John Kitto Evening Bible Devotions: April 16

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John Kitto Evening Bible Devotions: April 16


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Visiting the Lord in Trouble

Isa_26:16

There is a sort of people of whom we hear little when they can do without us—when the sun of their prosperity shines out, when their days are happy and their nights joyous—when their purses and barns are full—and when they can, as they suppose, afford to shun and look down upon the friends of their youth and the patrons of their struggling years. But when distress befalls, we hear of them again; once more we are remembered; once more we are most dear friends; their presence again graces our well-frequented doors, and our ears are filled with doleful tales of man’s wrong to man, and our sympathies are claimed by the pitiful tears of self-condolence. How this may strike us—whether with good-humored and forgetful compassion, or with austere repulsion, depends upon circumstances—upon habit of mind or judgment, or perhaps even upon the temper of the moment. But it is to be feared that many who have the most acute perception of the flagrancy of this demeanor, entirely forget that the case is altogether the same with themselves in their approaches to the Lord, who has made and redeemed them. Of such the prophet speaks: “Lord, in trouble have they visited Thee; they poured out a prayer when thy chastening was upon them.” Then, but not till then, not before, they visit Him, they honor Him, they supplicate Him, whom in the day of their prosperity they shunned and neglected. It is often said—it is an ancient observation, which is rendered, by man’s living experience, forever new—that friends flock around us in prosperous times, and flee from us when the evil days come; but it has been less observed, though scarcely less frequent, that the friends who eschewed us in the day of their gladness, repair to us when their trouble comes.

It is often a profitable exercise thus to compare the great difference in our perceptions and judgment when a matter lies between man and man, and when between man and God. Alas for us, if in all things the same measure be meted to ourselves that we deal out to others. But it will not, in this. It may be doubtful how a man—and a good man too—may receive the ungenerous runagates who thus come to him. But there is no question at all how the Lord will receive even those who, after long and insulting neglect., have at last only been driven to Him by the stress of trouble and want. So that they have come at all, He heeds it not. To have come is of itself something. It at least implies confidence in his loving-kindness, his mercy, his overflowing compassion for all that want and suffer; and in his disposition to forget past slights and wrongs in those who have at last come to his door, to cast themselves upon that generous pity which, although a great and just King, He is enabled, in his beloved Son, to show to all that come to Him. Certainly the portals shall be flung wide open for one of these: he shall not want for robe, nor ring, nor sandals; and if the fatted calf be not killed for him, he shall yet, penniless as he is, eat and drink abundantly, without money and without price. The price has been already paid.

If we pray for the afflicted, let us pray not less earnestly for the prosperous and the indulged; they need our prayers not less, but more. It is surely a strong argument for the fact that our ultimate satisfactions are only to be found in the life beyond, that in this life it is never safe for us to be long without sorrow—without some kind of humbling, scourging, or taking down. There we may possess joys measureless and unutterable, without stint, and yet without peril; but here we cannot. And therefore it is, that the Lord who knows our frame so well, and remembers that we are but dust, takes care that those who are dear to Him, shall not, for any long time, be without the wholesome discipline of His chastening hand. It is his appointed means of bringing his wanderers home; and it is effectual by reason of that appointment, and not from any inherent quality of affliction, which apart from its appointed use as a means, under the controlling grace of the Spirit, would tend rather, like the repeated action of fire upon iron, to harden the heart and deaden its sensibilities; and it is only in the hand of the Spirit that they can have a contrary effect. The child sporting in the street flees to his home when he has received an injury or a hurt, or when peril appears; and it is his previous knowledge that it is his home—that it is the only place in his little world where he can reckon upon safety, and where he is sure of protection and condolence, that gives this direction to his steps. So it is not the alien and the stranger whom affliction drives to God for refuge, but those who have already known Him as their Father, and have learned that his house, from which they have wandered, is their true home and certain refuge.

In reference to the text we have chosen, a plain but sensible and pious writer remarks—“Even those who know and serve God, may become remiss and careless in prayer and in other duties, until God is pleased to reprove them for their sins, and to correct them for their profit. They may preserve the form, while destitute of the spirit of prayer; they may draw nigh to God with their lips, while their hearts are far from him; and they may seldom visit the throne of grace, and God may have their homage only on particular occasions. In the pleasant day of prosperity we are too prone, like the generation of Israel, to say to God, ‘We are lords, we will come no more unto Thee;’ and in this manner to discover our insensibility to the Divine goodness. But when the gloom of adversity arrives, and every refuge fails, then we are ready to exclaim with David, ‘O Lord, I said, Thou art my refuge and my portion in the land of the living’—Psa_142:5.” Note: Macculoch, Lectures on the Prophecies of Isaiah. London, 1794. Vol. ii. p. 451. To the same author we are indebted for the suggestion, that although God is frequently said to visit men, the expression of men’s visiting God is peculiar to the passage now before us. “It seems to import, that in the time of distress the church remembered the Lord; they looked towards his holy habitation; they had immediate recourse for necessary support and reasonable relief to Him who is a refuge in affliction, and a present help in time of need.”