"In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." (John 16:33)
My Lord's words are true as to the tribulation. I have my share of it beyond all doubt. The flail is not hung up out of the way, nor can I hope that it will be laid aside so long as I lie upon the threshing floor, How can I look to be at home in the enemy's country, joyful while in exile, or comfortable in a wilderness? This is not my rest. This is the place of the furnace, and the forge, and the hammer. My experience tallies with my Lord's words.
I note how He bids me "be of good cheer." Alas! I am far too apt to be downcast. My spirit soon sinks when I am sorely tried. But I must not give way to this feeling. When my Lord bids me cheer up I must not dare to be cast down.
What is the argument which He uses to encourage me? Why, it is His own victory. He says, "I have overcome the world." His battle was much more severe than mine. I have not yet resisted unto blood. Why do I despair of overcoming? See, my soul, the enemy has been once overcome. I fight with a beaten foe. O world, Jesus has already vanquished thee; and in me, by His grace, He will overcome thee again. Therefore am I of good cheer and sing unto my conquering Lord.
The trials and sufferings of the godly (Thomas Watson, "Body of Divinity")
God's own people often suffer great afflictions.
"This is what the wicked are like—always carefree, they increase in wealth. Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure; in vain have I washed my hands in innocence. For I am afflicted all day long!" Psalm 73:12-14
How can this be consistent with God's justice?
'God's ways of judgment are sometimes secret, but never unjust!' The Lord never afflicts His people without a cause; He cannot be unjust towards them.
There is some good in the godly—therefore the wicked afflict them; there is some evil in them—therefore God afflicts them!
God's own children have their blemishes. "But aren't you also guilty of sins against the Lord your God?" 2 Chr. 28:10. These spiritual diamonds—have they no flaws? Do we not read of the spots of God's children? Are not they guilty of much pride, passion, worldliness? Though, by their profession, they should resemble the birds of paradise, to fly above, and feed upon the dew of heaven; yet, as the serpent, they often lick the dust!
The sins of God's people, do more provoke God than the sins of others. "The Lord saw this and was filled with loathing. He was provoked to anger by His own sons and daughters." Deut 32:19. The sins of others pierce Christ's side; the sins of His people wound His heart! Therefore is not God just in all the afflictions which befall them? "You only have I chosen of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your sins." Amos 3:2. I will punish you sooner, surer, sorer—than others.
The trials and sufferings of the godly, are to refine and purify them. God's furnace is in Zion. Is it any injustice in God to put His gold into the furnace to purify it? Is it any injustice in God, by afflicting His people, to make them partakers of His holiness? What more proclaims God's faithfulness—than to take such a course with them as may make them more holy?
"I know, O Lord, that Your laws are righteous, and in faithfulness You have afflicted me." Psalm 119:75
There is mercy in God, like a river—but it is for the penitent believer in Christ Jesus. There is a love in God towards sinners which is unspeakable and unsearchable—but it is for those who “hear Christ’s voice and follow Him.” Seek to have an interest in that love. Break off every known sin; come out boldly from the world; cry mightily to God in prayer; cast yourself wholly and unreservedly on the Lord Jesus for time and eternity; lay aside every weight. Cling to nothing, however dear, which interferes with your soul’s salvation; give up everything, however precious, which comes between you and heaven. — This old shipwrecked world is fast sinking beneath your feet: the one thing needful is to have a place in the lifeboat and get safe to shore. Give diligence to make your calling and election sure. Whatever happens to your house and property, see that you make sure of heaven. Oh, better a million times be laughed at and thought extreme in this world than go down to hell from the midst of the congregation and end like Lot’s wife!
"It is appointed unto all once to die — and after death, the judgment!" Hebrews 9:27
O my Father, You are daily loading me with Your benefits — giving me unnumbered causes for gratitude and thankfulness. No earthly friend could have loved and cared for me like You. Oh may the life You are thus preserving by Your unceasing bounty — be unreservedly dedicated to Your praise.
O my Father, keep me mindful that I am soon to be done with this fleeting world — that I am fast borne along the 'stream of time' — to the ocean of endless futurity!
May I be living in a constant state of preparedness for that solemn hour when small and great shall stand before You, and the books shall be opened. Train me foreternity! Let me not be frittering away these fleeting, but precious moments. Impress on me the solemn conviction that "as men live — so do men die;" that as deathleaves me — so judgment will find me; and as judgment finds me — so eternity will keep me.
Oh let death leave me falling asleep in Jesus, united to Him by a living faith — so that judgment may find me seated at His right hand, listening to the joyous welcome,"Come, you who are blessed by My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world!"
Blessed Jesus, all my hope of a glorious resurrection centers in You. I look to You as the strong tower which cannot be shaken. I flee anew to the holy sanctuary of Your covenant love. Sheltered there, amid a dissolving earth, and burning worlds — I shall be able joyfully to utter the challenge, "Who shall separate me from the love of Christ?"
Keep me from all negligence and unwatchfulness. Trim my flickeringlamp. Let me live with Your Judgment-throne in view. May I ever remember — that I must soon give an account of myself to You, the infallible searcher of all hearts. May I feel that all the talents and means which You have given me — are trusts to be laid out for You. When you come to demand a reckoning, may I not be among the number of those who have hidden their talent in the earth, and have the cheerless retrospect of a misspent life.
May every providential voice sound loud in my ears, "Arise and depart — for this is not your rest, because it is defiled — it is ruined, beyond all remedy!"
Make me more heavenly-minded. Give me more of a pilgrim attitude — and a pilgrim spirit. May I ever feel that my true home is above — and that I am here on earth, but a wayfarer and sojourner, as all my fathers were. May I attain, as I advance nearer to Heaven, the blessed habit of a holy life, declaring plainly that I am seeking "a better country."
I delight often to anticipate that happy time, when I shall suffer no more — and sin no more!
We may learn the folly and madness of the greater part of mankind in that for the sake of present, momentary gratification, they run the venture of enduring all these eternal torments. They prefer a small pleasure, a little wealth, or a little earthly honor and greatness that can last but for a moment to an escape from this punishment. If it be true that the torments of hell are eternal, “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Mar 8:37)…Eternal misery, though they lie every day exposed to it, is a thing neglected…And if they do take pains for a little while, they soon leave off: somethingelse takes up their thoughts and concern.
Thus you see it among young and old. Multitudes of youth lead a careless life, taking little care about their salvation. So you may see it among persons of middle age and with many advanced in years, when they certainly draw near to the grave…How strange is it that men can enjoy themselves and be at rest when they are thus hanging over eternal burnings. At the same time…not knowing how soon the thread by which they hang will break, nor indeed do they pretend to know. And if it breaks, they are gone, they are lost forever, and there is no remedy!...
I shall improve this subject in a use of exhortation to sinners to take care to escape these eternal torments. If they be eternal, one would think that would be enough to awaken your concern and excite your diligence. If the punishment be eternal, it is infinite, as we said before. Therefore, no other evil, no death, no temporary torment that you ever heard of or that you can imagine is anything in comparison with it…Therefore here,
(1) Be entreated to consider attentively how great and awful a thing eternity is…Do but consider what it is to suffer extreme torment forever and ever; to suffer it day and night, from one year to another, from one age to another, from one thousand ages to another, and so adding age to age and thousands to thousands, in pain, in wailing and lamenting, groaning and shrieking, and gnashing your teeth; with your souls full of dreadful grief and amazement, with your bodies and every member full of racking [pain] without any possibility of getting ease; without any possibility of moving God to pity by your cries; without any possibility of hiding yourselves from Him; without any possibility of diverting your thoughts from your pain; without any possibility of obtaining any manner of mitigation, help, or change for the better.
(2) Do but consider how dreadful despair will be in such torment. How dismal will it be, when you are under these racking torments, to know assuredly that you never, never shall be delivered from them; to have no hope. When you shall wish that you might be turned into nothing, but shall have no hope of it; when you shall wish that you might be turned into…a serpent, but shall have no hope of it; when you would rejoice, if you might but have any relief, after you shall have endured these torments millions of ages, but shall have no hope of it. After you shall have worn out the age of the sun, moon, and stars in your dolorous[67] groans and lamentations, without rest day and night or one minute’s ease, yet you shall have no hope of ever being delivered. After you shall have worn a thousand more such ages, you shall have no hope, but shall know that you are not one whit nearer to the end of your torments—but that still there are the same groans, the same shrieks, the same doleful cries, incessantly to be made by you and that the smoke of your torment shall still ascend up forever and ever. Your souls, which shall have been agitated with the wrath of God all this while, will still exist to bear more wrath. Your bodies, which shall have been burning all this while in these glowing flames, shall not have been consumed but will remain to [burn] through eternity, which will not have been at all shortened by what shall have been past…The more the damned in hell think of the eternity of their torments, the more amazing will it appear to them. Alas! They will not be able to keep it out of their minds. Their tortures will not divert them from it but will fix their attention to it. O how dreadful will eternity appear to them after they shall have been thinking on it for ages together and shall have so long an experience of their torments! The damned in hell will have two infinites perpetually to amaze them and swallow them up: One is an infinite God, Whose wrath they will bear and in Whom they will behold their perfect and irreconcilable enemy. The other is the infinite duration of their torment.
A man in his present state, without any enlargement of his capacity, would have a vastly more lively impression of eternity than he has, if he were only under some pretty sharp pain in some member of his body and were at the same time assured that he must endure that pain forever. His pain would give him a greater sense of eternity than other men have. How much more will those excruciating torments that the damned will suffer have this effect!...O be entreated, ye that are in a Christless state and are going on in a way to hell, that are daily exposed to damnation, to consider these things. If you do not, it will surely be but a little while before you will experience them, and then you will know how dreadful it is to despair in hell. It may be before this year, this month, or this week is at an end, before another Sabbath or ever you shall have opportunity to hear another sermon.
(3) That you may effectually escape these dreadful and eternal torments, be entreated to flee and embrace Him Who came into the world for the very end of saving sinners from these torments. [Jesus Christ] has paid the whole debt due to the divine Law and exhausted eternal [sufferings] in temporal sufferings. What great encouragement it is—to those of you who are sensible that you are exposed to eternal punishment—that there is a Savior provided, Who is able and Who freely [saves sinners] from that punishment in a way that is perfectly consistent with the glory of God—yea, [in a way] that is more to the glory of God than it would be if you should suffer the eternal punishment of hell. For if you should suffer that punishment, you would never pay the whole of the debt. Those who are sent to hell never will have paid the whole of the debt that they owe to God, nor indeed a part that bears any proportion to the whole…Justice therefore never can be actually satisfied in your damnation, but it is actually satisfied in Christ. Therefore, He is accepted of the Father, and all who believe are accepted and justified in Him. Therefore, believe in Him, come to Him, commit your souls to Him to be saved by Him. In Him, you shall be safe from the eternal torments of hell. Nor is that all: but through Him, you shall inherit inconceivable blessedness and glory that will be of equal duration with the torments of hell. For as at the Last Day the wicked shall go away into everlasting punishment, so shall the righteous, or those who trust in Christ, go into life eternal.
From “The Eternity of Hell Torments” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 2, reprinted by The Banner of Truth Trust, www.banneroftruth.org.
"Many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able!" Luke 13:24
I do not wonder that so many are deceived, when I see the careless way in which they deal with their souls. When men have to do with their estates, they are very careful; they pay a lawyer to go back over the title-deeds perhaps for two or three hundred years. Intrade they will hurry hither and thither to attend to their commercial engagements; they would not launch into speculations, nor would they run great risks.
But the soul, the poor soul — how men play with it as a toy, and despise it as if it were worthless! Two or three minutes in the morning when they first roll out of bed, two or three odd minutes in the evening, when they are nearly asleep — the fag-ends of the day given to their souls, and all the best part given to the body!
And then, with what indifference do you lend your ears too often to the preaching of the Word! It is an old song; you have heard it so many times; Heaven has become a trifle to you, Hell is almost a jest, eternity an empty notion, and death but a bugbear!
Alas! it is a marvel that there are not more deceived. The wonder is that any find the gate, that any discover eternal life, when we are so, so mad, so foolish, so insane — as to trifle where we ought to be solemnly in earnest; and to play and toy — where the whole heart should be given to a work of such everlasting importance. God help us, since it is so easy to be deceived — to search, and watch, and look, and test, and try, that we be not found castaways at the last!
"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it!" Matthew 7:13-14
"Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you — unless, of course, you fail the test?" 2 Corinthians 13:5
"He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does shall prosper." Psalm 1:3
Blessed is the man who has such a promise as this! But we must not always estimate the fulfillment of a promise — by our own eye sight. How often, my brethren, if we judge by feeble sense, may we come to the mournful conclusion of Jacob, "All these things are against me!" For though we know our interest in the promise, yet we are so tried and troubled — that sight sees the very reverse of what that promise foretells. But to the 'eye of faith' this word is sure, and by it we perceive that we are prospered, even when everything seems to go against us.
It is not outward prosperity which the Christian most desires and values; it is soul prosperity which he longs for. Even in adversity, there is a true prospering, for it is often for the soul's health — that we would be poor, afflicted and tried. Our worst things — are often our best things! As there is a curse wrapped up in the wicked man's mercies — so there is a blessing concealed in the godly man's crosses, losses and sorrows. The trials of the saint are a divine husbandry, by which he grows and brings forth abundant fruit.
