In his book, In
All Their Afflictions, Murdoch Campbell tells of a minister in the North
of Scotland who suddenly lost his spiritually-minded wife. As he prayed
that night in the presence of friends he said, ‘If an angel from heaven
told me that this would work my good I would not believe him but because
thy Word says it I must believe it.’
We are to measure God’s
love not by His providence but by His promise. ‘When we cannot trace
God’s hand we can trust God’s heart’, says C. H. Spurgeon. When
providences are dark it is difficult to read them. It is the Word that
tells us how to view them.
Judge not
the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.
By faith we have to trace
it all to the hand of our Father. The ‘crook in the lot’ is all of
God’s making. We are prone to stop at second causes. We may look at
doctors who may have been negligent. We may think of drivers who have been
careless. We may feel bitterness over ‘what might have been’.
Joseph after suffering the
greatest indignities at the hand of his brothers traced it all to the hand
of God: ‘But as for you, you meant evil
against me but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is
this day, to save people alive’ (Genesis 15:20). Job suffered at
the hands of the Chaldeans and Sabeans yet when he came to speak of his loss
he was able to say, ‘The Lord gave and the
Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord’ (Job
1:21). Joseph left his cause in the hand of God and he was vindicated. Job
did the same. Says Samuel Rutherford, ‘It is impossible to be
submissive and religiously patient if you stay your thoughts down among the
confused rollings and wheels of second causes, O, the place! O, the time! O,
if this had been this had not followed!’
2.
THERE IS MUCH THAT REMAINS A MYSTERY AND FOR WHICH THERE IS NO IMMEDIATE
ANSWER
This lies at the very crux
of the matter. It may seem a strange paradox but it was when Job was
willing not to understand that he began to understand.
God moves
in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm,
Deep in
unfathomable mines
Of never-ending skill
He treasures up his bright designs,
And works his sovereign will.
And why should this not be
so? God is God and man is man. It is in keeping with the greatness of
God. In a sermon on John 13:7 entitled ‘Dark Providences Made Clear in
Due Time’, Ralph Erskine explains God’s purpose in dark providences
thus:
It is to
discover Himself in a way suitable to Himself and His glorious perfections
and to show that His thoughts are not our thoughts nor His ways our ways.
If He should work according to our thoughts and imaginations, how would it
appear that He is Jehovah, a sovereign God that acts like Himself?’ God
owes us no explanations. We owe Him implicit trust and obedience. It is
not easy to trust God when He appears to be silent, as He was with Job, but
trust we must.
Dr. Ronald Dunn has these
wise words to say on the problem of the silence of God in suffering:
I think
this is the hardest part of all. You can take just about anything, if you
know why. Everywhere I go, every meeting, I’m asked – ‘Why?...I’m going to
tell you something: God will very seldom answer your question of Why. It is
not that there are no answers, it’s just that you and I probably wouldn’t be
able to comprehend the answer if God were to tell us, and besides that, we
have to learn to trust Him without knowing why. We ask Him questions. What
we’re usually doing is saying, ‘Lord explain yourself’, call God into
account (Walking with the King, p. 173.)
There appears to be an
obsession today with ‘Why me?’ Books which claim to have an answer to
all our problems top the Christian best-sellers lists. One book that
enjoyed a wide circulation, especially in the United States, Rabbi Harold
Kushner’s When Bad Things Happen to Good People, gave this answer to
the problem of suffering; God is a limited God. ‘God would like people to
get what they deserve in life but he cannot always arrange it’. A reply
to this came from the pen of Warren Wiersbe in his book, Why Us? And
sub-titled ‘When bad things happen to God’s people’.
Wiersbe also has some most
helpful insights from the sufferings of Job. He writes:
One of the
reasons God did not answer Job’s cries for justice was because He wanted to
continue His relationship with Job on the basis of grace. God didn’t want
Job to have ‘commercial faith’ based on a celestial contract. He wanted Job
to have faith in a God with such richness of character – love mercy, grace,
goodness, kindness – that nothing could interfere with their relationship.
Because the key question is not ‘Why do the righteous suffer?’ but ‘Do we
worship a God who is worthy of our suffering?’
So much of our thinking is
self-centered. As Dr. Dunn points out, the major theme of the book of Job
is not ‘Why to Christians suffer?’ but ‘Why do men serve God?’
If God were to strip us of everything would we still love and worship Him?
If we can do so, like Job, we are giving the lie to the devil and we are
glorifying God.
3.
THE ONLY ULTIMATE SOLUTION IS TO CULTIVATE NEARNESS TO GOD
Far more important than
any explanation for our suffering is nearness to God in our experience:
‘I had a million questions to ask God; but when I met Him they all fled my
mind and it didn’t seem to matter’ (Christopher Morley). This is the
only way to get things into perspective. That is what happened to Asaph.
As he saw the wicked prosper and experienced the chastening of the Lord the
whole thing was too painful for him until he went into the sanctuary of
God. He came into the presence of God. He listened to God’s Word.
‘Then’ he says
‘I understood their end’ (Psalm
73:17). He did not just feel good. He had an understanding.
Thomas Boston speaks of
communion with God in providence. It is the Word that interprets
providence. Providence is the outworking of the will of God in my life. It
is because the psalmist was out of fellowship with God that he was in the
condition he was in. He had things out of perspective.
‘I was a beast before thee’. When
things were back in perspective he could say,
‘It is good for me to draw near to God.’
Our responsibility
whatever our circumstances is to keep on the path of duty:
Put thou
thy trust in God
In duty’s path go on.
People are usually more
anxious to get rid of the problem than they are to find the purpose of God
in it. ‘Afflictions’, says Matthew Henry ‘are continued no longer
than till they have done their work’. It is also our responsibility to
pray that our afflictions will be sanctified to us. In his book Why Us?
Warren Wiersbe speaks of a friend who found herself in a sea of troubles.
Attempting to encourage her one day he said ‘I want you to know that we
are praying for you’. ‘I appreciate that’, she replied, ‘What are
you praying God to do?’ Wiersbe found himself struggling for an answer
and mentioned some things. ‘Thank you’, she said, ‘but please
pray for one more request. Pray that I won’t waste all this suffering’.
4.
WE CAN BE ASSURED THAT THE OUTCOME WILL BE ‘BIG WITH MERCY’
‘Every work of Christ
toward His people’, said Ralph Erskine, ‘carries something more great
and precious in the bosom of it than we are capable at the time of
understanding.’ William Cowper says something similar in the well-known
words
Ye fearful
saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.
His
purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.
We see this frequently in
the lives of God’s saints. Think of Joseph and his long night of
suffering. What a contrast between the prison and palace!
‘They hurt his feet with fetters. He was laid
in irons. Until the time that his word came to pass, the word of the Lord
tested him’. And then the
deliverance: ‘The king sent and released
him. The ruler of the people let him go free. He made him lord of his
house, and ruler of all his possessions.
To bind his princes at his pleasure, and teach
his elders wisdom’ (Psalm 105: 18-22). It is the timing of
providence that is often so wonderful. It is the seasonableness of a mercy
that gives such value to it. The engine of God’s providence can bring in
such a train of happy consequences.
We may not be able to
understand our present condition or sufferings because God’s providence
works on a grand scale. Job had no idea that he was the focus of a battle
between God and Satan. God was, as it were, showing off a trophy of His
grace. Job thought that his life was useless. At the very moment when he
thought all was lost he was doing the greatest thing of all – he was
glorifying God, he was giving the lie to the devil. It was twenty-two years
after he was thrown into the pit that Joseph discovered the reason why.
Thomas Boston was not able
to understand the purpose behind his ‘sea of troubles’ in Ettrick.
He was daily exercised about God’s providential dealings. It is there on
almost every page of his Memoirs. Many would conclude that he was
prone to morbid introspection. Whatever tendency to melancholy he may have
had he was above all a deeply-exercised saint. The load of suffering he
endured has surely an explanation in the abundant fruit that has come from his
labors. While men who occupied prominent positions in the Church in his day
are largely forgotten the Works of Boston are read all over the
world.
Our lives resemble the
making of a tapestry. The back of it seems to be a mass of tangled and
purposeless threads while on the front a beautiful picture is taking shape.
Not till
the loom is silent
And the shuttles cease to fly
Shall God unroll the canvas
And explain the reason why.
The dark
threads are as needful
In the weaver’s skilful hand
As the threads of gold and silver
In the pattern he has planned.
We must look to the end of
everything. ‘Indeed we count them blessed who
endure. You have heard of the patience of Job and seen the end intended by
the Lord – that the Lord is very
compassionate and merciful’ (James 5:11)
CONCLUSION -
God has forged an inseparable link between
sufferings and glory. That was the road that Christ took. He was made
complete as our Savior ‘through sufferings’.
He endured. He was without sin.
How much more is suffering part of the road
that leads sinners to perfection and glory! What abundant cause we have to
be reconciled to our sufferings! ‘I always feel much need of God’s
afflicting hand’, wrote Robert Murray M’Cheyne. Said Rutherford:
‘Praise God for the hammer, the file and the furnace’ and, in similar vein,
C. H. Spurgeon wrote, ‘This is the place of the furnace, the forge and
the hammer’.
We must not be deceived by the current view
that invites us to get rid of our troubles and sicknesses and then rejoice.
The New Testament calls on us to rejoice in the midst of sufferings.
Indeed we ought to be alarmed if we have no experience of suffering, for we
suffer with Him that we may be glorified together. There is no glory
without suffering.
Sinclair Ferguson in his work Add to you
Faith recalls seeing a poster on the notice board of a church which read
WORKSHOP – INSIDE
SHOWROOM – UPSTAIRS
Our lives on earth resemble the workshop.
We are in the place of preparation. My life has the chisel of God upon
it. Our English word ‘character’ comes from a Greek word which means an
engraving tool, a die for stamping an image. The trials of life can be
God’s tool for engraving the image of his Son on our character. The
experiences may not be enjoyable but they are profitable. Upstairs in the
glory God will display the finished articles. They will be like His Son.
God’s people never sacrifice or suffer in
vain. Our present suffering is an investment in future glory. The
sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the
glory. ‘How soon you will find’, says M’Cheyne again, ‘that
everything in your history, except sin, has been for you. Every wave of
trouble has been wafting you to the sunny shores of a sinless eternity’.
Deep waters cross’d life’s
pathway;
The hedge of thorns was sharp;
Now these lie all behind me;
Oh! for a well-tuned harp!
Soon shall the cup of blessing
Wash down earth’s bitterest woes;
Soon shall the desert brier
Break into Eden’s rose.
BEHIND A FROWNING PROVIDENCE, by John J.
Murray is published by THE BANNER OF TRUTH TRUST. Write them
for free 32 page illustrated catalog:
THE BANNER OF TRUTH
TRUST
3 Murrayfield Road, Edinburgh EH12 6EL
P. O. Box 621, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, 17013, U.S.A.
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