You have forgotten the exhortation which reasons with you as with children, “My son, don’t take lightly the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by him;
for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines, and chastises every son whom he receives.”
It is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as with children, for what son is there whom his father doesn’t discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have been made partakers, then you are illegitimate, and not children. Furthermore, we had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits, and live? For they indeed, for a few days, punished us as seemed good to them; but he for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness. All chastening seems for the present to be not joyous but grievous; yet afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11 5. And ye have forgotten, etc. I read the…
5. And ye have forgotten, etc. I read the words as a question; for he asks, whether they had forgotten, intimating that it was not yet time to forget. But he enters here on the doctrine, that it is useful and needful for us to be disciplined by the cross; and he refers to the testimony of Solomon, which includes two parts; the first is, that we are not to reject the Lord’s correction; and in the second the reason is given, because the Lord loves those whom he chastises. But as Solomon thus begins, my “Son”, the Apostle reminds us that we ought to be allured by so sweet and kind a word, as that this exhortation should wholly penetrate into our hearts.
Now Solomon’s argument is this: — If the scourges of God testify his love towards us, it is a shame that they should be regarded with dislike or hatred. For they who bear not to be chastised by God for their own salvation, yea, who reject a proof of his paternal kindness, must be extremely ungrateful.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv5, 9, 10 Secondly, because they are testimony of his fatherly good…
Secondly, because they are testimony of his fatherly good will toward us, insomuch that they show themselves to be bastards, which cannot abide to be chastened of God.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv5–11 5 And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh…
5 And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him:
Ver. 5. And ye have forgot the exhortation] Or, have ye forgot the consolation? {a} Are the consolations of God small unto you? Job 15:11. Do ye, instead of wrestling with God, wrangle with him, refusing to be comforted (as Rachel), out of the pettishness of your spirits, as he, Psa 77:2? Will ye not, as children, eat your milk, because you have it not in the golden dish? Will ye be like the hedgehog, of which Pliny reporteth, that being laden with nuts and fruits, if the least filbert fall off, will fling down all the rest in a pettish humour, and beat the ground with her bristles.
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Despise not thou the chastening] See my Love Tokens, p. 37. Count it not a light matter, a common occurrence, such as must be borne by head and shoulders, and when things are at worst, they will mend again. This is not patience but pertinacy, strength but stupidity, "the strength of stone, and flesh of brass," Job 6:12. When Gallienus the emperor had lost the kingdom of Egypt, What? said he, Sine lino Egyptio esse non possumus? cannot we be without the hemp of Egypt? but shortly after he was slain with the sword. When the Turks had taken two castles in Chersonesus, and so first got footing in Europe, the proud Greeks said that there was but a hog’s sty lost, alluding to the name of the castle. But that foolish laughter was turned within a while into most bitter tears. When Calais was lost under Queen Mary, those of the faction strove to allay the Queen’s grief, saying that it was only a refuge for runaway heretics, and that no Roman Catholic ought to deplore, but rather rejoice, at the damage:
At regina gravi iamdudum saucia cura,
Vulnus alit venis-
Nor faint when thou art rebuked] If we faint in the day of adversity, our strength is small, saith Solomon, Pro 24:10; and it is, Non quia dura, sed quia molles patimur, saith Seneca; not for that we suffer hard things, but because we are too soft that suffer them. As is the man, so is his strength, said they to Gideon, Jdg 8:21. Joseph’s bow abode in strength, even when the iron entered into his soul, Gen 49:24; and Job’s stroke was heavier than his groaning, Job 23:2. Invalidum omne natura querelum, saith Seneca: It is a weakness to be ever whining. See my Love Tokens.
{a} Legenda haec sunt cum interrogatione. Pisc.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv5–11 And ye have forgotten; eklelhsye, whether rendered interrogatively: have…
And ye have forgotten; eklelhsye, whether rendered interrogatively: have ye forgotten? Or positively: ye have forgotten; either way it carrieth a check upon their forgetfulness of what was of the greatest importance for them to remember in the time of persecutions, and implieth a direction of them to their duty, that they ought to remember the counsel or command given by God to them, how to interpret these persecutions for Christ and the gospel, and how to improve them; and so introduceth a further help to their rnnning of the race of God with patience.
The exhortation; paraklhsewv notes properly consolation, and is here a consolatory exhortation to the management of a duty which would be highly such to them, and a dehortation from an evil which would greatly prejudice them; when it is said to speak, it is a metonymy of the effect for the efficient; the Lord in the exhortation speaking this to them.
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Which speaketh unto you as unto children: these words were written by Solomon, from God unto his children in that time; and God speaks no less by him to these Hebrews, who were his children now, as to all others who are such, or should be such, children to him. And whereas it is spoken singularly:
My son, it is to every child of God in Christ Jesus, and so collectively includeth all of them.
Despise not thou the chastening of the Lord: the dehortation is written in Pro 3:11, that not one of these children should care little for, or set light by, denying all regardlessness, senselessness of, and incorrigibleness under, such smart correction as a parent gives to a child, either by himself, or by any other to whose care it is committed; but this chastening is from the Lord, the most gracious and tender Father, who can do them no evil, and will profit and benefit them by it. As they come from their persecutors for the sake of Christ, they are injuries; but as ordered by God their Father, they are so many favours to them, preventing sin, preserving in duty, and preparing them for blessedness.
Nor faint when thou art rebuked of him; nor to nauseate his rebukes, or to faint under them; neither to let our faith or hope in our Father fail, nor to sink in our love to him, his way, or truth, or religion; nor to be weary, and give over our course, because of persecutions, but continuing faithful to him to the end, Heb 12:14,15; Mt 10:22; Luk 22:28,29.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv5, 6, 7, 9, 11 As if he had said, "By growing weary and…
As if he had said, "By growing weary and faint in your minds, you will plainly show and evidently declare, that you have forgotten that exhortation which God gives, Proverbs 3." The want of a diligent consideration and due remembrance of God’s promises, recorded in scripture for our encouragement unto duty, and support under difficulties, is very sinful, and of dangerous consequence unto our souls. Ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you,-
Note here, 1. A sweet and endearing compellation, My son.
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Learn hence, That good men, when under the greatest trials and heaviest afflictions, are God’s sons; he calls them sons, and he deals with them as with sons.
Note, 2. The nature of the saints’ afflictions declared; not judgments, out chastisements, and fatherly rebukes; the original word signifies such a correction as a father gives a child for his instruction, and bringing him to a sense of his duty.
Learn hence, That all the afflictions which God lays upon his children are not the effects of his vindictive anger, but the fruits and effects of his paternal love.
Note, 3. A cautionary direction given against two very dangerous extremes in the time of affliction, namely, despising correction, and fainting under it. It is the duty, and ought to be the endeavour, of all the children of God, when under his fatherly hand, to take care that they neither despise his chastisements, nor faint under them.
When God has taken away one of our comforts, to say, "Let him take all if he will; if my children must die, let if he will; if my children must die, let them die; if my estate must go, let it go;" -this is to despise. God cannot bear to see us bear his hand thus lightly.
The other extreme is fainting: If when goods are taken away, the heart is taken away, and whe relations die, the spirit of a person dies with them: Despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint, &c.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv5–11 And ye have forgotten the exhortation,.... Or consolation, the…
And ye have forgotten the exhortation,.... Or consolation, the consolatory word or doctrine, in Pro 3:11. This, by their conduct, the apostle feared they had forgotten, and therefore puts them in mind of it; or it may be read by way of question, "and have ye forgotten?", &c. do not ye remember? it would be right to call it to mind:
which speaketh unto you as unto children; not as the children of Solomon, but as the children of God, or of Christ, the wisdom of God: here, by a prosopopeia, the word of exhortation is introduced as a person speaking,
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my son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord; by which is meant, not vindictive punishment; this would not be speaking to them, nor dealing with them as children, and would be contrary to the love of God towards them; besides, chastisement in this sense has been upon Christ for them, and it would be unjust to lay it on them again; but a fatherly correction is designed, and which is given in love by God, as a Father, and for the instruction of his children, as the word used signifies: and it is called not the chastening of men, but of the Lord; every chastening, or afflictive providence, is appointed by God, and is looked upon by believers, when grace is in exercise, as coming from him; and it is directed, and governed, and limited by him, and is overruled by him for his own glory, and their good: and this is not to be despised, as something nauseous and loathsome, or as not useful and unprofitable, or as insignificant and unworthy of notice, but should be esteemed for the good ends, which are sometimes answered, by it:
nor faint when thou art rebuked of him; God has various ways of rebuking, reproving, and convincing, sometimes by his Spirit, sometimes by his word and ministers, and sometimes by afflictive providences; by these he rebukes his people for their sins, convinces them of them, and brings them to acknowledgment and confession; he makes them hereby sensible of their duty, in which they have been remiss, and brings them to a more constant and fervent discharge of it; he reproves them for, and convinces of their folly in trusting in the creature, or loving it too much, and of every wrong way they have been walking in; and these rebukes are not in a way of wrath, but love, and therefore saints should not faint at them: there are two extremes they are apt to run into, under such a dispensation; either to take no notice, and make light of an affliction, or else to be overwhelmed by it, and sink under it; both are guarded against in this exhortation.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv5–11 And yet ye seem already to have forgotten the…
And yet ye seem already to have forgotten the exhortation - Wherein God speaketh to you with the utmost tenderness. Despise not thou the chastening of the Lord - Do not slight or make little of it; do not impute any affliction to chance or second causes but see and revere the hand of God in it. Neither faint when thou art rebuked of him - But endure it patiently and fruitfully. Pro iii, 11, &c.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv5–11 Verse 5. And ye have forgotten] Or, have ye…
Verse 5. And ye have forgotten] Or, have ye forgotten the exhortation? This quotation is made from Pr 3:11-12, and shows that the address there, which at first sight appears to be from Solomon to his son, or from some fatherly man to a person in affliction, is properly from God himself to any person in persecution, affliction, or distress.
Despise not thou the chastening] Μη ολιγωρει παιδειας Κυριου· Do not neglect the correction of the Lord. That man neglects correction, and profits not by it, who does not see the hand of God in it; or, in other words, does not fear the rod and him who hath appointed it, and, consequently, does not humble himself under the mighty hand of God, deplore his sin, deprecate Divine judgment, and pray for mercy.
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Nor faint] Do not be discouraged nor despair, for the reasons immediately alleged.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv5, 9 Heb 12:5-8. And ye have forgotten, &c. — As…
Heb 12:5-8. And ye have forgotten, &c. — As if he had said, If you faint it will appear you have forgotten, the exhortation — Wherein God speaks to you with the utmost tenderness; as unto his own dear children, saying, My son, despise not thou — Do not slight or make light of; the chastening of the Lord — Do not impute it to chance or to second causes, but see and revere the hand of God in it; account it a great mercy, and improve it; nor faint, and sink, when thou art rebuked of him — But endure it patiently and fruitfully, avoiding the extremes of proud insensibility and entire dejection. For — All such dispensations spring from love; therefore neither despise them nor faint under them; whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth — Or correcteth for their faults, in order to their amendment; and that he may try, exercise, and thereby increase their faith, hope, love, resignation, patience, meekness, and other graces; and that he may purify them by such fires, as gold and silver are purged in the furnace from their dross. And scourgeth — With seeming severity; every son whom he receiveth — Into his peculiar favour. See note on Pro 3:11-12, &c. If ye endure, &c. — If God correct you, and cause you to endure chastening, he dealeth with you as wise and affectionate parents deal with their beloved sons; for what son is he whom the father — Namely, the person who performs the duty of a father; chasteneth not — More or less? There are scarce any children who do not sometimes need correction, and no wise and good parent will always forbear it. But if ye be without chastisement — “If ye pass your lives without experiencing sickness of any kind, or worldly losses, or affliction in your families, or death of children, or injuries from your neighbours, or any of the other troubles to which the children of God are exposed, certainly you are treated by your heavenly Father as bastards, and not as sons.” Ye are not owned by God for his children.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv5–11 And ye have forgotten the exhortation - This exhortation…
And ye have forgotten the exhortation - This exhortation is found in Pro 3:11-12. The object of the apostle in introducing it here is, to show that afflictions were designed on the part of God to produce some happy effects in the lives of his people, and that they ought, therefore, to bear them patiently. In the previous verses, he directs them to the example of the Saviour. In this verse and the following, for the same object he directs their attention to the design of trials, showing that they are necessary to our welfare, and that they are in fact proof of the paternal care of God. This verse might be rendered as a question. “And have ye forgotten?” etc. This mode of rendering it will agree somewhat better with the design of the apostle.
Which speaketh, unto you - Which may be regarded as addressed to you; or which involves a principle as applicable to you as to others. He does not mean that when Solomon used the words, he had reference to them particularly, but that he used them with reference to the children of God, and they might therefore be applied to them. in this way we may regard the language of the Scriptures as addressed to us.
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As unto children - As if he were addressing children. The language is such as a father uses.
My son - It is possible that in these words Solomon may have intended to address a son literally, giving him paternal counsel; or he may have spoken as the Head of the Jewish people, designing to address all the pious, to whom he sustained, as it were, the relation of a father. Or, it is possible also, that it may be regarded as the language of God himself addressing his children. Whichever supposition is adopted, the sense is substantially the same.
Despise not thou the chastening of the Lord - Literally, “Do not regard it as a small matter, or as a trivial thing - ὀλιγώρει oligōrei. The Greek word used here does not occur elsewhere in the New Testament. The word rendered here “chastening” - παιδεία paideia - and also in Heb 12:6-8, and in Heb 12:9, “corrected” - παιδευτὰς paideutas - does not refer to affliction in general, but that kind of affliction which is designed to correct us for our faults, or which is of the nature of discipline. The verb properly relates to the training up of a child - including instruction, counsel, discipline, and correction (see this use of the verb in Act 7:22; 2Ti 2:25; Tit 2:12), and then especially discipline or correction for faults - to “correct, chastise, chasten;” 1Co 11:32; 2Co 6:9; Rev 3:19. This is the meaning here; and the idea is, not that God will afflict his people in general, but that if they wander away he will correct them for their faults. He will bring calamity upon them as a punishment for their offences, and in order to bring them back to himself. He will not suffer them to wander away unrebuked and unchecked, but will mercifully reclaim them though by great sufferings. Afflictions have many objects, or produce many happy effects. That referred to here is, that they are means of reclaiming the wandering and erring children of God, and are proofs of his paternal care and love; compare 2Sa 7:14; 2Sa 12:13-14; Psa 89:31-34; Pro 3:11-12. Afflictions, which are always sent by God, should not be regarded as small matters, for these reasons:
The fact that they are sent by God. Whatever he does is of importance, and is worthy of the profound attention of people.
(2)They are sent for some important purpose, and they should be regarded, therefore, with attentive concern.
Men “despise” them when:
(1)They treat them with affected or real unconcern;
(2)When they fail to receive them as divine admonitions, and regard them as without any intelligent design; and,
(3)When they receive them with “expressions” of contempt, and speak of them and of the government of God with scorn.
It should be a matter of deep concern when we are afflicted in any manner, not to treat the matter lightly, but to derive from our trials all the lessons which they are adapted to produce on the mind.
Nor faint ... - Bear up patiently under them. This is the second duty. We are first to study their character and design; and secondly, to bear up under them, however severe they may be, and however long they may be continued. “Avoid the extremes of proud insensibility and entire dejection” - Doddridge.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv5, 8, 11 You have forgotten the consolation, &c. He puts them…
You have forgotten the consolation, &c. He puts them in mind, that it ought to be a subject of great comfort to them, that God calls them his children, his sons, and treats them as his true and legitimate children, when he admonished them to live under the discipline and obedience to him, when, to correct their disobedient and sinful ways, he sends the afflictions and persecutions in this world, which they ought to look upon as marks of his fatherly tenderness; for this is what a prudent kind father does to his legitimate children, of whom he takes the greatest care: and not to use these corrections, is to neglect them, as if they were [3]illegitimate children. We reverence the father of our flesh, (ver. 10.) our parents in this world, when they instruct and correct us, how much more ought we to obey the Father and Creator of spirits, (i.e. of our souls) that being truly sanctified by him, we may live and obtain life everlasting. (Witham)
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[BIBLIOGRAPHY]
adulterini, non germani filii.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv5–11 forgotten--"utterly," so the Greek. Compare Heb 12:15-17, in which…
forgotten--"utterly," so the Greek. Compare Heb 12:15-17, in which he implies how utterly some of them had forgotten God's word. His exhortation ought to have more effect on you than the cheers and exhortations of the spectators have on the competitors striving in the games.
which--Greek, "the which," of which the following is a specimen [ALFORD].
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speaketh unto you--as in a dialogue or discourse, so the Greek, implying God's loving condescension (compare Isa 1:18).
despise not--literally, "Do not hold of little account." Betraying a contumacious spirit of unbelief (Heb 3:12), as "faint" implies a broken-down, weak, and desponding spirit. "Chastening" is to be borne with "subjection" (Heb 12:9); "rebuke" (more severe than chastening) is to be borne with endurance (Heb 12:7). "Some in adversity kick against God's will, others despond; neither is to be done by the Christian, who is peculiarly the child of God. To him such adverse things occur only by the decree of God, and that designed in kindness, namely, to remove the defilements adhering to the believer, and to exercise his patience" [GROTIUS].
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv5–11 5. Ye have forgotten—Perhaps this is truly a question:…
5. Ye have forgotten—Perhaps this is truly a question: have ye forgotten? It then becomes a gentle, yet reproving reminder.
Children—Greek, sons.
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Chastening—Inflictions intended to reform, not to punish with irrevocable retribution. The good are disciplined, the incorrigible are vindicatively punished. When we suffer let us remember our sins, and be submissive. But our author puts it better even than this. When we suffer let us see in it a proof of our divine sonship, a promise of our own improvement, and rejoice.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv5–11 5. And ye have forgotten] “Yet ye have utterly…
5. And ye have forgotten] “Yet ye have utterly forgotten,” or possibly the words may be intended interrogatively “Yet have ye utterly forgotten?”
the exhortation] “the encouragement,” or “strengthening consolation.”
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speaketh] “discourseth,” or “reasoneth” (dialegetai).
My son …] The quotation is from Pro_3:11-12, and is taken mainly from the LXX. There is a very similar passage in Job_5:17, and Philo, de Congr. quaerend. erudit. gr. (Opp. i. 544).
despise not] “Regard not lightly.”
the chastening] Rather, “the training.”
nor faint …] In the Hebrew it is “and loathe not His correction.”
rebuked] Rather, “tested,” “corrected.”
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv5–11 (5) In this cowardly avoidance of trouble and persecution…
(5) In this cowardly avoidance of trouble and persecution they have been shrinking from that chastening which every son receives from the Lord.
Which speaketh unto you.—Better, which holds converse (or, reasoneth) with you as with sons. The words which follow are taken from Pro_3:11-12, and agree with the text of the LXX., except that for “son” we have “my son,” and for “reproveth” (Heb_12:6) “chasteneth.” In the original passage Solomon is the speaker, and it is the second verse only that speaks of God’s fatherly love. It may be so here also, but the exhortation of the Scripture seems to be quoted as if spoken directly by God Himself to His sons.
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Despise.—Better, think not lightly of. In the next clause the Hebrew (“and loathe not His correction”) denotes rather a spirit that rejects and chafes under divine discipline. As the words are found here, they point to losing heart and hope.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv5, 7, 9, 10, 11 Vers. 5, 6. And ye have forgotten (or, have…
Vers. 5, 6. And ye have forgotten (or, have ye forgotten?) the exhortation which speaketh unto you (more correctly, discourses, or reasons, with you; i.e. in the way of fatherly remonstrance) as unto children, My son, etc. This verse introduces a further motive for persevering under prolonged trial, viz. our being assured in Holy Writ of its beneficial purpose as discipline. The quotation is from Pro_3:11, Pro_3:12, as it is in the LXX We observe that the word "faint" (ekluou) is the same as was used in ver. 3. In the seventh and following verses this scriptural admonition is applied and commented on.
Vers. 5, 6. Divine discipline. "My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, etc. Our subject is Divine discipline. Let us notice
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I ITS CHARACTER. Three words are used to express it chastening," "scourging." The last two seem to be used synonymously here. Archbishop Trench points out that rebuke" and "to chasten" are often found together, but they are very capable of being distinguished. "To rebuke" is so to rebuke that the person is brought to the acknowledgment of his fault is convinced, as David was when rebuked by Nathan." (2Sa_12:13) The word translated to "chasten," "being in classical Greek to instruct, to educate, is in sacred Greek to instruct or educate by means of correction, through the severe discipline of love." The object of the discipline is to deliver the subjects of it from sin, to establish them in the faith, and to perfect them in holiness. The means of the discipline are afflictions, persecutions, and trials. And it may be administered by the enemies of the Church of Christ. The persecutions of man may be the discipline of God. "Persecution for religion is sometimes a correction and rebuke for the sins of professors of religion. Men persecute them because they are religious; God chastises them because they are not more so: men persecute them because they wilt not give up their profession; God chastises them because they have not lived up to their profession.
II ITS AUTHOR. The chastening of the Lord .... Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth." Some of our trials are from his hand. He is the great Husbandman, and he prunes the vines that they may bring forth more fruit. The trials which are not sent by him are permitted by him. (cf. Job_1:12 2Co_12:7) And he gives to all our trials their disciplinary character. He makes the bitter potion medicinal. By his blessing our sufferings become salutary, and our sorest afflictions our sagest instructors. The fact that the Lord is the Author of our discipline, that our trials either proceed from him or are permitted and regulated by him, supplies a guarantee that we shall not be tried beyond our strength. He is infinite in wisdom and in love. "He knoweth our frame;" and he will either restrict our trials so that they exceed not our strength, or increase our strength until it surpasses the severity of our trials. "He stayeth his rough wind in the day of the east wind." "I will correct thee in measure." "Though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies." "My grace is sufficient for thee; for my strength is made perfect in weakness.
III ITS SUBJECTS. "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
1. They are filially related to him. "Every son" of his he subjects to reproof and chastisement. "God has one Son without sin, but none without suffering." If we are his sons, we may rest assured that he will not fail to secure to us the discipline that we need. Thus our sufferings may be an evidence of our sonship.
2. They are beloved by him. "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth." Because he loves us he corrects us. It has been well said, that lawns which we would keep in the best condition are very frequently mown; the grass has scarcely any respite from the scythe. Out in the meadows there is no such repeated cutting; they are mown but once or twice in the year. Even thus the nearer we are to God, and the more regard he has for us, the more frequent will be our adversities. To be very dear to God involves no small degree of chastisement.
IV ITS RECEPTION. "My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord," etc.
1. It should not be deemed unimportant. "Regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord." "We may be said to despise the chastening of the Lord," says Dr. Wardlaw, "in the following eases:
(1) When it is not felt; when there is a want of natural sensibility to the particular stroke of the rod. This is but rare. Men in general are quite sufficiently alive to the value of temporal things. But the value is comparative. There are cherished and favorite possessions, and others less highly thought of, less fondly held. The Lord, it may be, deals gently. He spares the "gourd." He does not take what is most highly set by. And instead of humbly owning the kindness being lowly and submissive, and seeking a blessing on the gentle stroke, that the heavier one may be withheld the preservation and safety of the greater produces insensibility to the privation of the less; and the correction is thus disregarded, and proves inefficient.
(2) When it is not duly felt as from God.
(3) When, although God is seen in it and his hand is felt, it is not felt humbly and submissively; not bowed to, but resisted.
(4) When the design or end of correction is not laid to heart.
2. It should not be deemed intolerable. Nor faint when thou art rebuked of him." We are not to sink under the reproofs and strokes of the Divine discipline, though they be severe. The fact that our trials are regulated by our Father"s hand, that they are educational, that they are intended and adapted to promote our spiritual and eternal well-being, should keep us from sinking beneath their pressure. The tears we shed are not in vain; Nor worthless is the heavy strife; If, like the buried seed of grain, They rise to renovated life. It is through tears our spirits grow Tis in the tempest souls expand, If it but teaches us to go To him who holds it in his hand. Oh, welcome, then, the stormy blast! Oh, welcome, then, the ocean"s roar! Ye only drive more sure and fast Our trembling bark to heaven"s bright shore. (T. C. Upham.) W. J.
Vers. 5-10. God"s discipline of his children.
Continually in the New Testament, when we get into circumstances of doubt and pain, we are brought back to the rich truth and comfort to be found in the fatherhood of God. Here, as elsewhere, fortiori argument is employed. If an earthly father, being evil, gives good gifts to his children, how much more will the heavenly Father give his Holy Spirit to them asking him? And even so, if an earthly father disciplines his children, making them do and bear many hard things that they may grow into a useful manhood, how much more will the heavenly Father make his children to suffer hardness that they may be fit to run in the way of his commandments hereafter?
I HOW A BRIGHT SIDE MAY BE FOUND TO SUFFERING. They were evidently a sadly tried community to whom this letter was written. What shall be done to comfort and encourage them? In the fourth verse there is a very common and not altogether useless ground of comfort suggested. Things are bad, no doubt, but they might be worse. "You have to suffer a good deal in resisting sin, but not yet have you resisted to blood." This view of suffering, however, useful as it is for the moment, soon leads on to the question, "Why should others suffer, or seem to suffer, more than I?" And so the writer quickly turns to bid his friends remember that they are the children of God, and if they only recollect their character and destiny, and live under the ever-deepening influence of this recollection, then they will see that nothing can do them abiding harm. All the comfort of the exhortation passes away, unless it mingles with the assurance of the Spirit bearing witness with our spirits that we are indeed the children of God. Suffering must cast an ever-thickening gloom upon the heart unless the hopes of a child of God come in to shed abroad an amply countervailing light.
II THE RESPONSIBILITY THAT SUFFERING LAYS UPON US. It is a serous thing for one who reckons himself a Christian to pass through suffering and difficulty. He is expected to be the better for it all. If he uses it aright, according to the wisdom communicated from above, then assuredly he will emerge front it with a purified heart and a clearer spiritual vision. The first rule is that suffering is to be escaped if possible. But if it cannot be escaped, it must not merely be endured. It must be received as an agent of God"s will in making us better and more capable children. Hence the plain truth that we shall be held responsible for all we have had in the way of pain.
III THE USE GOD CAN MAKE OF HUMAN WICKEDNESS. Those here sought to be comforted were evidently suffering persecution. This is distinctly suggested in the expression "striving against sin." And thus it is made manifest how the discipline comes in. Much suffering could have been escaped by yielding to the temptation of compromise, or of total retreat from the Christian"s position. Little do the enemies of Christ imagine the service they render his true people by the demonstrations of hostility. We are forced to a firmer grasp of truth and to a more penetrating and exact estimate of our spiritual possessions. Y.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv5, 7, 9, 11 Despise not thou the chastening of the Lord
Heb_12:5-6
Despise not thou the chastening of the Lord
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How to bear afflictions
The proposition that ariseth from the words is this: It is the duty and best wisdom of afflicted Christians to preserve themselves from the vicious extremes of despising the Schastenings of the Lord, or fainting under them.
I. To DESPISE THE CHASTENINGS OF THE LORD, imports the making no account of them, as unworthy of serious regard, and includes inconsiderateness of mind, and an insensibleness of heart.
1. Inconsiderateness of mind with respect to the Author or end of chastenings.
(1) With respect to the Author. When the afflicted looks only downwards, as if the rod of affliction sprang out of the dust (Job_5:6), and therewere no superior cause that sent it.
(2) Inconsiderateness of the end of the Divine discipline is a great degree of contempt. The evils that God inflicts are as real a part of His providence as the blessings He bestows; as in the course of nature the darkness of the night is by His order, as well as the light of the day; therefore they are always sent for some wise and holy design. Sometimes, though more rarely, they are only for trial, to exercise the faith, humility, patience of eminent saints; for otherwise God would lose in a great measure the honour, and His favourites the reward, of those graces--afflictions being the sphere of their activity. But for the most part they are castigatory, to bring us to a sight and sense of our state, to render sin more evident and odious to us.
2. Insensibility of heart is an eminent degree of despising the Lords chastenings. A pensive feeling of judgments is very congruous, whether we consider them either materially as afflictive to nature, or as the signs of Divine displeasure: for the affections were planted in the human nature by the hand of God Himself, and are duly exercised in proportion to the quality of their objects; and when grace comes, it softens the breast, and gives a quick and tender sense of Gods frown.
II. THE CAUSES OF THE DESPISING OF GODS CHASTENINGS.
1. A contracted stupidity of soul, proceeding from a course in sin.
2. Carnal diversions. The pleasures and cares of the world, as they render men inapprehensive of judgments to come, so regardless of those that are present (Luk_21:34).
3. An obstinate fierceness of spirit, a diabolical fortitude. Their hearts are of an anvil-temper, made harder by afflictions, and reverberate the blow; like that Roman emperor, who, instead of humbling and reforming at Gods voice in thunder, thundered back again.
III. I shall proceed to consider the other extreme, of FAINTING UNDER GODS REBUKES.
1. The original word signifies the slackening and relaxing of things that were firmly joined together.
2. It may respect the sinking and falling away of the soul like water, being hopeless of overcoming troubles. When water is frozen into hard ice it will bear a great burden; but when it is melted, nothing is weaker: so the spirit of a man, confirmed by religious principles, is able to sustain all his infirmities (Pro_18:14).
3. The causes of this despondency are usually
(1) Either the kind of affliction. When there is a singularity in the case, it increaseth the apprehension of Gods displeasure, because it may signify an extraordinary guilt in the person that suffers; and upon that account the sorrow swells so high as to overwhelm him.
(2) The number and degrees of afflictions. When, like those black clouds which in winter days join together, and quite intercept the beams of the sun, many troubles meet at once, and deprive us of all present comfort.
(3) The continuance of afflictions. When the clouds return after rain, and the life is a constant scene of sorrows, we are apt to be utterly dejected and hopeless of good.
(4) The comparing their great sufferings with the prosperity of these who are extremely vicious, inclines some to despair.
IV. TO PROVE THAT IT IS THE DUTY AND WISDOM OF THE AFFLICTED NOT TO DESPISE THE CHASTENINGS OF THE LORD, NOR TO FAINT UNDER THEM.
1. It is their duty carefully to avoid those extremes, because they are very dishonourable to God.
(1) The contempt of chastisements is a high profanation of Gods honour, who is our Father and Sovereign, and in that quality afflicts us.
(2) Fainting under chastenings reflects dishonourably upon God.
2. It is the best wisdom not to despise Gods chastenings, nor faint under them.
(1) The contempt of chastenings deprives us of ill those benefits which were intended by them.
(2) The neglect of chastenings doth not only render them unprofitable but exposes to greater evils.
(a) It provokes God to withdraw His judgments for a time. This the sinner desired, and thinks himself happy that he is at ease. Miserable delusion l This respite is the presage of his final ruin.
(b) The slighting of lighter strokes provokes God sometimes to bring more dreadful judgments in this life upon sinners. No man can endure that his love or anger should be despised.
(3) Faintings under chastenings is pernicious to sufferers.
(a) It renders them utterly indisposed for the performance of duty. He that is hopeless of a good issue out of troubles, will neither repent nor pray nor reform, but indulges barren tears instead of real duties. Besides, it often falls out, that the same affliction is sent from Gods displeasure upon His people for their sins, and is the effect of the rage of men against them upon the account of their professing His name.
(b) They are incapable of the comforts proper to an afflicted state. Those arise from the apprehension that God loves whom lie chastens Rev_3:19); for the least sin is a greater evil than the greatest trouble, and His design is to take that away; and from the expectation of a happy issue. Hope is the anchor within the veil, that in the midst of storms and the roughest seas preserves from shipwreck. USE. The use shall be to excite us to those duties that are directly contrary to the extremes forbidden; namely, to demean ourselves under the chastenings of the Lord with a deep reverence and humble fear of His displeasure, and with a firm hope and dependence upon Him for a blessed issue upon our complying with His holy will.
USE
I. With a humble reverence of His hand. This temper is absolutely necessary and most congruous with respect to God, upon the account of His sovereignty, justice, and goodness, declared in His chastenings; and with respect to our frailty, our dependence upon Him, our obnoxiousness to His law, and our obligations to Him that He will please to afflict us for our good.
USE
II. Let us always preserve a humble dependence and firm hope on God for a blessed issue out of all our troubles.
1. The relation God sustains when He afflicts believers. He is a Judge invested with the quality of a Father.
2. It is a strong cordial against fainting to consider that, by virtue of the paternal relation, He scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. For no troubles are more afflictive and stinging than those that are unexpected. Now when we are assured that there is no son whom the Father doth not chasten, we are less surprised and less troubled when we meet with crosses.
3. The apostle represents the special prerogative of God as the Father of spirits (verse 9). As a prudent physician consults the strength of the patient as well as the quality of the disease, and proportions his medicine; so all the bitter ingredients, their mixture and measure, are dispensed by the wise prescription of God, according to the degrees of strength that are in His people.
4. The apostle specifies the immediate end of God in His chastenings. God is pleased to fashion us according to His image by afflictions, as a statue is cut by the artificer, to bring it into a beautiful form. He is pleased to bring us into divers temptations to try our faith, to work in us patience, to inflame our prayers, to mortify our carnal desires, to break those voluntary hands whereby we are fettered to the earth, &c. (Wm. Bates, D. D.)
The Lords chastening
I. DESPISE NOT THOU THE CHASTENING OF THE LORD. YOU are guilty of this
1. When you shut your eyes to the Author of your affliction. Everything that takes place in the whole universe comes to pass either by His direct appointment, or by His equally direct permission.
2. When you inquire not the cause of your affliction. God does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men. If therefore He sends chastisement upon you there must be some adequate cause, which you are bound to search out and discover.
3. When you resist the design of your affliction. You have long, perhaps, been convinced that you ought to forsake sin, and turn wholly to the Lord. But sin has still kept its hold on you; and you have resisted the conviction of your conscience. At length, then, God interrupts your comforts-pours contempt upon your idols; or He comes even closer--chastises you with bodily sickness, sorrow, and pain.
II. FAINT NOT WHEN THOU ART REBUKED OF HIM.
1. Although God be the Author of your sorrows, it is as a Father that He sends them. All is not against you. Your heavenly Father is for you, and, if you trust Him, will make these light afflictions, which are but for a moment, work out for you a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.
2. Although sin be the cause of year sorrows, yet those sorrows are not the special penalty of sin. They may distress and scorch you, but you are not tormented in this flame. Earth is not hell! Your Father is correcting you rather than punishing you.
3. Although conversion be the design of your sorrows, yet, it, was never intended that these should be, the only meads used by the Lord; and that you should be left, to do all the rest. The very expression, when thou art, rebuked, implies that other methods are also employed. He gives grace for grace--a Saviour to pardon-a Spirit to heal--promises to encourage and save your soul. (J. Jowett, M. A.)
Chastisement;
There are two dangers against which a person under the chastising hand of God should always be very careful to keep a careful look out. The one is despising the rod, and the other is fainting under it. We will begin with the first; My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord.
I. THIS MAY BE DONE IN FIVE WAYS; AND IN DISCUSSING THE SUBJECT I SHALL PROPOSE THE REMEDY FOR EACH OF THESE AS WE PASS ALONG.
1. A man may despise the chastening of the Lord when he mumurs at it. Ephraim is like a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke; when a son of God first feels the rod he is like a bullock--he kicks at it, he cannot bear it. A want of resignation shows that we despise Gods chastening hand. A word with thee, O murmurer! Why shouldst thou murmur against the dispensations of thy heavenly Father? Hast thou not read that amongst the Roman emperors of old it was the custom when they would set a slave at liberty, to give him a blow upon the head and then say, Go free? This blow which thy Father gives thee is a token of thy liberty, and dost thou grumble because tie smites thee rather hardly? After all, are not Ills strokes fewer than thy crimes, and lighter than thy guilt?
2. We despise the chastening of the Lord when we say there is no use in it. It is always a providence when it is a good thing. But why is it not a providence when it does not happen to be just as we please? Surely it is so; for if the one thing be ordered by God, so is the other. It is written, I create light and I create darkness, I create good and I make evil. I, the Lord, do all these things. But I question whether that is not despising the chastening of the Lord when we set a prosperous providence before an adverse one; for I do think theft an adverse providence ought to be the cause of as much thankfulness as a prosperous one.
3. There is a third way in which men despise the chastening of the Lord, that is--we may think it dishouourable to be chastened by God. How many men have thought it dishonourable to be persecuted for righteousness sake! But, my son, thou dost not weigh the blessing rightly. I tell thee it is the glory of a man to be chastened for Gods sake. Now you who faint under a little trouble, and despise the chastening of the Lord, let me encourage you in this way. My son, despise not the persecution. Remember how many men have borne it. What an honour it is to suffer for Christs sake! because the crown of martyrdom has been worn by many heads better than thine.
4. Again, in the fourth place, we despise the chastening of the Lord when we do not earnestly seek to amend by it. Many a man has been corrected by God, and that correction has been in vain. Take heed if God is trying you, theft you search and find out the reason. Are the consolations of God small with you? Then there is some reason for it. I have sometimes walked a mile or two, almost limping along, because there was a stone in my shoe, and I did not stop to look for it. And many a Christian goes limping for years because of the stones in his shoe, but if he would only stop to look at them, he would be relieved. What is the sin that is causing you pain? Get it out, and take away the sin, for if you do not, you have not regarded this admonition which speaketh unto you as unto sons--My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord
5. Once more: we despise the chastening of the Lord when we despise those that God chastens.
II. The second evil is this: NOR FAINT WHEN THOU ART REBUKED OF HIM.
1. The first way of fainting is when we give up all exertion under the rod.
2. Again, the man faints when he doubts whether he is a child of God under chastisement. Remember the passage: If we be not partakers of chastisement then are we bastards, and not sons. Say not He has forgotten thee, but look upon thy trial as a proof of His love. Cecil once called on his friend Williams, and the servant said he could not see him because he was in great trouble, Then I would rather see him, said Cecil; and Williams, hearing it was his old pastor, said, Show him up. Up he went, and there stood poor Williams, his eyes suffused with tears, his heart almost broken, his dear child was dying: Thank God, said Cecil; 1 have been anxious about you for some time; you have been so prosperous and successful in everything that I was afraid my Father bad forgotten you; but I know He recollects you now. I do not wish to see your child full of pain and dying; but I am glad to think my Father has not forgotten you. Three weeks after that Williams could see the truth of it, though it seemed a harsh saying at first.
3. Again, many persons faint by fancying that they shall never get out of their trouble. Three long months, says one, have I striven against this sad trouble which overwhelms me, and I have been unable to escape it. For this year, says another, I have wrestled with God in prayer that He would deliver me out of this whirlpool but deliverance has never come, and I am almost inclined to give the matter up. I thought He kept His promises, and would deliver those who called upon Him, but He has not delivered me now, and He never will. What! child of God, talk thus of thy Father! say He will never leave off smiting because He has smitten thee so long? Rather say, He must have smitten me long enough now, and I shall soon have deliverance. Say not thou canst escape. The fetters on thy hands may not be broken by thy feeble fingers, but the hammer of the Almighty can break them in a moment. Let them be laid on the anvil of Providence and be smitten by the hand of Omnipotence, and then they shall be scattered to the winds. Up, man! up. Like Samson, grasp the pillars of thy troubles and pull down the house of thine affliction about the heads of thy sins, and thou thyself shalt come out more than conqueror. Let me ask those who are afflicted and have no religion, where they get their comfort from. The Christian derives it from the fact that he is a son of God, and he knows that the affliction is for his good. But what does the worldling do when he loses his wife, when his children are taken away, when his health departs and he himself is nigh unto death? I leave him to answer. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The aim of Divine chastisement
Whom He loves, He loves so much that He will not let them abide in the lower parts of their nature. He will rout them out; He will drive them up. Whom He loves He means to make more of. He means to ennoble them. A king ennobles a man by putting a crown on his head: but God ennobles men by putting dispositions in their hearts. Whom He loves He chastens and scourges. That is very severe. A man may be chastised with small whips, but no man is scourged except with cord, laid on with soldiers hands. It is a horrible operation. God both chastens and scourges men, and all because He loves them. Wonderful love that is! and yet it is just your love. You have not a child whose body is worth more to you than his mind. No child of yours ever told a lie under circumstances of great baseness, that you did not feel rising against him an utter indignation, not because you hated the child, but because you loved him. All your identification with the child pleads for punishment. You said, It is my child, and he is not worthy of me; and he shall be worthy of me. As I was reading, For they--that is, our parents--verily, for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure. Great pleasure they had in it, if they felt as I did! I would rather be whipped any time than whip my children. And when my father used to say, Henry, I do not want to do it, I used to say to myself, What under heaven do you do it for then? I did not want to be whipped; and if he did not want to whip me, it seemed to me a very unnecessary ceremony! But when I became a father, I felt that nothing in the world was more true. When I had children to bring up, they so far inherited my nature that they deserved to be whipped often, and they got their deserts! It was true that I would rather have taken five blows than to have given one; and yet I put it on to them. And I remembered the precept, What your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. Do not you know what that is? Are you not familiar with both sides of the experience? Paul says, We have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence; shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but He--God--for our profit, that we might be partakers of His holiness. Here is the end that God is driving at continually, by such a grand sympathy, by such a tender personal connection with us, by such a constant interference and meddling with all that belongs to us, that we shall not be thralled in lusts and the lower parts of our nature, and depart from His will, and inherit the final remuneration; but that we shall escape, and go up and be made partakers of the Divine nature. (H. W. Beecher.)
Faint not when rebuked
1. To faint when we as rebuked is to lose self-possession, or to be so overwrought, or overwhelmed with the trial, that we grow insensible to its nature, its extent, its punishment.
2. To faint when we are rebuked is under the pressure of the sorrow, to relax any duty--for praise or love--and especially to let go our holy confidences, and to take the eye off Jesus.
3. To faint when we are rebuked is to grow weary on account of its length, and not to let patience have her perfect work. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)
Submission under loss:
When John Flavel lost his wife and child in one day--root and branch cut off together--he acknowledged the bitterness of the cup, but said there was not a drop of injustice in it. Under the severest losses the Marquis de Renty was wont to go to his chamber, and drop on his knees to thank God that not his own but the Lords will was done.
Submission:
Stonewall Jackson was once asked, Suppose that these unprofitable eyes of yours, that give you so much trouble, should become suddenly blind, do you believe your serenity would remain unclouded? He paused a moment, as if to weigh fully the exact measure of every word he uttered, and then said: I am sure of it; even such a misfortune could not make me doubt the love of God. Still further to test him it was urged: Conceive, then, that besides your hopeless blindness, you were condemned to be bedridden, and racked with pain for life; you would hardly call yourself happy then? There was again the same deliberateness before he replied: Yes, I think I could; my faith in the Almighty wisdom is absolute: and why should this accident change it? Touching him upon a tender point--his impatience of anything bordering on every species of dependence--the test was pushed further. But if in addition to blindness and incurable infirmity and pain you had to receive grudging charity from those on whom you had no claim, what then? There was a strange reverence in his lifted eye, and an exalted expression over his whole face, as he replied with slow deliberateness: If it was Gods will, I think I could lie there content a hundred years! (H. O. Mackey.)
Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth
Suffering, the gift and presence of God:
This, then, is the first, most comprehensive, yet most special way, in which God is the consolation of the afflicted, that He has revealed, that sorrow is a token of His love. We have often thought perhaps, If God did but tell me that He loves me! If He has sent you sorrow or pain, He has told you that He loves you.
Suffering is in the order of our salvation; it is in order to our salvation. In the mercy of our God, it arrests the sinner; it deepens the loving sorrow of the penitent; it proves and advances the all-but-perfected. It exhibits us to ourselves; it enhances the love of our Redeemer; it is Gods instrument to make us of one mind with Himself. This, then, is the great comprehensive comfort in every ache of mind or body, that we know infallibly from Gods infallible Word that it is a token of His love. Be it disease or loss of bodily health or strength, or of clearness of intellect, the consequence of sin; be it the shame with which God filleth the face that they may seek Thy Face, O God; be it the first terror of hell, which, by Gods grace, scares the yet unconverted sinner towards the wide-open arms of Jesus on the Cross, or the last sharp pang of death, which lets the imprisoned soul go free, to meet its God for whom it yearned and fainted, we know, by Gods own Word, it is His love. Yet it is not only love, working through some fixed or some general rule of His Providence. It is something far nearer, more tender, more blessed. It is Gods own personal act. It is our Redeemers own medicinal hand. I have afflicted thee. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Happy is the man whom God correcteth. Blessed is the man whom Thou chastenest, O Lord, and teachest him out of Thy law. This is the deep reassuring truth, that it is not mans caprice, nor a fixed iron law, nor a combination of events, but our own God. This is the deep inward peace in every trial, that He orders each particular blow or weight of sorrow, or fretting care, or harassing discomfort or unrest, in His all-wise love, fitting each trial to our own particular temperament. He gives to each of us just our own trial, what, by His grace, will most amend us, what will bring us most to Himself, what will most draw out the good which He has implanted in us, or burn out the evil which would most estrange or ruin us. This too is not all. It is not an all-wise God, unseen, unfelt, at a distance, guiding all things in perfect wisdom for the good of each individual creature which He had made. Great were this, yea, in one sense, all; for it is His individual, infinite, personal love. He who loves us infinitely loves us individually. But this too not afar off, not only in the heaven of heavens (Psa_91:15). Trouble is the special presence of God to the Isa_43:2). He who, present with them, soothed to the three youths the flames of fire, so that they fanned softly around them, and were to them an unharming robe of glory; He who, ever-present with His disciples, then appeared to them, when the storm was at its highest, and its waves were boisterous; He, still present to the soul, now soothes to His own the fire of affliction, that, while it burns out the dross, it should not touch the soul, but should yield it pure, transfigured and translucent with the fire of love. He who baptizes with a baptism of blood, holds His own, that, although immersed and sunk deep down, the waters should not come in to the very soul itself, but should only wash away its stains through His most precious blood. Can there be more yet than the presence of God with the soul? Yes, the end of the presence is more to the soul itself than that presence itself. For it is the earnest of His abiding presence, yea, of union with God. Suffering, the due reward of our deeds, becomes, by His mercy, the means of conforming us to the Son of His love. While we suffer for our own sins, and bear about us less than their deserved chastisements, God gives us yet an outward likeness to His Cross, in that it is suffering. For on Him were laid the iniquities of us all. But we still hang, as it were, by His side; His healing compassionate look falls upon us; from His all-holy sufferings there goeth forth virtue to sanctify ours. Hence is deserved suffering by Gods mercy such a token of predestination, that it brings us near to, makes us partakers of, the sufferings of Christ. (E. B.Pusey, D. D.)
The mystery of suffering:
This, after its sort, is a kind of philosophy, a phenomenon of human experience. Everything in nature, according to the measure of its power, is happier than man. Men have been studying how to create happiness that should be unbroken in this world. They have invented a great many things, found out a great many medicines, but happiness has eluded their search. A steady flow of happiness, a soul that knows how to keep time as that watch knows how to keep time, has never been born, and does not live. We flit between light and dark blow, happiness is certainly, we may believe, the final end of creation. Whatsoever maketh a lie or causeth offence in the grand land of consummation will have been purged out, and happiness without alloy will yet be the end of every true life that by sorrow and suffering has been wrought out into the full possession of its birthright. The process or education of man in this world proceeds on the law of suffering--happiness the graduating point; suffering the academy, the seminary; and the best teachers are the teachers that inflict suffering on man. Clear down to the last vision they are highest that have been most suffering in the great school of this life. It is the law of education. Why it was made so, if you know, please instruct me. Why did God make things thus and so? Why did He make the law of suffering the law of education, rather than the law of happiness? This why pours into the gulf of ignorance. We dont know. We are ignorant in proportion as we go back to the beginnings of things. These are secrets that no science will penetrate; at any rate, not for ages yet; these lie hidden in the bosom of God. But Christ is the type of the moral kingdom of God. It was necessary to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through suffering, because He was leading the multitude, the whole worlds population, towards elevation through suffering, and He entered Himself under that august law of the universe, suffering. It is a badge of discipleship--suffering is. Men do not come to the fulness of their relation to God except through it. Now, look at the scale of suffering. The first is physical pain, which is the lowest; it is cautionary. The remembrance of it prevents a man violating some natural law; that is, some law that has its seat in the physical structure of the mans own body. It teaches men patience; it teaches men to bear valiantly. Cheerfulness under physical suffering is a wonderful victory, repining is a defeat. If a man shirks down, if he sneaks into complaints and all forms of bewilderment, and dissipated faith, he is wretched indeed, and there is no moral end gained under such circumstances. Then, aside from the suffering which comes to us through our bodily organs, there is that suffering which comes to us through the law of evolution in ourselves. The law of conflict between the lower man and the higher man, or, as St. Paul phrases it, between the flesh man and the spirit man. If, in unfolding ourselves from childhood to manhood, the process goes on by which we subdue the animal that is in us, and the passions that belong to it, by the ascendency of higher social, moral and intellectual inspirations, then suffering is more immediately and perceptibly a schoolmaster. Men are driven up higher and higher towards the citadel of God, by the sufferings which take place in the conflict between the lower and the higher man. Living largely in the West in my early life, I had the opportunity of beholding phenomena that are good illustrations. When the great western rivers were suddenly swollen, and booming freshets came tearing down, flooding the country on either side, I have seen the river Ohio, that was not a quarter of a mile wide, ten miles wide in the flood. Nothing is more familiar to the settlers than the fact that the animals are all driven from the lower places, and frequently it is the case that they mount to some round hill and the water following surrounds it, and they are imprisoned on that hill. But they still go higher up, and higher up, and higher up, until they get a place that is a refuge. Suffering that teaches an animal to go up ought to teach a man to go up. Then suffering is still on another level, where we suffer by our social relations, where we suffer with and for each other, and here is the beginning of the grandeur of the kingdom of suffering. Vicarious suffering then, I may say at last, is the law of the universe. Christ entered into the world to partake of those very things that the race have passed through, Tempted in all points like as we are, tried into all points as we are; and as it is the law of social connection that one shall suffer for another, Christ suffered for men under the same great grand law of vicarious suffering. That is a wretched child, that is a wretched man, who has no one to suffer for him. Then, higher than this, or rather more extended in its relation, is the suffering which men have in civic relations. Men are not individuals. Man is a collective animal; every man stands on his own stem, but he also stands on the trunk which holds up a million stems, and if anything afflicts the root it afflicts everything at the top. Although blossom is not identical with blossom, nor fruit with fruit, human life is made up of individualisms; but collected and made into one great organisation. And so men must suffer when society suffers. Then, next and yet higher, men suffer on account of their moral relations that unite them to man and to God and to the universe. The progress of knowledge is through suffering. One man suffers, and leaves a glow of new truth behind him, which irradiates the whole of a generation. Thus far we can see and understand. But the world is the workshop of heaven. There we shall see the consummation of that which we see but feebly and understand but partially. Many there are on earth who see no outcome; they are underfoot, they are out of place; suffering seems not only to bring to them no relief and no inspiration, but it seems never to have declared its real nature to their surroundings or to their generations. Oh I there will be a land where these things will be known; there will be an interpretation to every pang and to every tear, and to every crushing sorrow; and as for those who suffer for a noble cause, who suffer for children, who suffer for those who have no parents, who suffer for the community, though they are accounted unworthy, and are east out by the community, though they be crushed out of life and hope, and go mourning all the days of their lives, there is a reckoning--that is to say, there is to be an unfolding of the reasons of their suffering, and the results of it which do not by any means all appear upon this mortal sphere and in this limited life--it is to be made known. You do not know what is going on, you do not know all the meaning of your sorrow; God does. Do you suppose that the wool on the sheeps back knows what it is coming to when it is sheared? When it was scoured, and washed, and spun, and twisted of its life almost; when it went into the hateful bath of colour; when it was put into the shuttle, and was thrust back and forth, back and forth, in the darkness, and out came the royal robe, it did not know what it started for; yet that is what it comes to--kings wear it. The flax in the field sighs to be made into the garment of the saints. All right. Pluck it up; rot it, put it under the brick, thread it, weave it, bleach it, purify it; and the saints may wear it now. It came to honour and glory through much suffering. Suffering is Gods guardian guiding angel to those that will; it takes them up through the gate of trouble and trial to that land of perfectness and of everlasting peace. And you do not know what your suffering means? Yet you may rejoice in the general fact that somehow or other it is going to make you glorious if you are only worthy of it. Allow me still one more figure; for some may take one figure easily and some another. When this organ was built the lead and the zinc did not know what the men were about when they were melting them, and making them into pipes, and when the work was distributed through the different shops among different hands. Here you have the sesquialtera and the mixture--hideous stops unless they are masked or hidden under a great weight of sound. If you tried them in the factory you would run out with your fingers in your ears, and cry, Lord deliver me from that sort of music! Then there are the flute stops, and the diapasons in their grand under tones. With all the different parts of the organ separately made, unconnected, nobody can tell what is coming except an experienced workman; but by-and-by, little by little, the frame is erected, the stops are all arranged and in connection with the wind-chest, and now that it is an organic whole every part plays into every other part. As a whole it is magnificent; but the separate steps were poor and weak and unsatisfactory. God makes stops on earth, but He builds the organ in heaven; and many a man will never know till he comes there what was the reason of that providence by which he was trained and fitted to be of that great band of music in the heavenly home. Thus far illustrated and explained the subject will give rise to some applications. And, first, no man should hunt after suffering any more than a man should hunt after sickness. Do not regard suffering as if it were in and of itself a means of grace. If it makes you better it will come of itself. Secondly, lower animal suffering is penalty for sin; but, going up the scale, it is not punishment, but the other way. Men suffer because they are so good; they are the vicarious sufferers for those who are not good, through sympathy, through pity, through endeavour to help them, through self-repression for the development of those that are round about. I have but one more thought, and that is final--not alone in this sermon, but final in creation. No imagination can conceive the wonder, the ecstasy, of the great hour of finding out. When we have borne our body, borne our allotted suffering and pain, borne our obscurity and our persecution, borne all the troubles that go to the making of manhood in this life, unrecognised, not rated according to our moral value, rated according to the law of selfishness in human society, when at last emancipated the pauper from the poorhouse, the debtor from the prison, the broken-down man in business, who has been living on the crusts of his former prosperity, mothers, nurses, servants, whose souls were greater than their places, when at last they shall come and stand in the light of the eternal heavens--oh, what a surprise, and oh, what a dismay, when the last tumble from their heights of imagined greatness, when the first shall be last, and the last first! But oh! when the suffering is all gone, and we come to find ourselves, and come to find that the work of life, racking, filing, sawing in various violent ways upon us, has made us perfect, and we stand in the light of the other life, to see the meaning of all that has taken place in our obscure life--oh, what an hour of joy and of consolation! (H. W. Beecher.)
The ministry of sorrow:
There is no fact in human life more certain than universality of suffering, and there is, perhaps, nothing for which man finds a greater difficulty to discover an adequate or satisfactory reason. The Bible does not solve the difficulty. The Bible deals with the subject practically, and only practically. The Bible never satisfies your speculative inquiry. No question is solved by the Book so as to answer everything that you can ask. It is only solved so that yon can live as faithful servants of the Eternal One. And the Bible shows us the relation of suffering to sin. But, finally, it bids us fall back upon God. He will do right, He will make all well, He is the great consoler of man. These are the three facts that lie in this text of ours: sorrow, discipline, love.
I. THE ACCEPTANCE OF GODS MERCY DOES NOT ASSURE THE BELIEVER FROM THE LOT OF THE SUFFERER. It is perfectly true we may promise to him who accepts the gospel much joy and much pleasure. For a man to place himself in harmony with the Divine law; for him to say, No longer my will but Thine be done; for him to seek no more his ends but the Divine ends; he will find therein the peace, the calm, the quiet restfulness, enter his spirit, and will give him infinite delight. Now, this is true; but at the same time the believer will not be exempt from the conditions of distress. They will come. Natural griefs will be yours. The imperfections of his own character will distress him; the ideal that we sometimes set before us, and then the real that is ours; the picture that we would paint, and the unhappy daub that is often the result of our best endeavour; the beautiful garments that we would set upon ourselves--the garments of righteousness and glory--richer and brighter than the garments that the angels wear--and then the poor tattered rags of the righteousness that we have lost, and the smear and smirch of the secular wrong or the sensual vice into which we have fallen. Oh the disappointment through which life seems to pass until it shall reach the blessed consummation which you hope for! I promise you blessedness, infinite blessedness; but the sorrows will conic.
II. THE SUFFERINGS OF THE BELIEVER ARE INTENDED TO BE DISCIPLINES OF LIFE AND MINISTRIES OF CHARACTER. They direct the soul to its true home and life. Life eternal, remember, is a quality; it is not merely a state; and you may enter into eternal life now. Your sorrows and your pains do not belong to the eternal life; and they are given to you that you may lift your spirit out of the surroundings of the present, and that you may clothe them with the glory and the blessedness that belongs to the life that lies beyond. Yes; and these sufferings limit and destroy the evil that remains. And think of the scope it gives for the practice and perfection of the Christians virtues.
III. THESE SUFFERINGS, BEING DISCIPLINARY, ARE THE PROOFS AND THE RESULTS OF THE DIVINE LOVE. They are signs that God has not forgotten us. One of the most famous men of this city one day said to me: I know not how it is, I sometimes tremble at the success of my life. I have wealth beyond the dreams of avarice; I have success in business phenomenal even in these days of success; I have a satisfaction and joy in my family life and in all the relations of my public life that I cannot describe; I sometimes tremble with fear and apprehension. Within six months that man was smitten--smitten in what was the dearest part of his own self-consciousness; charged with an unworthy action, charged with base behaviour, and held up to obloquy because of things done in his name over which he had no control, and for which he was not responsible, but for which he suffered. Ah! God had not forgotten him. What is Gods will concerning you? It is not merely your joy; it is the bettering of your moral nature; it is the perfecting of all those virtuous characteristics that come out even in the midst of your sorrow. And it is always accompanied by some proof of peculiar favour. When sometimes your loved ones have entered into the place of sorrow, be silent; God is with them. Far off, far off, ye profane ones! was the cry of the ancient priestess. So, sometimes, should be the cry to your own souls when the presence of God is manifested in the sorrows of those you love. This is the spirit in which we should receive it, and this is the forecast of its complete removal. For the work of chastisement shall be perfected. All the dealings of God with us shall issue in the attainment of the highest conceptions of the Christian life. And when sorrow shall have done its work, we shall have entered into that infinite life where death itself shall die, and sin itself shall be forgotten, the life that issued even out of the sins and the sorrows and the death of this. (L. D.Bevan, D. D.)
Trouble for our good
The dealings of the Lord, which seem so mysterious to us, may be and often are, the answer to some forgotten petition for spiritual gifts or grace which we have desired. (Anna Shipton.)
Adversity the blessing of the New Testament:
Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New, which carried the greater benediction and the clearer revelation of Gods favour. (Lord Bacon.)
Love in pain
Years ago I went into the operating room of University College Hospital, and once saw one of the most skilled of our surgeons removing a limb. It was my first sight of the movement of the surgeons knife. I could not keep back a shudder. It made me ill to note the writhing of the sufferer as the cruel instrument penetrated the quivering flesh. I looked at the surgeons face. Not a muscle betokened anxiety. His gaze was steady, his spirit calm. His larger vision of the issues, the beneficent issues of his work, filled him with strength, steadied his nerve, and delivered him from weakening fear. The sight of his countenance made me strong. I could look to the end in calm self-control. So have I often found an unspeakable consolation in the joy of God. If He, the Lord of this pain-filled, care-laden, sin-fettered life, where misery and sin and shame abound, and the struggle is so keen, and the strife so dinning; if He is glad and blessed amid all this, it is because He sees all and knows all. (D. Clifford, D. D.)
Afflictions precious:
When Munster lay sick, and his friends asked him how he did, and how he felt himself, he pointed to his sores and ulcers (whereof he was full) and said, These are Gods gems and jewels wherewith He decketh His best friends, and to me they are more precious than all the gold and silver in the world. (J. Trapp.)
Afflictions--tokens of Divine regard
Lawns which we would keep in the best condition are very frequently mown; the grass has scarcely any respite from the scythe. Out in the meadows there is no such repeated cutting, they are mown but once or twice in the year. Even thus the nearer we are to God, and the more regard He has for us, the more frequent will be our adversities. To be very dear to God, involves no small degree of chastisement. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Divine discipline
In Southern Europe grow the larches. When they were first introduced into England, the gardeners took it for granted that they needed warmth to cause them to grow; so they were placed in the hothouses, and at once began to wither and droop. The gardeners became disgusted, and threw them out of doors. They at once began to grow, and became trees of great beauty. So it ofttimes becomes necessary for Christ to throw us out of doors into the cold of reverses, disappointments, sorrow, and pain, that our Christian characters may be developed. It becomes at times necessary that God bring upon us sore trials and bereavements that we may be brought back to Him and His service. God does not willingly afflict His people; but in order to bless us it is often necessary to put us in a position to receive and to appreciate His blessings, though it may be through severe trials and galling crosses. (C. W. Bibb.)
Divine discipline:
Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things. Far up the mountain side lies a block of granite, and says to itself, How happy am I in my serenity--above the winds, above the trees, almost above the flight of the birds! Here I rest, age after age, and nothing disturbs me. Yet what is it? It is only a bare block of granite, jutting out of the cliff, and its happiness is the happiness of death. By and by comes the miner, and with strong and repeated strokes he drills a hole in its top, and the rock says, What does this mean? Then the black powder is poured in, and with a blast that makes the mountain echo, the block is blown asunder, and goes crashing down into the valley. Ah! it exclaims as it falls, why this rending? Then come saws to cut and fashion it; and humbled now, and willing to be nothing, it is borne away from the mountain and conveyed to the city. Now it is chiselled and polished, till, at length, finished in beauty, by block and tackle it is raised, with mighty hoistings, high in air, to be the top-stone on some monument of the countrys glory. So God Almighty casts a man down when He wants to chisel him, and the chiselling is always to make him something finer and better than he was before. (H. W. Beecher.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv5–11 5–11. Ye have forgotten the exhortation, etc. Surely they…
5–11. Ye have forgotten the exhortation, etc. Surely they must have forgotten, or they would bear their tribulations more cheerfully. My son, despise not, etc. This is quoted from Job 5:17, 18. See also 2 Sam. 6:7–10. The thought is, Do not murmur at God's reproofs and chastenings.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v9 Heb_12:9. Father of spirits.—See Num_16:22; Num_27:16; Zec_12:1. “The Creator…
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Heb_12:9. Father of spirits.—See Num_16:22; Num_27:16; Zec_12:1. “The Creator of all spirits, who is the Giver of life to all, who knows the spirit which He has made, and can discipline it by chastening.”
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Heb_12:12. Lift up the hands.—Lit. “straighten out the relaxed hands and the palsied knees” (Isa_35:3).
Heb_12:15. Root of bitterness.—See Deu_29:18.
Heb_12:16. Fornicator.—The Scriptures do not thus describe Esau. Farrar thinks that the writer must have in mind the Jewish Hagadah, in which Esau is represented in the blackest colours, as a man utterly sensual, intemperate, and vile. And this also was the view of Philo.
Heb_12:17. Place of repentance.—In his father. There is no reference to repentance in relation to God. He could not induce his father to change his mind in regard to the matter. The reference is entirely to the transfer of the rights of primogeniture to the younger of the twins, Jacob. The rest of the chapter pleads for watchfulness and steadfastness on the ground that everything under the-new dispensation is of a milder aspect, and of a more inviting, encouraging nature, than under the old. For the references to Old Testament Scriptures, see Exodus 20, 21; Deuteronomy 4, 5.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Heb_12:9-17
Heb_12:9-11. The Father of Spirits.—The contrast here presented between our earthly father and our heavenly Father, and the arguments for the superior claims of our heavenly Father, are based upon a distinction which needs to be more fully recognised. Our earthly father is father of the body and the animal life that we have; our heavenly Father is Father of the souls that we are. The natural relations illustrate the spiritual, but the spiritual are altogether higher than the natural.
I. We recognise authority in the natural relation (Heb_12:9).—That sense of parental authority is the basis of moral character. It associates right and wrong with the will of a person, and prepares us to see absolute right and wrong as the will of God. It is to rise into the higher plane of being to recognise the authority of God in the spiritual relation.
II. We yield to the natural authority, even though we know it is imperfect (Heb_12:10).—The sense of fatherly unwisdom comes to the son. His judgment does not go with his father’s. He is keen enough to see that the father is serving his own ends, rather than doing the best for him; and, nevertheless, the loyal and good son yields to his father, does what he wishes, submits himself in obedience. How much more then should the submission and obedience be offered when the Father’s wisdom and judgment and motive are absolutely unquestionable, and the child knows that the fatherly dealings are altogether for his profit?
III. When there is full trust in the natural relation, things painful can easily be borne.—This may be illustrated by things required to be done or borne in times of illness. The assurance that parental love aims at restored health and strength enables the child to endure. And in the higher, spiritual relation we may be so sure that our heavenly Father is ever working to produce the “peaceable fruits of righteousness in us,” that we may find it easy to bear chastening which, “for the present, is not joyous, but grievous.”
Heb_12:12-17. Christian Ways of helping One Another.—It is evident that the writer had the passage from Isaiah (Isa_33:3) in mind. Four ways of mutually helping under the Christian strain are here indicated.
I. By considerateness for the weak.—Lit. “Straighten out the relaxed hands and the palsied knees” (Heb_12:12). Make one effort to invigorate the flaccid muscles which should be so tense in the struggle in which you are engaged. This, however, unduly confines the advice to the Christian’s work upon himself. It seems better to refer the words to the way in which the strong ones in a Church can bear the infirmities of the weak. In the Christian chain there always are weak links. They may be a peril. They should be an anxiety. They can be strengthened. That is the work of the experienced and strong-principled.
II. By personal example.—“Make straight paths for your feet” (Heb_12:13). Let those about you see you “walking worthily of the vocation wherewith you are called.” Every steadfast Christian is a power; every beautiful Christian is an inspiration. Integrity helps all who watch it.
III. By wise ordering of relationships.—“Follow peace with all men” (Heb_12:14). That is, shape your conduct, meet your obligations, and show a graciousness in all the daily associations of your life: they shall disarm your foes, and make peaceful all your human relations. “Blessed are the peacemakers.” And those who follow after holiness always find that holiness makes for peace.
IV. By anxious watchfulness and resolute dealings with the beginnings of evil.—“Looking carefully” (Heb_12:15-17). The care concerns things and persons.
1. Things. “Lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you.” Things include opinions, teachings, attractions of worldly pleasure, neglects of duty, self-indulgences, etc.
2. Persons. “Lest there be any profane persons.” Persons are always more mischievous than things, because there is life, and activity, and power of influence in them. It is the person whose word, example, or influence is morally mischievous against whom the writer inveighs.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
Heb_12:10. Different Principles in the Chastening of Sons.—R.V. “Chastened us as seemed good to them.” It is an indication of the thoughtful observation and intelligent insight of this writer, that he discerns the weakness usually attaching to the discipline of earthly parents. It is the expression of the father’s ideas and wishes, rather than a careful. adaptation of method and rule to meet the differing dispositions of the children. So often the family rules are applied without modification, and the maintenance of the parental authority is more cared for than the moral well-being of a particular child. It has also to be said, that the yet graver mistake made by human parents is punishing when in a temper, and making the chastisement represent the wounded personal feeling, rather than the care for the child’s good. On these sides of parental weakness there can only be contrast between man and God. We may never think of the heavenly Father as losing His self-control under any aggravation of His sons. And we may think of Him as so concerned for the individual well-being of each son as to adapt the outworking of His parental principles so as to secure the “profit,” the moral and spiritual good, of each. Restlessness of sons under the weak fatherhoods of earth may be reasonable. The restfulness of sons under the strong, wise, gracious fatherhood of God should be expected.
Heb_12:11. Grievous Now, Joyous By-and-By.—It seems to be an ever-working law of life for moral beings that joy shall not come first—that joy shall always be a consummation, an issue, of something which, in one form or another, involves struggle, self-restraint, “strain and stress.” Things can only gain moral character out of conflict. The moral life is recognising the good and the evil, with inclination to choose the evil, and judgment, based on knowledge, approving the good; and then a conflict resulting in following the judgment, and not the inclination. That struggle must come first; it is always grievous; but triumph brings joy.
The Happy Fruit of Righteousness.—εἰρηνικός is that which bestows happiness or produces it. This corresponds with the writer’s design, who means to say that afflictions, rightly improved, will be productive of fruit that will confer happiness, such fruit as righteousness always produces.—Moses Stuart.
The Purpose of Affliction relieves the Pain of Affliction.—“Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.” That may be true as a fact of observation, but we must never think it be true as a matter of Divine appointment. If we could clear away all the troubles which men bring upon themselves, there would be very little, if any, trouble left in the world to account for. Concerning earthly trouble we may say, Man made it, by disturbing the Divine order in His wilfulness; but God overrules it, takes the evil thing up into His service, and works out a surprising benediction—a benediction that could not be wrought in any other way—by means of it. But the use which God makes of it must never be allowed to blind our eyes to the evil of it. Trouble is trouble, though we may be lifted up, by our confidence in the fatherliness of God, to call it chastisement and correction. But though man is the cause of all, or almost all, the trouble under which this fair earth of ours groans continually, we have the perplexing fact to deal with, that those who suffer are by no means always those who sin; and it is not easy for us to discern why those who suffer need the chastening. The tower in Siloam falls in a way that men call accidental, but those who were crushed to death were not sinners above all who dwelt in Jerusalem. The Judæan Christians suffered bitter persecutions at the hands of Jewish brethren and heathen neighbours, but the troubles were not brought upon them through their evil-doing, but through their well-doing. See these things standing on the level with them, and they are hopelessly perplexing, and it is easy for us to say, There either is no God, or He is a very inefficient one. This kind of thought has troubled the people of God from the times of Job and Asaph, and led many to make shipwreck of faith. The writer of this epistle does not propose to explain to the Hebrew Christians the meaning of their troubles and persecutions from the level. He tries to lift them up above, so that they may look down upon them, see how they are being overruled, and what they are working towards. On the level you can only see the things that are close to you; up above you can see other things, you can form some idea of the relations of things, and begin to trace how things work together. Up above we can begin to discover working principles, and Divine purposes and meanings. But precisely our difficulty is the difficulty of getting and keeping up above. If we follow the lead of the writer of this epistle, we shall find that the best way is to fill our minds and hearts full of the glory of the Lord Jesus; the marvellous wisdom and grace of His mission; the moral life that He quickens; and the power of His abiding presence in the world as its Redeemer, not only from sin, but also from all the woes that sin has brought in its train. Enter into the mind of Christ, and you will rise above the level of earthly troubles; and looking down upon life as He looks, you will see a great moral purpose being outwrought: the world is being kept, and afflictions are the moral salt that is keeping it; the world is being cleansed, and human troubles are the refiner’s fires and the fuller’s soap, that are doing the cleansing work. Just this seems to be expressed in our text, which the R.V. gives in a somewhat sharper form: “All chastening seemeth for the present to be not joyous, but grievous: yet afterward it yieldeth peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby, even the fruit of righteousness.” Mr. Spurgeon has a clever illustration of the point of this text. There is a little plant, small and stunted, growing under the shade of a broad-spreading oak, and this little plant values the shade that covers it, and greatly does it esteem the quiet rest which its noble friend affords. Once upon a time there comes along the woodman, and with his sharp axe he fells the oak. The plant weeps and cries, “My shelter is gone, every rough wind will blow upon me!” “No,” says the angel of the flower, “now will the sun get at thee, now will the shower fall on thee in more copious abundance than before, now thy stunted form shall spring up into loveliness, and thy flower, which could never have expanded itself to perfection, shall now laugh in the sunshine, and men shall say, How greatly hath this plant increased, how glorious hath become its beauty through the removal of that which was its shade and delight!” This is the truth now presented to us—the purpose of affliction relieves the pain of affliction.
I. Affliction passing over us is hard to bear.—The heap of wheat as it is brought in from the fields, and spread out all over the threshing-floor, cannot but feel it hard when the heavy threshing-roller, with its cutting teeth, is drawn backward and forward over it. That tribulum-work, that tribulation, cannot be joyous, but grievous. But presently it appears what good work has been done by the severe discipline: the husks have been split, and have fallen away from the grain; and it only needs now the winnowing fan to secure the pure corn for the food of man. In every human life there is a mission for the threshing-roller of afflictive discipline. Human trouble takes on a great variety of forms, but it never takes any that are easy to bear at the time. It is in the very nature of trouble that it must be pressure, strain, distress. It would not have its ministry in character if it were not. It is easy to classify the afflictions that befall humanity. They take form as suffering, as sorrowing, as sinning.
1. The form of suffering. Suffering, pure and simple, without the element of sin embittering it, is part of the economy of nature; man only shares it in common with the creature, and we need to speak cautiously and carefully concerning it when we speak of it as evil. It would be possible to show that even important animal qualities, and much more moral qualities, can only be wrought by simple suffering. At once it will come to mind that the motherliness of motherhood, both in the creatures and in humanity, follows upon, and can only follow upon, the suffering of the birth-time. Think closely, and it will soon appear, that moral character can never be made anywhere, save by the agency of suffering. Of Christ it is said, “Though He were a son, yet learned He obedience by the things that He suffered.” We must therefore speak thoughtfully and wisely on this matter. But this is certainly true, and always true—suffering is hard to bear. Personal suffering, taking shape as sickness, frailty, pain, always is. Disease comes in so many painful and repulsive forms. It comes at what seem such unfitting times. It brings in with it such a trail of other woes. It breaks into the enterprise of life, disturbing and imperilling our business relations. It often wholly upsets the plan of our life, and leaves us, when convalescent, to battle again for lost position. It brings strain and stress on those whom we love more than we love ourselves. Hezekiah is the type of all sick folk in his experience of the hardness of his lot: put aside, in pain and helplessness, when life’s schemes were just working out well, but nothing seemed really accomplished. It was hard to be cut off in the midst of his days. It is hard to be sick for a while; it is hard to be frail and weak all life long. While the cloud hangs low over us, we can but walk in the darkness, and feel depressed by it. No personal suffering for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous. It has to feel grievous; it is just its ministry to make us feel burdened and distressed. Do not be surprised that you find your frailty hard to bear: it is precisely what you ought to find it and feel it.
2. The form of sorrowing. A very large portion of human affliction is not personal, but relative, suffering. It is such affliction as David knew when he wailed over his ruined son. It is such sorrow as St. Paul knew when he feared his companion would be taken away, and he would have “sorrow upon sorrow.” It is such sorrow as our Divine Lord felt when He stood by the tomb of His friend Lazarus, with the heart-broken sisters beside Him. It is the sympathetic entering into the sorrows of others which brings their burdens to lie on our hearts. And the sympathy is keen according to our dispositions. There are some who can pass amid the suffering with a chilly self-control, a calmness that keeps them from undue distress; but there are many who, in the quickness and keenness of their sympathy, sorrow unduly, suffer more than the actual sufferers. Perhaps many of us can see, in looking back over our lives, that we have known more affliction through sympathy than through personal suffering. Maybe we have had to deal with great sufferers, or to come helpfully near to those who have been in overwhelming distress; and the strain for us has almost been overstrain. And sometimes our utter helplessness, our inability to meet occasions, the misery of having to stand by with folded hands while the great billows of woe have rolled over our beloved, has been overwhelming woe for us. Even public distress may try us greatly. What do the clergy feel when they bury the bread-winners, and the mothers for whose love and tending the children will lift a life-long wail? Sometimes one is disposed to say that the burdens of sympathetic sorrowing are far heavier than the burdens of personal suffering. How much is suggested when it is said of our great High Priest, that He is “touched with the feeling of our infirmities”!
3. The form of sinning. The bitterness of suffering, to us moral beings, lies in our conviction of its close association with sin. But this is no overwhelming distress while we keep to the general fact, that the Divine order has been disturbed by human wilfulness, and the penalties fall upon the whole race, and, vicariously, fall heavy on some members of it. The weight of the woe comes when we are distinctly able to associate personal sin with personal sufferings. What revelations the doctor could make to us if he would be open and true in dealing with us! We go with him round the wards of the hospital, and he could say—There, that miserable sufferer is reaping the drink-seed that he sowed; that wreck of humanity on whom you can hardly bear to look is ending in unspeakable wretchedness a life of vice. When that association of sin and suffering comes close into our spheres, when our prodigal comes home to die, our wilful girl drags life-ruin upon herself, then we have sorrow upon sorrow—sorrow in which is the bitterness of death. That sorrow is hardest of all to bear. While passing over us it is altogether grievous. And you will have found in your experience, that it is very hard to deal with sufferers when you know that they are sinners, and when the sufferings take offensive and repulsive forms, as they always do when they come directly out of sin. It seems so wonderful that our Divine Lord could be so sympathetic with outcasts and sinners, and could deal so graciously with those who were possessed with the devil of uncleanness. But it is the Christliness of Christ that He could take the sin with the suffering, and help at once the sinner and the sufferer. They let a sufferer down through the roof, right in front of Him. Jesus looked upon him, and saw a sinner. But He did not therefore despise him. He only saw the severest feature of his need, the root of all the mischief, and He dealt first with that. It is our Christlikeness likeness if we can bear the suffering that comes out of sin, though that kind of affliction is hardest of all to bear. Whatever form our human troubles take, our text—the first half of it—certainly is true: “No affliction for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous.” While passing over us it is hard to bear.
II. Affliction passed by is good to remember.—The psalmist must have felt that it was when he said, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now will I keep Thy word.” Affliction had done something for him, and something so good that he liked to think about it. It is well to remind ourselves of the temporary character of all human suffering and affliction. It is always “a light affliction, and but for a moment.” It is always a cloud, light or dark, high or low, that is passing on, and drops its rains upon us as it passes. We always have a chance of standing under a clear sky, watching our clouds sail away to the west. We have had our troubles, but they never stayed. They came and went. And when they were gone right past, somehow we began a little to understand them; and the farther they receded into the distance, the more clearly we saw how they—strange puzzle-pieces though they were—fitted into the plan of infinite Wisdom. They bore to us a mission. They carried out their mission. They left us with the blessing of their mission. What have the suffering and sorrowing times of our lives done for us? Perhaps it would be wiser not to try and read the answer by going over the scenes of our own lives. We can never be quite sure of being just to ourselves. It is better to see what suffering did for Jesus. There is so much in that sentence, “Made perfect through suffering.” But we may also each one of us think of some saintly soul who has come, like the silver, through a seven-times refining. It is quite safe for us to trace in them what sublime moral and spiritual agencies these our human afflictions prove to be. We watch them, and see “what almighty grace can do,” and then we hope that almighty grace is doing it for us. Only a word or two can be given to this point, but they may suffice to guide thought along helpful and comforting lines. We can sometimes see—
1. How afflictions have loosened the grip of the world upon the soul. What an enslaving power things seen and temporal have! What would they have if God did not break in upon them with His afflictive dispensations? The claims and rush of life keep our souls looking down and around. The visions and quietness of sorrow-times lift our souls up and away. The other life is far off, and the world is near, while health and energy are with us. The other life comes near, and the world-interests recede, when God puts us into desert places of sickness and trouble. It is said that we never really see the full splendour of God’s sky in the smoky towns. Go out into the broad desert spaces, away from the world, and the stars fairly glitter, and the blue is unspeakably beautiful. Can we not look back and see how trials that were hard to bear loosened our hold of life a little? And what is the mystery of all life save this—gradually getting loosened from the world, and getting soul-anchored in the city of habitations, whose builder and maker is God? It is good to remember how God has been loosening our world-grip, and teaching our hearts to say, “This is not our rest.”
2. We can see how afflictions have tightened our trust in God. Have you held a child’s hand in a first railway journey. It just lay quietly in yours, for the child felt all safe with father; but then the train rushed screaming into the dark tunnel, and the child’s grip tightened, and held tight till long after the calming sunshine had come back again. That is the way it is with us and the Father-God. When the strain-times of life come, we grip His hand hard. And after the strain-times of life are passed by, we love to remember how our Father’s hand clasped ours in the time of fear, and thrilled our souls with the feeling of uttermost safety. We should never be trusting God as we are trusting Him to-day, if it were not for those experiences of sorrow and trouble which are passed and gone long since. The writer of this epistle has a very suggestive term for the issues of Divinely sent afflictions. He calls them the “peaceable fruits of righteousness,” or “it yieldeth peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby, even the fruit of righteousness.” Why does he call it “peaceable fruit”? I think he must have had this in mind: When our life-troubles first come to us, the trouble in the trouble is the resistance of our wills, the warfare that we make over submission and obedience. But as we learn the Christ-lessons of afflictions, we gain the Christ-mastery over self-will, and then gradually, as afflictions come, there is little or no resistance, little or no warfare. Our souls gradually gain the peace of righteousness, the peace of right-mindedness, that can quietly say, facing each new woe—
“Is this Thy will, good Lord?
Thy servant weeps no more.”
“To them that have been exercised thereby.” You have had many a trouble; but have you been “exercised thereby”? Has your soul-life of love and submission and trust been exercised thereby? Can you gratefully recognise what God has done for you through times of strain and stress? Let us sit down beside St. Paul, and feel that he is writing for us, as truly as for himself, when he says—“For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”
Heb_12:13. The Removal of Hindrances.—There are two ways of training children, and two ways of exerting our influence in the associations of life:
1. We may directly mould the child-mind, habits, and life to a pattern which we ourselves form.
2. We may watchfully and carefully take out of the child’s way everything that would hinder the child from naturally and healthily developing itself. This is the kind of influence which can be so wisely and helpfully exercised in the Church, and in the ordinary associations of life.
Heb_12:14. The Christian’s Race and Goal.—The idea running through this chapter is that this world is the Christian’s training for heaven. Our Christian course is compared to a race, which implies our effort; not to a voyage, in which we are borne by the effort of others. The images employed in Scripture imply the most sustained effort. A race which is to be run; a narrow path by which many shall seek to enter into life, and those only who strive shall enter; a battle to be won, which requires the whole armour of God, and this we are invited to put on. How far has the reception of the good news that “Christ died for all” really had the effect of leading men to live “not unto themselves, but unto Him that died for them and rose again”? How, then, are we to run this race that is set before us? The answer is, “Looking unto Jesus.” He is our pattern. Christian holiness is a growing conformity to the image of Christ. He saves both from the guilt and from the power of sin—gives purity as well as pardon. He has brought in everlasting righteousness.—Robert Barclay.
Peaceableness and Purity.—The connection between “peace” and “holiness” may profitably be thought out.
1. Peace as a state and condition, peace as an atmosphere, is the surrounding in which Christian holiness can alone thrive. Other good things may thrive in time of war: holiness cannot. There is a bloom on it which cannot stay unless the air is still.
2. But there is a more precise point in the text. It is this—the man who seeks peace, who “follows after peace,” is the man who will be sure to seek also holiness, and follow after purity. Let any one make for peace, keep peace, that man will be sure to make things clean, and keep things clean. He knows that the one thing that spoils peace is self-indulgence and sin.
The Peaceful Temper.—Christianity and worldly wisdom meet in conmending the duty of this text. Wise advice is, Beware of getting into quarrels with people. The reason for “following peace” which worldly prudence suggests is the quietness and happiness of life, which are interfered with by relations of enmity to others. The reason which religion gives is the duty of brotherly love, of which the peaceful disposition is a part. The frequency of the advice indicates that there is some strong prevailing tendency in human nature to which it is opposed. What can that tendency be? Some rush into quarrels from simple violence and impetuosity of temper, which prevents their examining the merits of a case, and permits them to see nothing but what favours their own side. And there is the malignant temper, which fastens vindictively upon particular persons. Men of this character pursue a grudge unceasingly, and never forget or forgive. There are also many persons who can never be neutral, or support a middle state of mind. If they do not positively like others, they will see some reason for disliking them; they will be irritable if they are not pleased; they will be enemies if they are not friends. This disposition has the necessary result of placing them in a kind of enmity towards numbers of persons to whom there is not the slightest real reason for feeling it. It is simply irksome to them to maintain an attitude of indifference and neutrality. The relation of peace towards others is exactly that which the temper described has such a difficulty in adopting. A state of peace is precisely this middle state to which such objection is made. It is not a state of active love and affection; nor is it a state that admits of any ill-feeling; but it lies between the two, comprehending all kindly intentions, forbidding the least wish for another’s injury, avoiding, as much as possible, dispute and occasion of offence, consulting order, quiet, and contentment, but not arriving at more than this. Peace implies the entire absence of positive ill-will. The apostle then says that this is our proper relation toward all men. More than this applies to some, but as much as this applies to all. Be in fellowship with all men, so far as to have nothing wrong in your relation to them—nothing to disunite. Is any other principle of conduct and kind of temper indeed fit for this world in which we live? There are so many obstacles to mutual understanding in this world, and so very thin a veil is enough to hide people from each other, that any other line is hopeless. Two reasons have much to do in promoting the temper to which we are referring:
1. It is very irksome to keep watch over ourselves, and to repel the intrusion of hostile thoughts by the simple resistance of conscience, when we are not assisted by any strong current of natural feeling in doing so.
2. The hostile classes of relation are evidently accompanied by their own pleasures in many temperaments. There is a kind of interest which people take in their own grievances, their own grudges, their own causes of offence at various people, their own discords and animosities, which occupies their thought, it must candidly be said, in a manner not disagreeable to themselves. They enjoy these states of mind towards others in their own way. It is with the entire knowledge of these weaknesses and frailties of human nature, and these elements of disturbance, even in minds of average goodness, that St. Paul said, “Follow peace with all men.” It is not without design that the two things “peace” and “holiness” were connected together by the apostle. A life of enmities is greatly in opposition to growth in holiness. All religious habits and duties—prayer, charity, mercy—are formed and matured when the man is in a state of peace with others, when he is not agitated by small selfish excitements and interests, which divert him from himself and his own path of duty, but can think of himself what he ought to do and where he is going.—J. B. Mozley, D.D.
Holiness bringing Sight of God.—
1. Seeing God is, to all Scripture writers, the very highest conception of bliss. Such a conception attests their superiority to ordinary men. What a sublime conception it is! It really means full, satisfying, up to capacity, knowledge of God. Present knowledge is not restful; the knowledge which comes by faith is. The future knowledge of God may be called “seeing,” in the sense of restful, satisfying, sure knowledge, but not in the sense of being absolutely complete. He must be God who can fully see God.
2. Holiness is, for all Scripture writers, the necessary condition of bliss. Here also is a conception beyond the reach of ordinary men. Holiness is an idea wholly limited to religion. The ordinary man reaches to conceive of goodness according to the standard of the Golden Rule. The religious man reaches to conceive of goodness as “godliness,” according to the standard of his spiritual apprehension of God. With that altogether higher conception all his life becomes higher-toned. See what belongs to the Scriptural idea of holiness.
(1) Sincerity—no guile.
(2) Right-principled.
(3) Right-hearted.
(4) Separated from.
(5) Consecrated to.
(6) Sanctified and sanctifying; white and whitening.
3. How does holiness become the condition of seeing God?
(1) Holiness is the trained vision that alone gives perfect sight.
(2) Holiness fully seen and apprehended is God. It is inseparable from Him. He is the embodiment of it to us. Like alone sees like. The holy alone can see the Holy One. But as our apprehension of holiness grows, we lift it more and more away into the future. It seems to be something attainable in the by-and-by alone. Then there is the danger of our becoming content with an imperfect Christian life now. It should therefore be duly impressed upon us that the Scripture sets holiness before us as present, and practical, and attainable. Absolute perfection is unattainable anywhere, in any world, by a dependent creature; but high measures of holiness are attainable by us, though we are creatures—attainable, if we will live the life of faith.
Heb_12:15-16. The Perils of Churches.—Our Lord made it quite clear that the sincere and insincere would be blended in His earthly Church; that no strict attempts could ever be wisely made to separate them; and that the presence of the insincere would have a disciplinary influence on the sincere. Dr. A. B. Bruce says: “In the parables of the tares and the drag-net, especially in the former, we are warned that in the future history of the kingdom there will appear a revolting and unnatural mixture of good and bad men, Christians and anti-Christians, children of the heavenly Father and children of Satan.… Christ deliberately recommends patience as the least of two evils, the other being the uprooting of wheat along with tares in headlong zeal to get rid of the noxious crop [of tares]; which implies a close inter-relationship between the two kinds of growths that may well seem an additional calamity.” St. Paul, in his address to the elders of Ephesus, pointed out the main sources of peril for Christian Churches. “I know that after my departing grievous wolves shall enter in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.” It is a point of importance to see that the supreme peril of any Church never comes with its circumstances, but always from the character and conduct of its members. The Church’s foes are traitors within the city.
I. Peril comes from the inconsistent member.—The man who is sincere, and has the grace of God; but fails to respond worthily to the grace; fails to order his life by the grace; fails to rise to the spiritual level to which the grace would lift him. The man who permits his life to be below the Christ-standard.
II. Peril comes from the quarrelsome member.—That is the “root of bitterness”—the man who makes disturbance, because nothing is ever to his mind, and somebody is always hurting his feelings. The quarrelsome man does the supreme mischief of introducing the quarrelsome spirit.
III. Peril comes from the insincere member.—There are those who are in the Church, but not of it. Their insincerity may be indicated in their
(1) profanity;
(2) in their immorality. There never can be any right sense of God when there is no cleanness, no moral self-restraint, in the life.
Heb_12:16. Selling the Birthright.—“So Esau despised his birthright.” It was done in a moment; but such moments cannot occur except as the epitome of years. There is a plant which is fabled to rush into crimson blossom once only in a hundred years; but even then all the hundred years have been causing, have been maturing, that one crimson flower. So it is with every great sin. It is but the ripened fruit of hundreds of little tendencies. Esau’s guilty moment was but the expression and heritage of all his past life. It was as a youth that he had sold his birthright; it was as a man, it was forty years afterwards, that the seed of that youthful profanity set into the bitter fruit of irreparable grief. It was forty years afterwards that he stood before his aged and trembling father, and found that what he had sold for a mess of pottage was not only the birthright, but the blessing, the glory, the dominion, the prosperity, of years. Then he read his boyish sin under the terrible glare flung upon it by its consequences. It is the epitome of retribution. What was Esau’s sin? He sold his birthright because he despised it; and he despised it because it was not a thing which he could see, or eat, or drink, or grasp with both hands; because it was a glory and a blessing which pertained not to the body, but to the soul. And is this sin rare? Is it not the very commonest of all sins? Is it not distinctly the sin to which every one of us is tempted? And why? Because all men have not faith; and this sin is the absence of faith, the opposite of all faith. For faith is the power to recognise the spiritual, and to trample on the carnal. Want of faith often looks like the sin of a moment, but it is the abstract of a tendency, it is the habit of a life. It is that profane self-indulgence to which an ideal blessing is as nothing compared to a momentary pleasure. What then is the birthright that each one of us has? It is the synthesis of all spiritual blessings. It is a body rightly endowed: it is a mind thrilling with bright affinities for all things beautiful and high; it is a spirit, in which are folded the wings which can soar to heaven, and hold communion with the Divine. It is life; the innocent brightness of childhood, the spring of youth, the force of manhood, the snowy and sunlit heights of age. Do men keep their birthright? Our birthright is innocence, holiness, peace with God, life, light, immortality. Where is the holiness of the liar, the schemer, the blasphemer? Where is the innocence of the drunkard? Where the peace with God of the impure? Yet there are among these crowds some who have not sold their birthright—some who, even in Sardis, have not stained their raiment; the holy, and the brave, and the merciful; the white souls who have toiled, and fought and overcome—souls “transparent as crystal, active as fire, unselfish as the ministering spirits, sweet and tender as grace; strong, generous, and enduring, as the hearts of martyrs.” But how comes it that all are not such? It is because, for one morsel of meat, they have sold their birthright. The one aim and object of all God’s education of us in life is the cherishing, the preserving, the securing, of our birthright. It is in youth that the birthright is most often sold. This should be the aim of every man who would make something of his life—to keep his birthright unimpaired, not to sell it for a mess of pottage, not to sell it for the careless hour or the sensual snare. That youth is in the highest sense well educated who by God’s grace passes into the battle of life strong, self-denying, pure; scorning mean pleasures, scorning vulgar comforts, scorning idle uselessness; brave to meet danger, brave to defy sin, brave to fight in the cause of God; strenuous to do and to do dare; ready to spring to the front in every good cause; not following the multitude to do evil. To be thus is to have the birthright of a man. To strengthen the higher, to control the lower, to enlist on the side of the higher every pure spiritual influence, to help you to win the tranquil mastery over yourselves—this should be your aim.
“One there is can curb myself,
Can roll this strangling load off me,
Break off my yoke and set me free.”
That one is Christ.—Farrar.
Profanity in the Home.—In Scripture there are few characters more profitable for study than Esau. Here is a man who came to sin by birth into it, by the sins of others as well as his own, by every-day and sordid temptations, by carelessness, and the sudden surprise of neglected passions. There is everything about Esau to engage us in the study of him. The mystery that haunts all human sin, the pity that we feel for so wronged and genial a nature, only make clear to us more fully the central want and blame of his life.
I. Esau was sinned against from his birth.—His father and mother were responsible for much of the character of their son. The marriage of Isaac and Rebecca began in a romance, and it ended in the sheerest vulgarity, just because, with all its grace and wonder, the fear of God was not present. Their introduction was very picturesque. The Nemesis of picturesqueness without truth is always sordidness; the Nemesis of romance without religion is always vulgarity; and vulgarity and sordidness are the prevailing notes of Isaac and Rebecca’s wedded life. Throughout we see a divided house—father and elder son upon one side, mother and younger son upon the other. Of such a false and hasty mother was Esau born, and he had her haste. Sin, whatever form it assumes, always works itself out, if not in the first generation, then in the next, to violent ends. The faults that spoiled Rebecca’s character were the same faults that ruined Esau’s life.
II. Esau got his “profane” character at home.—“Profane” means “thoroughfare.” A “profane” character means an open, common character, unhallowed, no guardian angel at the door, no gracious company within, no heavenly music pealing through it, no fire upon the altar, but open to his dogs and his passions, to his mother’s provocations, and his brother’s fatal wiles. The home was not walled in by reverence and truth, and the steadfast patience of father and mother.
III. In the subsequent tragedy we see the climax of minor vices.—Two habits came to their fatal head in Esau’s confession and his offer to sell his birthright (see Gen_25:30-34).
1. First, his hunger; second, exaggeration. The physical selfishness of hunger, stimulated by the mental selfishness of thinking and feeling in an exaggerated way about oneself, sprang to fatal empire, and at their bidding the deluded man sold his birthright, his life, and his honour. There are more people cheated out of their spiritual birthrights by ordinary selfishness than by great crimes. The habit of insisting upon getting our own way in every little matter distorts the true porportion of life to our eyes. The habit of thinking in an extravagant way about oneself, how often it cheats us out of the great chances of life, and renders us unfit for life’s noblest callings! Some are needed to take the lead in Church or State, for inspiration in the crowd, for God’s work; but a base love of comfort, a selfish exaggertion of their impotence or weakness, a cowardly succumbing to the sorrow that should have been the flood-tide to carry them to triumph, turned them from their idea and their God-given right.
2. The other point in the development of Esau’s tragedy is this—his passion made him the prey of the first designing man he came across. There is not a pleasure or a passion which to-day tempts any one, but there are men and women waiting to make something out of it for themselves, and to make fools of us. Let no one be deluded by either of the two great temptations to a life of pleasure—by the fancy that you are going to play the full-grown man in it, or by the fancy that you are going to enjoy a cordiality and a friendship that you will fail to find in more sober or steady circles.
IV. Let us get back to this word “profane.”—It is the centre of the whole evil. Fence your characters; make yourselves not common. Guard against little vices. Keep the virtue of truth. Jealously guard your hearts from the vulgar world; jealously fill them with the inhabitants of the world of holiness and truth. An empty mind is the unsafest and unhallowedest thing in the world.
V. God has provided something more for us than guardian angels: He has given us a Saviour.—A Saviour sufficient for the world. Let Him dwell in your hearts by faith, and, like Jacob, you may be lifted from your low level to the very heights of spiritual character and genius.—Prof. G. Adam Smith.
Heb_12:17. Lost Opportunities.—This verse is easily misapprehended. It is quite misused when it is made to mean that a man may at some time want to repent, and find repentance impossible. It is equally misused when it is made to mean that a man may seek forgiveness from God, and fail to gain it. All that is said is, that Isaac, having given the blessing, refused to undo what he had done.
Estimating the Value of Things Lost.—Wonderful is the intelligence with which we can perceive the value of anything we have lost. The collector of household treasures is cited, who in his daily walks may see in a shop-window a little bit of china, a picture, an apostle spoon, a quaint old volume, which he intends to bargain for one day when he shall have leisure; so he passes it a hundred times, indifferent as to its merits, half uncertain whether it is worth buying. But he discovers some day that it is gone; and then in a moment the doubtful shepherdess becomes the rarest old china, the dirty-looking bit of landscape an undeniable Crome, the battered silver spoon an unquestionable antique, the quaintly bound book a choice Elzevir. “The thing is lost; and we regret it for all that it might have been, as well as for all that it was, and there are no bounds to the extravagance we would commit to regain the chance of possessing it.” This is but the subjunctive or potential mood of what is simply but largely indicative in Scott’s sufficiently commonplace couplet—
“Those who such simple joys have known
Are taught to prize them when they’re gone.”
Francis Jacox.
Blessings Estimated when they have Vanished.—Possession drowns, or at least mightily cools, contentment. Want teaches us the worth of things more truly. How sweet a thing seems liberty to one immured in a dungeon! How dear a jewel is health to him who is in sickness! I have known many who have loved their dead friends better than ever they esteemed them in their lifetime.… When we have lost a benefit, the mind has time to reflect on its several advantages, which she then finds to be many more than she was aware of while in possession of it. It is a true remark, that blessings appear not till they have vanished.—Owen Feltham.
Belated Appreciation of Blessings Past.—Coming home faint from the field, Esau, that cunning hunter and man of the woods, preferred to his birthright a meal of Jacob’s bread and pottage of lentils. Behold, he was a-hungered; felt even at the point to die of hunger: what profit should that birthright do to him? Let it go. And it went. Thus Esau despised his birthright. Time passes; and we see the red hunter, even Edom, plying his aged father with savoury meat, that Isaac may eat of his son’s venison, and bless his elder-born, before he die. But the blessing is forestalled. The subtle purchaser of the birthright is the fraudulent possessor of the blessing. In vain, for all too late, is Esau’s great and exceeding bitter cry, “Bless me, even me also, O my father!” The blessing is gone, like the birthright. For one morsel of meat was the birthright bartered. And he who stigmatises the barterer as a “profane person” tells us that we know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected; for he found no place of repentance—τόπον μετανοίας: by some of our best commentators referred to Isaac, who could not be induced to alter his decision, though the disinherited suppliant sought it carefully with tears. A morsel of meat was worth more than the birthright till the birthright was gone. Gone, the valuation of it was declared with streaming eyes and an exceeding bitter cry, with, as it were, groanings that could not be uttered—a flood of unavailing tears, shed all the more because shed in vain. And such is the way of the world.—Francis Jacox.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v10 Ecc 1:13. - Heb 12:10.
Ecclesiastes
TWO VIEWS OF LIFE
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Ecc 1:13. - Heb 12:10.
These two texts set before us human life as it looks to two observers. The former admits that God shapes it; but to him it seems sore travail, the expenditure of much trouble and efforts; the results of which seem to be nothing beyond profitless exercise. There is an immense activity and nothing to show for it at the end but wearied limbs. The other observer sees, at least, as much of sorrow and trouble as the former, but he believes in the ‘Father of spirits,’ and in a hereafter; and these, of course, bring a meaning and a wider purpose into the ‘sore travail,’ and make it, not futile but, profitable to our highest good.
I. Note first the Preacher’s gloomy half-truth.
The word rendered in our text ‘travail’ is a favourite one with the writer. It means occupation which costs effort and causes trouble. The phrase ‘to be exercised therewith,’ rather means to fatigue themselves, so that life as looked upon by the Preacher consists of effort without result but weariness.
If he knew it at all, it was very imperfectly and dimly; and whatever may be thought of teaching on that subject which appears in the formal conclusion of the book, the belief in a future state certainly exercises no influence on its earlier portions. These represent phases through which the writer passes on his way to his conclusion. He does believe in ‘God,’ but, very significantly, he never uses the sacred name ‘Lord.’ He has shaken himself free, or he wishes to represent a character who has shaken himself free from Revelation, and is fighting the problem of life, its meaning and worth, without any help from Law, or Prophet, or Psalm. He does retain belief in what he calls ‘God,’ but his pure Theism, with little, if any, faith in a future life, is a creed which has no power of unravelling the perplexed mysteries of life, and of answering the question, ‘What does it all mean?’ With keen and cynical vision he looks out not only over men, as in this first chapter, but over nature; and what mainly strikes him is the enormous amount of work that is being done, and the tragical poverty of its results. The question with which he begins his book is, ‘What profit hath a man of all his labour wherein he laboureth under the sun?’ And for answer he looks at the sun rising and going down, and being in the same place after its journey through the heavens; and he hears the wind continually howling and yet returning again to its circuits; and the waters now running as rivers into the sea and again drawn up in vapours, and once more falling in rain and running as waters. This wearisome monotony of intense activity in nature is paralleled by all that is done by man under heaven, and the net result of all is ‘Vanity and a strife after wind.’
The writer proceeds to confirm his dreary conclusion by a piece of autobiography put into the mouth of Solomon. He is represented as flinging himself into mirth and pleasure, into luxury and debauchery, and as satisfying every hunger for any joy, and as being pulled up short in the midst of his rioting by the conviction, like a funeral bell, tolling in his mind that all was vanity. ‘He gave himself to wisdom, and madness, and folly’; and in all he found but one result-enormous effort and no profit. There seemed to be a time for everything, and a kind of demonic power in men compelling them to toil as with equal energy, now at building up, and now at destroying. But to every purpose he saw that there was ‘time and judgment,’ and therefore, ‘the misery of man was great upon him.’ To his jaundiced eye the effort of life appeared like the play of the wind in the desert, always busy, but sometime busy in heaping the sands in hillocks, and sometimes as busy in levelling them to a plain.
We may regard such a view of humanity as grotesquely pessimistic; but there is no doubt that many of us do make of life little more than what the Preacher thought it. It is not only the victims of civilisation who are forced to wearisome monotony of toil which barely yields daily bread; but we see all around us men and women wearing out their lives in the race after a false happiness, gaining nothing by the race but weariness. What shall we say of the man who, in the desire to win wealth, or reputation, lives laborious days of cramping effort in one direction, and allows all the better part of his nature to be atrophied, and die, and passes, untasted, brooks by the way, the modest joys and delights that run through the dustiest lives. What is the difference between a squirrel in the cage who only makes his prison go round the faster by his swift race, and the man who lives toilsome days for transitory objects which he may never attain? In the old days every prison was furnished with a tread-mill, on which the prisoner being set was bound to step up on each tread of the revolving wheel, not in order to rise, but in order to prevent him from breaking his legs. How many men around us are on such a mill, and how many of them have fastened themselves on it, and by their own misreading and misuse of life have turned it into a dreary monotony of resultless toil. The Preacher may be more ingenious than sound in his pessimism, but let us not forget that every godless man does make of life ‘Vanity and strife after wind.’
II. The higher truth which completes the Preacher’ s.
Of course the fragmentary sentence in our second text needs to be completed from the context, and so completed will stand, ‘God chastens us for our profit, that we should be partakers of His holiness.’ Now let us consider for a moment the thought that the true meaning of life is discipline. I say discipline rather than ‘chastening,’ for chastening simply implies the fact of pain, whereas discipline includes the wholesome purpose of pain. The true meaning of life is not to be found by estimating its sorrows or its joys, but by trying to estimate the effects of either upon us. The true value of life, and the meaning of all its tears and of all its joys, is what it makes us. If the enormous effort which struck the Preacher issues in strengthened muscles and braced limbs, it is not ‘vanity.’ He who carries away with him out of life a character moulded as God would have it, does not go in all points ‘naked as he came.’ He bears a developed self, and that is the greatest treasure that a man can carry out of multitudinous toils of the busiest life. If we would think less of our hard work and of our heavy sorrows, and more of the loving purpose which appoints them all, we should find life less difficult, less toilsome, less mysterious. That one thought taken to our hearts, and honestly applied to everything that befalls us, would untie many a riddle, would wipe away many a tear, would bring peace and patience into many a heart, and would make still brighter many a gladness. Without it our lives are a chaos; with it they would become an ordered world.
But the recognition of the hand that ministers the discipline is needed to complete the peacefulness of faith. It would be a dreary world if we could only think of some inscrutable or impersonal power that inflicted the discipline; but if in its sharpest pangs we give ‘reverence to the Father of spirits,’ we shall ‘live.’ Of course, a loving father sees to his children’s education, and a loving child cannot but believe that the father’s single purpose in all his discipline is his good. The good that is sought to be attained by the sharpest chastisement is better than the good that is given by weak indulgence. When the father’s hand wields the rod, and a loving child receives the strokes, they may sting, but they do not wound. The ‘fathers of our flesh chasten us after their own pleasure,’ and there may be error and arbitrariness in their action; and the child may sometimes nourish a right sense of injustice, but ‘the Father of spirits’ makes no mistakes, and never strikes too hard. ‘He for our profit’ carries with it the declaration that the deep heart of God doth not willingly afflict, and seeks in afflicting for nothing but His children’s good.
Nor are these all the truths by which the New Testament completes and supersedes the Preacher’s pessimism, for our text closes by unveiling the highest profit which discipline is meant to secure to us as being that we should be ‘partakers of His holiness.’ The Biblical conception of holiness in God is that of separation from and elevation above the creature. Man’s holiness is separation from the world and dedication to God. He is separated from the world by moral perfection yet more than by His other attributes, and men who have yielded themselves to Him will share in that characteristic. This assimilation to His nature is the highest ‘profit’ to which we can attain, and all the purpose of His chastening is to make us more completely like Himself. ‘The fathers of our flesh’ chasten with a view to the brief earthly life, but His chastening looks onwards beyond the days of ‘strife and vanity’ to a calm eternity.
Thus, then, the immortality which glimmered doubtfully in the end of his book before the eyes of the Preacher is the natural inference for the Christian thought of moral discipline as the great purpose of life. No doubt it might be possible for a man to believe in the supreme importance of character, and in all the discipline of life as subsidiary to its development, and yet not believe in another world, where all that was tendency, often thwarted, should be accomplished result, and the schooling ended the rod should be broken. But such a position will be very rare and very absurd. To recognise moral discipline as the greatest purpose of life, gives quite overwhelming probability to a future. Surely God does not take such pains with us in order to make no more of us than He makes of us in this world. Surely human life becomes ‘confusion worse confounded’ if it is carefully, sedulously, continuously tended, checked, inspired, developed by all the various experiences of sorrow and joy, and then, at death, broken short off, as a man might break a stick across his knee, and the fragments tossed aside and forgotten. If we can say, ‘He for our profit that we might be partakers of His holiness,’ we have the right to say ‘We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.’
Hebrews
A FATHER’S DISCIPLINE
Heb 12:10
FEW words of Scripture have been oftener than these laid as a healing balm on wounded hearts. They may be long unnoticed on the page, like a lighthouse in calm sunshine, but sooner or later the stormy night falls, and then the bright beam flashes out and is welcome. They go very deep into the meaning of life as discipline; they tell us how much better God’s discipline is than that of the most loving and wise of parents, and they give that superiority as a reason for our yielding more entire and cheerful obedience to Him than we do to such.
Now, to grasp the full meaning of these words, we have to notice that the earthly and the heavenly disciplines are described in four contrasted clauses. which are arranged in what students call inverted parallelism - that is to say, the first clause corresponds to the fourth and the second to the third. ‘For a few days’ pairs off with ‘that we might be partakers of His holiness.’ Now, at first sight that does not seem a contrast; but notice that the ‘for’ in the former clause is not the ‘for’ of duration, but of direction. It does not tell us the space during which the chastisement or discipline lasts, but the end towards which it is pointed. The earthly parent’s discipline trains a boy or girl for circumstances, pursuits, occupations, professions, all of which terminate with the brief span of life. God’s training is for an eternal day. It would be quite irrelevant to bring in here any reference to the length of time during which an earthly father’s discipline lasts, but it is in full consonance with the writer’s intention to dwell upon the limited scope of the one and the wide and eternal purpose of the other.
Then, as for the other contrast - ‘for their own pleasure,’ or, as the Revised Version reads it, ‘as Seemed good to them’ - ‘but He for our profit.’ Elements of personal peculiarity, whim, passion, limited and possibly erroneous conceptions of what is the right thing to do for the child, enter into the training of the wisest and most loving amongst us; and we often make a mistake and do harm when we think we are doing good. But God’s training is all from a simple and unerring regard to the benefit of His child. Thus the guiding principles of the two disciplines are contrasted in the two central clauses.
Now, these are very threadbare, commonplace, and old-fashioned thoughts; but, perhaps, they are so familiar that they have not their proper power over us; and I wish to try in this sermon, if I can, to get more into them, or to get them more into us, by one or two very plain remarks.
I. I would ask you to note, first, the grand, deep, general conception, here firmly laid hold of, of life as only intelligible when it is regarded as education or discipline.
God corrects, chastens, trains, educates. That is the deepest word about everything that befalls us. Now, there are involved in that two or three very obvious thoughts, which would make us all calmer and nobler and stronger, if they were vividly and vitally present to us day by day.
The first is that all which befalls us has a will behind it and is co-operant to an end. Life is not a heap of unconnected incidents, like a number of links flung down on the ground, but the links are a chain, and the chain has a staple. It is not a law without a law-giver that shapes men’s lives. It is not a blind, impersonal chance that presides over it. Why, these very meteors that astronomers expect in autumn to be flying and flashing through the sky in apparent wild disorder, all obey law. Our lives, in like manner, are embodied thoughts of God’s, in as far as the incidents which befall in them are concerned. We may mar, we may fight against, may contradict the presiding divine purpose; but yet, behind the wild dance of flashing and transitory lights that go careering all over the sky, there guides, not an impersonal Power, but a living, loving Will He, not it; He, not they, men, circumstances, what people call second causes - He corrects, and He does it for a great purpose.
Ah! if we believed that, and not merely said it from the teeth outwards, but if it were a living conviction with us, do you not think our lives would tower up into a nobleness, and settle themselves down into a tranquillity all strange to them to-day?
But, then, further, there is the other thought to be grasped, that all our days we are here in a state of pupilage. The world is God’s nursery. There are many mansions in the Father’s house; and this earth is where He keeps the little ones. That is the true meaning of everything that befalls us. It is education. Work would not be worth doing if it were not. Life is given to us to teach us how to live, to exercise our powers, to give us habits and facilities of working. We are like boys in a training ship that lies for most of the time in harbour, and now and then goes out upon some short and easy cruise; not for the sake of getting anywhere in particular, but for the sake of exercising the lads in seamanship. There is no meaning worthy of us - to say nothing of God - in anything that we do, unless it is looked upon as schooling. We all say we believe that. Alas! I am afraid very many of us forget it,
But that conception of the meaning of each event that befalls us carries with it the conception of the whole of this life, as being an education towards another. I do not understand how any man can bear to live here, and to do all his painful work, unless he thinks that by it he is getting ready for the life beyond; and that ‘nothing can bereave him of the force he made his own, being here.’ The rough ore is turned into steel by being
‘Plunged in baths of hissing tears, And heated hot with hopes and fears, And battered with the shocks of doom.’
And then - what then? Is an instrument, thus fashioned, and tempered and polished, destined to be broken and ‘thrown as rubbish to the void’? Certainly not. If this life is education, as is obvious’ upon its very face, then there is a place where we shall exercise the faculties that we have acquired here, and manifest in loftier forms the characters which here we have made our own.
Now, brethren, if we carry these thoughts with us habitually, what a difference it will make upon everything that befalls us! You hear men often maundering and murmuring about the mysteries of the pain and sorrow and suffering of this world, wondering if there is any loving Will behind it all. That perplexed questioning goes on the hypothesis that life is meant mainly for enjoyment or for material good. If we once apprehended in its all- applicable range this simple truth, that life is a discipline, we should have less difficulty in understanding what people call the mysteries of Providence. I do not say it would interpret everything, but it would interpret an immense deal. It would make us eager, as each event came, to find out its special mission and what it was meant to do for us. It would dignify trifles, and bring down the overwhelming magnitude of the so- called great events, and would make us lords of ourselves, and lords of circumstances, and ready to wring the last drop of possible advantage out of each thing that befell us. Life is a Father’s discipline.
II. Note the guiding principle of that discipline.
‘They... as seemed good to them.’ I have already said that, even in the most wise and unselfish training by an earthly parent, there will -mingle subjective elements, peculiarities of view and thought, and sometimes of passion and whim and other ingredients, which detract from the value of all such training. The guiding principle for each earthly parent, even at the best, can only be his conception of what is for the good of his child; and oftentimes that is not purely the guide by which the parent’s discipline is directed. So the text turns us away from all these incompletenesses, and tells us, ‘He for our profit’ - with no sidelong look to anything else, and with an entirely wise knowledge of what is best for us, so that the result will be always and only for our good. This is the point of view from which every Christian man ought to look upon all that befalls him.
What follows? This, plainly: there is no such thing as evil except the evil of sin. All that comes is good - of various sorts and various complexions, but all generically the same. The inundation comes up over the fields, and men are in despair. It goes down; and then, like the slime left from the Nile in flood, there is better soil for the fertilising of our land. Storms keep sea and air from stagnating. All that men earl evil in the material world has in it a soul of good.
That is an old, old commonplace; but, like the other one, of which I have been speaking, it is more often professed than realised, and we need to be brought back to the recognition of it more entirely than we ordinarily are. If it be that all my life is paternal discipline, and that God makes no mistakes, then I can embrace whatever comes to me, and be sure that in it I shall find that which will be for my good.
Ah, brethren, it is easy to say so when things go well; but, surely, when the night falls is the time for the stars to shine. That gracious word should shine upon some of us in to-day’s perplexities, and pains, and disappointments, and sorrows - ‘He for our profit.’
Now, that great thought does not in the least deny the fact that pain and sorrow, and so-called evil, are very real There is no false stoicism in Christianity. The mission of our troubles would not be effected unless they did trouble us. The good that we get from a sorrow would not be realised unless we did sorrow. ‘Weep for yourselves’ said the Master, ‘and for your children.’ It is right that we should writhe in palm It is right that we should yield to the impressions that are made upon us by calamities. But it is not right that we should be so affected as that we should fail to discern in them this gracious thought - ‘for our profit.’ God sends us many love-tokens, and amongst them are the great and the little annoyances and pains that beset our lives, and on each of them, if we would look, we should see written, in His own hand, this inscription: ‘For your good.’ Do not let us have our eyes so full of tears that we cannot see, or our hearts so full of regrets that we cannot accept, that sweet, strong message.
The guiding principle of all that befalls us is God’s unerring knowledge of what will do us good. That will not prevent, and is not meant to prevent, the arrow from wounding, but it does wipe the poison off the arrow, and diminish the pain, and should diminish the tears.
III. Lastly, here we see the great aim of all the discipline.
The earthly parent trains his son, or her daughter, for earthly occupations. These last a little while. God trains us for an eternal end: ‘that we should be partakers of His holiness.’ The one object which is congruous with a man’s nature, and is stamped on his whole being, as its only adequate end, is that he should be like God. Holiness is the Scriptural shorthand expression for all that in the divine nature which separates God from, and lifts Him above, the creature; and in that aspect of the word the gulf can never be lessened nor bridged between us and Him. But it also is the expression for the moral purity and perfection of that divine nature which separates Him from the creatures far more really than do the metaphysical attributes that belong to His infinitude and eternity; and in that aspect the great hope that is given to us is that we may rise nearer and nearer to that perfect whiteness of purity, and though we cannot share in His essential, changeless being, may ‘walk’ - as befits our limited and changeful natures - ‘in the light, as He’ - as befits His boundless and eternal being - ‘is in the light.’ That is the only end which it is worthy of a man, being what he is, to propose to himself as the issue of his earthly experience. If I fail in that, whatever else I have accomplished, I fail in everything. I may have made myself rich, cultured, learned; famous, refined, prosperous; but if I have not at least begun to be like God in purity, in will, in heart, then my whole career has missed the purpose for which I was made, and for which all the discipline of life has been lavished upon me. Fail there, and, wherever you succeed, you are a failure. Succeed there, and, wherever you fail, you are a success.
That great and only worthy end may be reached by the ministration of circumstances and the discipline through which God passes us. These are not the only ways by which He makes us partakers of His holiness, as we well know. There is the work of that Divine Spirit who is granted to every Believer to breathe into him the holy breath of an immortal and incorruptible life. To work along with these there is the influence that is brought to bear upon us by the circumstances in which we are placed and the duties which we have to perform. These may all help us to be nearer and liker to God.
That is the intention of our sorrows. They will wean us; they will refine us; and they will blow us to His breast, as a strong wind might sweep a man into some refuge from itself. I am sure that among my hearers there are some who can thankfully attest that they were brought nearer to God by some short, sharp sorrow than by many long days of prosperity. What Absalom, in his wayward, impulsive way, did with Joab is like what God sometimes does with His sons. Joab would not come to Absalom’s palace, so Absalom set his corn on fire; and then Joab came. So God sometimes burns our harvests that we may go to Him.
But the sorrow that is meant to bring us nearer to Him may be in vain. The same circumstances may produce opposite effects. I dare say there are people listening to me now who have been made hard, and sullen, and bitter, and paralysed for good work, because they have some heavy burden or some wound that life can never heal, to be carded or to ache. Ah, brethren! we are often like shipwrecked crews, of whom some are driven by the danger to their knees, and some are driven to the spirit-casks. Take care that you do not waste your sorrows; that you do not let the precious gifts of disappointment, pain, loss, loneliness, ill-health, or similar afflictions that come into your. daily life, mar you instead of mending you. See that they send you. nearer to God, and not that they drive you farther from Him. See that they make you more anxious to have the durable riches and righteousness which no man can take from you, than to grasp at what may yet remain, of fleeting: earthly joys.
So, brethren, let us try to school ourselves into the habitual and operative conviction that life is discipline. Let us yield ourselves to the loving will of the unerring Father, the perfect love. Let us beware of getting no good from what is charged to the brim with good. And let us see to it that out of the many fleeting circumstances of life we gather and keep the eternal fruit of being partakers of His holiness. May it never have to be said of any of us that we wasted the mercies which were judgments too, and found no good in the things, that our tortured hearts felt to be also evils, lest God, should have to wail over any of us, ‘In vain have I smitten your children; they have received no correction!’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv5, 6, 11 Jehovah. Pro 3:11; Pro 3:12.
Lord
Jehovah. Pro 3:11; Pro 3:12.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v9 The object of God’s chastening:
The object of God’s chastening:
v. 9. Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence; shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits and live?
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v. 10. For they, verily, for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure, but He for our profit, that we might be partakers of His holiness.
v. 11. Now, no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.
v. 12. Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees,
v. 13. and make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed.
Another consideration of the argument is here introduced: Further, fathers of our flesh we had to discipline us, and we gave them reverence; should we not much rather subject ourselves to the Father of spirits and live? The conclusion is from the smaller to the greater. We Christians, with the average run of humanity, had human fathers, parents of our own flesh and blood, who had charge of our training, including the necessary chastening, which cannot be omitted without disastrous results. To these fathers we gave honor and respect according to the Fourth Commandment. But if we did so much for our earthly fathers, who were, after all, merely human, does it not follow that our attitude toward the heavenly Father, the Father of spirits, whom we worship, with whom we come in contact, in the spirit, should be one of cheerful and obedient subjection? For in doing so, aside from the fact that the duty seems so obvious, this obedient relation toward God, flowing out of faith as it does, gives us the true spiritual life.
That this thought is altogether reasonable, and should appeal to all readers at once, the author now shows: For they, indeed, for a few days disciplined us as it seemed best to them, but He for our advantage, that we may be partakers of His holiness. The truth of the comparison is obvious. The earthly fathers had charge of our training for only a short while, during the short period of childhood and youth, and the training which they gave during this time was certainly done in accordance with the ideals which they had set before them, subject nevertheless, however, to mistakes, especially as to the means employed and the degrees of severity used in various instances. But the discipline of God is without fail, always to our advantage; He never makes a mistake in the kind and in the amount of suffering which He has us endure. For it is by this training that we are brought to that degree of holiness which He desires us to possess. His chastening constantly reminds us of the duty which we owe Him, and we are thus trained in His discipleship more and more.
The author here answers an objection which some reader may make: All discipline, indeed, seems for the time to be not joy, but grief; but afterwards it yields, to those that are disciplined by it, the peaceable fruit of righteousness. The writer has throughout spoken of God’s discipline in a most enthusiastic strain, and his ardor is not dampened by the objection which will tend to arise, at least in the hearts of such as are still weak in faith, that suffering of all kinds is a most unpleasant experience. That, indeed, is true: while the discipline lasts, while God permits the suffering to strike us, it certainly is a matter of pain and not of joy. But without training, correction, wholesome restraint, strict regulations, and an occasional punishment the aim of God cannot be accomplished with regard to His children. It is therefore solely in our interest that He uses this method. The result invariably is that those who are exercised and trained by it will be able to bear such peaceable fruit of righteousness as is well-pleasing to the heavenly Father. It is through this training of the Lord that our faith is rendered pure, true, precious, that we ourselves are thoroughly prepared, strengthened, founded unto eternal salvation, 1Pe 1:6-9; 1Pe 5:10; Rom 8:25; Rom 5:3-5.
This being true, the appeal may be made with full force: Wherefore lift up the listless hands and the paralyzed knees, and make the paths straight for your feet to walk in, that the lame be not turned out of the way, but rather be healed. Listless, nerveless hands and weak, paralyzed knees are not the members which should be found in true Christians, Isa 35:3. Knowing that the Lord always has thoughts of peace with regard to them, they can rely upon His promise, which He will keep without fail, Isa 40:29-31. Instead of walking with unsteady feet, as under the weight of a heavy load, which tends to bear him down to the ground, every Christian should let his feet go straight before him along the path of sanctification as prepared by Christ, swerving neither to the right nor to the left, Pro 4:26-27; Isa 30:21. If this is the case, then also the lame and limping, those Christian brothers that are still weak in the faith, will not be discouraged and turned quite out of the way, but will be given an opportunity of being healed of their spiritual infirmity. If the stronger believers are always firm and steadfast in all matters pertaining to sanctification and the discipleship of Christ, then their example will serve as an aid to the weaker brethren, causing them to follow the Master without doubt and without flinching until they reach the goal above, Isa 35:5-6.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv7, 9 Endure suffering as discipline
Endure suffering as discipline
"Understand that during suffering God teaches us discipline"
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God deals with you as with sons
This compares God disciplining his people to a father disciplining his sons. You can state clearly the understood information. AT: "God deals with you the same way a father deals with his sons" (See: Simile and Ellipsis)
sons ... son
All occurrences of these words may be stated to include males and females. AT: "children ... child" (See: When Masculine Words Include Women)
what son is there whom his father does not discipline?
The author makes the point throught this question that every good father disciplines his children. This can be expressed as a statement. AT: "every father disciplines his children!" (See: Rhetorical Question)
But if you are without discipline, which all people share in
You can restate the abstract noun "discipline" as the verb "disciplining." AT: "So if you have not experienced God disciplining you like he disciplines all his children" (See: Abstract Nouns)
then you are illegitimate and not his sons
Those whom God does not discipline are spoken of as if they are sons born to a man and a woman who are not married each other. (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
endure
suffer
discipline
God
son
ancestor
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv5, 7, 9, 10 12:5-6 In these verses, the encouraging words are quoted…
12:5-6 In these verses, the encouraging words are quoted from Prov 3:11-12, a passage that regards hardship as the Lord’s loving discipline for his children. God can turn a wide variety of trials and difficulties to our good, training us in righteousness and holy character.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.