I. They are often experienced. Every true life for Christ, at one step or another, verifies the expression of Paul, “Without are fightings, within are fears.”
1. The restraints may be in the servants. They may be ready to spread the Gospel, but are forbidden to enter the door which is apparently opened, or are afflicted with disease and unable to enter, or are prostrated in their energies by some domestic event and unfit to enter.
2. The restraints may be from those for whom the service is required.
(1) They may become violent against the persons who stand up for the rights of God.
(2) Or the people may be rebellious in heart.
II. The restraints are under the direction of the Lord. He concerns Himself with every matter relating to His kingdom amongst men. The enforced silence and disablement of the prophet and the “gross” heart of the people are controlled for His righteous and good ends.
1. Traces of His working are perceptible. Restraints are felt teaching His suffering servants to be patient, vigilant for Him, and so qualifing for future action and future reward. “If we suffer with Him we are glorified together.”
2. Hopes of His working may be entertained. When men make void His law, that is a time to ask God to do special work.
III. Restraints may be associated with communion between the Lord and His servants. This fact is brought to pass--
1. By a fresh consciousness of God in His service. He seems to come nearer to them, and they say, “Thou holdest me by my right hand.”
2. By a deepened conviction that He who has led them is the same forever.
3. By the power of the Holy Spirit. He takes the things that are Christ’s and shows them to us. He teaches to profit, and we receive power, love, and a sound mind. The efficacy of all true ministry depends on His energy. (D. G. Watt, M. A.)
God’s servants are told what to expect
1. Christ deals fairly, not fraudulently with His; He tells them at first what they must expect; not gold and silver, but bands and chains “They shall bind thee.” He told Jeremiah, they shall fight against him (Jer_1:19). So Paul no sooner is called to preaching, but he hears of suffering (Act_9:16). Christ tells all the apostles that they must be afflicted, hated, killed (Joh_16:2).
2. No excellency exempts a prophet from the malice of men’s tongues and hands.
3. The generality of people are enemies to their own good, and active to their own ruin. The house of Israel, they are against the prophet; they fetter and chain him up, and think they have done well, to make him secure from coming amongst them. And alas, what have they done! thrust away the physician that should cure them; shut out mercy by shutting up a prophet; put out the light. Christ the great Prophet, the people, after all His precious sermons and glorious miracles, cry (Luk_23:18; Luk_23:21).
4. Wicked ones deal severely, cruelly with the prophets when they fall into their hands.
5. Afflictive conditions seldom better men’s spirits. In the case of the Jews here, their wronging of the prophets was the cause of their suffering, and yet all their sufferings did not subdue their spirits, and work them to entertain the truth. The plough breaks the earth in many places, but doth not better it, but leaves it as it was; nothing is put in by the plough.
6. It is no new thing for prophets and ministers to be roughly entreated, and laid by as useless things (1Pe_5:9). (W. Greenhill, M. A.)
Liberty compatible with bodily restraint
When Bishop Hall was, with nine of his episcopal brethren, committed to the Tower on a charge of high treason, in the early days of the Long Parliament, besides preaching, as he had opportunity, on the Sundays, “he wrote a treatise, under the title: “Free Prisoner; or, The Comfort of the Saint,” joyously contrasting the bondage which he endured with that of lust and sinful desires. Madame Guyon took the same happy view of her imprisonment in the Bastille, in which she reckoned herself one of God’s singing birds, whom He had caged there to have pleasure in her music.
