Part 2 The Trial of the New Birth
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1. The first we quote is, the closer acquaintance into which it brings them with their own hearts. There are corruptions deeply embedded in the heart of the most holy, which the discipline of sanctified trial alone removes. It was not intuitively that the Church in the wilderness came into the experience of this fact. Thus we read, "He led you through the wilderness these forty years, to humble you, and to prove you, TO KNOW WHAT WAS IN YOUR HEART," (Deut. 8:2.) Until the hour of trial, how little know we of this the seat and chamber of all evil! What pride, what selfishness, what infidelity, what carnality, what idolatry, what ingratitude, what murmuring, what rebellion against God are there! Trial is searching in its tendency. It is the furnace alone that reveals the alloy, and separates it from the pure gold, and so brings to view the new nature in its reality, loveliness, and purity.
Speaking of His Church in Jer. 9:6-7, God says, "Through deceit they refuse to hear me. Therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, Behold, I will melt them and try them." As though He had said, "I will cast them into my furnace of love, and then will I discover themselves to themselves, and they shall know what was in their hearts." Thus the Lord by the same process deals with us. And then, in astonishment, we exclaim, "Woe is me! what a heart is mine! Did I suspect the existence of such latent virulence, such deep-seated depravity? How ignorant of myself have I been! Where is my faith in God, my love to Christ, my strength in service, my patience in suffering, my rejoicing in tribulation, my power in prayer? Instead of this, what do I discover but self-love, creature-idolatry, distrust of God, earth-bound affections, rebellion of will, and discontent of spirit against my God, my Father, my Friend!
What sad memories, also, does my trial awaken! Since God has let in a little of His displeasure upon my soul, I am made, as it were, to recollect the sins of my youth, sins of riper years, sins of old age--so easily committed and so soon forgotten--and with the brethren of Joseph exclaim, 'We are certainly guilty concerning our brother.' Thus searching and humbling is trial.
But if, like the surgeon's lance, the Lord's trial of His people is sometimes painfully probing, it is equally salutary and healing in its result. All this sad discovery of our hearts drives us more entirely out of ourselves to the Lord Jesus. We value Him as we learn to undervalue our own selves. Our thoughts of Him rise as thoughts of ourselves sink. In proportion as we learn by experience--and there is no school like God's school of trial--our own emptiness and nothingness, we learn what a full, all-sufficient, all-powerful Christ we have. Trial, deepening our self-acquaintance, deepens our acquaintance with the Lord; and to know more experimentally the Lord is worth all the discipline of chastening and of suffering it involves. Then we seek to straighten what is crooked, to strengthen what is weak, to restore what is lame, that it may not be turned out of the way, but that it may be rather healed.
2. By means of trial we are also brought into closer communion with God. In times of prosperity, there are many things which insinuate themselves between God and the soul. When the heart grows fat and is surfeited with creature-good, we are prone to forget and to forsake God, and even to kick against Him. Our communion with Him is invaded, and sometimes superseded. The compass is disturbed, and the needle of the soul swerves away from God.
But the Lord sends trial, and by it He restores the balance of the affections, attracting them again to their Divine and blessed Center. Responding to its touch, the truant heart flies back to God, under His most gracious restorings. Sensible of its backsliding, tasting the bitterness of its departure, it returns to its rest, and exclaims, "Lord, You have made my heart for Yourself, and it is restless and unquiet until it can rest in You." And, then, He who rebuked and chastened puts forth His hand, and receives back the weather-beaten dove, and the soul folds its weary wing upon the bosom of God.
To be stirred up to prayer is to be roused to our sweetest privilege and highest blessing. Therefore it is that God's tried ones are His most praying ones. The spirit of prayer is within them, but the lance of trial is often needed to draw it forth. "In return for my friendship they accuse me, but I am a man of prayer."David's adversaries gave themselves to persecution and wickedness, but he gave himself to prayer. The more they persecuted, the more he prayed. As his troubles multiplied, so did his heaven-sent petitions multiply.
So long as God keeps us in the furnace of trial, so long does He keep us on our knees at the throne of grace. "Is any afflicted? let him pray." Prayer is the true sweetener and solace of affliction. Affliction rouses us to prayer, and prayer in return soothes and hallows the affliction. Not only do our prayers multiply in trial, but they intensify. We pray not only more frequently, but more fervently. Of our blessed Lord it is recorded that, "being in an agony, He prayed MORE EARNESTLY," until He sweat great drops of blood falling down to the ground.
Prayers that satisfied us in prosperity will not meet our state in adversity. Petitions which answered well enough for the day of peace and prosperity will not serve our turn when the hour of temptation comes, and the cloud of sorrow darkens. The remembrance of the cold, dreary, formal devotions which congealed as they rose to our languid lips, covers us with shame and confusion when the Lord tries us. It would seem as though we never knew the reality, the power, and the intensity of real prayer until now. And never did God listen to our voice with so attentive ear. "O my dove, you who are in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs; let me see your countenance, let me hear your voice, for sweet is your voice, and your countenance is lovely," (Song 2:14.) Beautiful in His eye as was His dove, her wings covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold, most sweet as was the cadence of her voice, yet more beautiful is she now, bedewed with tears, trembling with emotion, and peering out from beneath the rock and the stair, that veiled her from His view. Yes, the Lord tries the righteous, that He might behold the loveliness of their countenance, and listen to the sweetness of their voice.
3. Trial, also, imparts to the new nature a more quickened and intense desire for the nutriment and sweetness of God's Word.The Bible is the book of the afflicted. We fly to it in times of correction. Then it is we read it more attentively, counsel with it more closely, understand it more clearly, relish it more sweetly, and receive it as the engrafted Word into the heart more experimentally. But in times of worldly engagement or prosperity, the Word of God is apt to be slighted and unread. As we then pray to God carelessly, so we read God's Word carelessly. Prayer and the study of the Word go hand in hand. But God uses His rod, and by its discipline, like indolent or careless children, we are chastened to a closer and more diligent study.
This was David's testimony--"It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn your statutes." Divine chastening and instruction are thus connected. Again--"Princes have persecuted me without a cause; but, my heart stands in awe of your word."While Saul and his princes were meditating his downfall, David was found meditating in God's statutes. While they were consulting with the oracles of hell how they might best sin, he was consulting with the Oracles of God how he might best not sin. While they were coming against him with the sword, the spear, and the shield of human might and prowess, he went forth in the name of the Lord of Hosts, armed only with the sling of God's Word, and the smooth stones of its exceeding great and precious promises.
Oh, how sweet and nourishing do we experience God's Word to be in times of soul-hunger and trial! "The full soul loaths the honeycomb;" but when God intensifies our spiritual hunger, even the bitterness of trial becomes sweet, because it endears Him to us who is the sweetness of the Word. He wisely and mercifully permits a famine, that He might show how He can keep our soul alive in its midst by the pure wheat of His own truth. "I have made," says one, "many a meal's food upon the promises when I have lacked bread." Oh blessed trial, that increases our love to, deepens our experience of, and satisfies our soul with, God's Word!
4. Another hallowed fruit of the Lord's trial of the righteous is, the examination and test of their salvation. It is when His afflictive hand is upon us that we more especially feel the necessity of that sound evidence and assured conviction of our salvation, and of heaven, which, in its support and consolation, more than balances the heaviest trial. Before the hour that brings our religion to the test, with what superficial grounds, with what slight evidence, with what a dubious hope, are many religious professors satisfied! When the candle of the Almighty shines upon their tabernacle, when all is peace within and prosperity without, they can walk as upon high places, and float as upon the placid tide, and speak confidently of the haven of eternal rest. A little religious profession, and still less religion, goes a great way with them, just serving their present turn.
But, when the hour of adversity comes, when the storm breaks over them, when death knocks at the door, oh, then they discover that the 'fig-leaf covering' and the foundation of sand--the Christless, lifeless, prayerless religion--which sufficed for the sunny hour, fails now that the hand of God is heavily upon them. Oh, what a test of real religion, of vital godliness, of the new nature in the soul, is the hour of trial! Shadows and chimeras, dreams and phantoms, flee away then, and one scriptural, real, spiritual evidence of interest in Christ, of the love of God, is worth ten thousand worlds.
My reader, look well to your religion, look well to your hope of the future. Ask yourself, "Will this covering avail me when I appear in the presence of God? Will this faith sustain me when my heart and my flesh are failing? Will this love give me boldness in the day of judgment? Will this evidence answer the solemn purpose, when I lay me down to die?"
But the true believer finds evidence of real grace, of soundness of profession, of a fixed hope, in the time of trial. The crucible tests his religion, the furnace consumes the spurious, the sieve scatters the chaff; and when God has tried him, he comes forth as the fine gold, as the pure wheat, testifying to the sweets of adversity, and chanting the praises of correction, rejoicing that the Lordtries the righteous.
5. Not the least hallowed and happy result of the Lord's trial of the righteous, is, the mellowness which it imparts to the Christian character. There is much, in some believers, which, like iron in its native state, is hard and intractable. It will receive no impress, and yield to no mold. There is the absence of that refinement of feeling, and ripeness of Christian character, so marked and distinguished a characteristic of the believer disciplined by sorrow. But, like to the ore to which we have compared it, let it be subjected to the fiery trial of the furnace, and the grace that is in the believer can be molded to any shape, and will receive any impress God may please. "I will melt and try you," says the Lord. "God makes my heart soft," is the experience of Job.
No believer attains to anything like completeness of Christian grace, who has not been a tried believer. The file has smoothed the roughness, the fire has softened down the sharp angularities of his character, imparting a tone and air so gentle and courteous and winning, as to rank him among those who 'wear soft clothing, and dwell in king's houses.' "Each one resembled the children of a king."
Emerging from beneath the hand of God, the tried believer presents a more beautiful and perfect copy of the mind, spirit, and demeanor of the Lord Jesus--meek, lowly, and loving. Trial, while it has more vividly impressed the seal of genuineness upon his Christianity, has developed more of its intellectual robustness and moral beauty, imparting a new mold to the entire man. Oh, how needful is affliction to perfect us in grace and to fit us for glory! We shall read this truth, before long, in a serener, clearer light, and shall then fully see, what now we perceive so imperfectly, that our present trials were indispensable parts of our spiritual education for earth's service, and of our holy preparation for heaven's enjoyment. Then shall we learn that, with not a solitary trial could we have dispensed; that there was nothing arbitrary, unkind, or unwise in any of the dealings of our God; that, that event wrapped in such dreadful mystery--that calamity so fearfully crushing--that trial which, like a two-edged sword, pierced our hearts through and through, was the message of a Father's wisdom and love, and formed an essential part of our holy training for eternity. Oh, to what lofty music shall we then wake our golden harp in remembrance of all the way the Lord our God led us home to glory, and home to Himself!
6. We have reserved for the last of the hallowed results of trial, its crowning and most precious one, the closer intimacy into which it brings us with the Lord Jesus. Much of our knowledge of Christ, before the Lord tries us, is but theoretical. Experience of Christ and His truth is only derived in the school of self-knowledge, and in the discipline of adversity. The soldier and the mariner are but mere theorists in their respective sciences, until the one stands amid the thunder of the battle-field, and the other amid the fury of the storm. It is thus God trains His Church for heaven. He will have us know His beloved Son not from books, or sermons, or hearsay only, but from a personal and heartfelt experience of what He is.
But it is to the school of trial we more especially refer. When clouds of adversity are gathering--when death is invading, and ties are dissolving, and friends are leaving, and resources are failing, and health is drooping, and the long-drawn shadows of sorrow are falling many and darkly upon the future of life's landscape, we turn to Christ, and the closer transactions into which we then are brought with Him deepens our intimacy and increases our knowledge; and then we more fully experience what a Redeemer, what a Friend, and what a Brother Christ is.
And now we rejoice in tribulation, since it has made us better acquainted with Jesus. We have learned more of Christ in one sanctified trial than from all the books we ever read! Sorrow brought us to Him, and brought Him to us; and so correction has been our teacher. Jesus loves to be where His saints are in trial. Are you in search of Him? Go where adversity in one of its many forms has found a home; go where there is a couch of weakness to strengthen, a pillow of sickness to sustain, a bed of death to cheer, a house of mourning to comfort, a wounded, sad, and lonely heart to heal and solace, and there you will find Jesus. Imitate Christ, and, perhaps, in striving to help, strengthen, and comfort a suffering fellow-disciple, the sorrow concealed within the cloister of your own sad heart may be comforted with the comfort with which you have comforted another.
Here would we pause and inquire– What, my reader, is the hallowed fruit of your affliction? The Lord has, perhaps, brought you through fiery trial, out of much tribulation. You have had sickness, bereavement, loss of property, or, some crushing woe. Sit down, examine and reflect. Turn in upon your heart, and ask, "What spiritual benefit have I derived from my affliction?--what lessons have I learned from the catechism of trial?--what blessings have I received from the discipline of sorrow? Have I in suffering learned that there is no evil in the world like sin, and that there is no sin so great as that of my own heart? Have I found from experience that there is no good so great, no treasure so precious, and no Savior so suitable in the universe, as Christ? Do I come forth from beneath God's chastening hand a converted man--born again? Am I, as a Christian man, more deeply sanctified? Am I more like Christ? the world less in the ascendant in my thoughts? and the creature less the idol of my heart? Has the Word of God become more precious, and communion with God more sweet? Am I, in a word, as was the Captain of my salvation, perfected through suffering? God, my Father, has consecrated suffering to me; has suffering consecrated me to God?"
Such, my reader, be our self-examination. Oh, it is sad to taste the bitter root and not the sweet fruit of sorrow; to experience its curse and not its blessings--its fainting, but not its cordial. "I have smitten you, yet have you not returned unto me, says the Lord,"(Amos 4:9.) May our testimony to the hallowed results of divine correction be that of David--"It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn your statutes. Before I was afflicted I went astray--but now have I kept your word." Then shall we go down to the grave and up to glory, chanting the praises of sanctified correction, and in eternity shall adore God for all the discipline of trial that fitted us for its endless enjoyment, and treasure up within the sacred ark of our memory, the rod of affliction that budded with blessings so many and so great.
Thus have we endeavored to trace in the present chapter, which now must close, the process of trial to which the Lord subjects thenew nature of His people. If this nature, as represented by the Son of God, passed through suffering--though He was without sin--shall we marvel that the same nature in us, dwelling as it does amid so much that is unholy, is made to pass through much tribulation to the kingdom? Meekly, submissively, no, cheerfully, let us drink the cup which Christ's own hand has mingled, rejoicing that we are counted as worthy to drink of the cup that he drank of, and to be baptized with the baptism with which He was baptized.
Soon--its coming speeds fast!--we shall require this training and this discipline no longer. We shall arrive unto the stature of perfect men in Christ Jesus, and our education and fitness by grace for glory will be complete. A few more 'winter days of suffering' and we shall be perfected. The last thorn of the crown will pierce us--the last cup of suffering will distress us--the last fiery dart will assail us--the last touch of sin will taint us--and we shall outshine the brightest angel, and sing more sweetly than the sweetest seraph, casting down our diadem of glory at the feet of Him whose atoning blood will have brought us there!
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