GOD-SENT TRIALS
Based on an address at the Tabernacle School of Theology 1998 by Dr Joel R BeekeFROM SWORD & TROWEL 1999 No 1
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who
are the called according to his purpose . . . Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall
tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?. . . Nay, in all
these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us (Romans 8.28, 35-37).
WHAT DID THE Puritans say about handling affliction, and dealing with it in a
Christian way? The Puritans thought about affliction very differently than we do today. They did not
long for a minimal amount of affliction. They were concerned with ‘improving’ affliction, or putting it
to good use.
Puritans looked at the Christian life much as a watchmaker looks at a watch. They wanted to
see things from God’s perspective. If you prise off the back of your watch you find a mass of wheels,
some turning clockwise, some anti-clockwise. It looks a muddle. But if you turn the watch over, you
see the second hand ticking round in perfect timing. This illustrates the Puritan view of how God
operates in the life of a Christian. From our point of view, one wheel goes one way, and another the
opposite way. Providences seem to contradict promises, and conflict with each other. We ask, ‘Why is
this happening?’ But if we could see it all from God’s perspective, we would observe the face of the
watch and say, ‘It is just the way God wants it to be.’
This is what Paul is saying in those famous words of Romans 8 - ‘All things
work together for good.’ He means both good and bad things. Good things work for us - including
God’s attributes, His glory, His promises, the work and Person of His Son, His covenant and all the
benefits that it entails. All good things work together for good. But also all seemingly evil things, such
as apparent divine desertion, temptation, affliction, and even sin, are overruled for our good.
The Heidelburg Catechism puts it this way: ‘He sends whatever evil befalls me
in this valley of tears to turn out to my advantage. For He is able to do it, being almighty God, and
willing, being a faithful Father.’
Someone may say, ‘But if you knew my afflictions you would think differently. I have more
afflictions than I can bear. I cannot take anymore.’
Oh yes you can, because God has promised that He will not place more upon you than you
are able to bear. In the light of this it is helpful to know how affliction can work together for our good.
Affliction is something that no one likes, not even the Puritans. ‘Affliction,’ said Ralph
Erskine, ‘is the tail of which the head is sin.’ Puritans held that affliction has to be ‘exercised’ in order
to benefit us. If there is no exercising, affliction has an evil outcome. Unsanctified affliction makes
people bitter and resentful. What we need is affliction which is exercised and sanctified by the Spirit
of God. But what does the Spirit do in exercising and sanctifying affliction? Here is the typical Puritan
outlook -
1. Affliction humbles. Through it, the Lord shows us what we really are in
ourselves. When He brings us into the furnace and the cellar of affliction, then we really see our
corrupt nature, apart from divine grace. Richard Sibbes said that affliction takes away the fuel that
feeds our pride. In Deuteronomy 8.15-16 we read, ‘Who led thee through
that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought . . . who fed
thee in the wilderness with manna, which thy fathers knew not, that he might humble thee, and that he
might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end.’
Our greatest enemy is not the devil, but ourselves. What we need most of all is the conquest
of self. To secure this, we need to know ourselves, and then we may be brought under submission to
God, and to His Word and His will. Self-esteem is a great problem today, not because we have too
little of it, but because we have too much of it.
In affliction God strips away that ugly pride and puts our priorities right. A Christian who is
greatly afflicted is not a shallow man, dealing flippantly with life. He is a humbled person, formed and
moulded after the pattern of Christ. The Puritans used to speak of fruit-laden trees being the most
beneficial because they hung lowest to the ground. When they are afflicted, Christians hang low to the
ground, but their lives are filled with fruit.
2. Because God uses affliction to cause us to search our lives, we see the character
of sin more clearly. By character we mean not so much its consequences, as its soul-defiling nature.
Thomas Watson said, ‘Sin has the devil for its father, shame for its companion and death for its
wages.’ Sin is an attack upon the heart, and upon the attributes of God. We find this out in affliction.
Bunyan said, ‘Sin is the daring of God’s justice, the raping of His power, the contempt of His love and
the jeering of His patience.’
It is as though the Holy Spirit comes in our afflictions with a candle and walks inside our
hearts, going to every crack and crevice, and He pulls out hidden sins that we were not even aware of.
He finds sins of motivation, and of failure to love God above all else, and our neighbours as ourselves.
William Bridge put it this way - ‘The sins of God’s people are like birds’ nests. As long as
there are leaves on the tree, and times of prosperity, you cannot see them. But in the winter-time of
affliction when the leaves are off, the nests appear plainly.’ When affliction is sanctified to us our sins
jump out at us, and we learn to hate them. ‘Affliction,’ said Puritan Daniel Cawdrey, ‘is the
shepherd’s dog sent out not to devour the sheep, but to nip at their heels and bring them back in the
right way again.’
David expressed it in these words: ‘Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept
thy word’ (Psalm 119.67). The Christian needs winter-times of affliction if he is to
experience spring blossoming, summer growing, and autumn harvesting.
‘A sanctified affliction is like a silver bell,’ said George Swinnock. ‘The Christian is one
whom the harder he is smitten the better he sounds.’
Stephen Charnock added - ‘We learn often more under God’s rod that strikes us, than the
staff that comforts us.’
Richard Baxter said, ‘The good shepherd is not drowning His sheep when He washes them,
nor killing them when He shears them. Rather His washes are needed cleansings, His shearings are
necessary strippings, His corrections are essential lessons.’
3. A further use by the Lord of afflictions is to conform us to Jesus Christ, and to
shape us according to His image. Hebrews 12.10 tells us that we are chastened ‘for our
profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness’. Puritan John Trapp said, ‘God had one Son without
sin, but no sons without affliction.’ ‘The Father’s afflicting rod,’ said Thomas Watson, ‘is God’s
pencil to draw on you the image of Christ more fully.’
The Puritan ideal is that in every affliction we ought to stop and think, ‘Our Saviour has
travelled this way before us. He was tempted and tried in all points like as we are. He has overcome.
He has sanctified that pathway to the way of the cross, and in this we see a pledge that no affliction or
trial shall separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. In affliction, therefore,
we are to rejoice and count it joy. We are to take His yoke upon us, for it is easy and His burden is
light.’
George Whitefield said of Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, ‘I smell the
prison upon its pages, because from out of the prison flows the fragrance of Christ.’ That is the way to
look at affliction.
How can we complain about the light crosses that we have to bear, when we
meditate upon the heavy cross that Christ had to bear? He was the innocent sufferer, we
are the guilty sinners. How can we complain when God overrules all our sufferings to make us more
Christ-like?
God uses affliction also as a means of bringing us back into communion with Him, and to
keep us close by His side. ‘In their affliction they will seek me early,’ says the Lord in Hosea
5.15. Thomas Brooks expressed the point in these words: ‘All the stones that came about
Stephen’s ears did but knock him closer to Christ, the chief corner-stone.’ Another Puritan said,
‘Manasseh’s chains were more profitable to him than his crown for they chained him close to God.’
4. The Holy Spirit also uses afflictions for our good because they magnify spiritual
comfort and joy. The one is balanced by the other. In Heaven there will be no more sorrow, no more
night, no more need for affliction. But here, we need this balance. George Swinnock said, ‘God gives
gifts that we may love Him, and stripes that we may fear Him, and yea, many times He mixes His
frowns with His favours as we have need.’
David said, ‘For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure
for a night, but joy cometh in the morning’ (Psalm 30.5). Jesus said to His disciples, ‘But
your sorrow shall be turned into joy’ (John 16.20). In Hosea 2.14 God says,
‘Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto
her.’ Paul says, ‘For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by
Christ’ (2 Corinthians 1.5).
5. Another accomplishment of affliction is to effect faith. It keeps us walking by
faith and not by sight. What would we be like if we had no affliction in this world? What if the life of
the Christian were composed only of enjoyment? We would surely live for this life. As
the old divines used to say, the tent stakes of our lives would go too deeply into earthly soil. Instead of
being tenants here, we would build solid homes. Instead of looking ‘for a city which hath foundations,
whose builder and maker is God,’ we would live out our lives for this world.
In adversity God’s people experience what it means to live by faith. John Flavel said that
when his colleagues had been cast into prison, God gave so much grace that they were loathe to come
out. Said Flavel, ‘Look upon your troubles on the inside more than the outside.’ To look on the outside
of an affliction is a frightening and horrible thing. But we must look on the inside, not by
sight, but by faith, to see what God intends them to accomplish. Then troubles become songs in stocks
and dungeons.
6. Finally, afflictions work together for good in weaning us from the world.
Thomas Watson said, ‘A dog never bites those who live in its house, only strangers.’ Affliction often
bites believers because they live as strangers to the ways of God. They are too much at home with the
ways of man. Watson also said, ‘God would have us living in this world lightly.’
Affliction is profitable to prepare us for a heavenly inheritance. Affliction elevates our souls
heavenward. Affliction paves our way for glory. ‘For our light affliction,’ says the apostle, ‘which is
but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory’ (2
Corinthians 4.17).
John Trapp put it this way: ‘He that rides to be crowned, needs not much to fear a rainy
day.’ The Puritans viewed affliction as being perfectly designed for each believer.
‘God is our tailor,’ said one, ‘and He tailor-makes every trial He sends our way.’ George Downame
said, ‘The Lord does not measure out our afflictions according to our faults but according to our
strength, and looks not at what we have deserved, but at what we are able to bear.’
What a way to look at affliction! Concerning it, the Puritans trusted God supremely,
realising that affliction would not kill them spiritually. ‘Adversity,’ said one Puritan, ‘hath slain his
thousands but prosperity his ten thousands.’ Prosperity is more dangerous than adversity for a
Christian.
Another Puritan, John Downey, said, ‘Think it not evil of God to put much weight on your
shoulders. It is only His signal that you have not slender shoulders. It is your badge of honour and not
your sign of defeat. For He will not put upon you more than you are able to bear. Do not be so afraid
of affliction. Be more afraid of sinning in it, than having it come to you.’
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