.. that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble.
Divine comfort in tribulation
1. There is no tribulation either for the kind or degree of it, but God can and doth comfort His people therein, and God’s comforts do far exceed all philosophical remedies, as much as the sun doth a glow-worm.
2. It is very useful to know what are these apples of comfort (Son_2:1-17; Son_3:1-11; Son_4:1-16; Son_5:1-16), because many of God’s children--
(1) Are in a great manner ignorant of what foundations and sure grounds they have of comfort. They are like Elisha’s servant, who, though there was a great host of angels to help him, yet did not see them. So that the Spirit of God not only illuminates us in the matter of duty, but also in matter of comfort.
(2) Though they know many arguments of comfort, yet their memory faileth them, that in the very hour of their temptations they forget what comfortable supports they might make use of. So that it is good to preach of these principles of consolation, that thereby we may be remembrancers to you.
3. Come we then to lead you up into the mount of transfiguration, let us see, even in this life, what are the good things God hath prepared for those that love Him. And take this for a foundation, that God comforts through and by the Scriptures.
I. All tribulation is precisely determined by God as a Father out of much love.
1. In regard of the beginning, the degree, and the continuance of it. Here is matter of comfort enough; here is more oil than we have vessels to receive (Mat_5:1-48.; Heb_12:9-10). Now as winter and cold is necessary in its season as well as summer, and the night hath its use as well as the day, a time of tribulation is as necessary as a time of rest and quietness.
2. In regard to the time of deliverance from it. The tribulation shall not stay an hour longer than while it may do good to thee; He will not take one drop of blood more from thee than is necessary to prevent thy disease, or abate it (Rev_2:10). Even as the artificer knoweth how long the gold must be in the fire to take away the dross, and will not suffer it to abide any longer.
II. Another Scripture-cordial is from Christ, with all the fulness that is in him. Christ received by faith is able to make us gather grapes of thorns and figs of thistles. He that hath this sun cannot be in the dark night. What makes Paul (Rom_8:1-39.) to triumph in all manner of tribulations? Is not the foundation of all this Christ dead and Christ risen again? And if He hath given us Christ, how shall He not with Him give us all things? Thus the spiritual influence of Christ into the soul taketh away the bitterness of all troubles.
III. Another Scripture discovery for comfort is to press and command the life of faith upon God’s promise. So that, whatsoever the principles of the world and sense do suggest, yet faith rectifieth all. That finds honey to come out of a dead lion, that can suck honey from a bitter herb. God’s thoughts and ours are wholly different; only faith enableth us to know the mind of God; and where flesh is ready to say, God is casting off and utterly forsaking, there faith seeth Him drawing near. The disciples in a tempest thought they had seen a spirit, and were affrighted, but it was Christ. The promise of God and faith applying it, do bear up the soul, and make it rejoice in troubles (Heb_6:18).
IV. Eternal glory is to be possessed after the troubles (2Co_4:16-17). (A. Burgess.)
Comforting others
Circumstances of life not unfrequently become aids to the revelations of God to the soul. Most of us know how troubles have helped us in the translation of the Bible.
I. Our afflictions and comfortings are the source of our fitness for influencing others.
1. These together bring a peculiar kind of power.
(1) How often the very tone of stricken ones has had its power upon us: They were not morbid; not talking always about their past griefs; but our spirits felt as we listened to them the hallowing influence of the passage through suffering. Compare their conversation with that of those whom God has but seldom and lightly smitten. Take those efforts which are made for the conversion of others; hear also the men of sanctified afflictions. They who have been brought to Christ without any great struggles seldom gain the power to aid the early seekings of others.
(2) Take any endeavour to express sympathy with those who may now be suffering. The unstricken can find beautiful words, but the stricken can express unutterable things in silence.
2. Then it will but be reasonable to expect that if God has valuable influence for us to exert, He will need to bring us through troubles. The same truth shines out, even more clearly, from the life and Cross of Christ. “He is able to succour because in all points tempted.” Should you not, then, bless God for sorrows that win you Christly powers to bless others?
II. Our afflictions and comfortings gain for us all the power of a noble example, There is an unconscious as well as a conscious influence, forming an atmosphere, living in which men insensibly grow better. Sometimes God’s more suffering children become despondent because they can do so little actual work for Christ; but God has done some of His very best things by the example of suffering patience.
1. Estimate the moral influence of sanctified afflictions on men who are living with no sense of spiritual and eternal things. What touches these men? Do sermons? Alas! but faintly. Does Christian life around them? Alas! its witness is too feeble. Does their own part of human trouble? Only a little, for they accept it as their part of the common lot. But in the presence of a sanctified Christian sufferer many a worldly, thoughtless man has said in his heart, “I would gladly change places with him, if I could but know his heart peace.”
2. Then estimate the influence exerted by such on doubting and imperfect Christians. For all of us the Christian life is difficult; it is easy for us all to fall into careless, unworthy living, and into doubt and despair. Now those who have passed under God’s afflictions and comfortings have a higher life; they excite us all to try and reach up to it.
3. Then think of the power exerted by these sanctified sufferers on children. Religion is in this way set before the young as no mere theory, but the very noblest power to sanctify their life. (R. Tuck,B. A.)
Affliction a school of comfort
1. If there is one point of character more than another which belonged to St. Paul it was his power of sympathy. He went through trials of every kind, and this was their issue. He knew how to persuade, for he knew where lay the perplexity; he knew how to console, for he knew the sorrow. His spirit was as some delicate instrument which, as the weather changed about him, accurately marked all its variations, and guided him what to do. “To the Jews he became as a Jew,” etc. (2Co_11:23-30). The same law was fulfilled not only in the case of Christ’s servants, but even He Himself condescended to learn to strengthen man, by the experiencing of man’s infirmities (Heb_2:17-18; Heb_4:14-15).
2. Now, in speaking of the benefits of suffering, we should never forget that by itself it has no power to make us more heavenly. It makes many men morose and selfish. The only sympathy it creates in many is the wish that others should suffer with them, not they with others. The devils are not incited by their own torments to any endeavour but that of making others devils also. It is only when grace is in the heart that anything outward or inward turns to a man’s salvation.
3. And while affliction does not necessarily make us kind, and may even make us cruel, the want of affliction does not mend matters. There is a buoyancy and freshness of mind in those who have never suffered, which, beautiful as it is, is perhaps scarcely suitable and safe in sinful man. Pain and sorrow are the almost necessary medicines of the impetuosity of nature. Without these, men, like spoilt children, act as if they considered everything must give way to their own wishes and conveniences.
4. Such is worldly happiness and worldly trial; but God, while He chose the latter as the portion of His saints, sanctified it. He rescues them from the selfishness of worldly comfort without surrendering them to the selfishness of worldly pain. He brings them into pain, that they may be like Christ, and may be led to think of Him, not of themselves. When they mourn, they are more intimately in His presence than at any other time. Pain, anxiety, bereavement, distress, are to them His forerunners. He who has been long under therod of God becomes God’s possession (Lam_3:1-2; Lam_3:12). And they who see him gather around like Job’s acquaintance, speaking no word to him, yet more reverently than if they did; looking at him with fear yet with confidence, as one who is under God’s teaching” and training for the work of consolation towards his brethren. Him they will seek when trouble comes on themselves; turning from all such as delighted them in their prosperity.
5. Surely this is a great blessing to be thus consecrated by affliction as a minister of God’s mercies to the afflicted. Thus, instead of being the selfish creatures which we were by nature, grace, acting through suffering, tends to make us ready teachers and witnesses of Truth to all men. Time was when, even at the most necessary times, we found it difficult to speak of heaven to another; but now our affection is eloquent, and “out of the abundance of the heart our mouth speaketh.”
6. Such was the high temper of mind instanced in our Lord and His apostles, and thereby impressed upon the Church. And for this we may thank God that the Church has never forgotten that we must all, “through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.” She has never forgotten that she was set apart for a comforter of the afflicted, and that comfort well we must first be afflicted ourselves. Those who are set on their own ease most certainly are bad comforters of others; thus the rich man, who fared sumptuously every day, let Lazarus lie at his gate, and left him to be “comforted” after this life by angels. As to comfort the poor and afflicted is the way to heaven, so to have affliction ourselves is the way to comfort them. (J. H. Newman, D. D.)
Vishal
Affliction
I. As a school of comfort. Affliction and comfort--a remarkable connection of two apparent opposites, and yet how indissoluble! For heavenly, as distinguished from mere earthly gladness, is inseparable from suffering. It was so in the life of Christ; it was immediately after the temptation that angels came and ministered to Him; it was in His agony that the angel strengthened Him. And as in His life so in ours, these two are never separated, for the first earnest questions of personal and deep religion are ever born out of personal suffering. As if God had said, “In the sunshine thou canst not see Me; but when the sun is withdrawn the stars of heaven shall appear.”
II. A school of assurance.
1. There is nothing so hard to force upon the soul as the conviction that life is a real, earnest, awful thing. Only see the butterfly life of pleasure men and women are living day by day, flitting from one enjoyment to another; living, working, spending, and exhausting themselves for nothing else but the seen and temporal and unreal.
2. Nothing is harder than to believe in God. When you are well, when hours are pleasant and friends abundant, it is an easy thing to speculate about God; but when sorrow comes, speculation will not do. It is like casting the lead from mere curiosity, when you have a sound strong ship in deep water. But when she is grinding on the rocks, then we sound for God. For God becomes a living God, a home, when once we feel that we are helpless anti homeless in this world without Him.
III. A school of sympathy.
1. Some Christians are rough, hard, and rude: you cannot go to them for sympathy. They have not suffered. Tenderness is got by suffering. Would you be a Barnabas and give something beyond commonplace consolation to a wounded spirit? then “you must suffer being tempted.”
2. Now here we have a very peculiar source of consolation in suffering. The thought that the apostle’s suffering benefited others soothed him in his afflictions, and this is a consolation which is essentially Christian. Consider how the old Stoicism groped in the dark to solve the mystery of grief, telling you it must be, and that it benefits and perfects you. Yes, that is true enough. But Christianity says much more; it says, Your suffering blesses others; it gives them firmness. Here is the law of the Cross: “No man dieth to himself”; for his pain and loss is for others, and brings with it to others joy and gain. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)
