The Fiery Trial 2
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II. We are not to think it strange concerning this fiery trial, as though some strange thing happened unto us when we are put into this fiery furnace. But why are we not to think it strange? For several reasons.
1. First, we are not the only people who are thus exercised; we are not the only individuals who ever have been or ever will be in the furnace of affliction. It is common to the whole election of grace; it is the appointed lot and portion of all the dear family of God. If therefore we belong to the election of grace; if we have a part and lot in the family of God, we are not to think it strange if that comes upon us which comes universally upon them. We should rather think it strange if we were not so tried. Exemption from affliction would be not a mark for us, but a mark against us. If the Lord has "chosen Zion in the furnace of affliction;" if "the fire is to try every man's work of what sort it is" (1 Cor. 3:13); if "many are the afflictions of the righteous" (Psalm. 34:19); if "he brings the third part through the fire" and "the other two parts are cut off and die;" if "whom the Lord loves, he chastens and scourges every son whom he receives" (Heb. 12:6); if we have "to suffer with Christ that we may be also glorified together" (Rom. 8:17), then to be out of the way of affliction would be to be out of the way of life and salvation. This may teach us rather to hug the cross than try to thrust it away, and rejoice in tribulation rather than fret and murmur under it.
2. Again, we are not to think it strange, as if there were something in the dispensation contrary to the wisdom and mercy of God; as if God went out of his way in some extra-ordinary manner, and it was inconsistent with the general tenor of his dealings. When we are first put into the furnace, we think it strange. We may not have had much communion with those of the family of God who have passed through the same trial; or if we have, their conversation may have fallen upon inattentive ears. We have heard them tell about their trials; but we not having had any experience of them, listen carelessly, nor do their words much touch our conscience or much reach our heart. We therefore prefer for our companions those who like ourselves are young in the way, and seem to know more of the sweetness of the gospel than of its trials and afflictions. When then we are for the first time put into the fiery furnace, how strange it seems to be, from our previous ignorance of it.
And is not this true of almost every new path into which we are led? Is it not something like entering for the first time into a foreign country, where everything and everybody seem alike new and strange? The first time the light of conviction entered your conscience, did you not think it strange work that the law to which you had looked to save was now the law that condemned; that the ladder which you thought would land you in heaven would be more likely, from your inability to mount it, to let you down into hell; and what you hoped to gain God's favour by was only a means of manifesting his dreadful displeasure? Was not that strange? And was it not strange, too, that the law, which is holy and just and good, should stir up sin in your heart, set on fire your combustible nature, and, as it appeared to you, give birth to a host of evils that you had never seen or felt before? Do you suppose that Paul did not think it strange when he found "the commandment which was ordained to life to be unto death?" Would not he who had been so zealous for the law, and "touching the righteousness" which it commanded, had considered himself "blameless," be surprised to find that this very law was the strength of sin, and that sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived him and by it slew him? Had not you something of the same experience, and wondered how it was that you could not keep the law, and that the more you tried the worse you were?
So in a similar way when you were put into Peter's fiery hour of temptation and trial, when sins that you had never dreamed of were stirred up in your heart, and you were tempted by night and by day to do things from which you would have shrunk, even in your carnal state– was this not altogether strange? When, too, all sorts of blasphemies kept running through your mind, temptations to infidelity, to use language that had never entered your conception, or to doubt the being of a God in whom you had, as you thought, believed from infancy, and of the truth and inspiration of the Scriptures which you had always received at the hand of your parents as God's book; was not this not only strange, but contrary, as it seemed to you, to the wisdom and goodness of God that you should be so exercised? What! that you, a religious man, a man whose whole soul was in search of God and heaven, whose mind was exercised night and day with divine things, who was endeavouring, with all the strength in his power, to be holy, and to have done forever with sin inwardly as well as outwardly, should be tempted with such thoughts as you believed never found a place except in an infidel, and such blasphemies as you had no conception of, for an oath, it may be, had never passed your lips for many years, if ever, nor even a desire to utter one.
Now for you to have all these things working in your mind, how dreadful it seemed; that a man who had lived a moral life from his boyhood should feel tempted to all manner of profligacy, and that one who had been a believer, as he conceived, of every word that God had spoken, to be tempted to doubt this or that and the other part, if not all, of the word of truth– was not that strange? You might have had during this fiery trial no one who from the pulpit or in private conversation ever named or alluded to such temptations, or ever brought them before you as an interpreter of the secrets of your heart. You might never have heard any one speak, or might never have read any book from which you could gather that any of the children of God had been so exercised; nor did you know that this was a part of the fiery trial which few of them escape. All this made it seem more contrary to the wisdom and goodness of God.
It was this which so puzzled Job, exercised Asaph, distressed Heman, and half killed Jeremiah. All these had to walk in this path of temptation and trial, and for the most part without friend or companion. How mournful are the words of Job, "You have made desolate all my company;" "My friends scorn me, but my eye pours out tears unto God." Heman cried out in the bitterness of his soul– "Lover and friend have you put far from me, and my acquaintance into darkness." (Psalm. 88:18.) And Jeremiah, "I sat alone because of your hand, for you have filled me with indignation." Now it is this lack of an interpreter, of friends and companions, which much adds to the strangeness of the trial.
This indeed, I may add, was much my own case when I was first led into it. I had never heard of experimental ministers, read experimental books, or had any acquaintance with the experience of God's people. What I learned, whether of law or gospel, misery or mercy, myself or Christ, sin or salvation, I had to learn for myself and by myself, without the intervention of any book or minister, church or chapel. It was therefore, so to speak, doubly strange to be brought into these trials without having ever heard that such or similar things had been known by any one upon earth. But I remember well what a lift I got in those days from reading Bunyan's "Grace Abounding," and some rough notes of his own experience, which had been, as it were, jotted down by Joseph Milner, the author of the Church History. I found in them both such a description of their temptations and trials, that it was, as Solomon speaks, "as in water face answers to face so the heart of man to man." But I have no doubt it was good for me to have no such helps from preaching and books, as many have been favoured with; and I have thought sometimes if ever I have been able as a minister to describe the difference between natural and spiritual religion, to take forth the precious from the vile, and to show the distinction between the mere professor and the living possessor, it has been in the hands of God much for this reason, that it was worked out in my own mind without any human help. I thus saw and felt more plainly and clearly the distinction between the work of faith with power and that natural religion in which hundreds live and die contented. I do not despise, no, I think highly of the gracious helps which God gives to his tempted and tried people both from the pulpit and from the writings of his servants. But I have always thought that we learn things best when we learn them without human help, and get them directly from the Lord without passing through any other channel. I have long felt so, and feel so still to this day.
But some such experience is necessary. How am I to put my hand upon your heart unless I know my own? How can I, like a detective, go into the very courts and alleys of human nature and lay hold of the thief who hides himself in them unless I have a clue by having myself threaded these back slums of the heart; and not lived all my life like a Court lady in a West-end square? Of course I mean only inwardly not outwardly, experimentally not practically. A minister who does not know the turnings and windings of his own heart can never track out the sins that lie so deep in the hearts of others. In my judgment, the best detective in the pulpit is a man who knows most of his own heart, and can enter into the trials, temptations, and exercises of others by having some personal experience of these things in his own soul. How wistfully, how earnestly is many a poor child of God often listening for a word from the minister which may touch upon his trials and exercises; what relief it often gives him to find that a servant of God is no stranger to his temptations, and is thus able to speak a word in season to him that is weary.
Have you not sometimes come with a heavy burden of temptation and trial pressing you down, looking and longing for some relief or help, but have gone away and got nothing? Not a syllable was dropped that touched upon your case, and you went away worse than you came. It is needful therefore that a minister should know for himself the fiery trial, and not deal with it as some strange thing which, not knowing himself, he deems it strange for others to know, but may describe it and open it up as far as he can, so as to speak a word of consolation to the distressed and exercised family of God.
III. But to pass on to the next point which we proposed to consider, where the apostle bids us to REJOICE under the fiery trial instead of being cast down and distressed by it.
You will observe that he bids us rejoice upon two grounds– first, that we are thereby partakers of Christ's sufferings; secondly, that when his glory shall be revealed we may be glad also with exceeding joy. Let me endeavor to unfold these two blessed causes of rejoicing.
A. We are thereby partakers of Christ's sufferings. God has predestinated all his people to be conformed to the image of his dear Son. Now that image is twofold– his 'suffering image' as a man of sorrows as when he was upon earth, and his 'glorified image' as he now is at the right hand of the Father in heaven. To both of these images we have to be conformed; for we must be conformed first to his suffering image here, that we may be conformed to his glorified image hereafter; in other words, we must be partakers of his sufferings upon earth that we may be partakers of his glory in heaven. Now the fiery trial puts us into a fellowship with the sufferings of Christ.
1. He knew, as revealed in his conscience, the burning indignation of God in a fiery law. Do we not read that he was "made of a woman, made under the law;" yes, that he was himself "made a curse for us?" What else was his experience upon the cross, when the anger of God, due to our transgressions, fell upon him, as standing there in our place and stead? He bore our sins in his own body on the tree. O what a solemn letting down of the wrath of the Almighty into the innocent bosom of our harmless, undefiled Representative when he sustained the whole weight of our sins which would have sunk us into the lowest hell! Then and there our gracious Lord went through the fiery trial, by baring his bosom to the fiery law, and, by fulfilling it to the uttermost, put it forever away.
2. Again, our gracious Lord experienced temptation in every shape and form, for the word of truth declares that "in all points he was tempted like as we are, yet without sin." I wish to speak very cautiously upon this subject, for upon a point so difficult and so mysterious there is great risk of speaking amiss. So long as we keep strictly within the language of the Scripture we are safe, but the moment that we draw inferences from the word without special guidance by the Spirit of truth, we may greatly err. You may think then, sometimes, that your temptations are such as our gracious Lord never could have been tempted by; but that word of the apostle decides the question– "in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." It is a solemn mystery which I cannot explain, how temptation in every point, shape, and form could assail the holy soul of the immaculate Redeemer. I fully believe it. I see the grace and wisdom of it, and my faith acquiesces in it as most blessed truth. But I cannot understand it.
I know also and believe from the testimony of the word and that of my own conscience, that whatever temptation he was assailed with, not one of them could or did sully, stain, or spot his holy humanity. That was absolutely and perfectly a pure, unfallen, immortal nature, able to die by a voluntary act, but having in itself no seeds of sickness, mortality, or death. And yet I read that, though thus possessed of a holy, pure, and spotless humanity, in everlasting union with his own eternal Deity, in all points he was tempted like as we are. I cannot explain the mystery– I do not wish to do so. I receive it as a mystery, in the same way as I receive that great mystery of godliness, "God manifested in the flesh." But still I bless God that he was tempted in all points like as we are; for it makes him such a sympathizing High Priest with his poor, exercised, tried, tempted family here below. I have sometimes compared the temptations which beat upon the soul of the Lord to the waves of the sea that dash themselves against a pure, white marble rock. The rock may feel the shock of the wave; but it is neither moved by it nor sullied. It still stands unmoved, immoveable in all its original firmness; it still shines in all the brightness of the pure, glittering marble when the waves recede and the sun breaks forth on its face. So none of the temptations with which the Lord was assailed moved the Rock of Ages, or sullied the purity, holiness, and perfection of the spotless Lamb of God.
3. And so with the other trials which our gracious Lord had to experience. He felt them all but was injured by none. Some trials indeed our Lord seemed exempt from; at least so far exempt that he could not have a personal experience of them. Take, for instance, family and domestic trials. Our Lord had no family, except that there were relatives on his mother's side. But our Lord was so separated from all family ties that he could not be said to have family trials as we have. And yet he had them by sympathy. He wept at the tomb of Lazarus, so as to enter by sympathy into the trial of Martha and Mary, though Lazarus was not brother to him as he was to them. And may we not indeed say that as our near kinsman, our Goel, the Lord has a large family to suffer with? for "in all their afflictions he was afflicted." We are "members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones;" and in this sense the trials and afflictions of the family are the trials and afflictions of their Head, Husband, and Brother.
4. But again, our Lord had no personal experience whatever of bodily afflictions. There was no sickness in him; there could not be. Had he had the seeds of sickness, he would have had the seeds of mortality; and had he had the seeds of mortality, he would not have had a spotless, unfallen, but a corrupt nature like our own. He had, therefore, a perfect immunity from all sickness; and yet he bore our sickness by sympathy. We therefore read, that when he healed all that were sick, it was "that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Elijah the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bore our sicknesses." (Matt. 8:17.) He could not have experienced them actually and personally, except by possessing a fallen nature; he therefore entered into them by sympathy. Let me illustrate this. Have not you sometimes had a sick child, a sick husband, or a sick wife; and you, though not ill yourself, yet so sympathized with them in their sickness, that you felt it almost as if it were your own? How that hacking cough went through you; how that croupy bark pierced you; how that loud groan or suppressed moaning racked you; how that pale, convulsed, dying face haunts your memory still. Perhaps you felt by sympathy more than they felt in reality. Thus we see that there is a suffering by sympathy where there is not a suffering in person. In our gracious Lord this sympathy, from the very purity and exquisite perfection of his sacred humanity, was of the tenderest kind, and therefore beyond all conception and beyond all comparison.
5. But other trials our gracious Lord had a large personal acquaintance with– such as providential trials, existing as he did upon alms, for a bag was carried by Judas and in that bag were deposited such small sums as were sufficient to procure those necessaries of life which our gracious Lord, as a part of his blessed humility partook of with his disciples.
6. But he had an experience also of persecution, opposition, contempt, and all that the malice of man could devise, until it rose to that culminating act of daring iniquity to hang him as a malefactor upon the cross.
Now our gracious Lord had no corruption in him as we have to make his sufferings and temptations a fiery trial to him in the first sense which I explained that it is so to us. It stirred up no corruption in him, for there was none in him to stir up. He could say, "Which of you convinces me of sin?" and again, "Behold the prince of this world comes, and finds nothing in me." Yet as calling forth every fruit and grace of the Holy Spirit, who dwelt in him without measure, it eminently drew forth and displayed the fruits of the furnace. When the gracious Redeemer hung upon the cross, what strong faith in God, what depending trust, what holy confidence, what blessed hope, what sweet humility, what calm resignation to the last breath, before he gave up the spirit and committed his departing spirit into the hands of God. How the fiery trial called forth in him every grace and every fruit of the Holy Spirit; and how all these fruits of the Holy Spirit, for they were such, shone eminently forth in the Redeemer's example when he was wounded for our transgressions and was bruised for our iniquities; when the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we were healed.
We are then to rejoice, inasmuch as by the fiery trial we become partakers of Christ's sufferings, are baptized into his death, drink of his cup, and know what it is in some measure to have fellowship with him in the garden and upon the cross. Thus you have cause to rejoice that God has taken you out of the world, chosen you from among men, and is graciously conforming you to the suffering image of his dear Son, that as you suffer with him you may also be glorified together.
B. But this leads us to the second reason which the apostle gives why we should rejoice in and under the fiery trial; "that when his glory shall be revealed, you may be glad also with exceeding joy."
The words, I think, will admit of a double interpretation; first, the revelation of his glory now as a spiritual, experimental reality; and secondly, the revelation of his glory hereafter, when he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and be admired in all those who believe. We will look briefly at both.
1. PRESENT glory. There is then a revelation of the glory of Christ upon earth, to be known, seen, felt, and enjoyed even in this time-state. Our Lord therefore said of his disciples to his heavenly Father, "The glory which you have given me, I have given them, that they may be one as we are one." Similar is the testimony of John– "We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." When Christ is revealed to the soul, he is revealed as a glorious Christ. The glory of his Deity, the glory of his humanity, the glory of his complex Person, Immanuel God with us, all shine into the soul, when he manifests himself. It is as the apostle beautifully expresses it– "God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." And see the effect. "We all with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." O a revelation of the glory of Christ, what a memorable blessing to those who have ever enjoyed it, as I hope some of us here present have. How it makes up for the fiery trial. How the pain and the suffering vanish, are lost out of sight, and nothing is then seen but the glory of Christ as revealed to the soul.
2. But there is the COMING glory, when the Lord Jesus shall appear with all his saints in the clouds of heaven; for though he seems to delay his coming, yet surely he will come a second time without sin unto salvation. Yes, he will come attended by thousands and tens of thousands of the saints now in glory; for he will raise their sleeping dust and change into his own likeness those who are still alive at his coming, that they may all enter into his glory and so be forever with the Lord. O what a day of solemn rejoicing will that be to the saints of God, when those who have carried his cross will wear his crown, when those who have been partakers of his sufferings will be partakers of his glory, when the righteous will shine like the skies, and those who have turned many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever.
God help you in the furnace, if any here present are now therein, to bear all, to believe all, and patiently endure all that God shall lay upon you. It will be well with you in the end. You will bless him for the furnace, for his helping hand in it, and his deliverance out of it, and the happy result in a personal revelation of the glory of Christ to your soul now, and at the last day of the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, to fill your souls with immortal joy!
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