Purified Through Sufferings

by G. Prasher | Category: General | Jan 1944

It must have been perplexing for Job to lose his family and his wealth, and so speedily thereafter to be smitten down by a loathsome, painful plague of boils. To be bereft of family, wealth and health, one after the other, in rapid sequence, was a trial that might well appear to be beyond the power of endurance. Like a tree that has lost its leaves by the chilly autumn blast, and then its twigs and shoots by the pruner's hand, till blasted and bare it stands, so is Job in the book that bears his name.

His experience undoubtedly led to introspection, for who could be plunged into such depths of grief and pain and fail to look within if perchance he might discover the cause for such affliction? Embarrassed and perplexed though he was in the time of grief and loss, yet we know it was all that he might bear to God the fruit of the Spirit. Job's summer came, and he saw "the end of the Lord, how that the Lord is full of pity, and merciful" (James 5.11). "And the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before" (Job 42.10).

It has been said that "the path of sorrow, and that path alone, leads to the land where sorrow is unknown." Joseph had enjoyed much happy fellowship with his father in the vale of Hebron. Hebron means, joining, and father and son were closely joined in the bonds of love and affection. But how keenly must he have felt the behaviour of his brothers, who envied him, and indeed hated him without a cause! In obedience to his father he went to Shechem to ascertain and report regarding their welfare, but finding they had left there he pursued them as far as Dothan. How their murderous acts then must have filled him with dismay! The pit, the sale for twenty pieces of silver, and their refusal to listen to the pleadings of one distressed in soul (Genesis 42.21), must have tended to induce self-despair. But as Spurgeon said, "The way to the door of faith is through the gate of self-despair." It is in the deepest trials that we come to know God best, and to know Him is life eternal.

Prosperity attended Joseph in his servitude, for Potiphar, recognising his worth, made him overseer of his house. But again a bitter experience is his, and with imputed guilt he must sink in the sea of sorrow. The tale of the heavy load that bore him down is tersely told to the butler in the prison :-" For indeed I was stolen away out of the land of the Hebrews: and here also I have done nothing that they should put me into the dungeon."

"His feet they hurt with fetters

He was laid in chains of iron:

Until the time that His word came to pass;

The word of the LORD tried him" (Psalm 105.18, 19).

The sorrows that overwhelmed him,. that came upon his soul like the billows of a mighty flood, came not by accident, but by design. God was preparing a man to be a preserver of life, a father to Pharaoh of Egypt, and the ruler of all the land. His two sons, Manasseh (making to forget), and Ephraim (to be fruitful), born in the days of his

power, are reminders of how in the end he forgot the toil and sorrow which led to the throne, and rejoiced in the fruit that the harrowing had secured.

As David fled from Saul and exchanged the comforts of home and palace for the rigours of a wilderness, and spent long years in flight and exile, oft must he have wondered why the God of Israel should permit such rancour and injustice by the jealous Saul. Though the anointing oil had been poured upon his head, and his heart had rejoiced in divine recognition and choice, yet in those years of suffering and trial there came a day when David said in his heart: "I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul: there is nothing better for me than that I should escape into the land of the Philistines" (1 Samuel 27 1). Escape he did, but only to descend to deeper woes. Ziklag's blackened ruins might well have left him destitute of hope, but besides, his despairing followers spake of destroying him with stones.

"The young bee," we are informed, "in the earliest stage of existence is shut up in a six-sided cell, with a store of honey on which it feeds. The cell is closed with wax: By degrees the bee consumes the store, grows too large to be contained in the cell, and prepares by a God-given instinct to force its way out. Between it and liberty, however, is the wax that shuts it in as in a prison. By striving and pushing, it at last gets through, and outside finds itself possessed of wings for flight. in the process of struggling through, the delicate membrane by which the gauze-like wings were bound gets rubbed away, and the wings are able to unfurl themselves.

On one occasion a moth managed to get into a hive. It did no damage to the honey or the bees, but simply ate off the layers of wax that sealed the cells, and the young bees were liberated without any struggle or strain. But they appeared without wings that could fly, and were therefore good for nothing and were cast out of the hive."

Had David been spared the struggles and strife of those trying days of rejection a very different person would have appeared in history. The David who adorns the sacred page of Scripture would have been missing. It was the trial that he endured that gave him the wings of faith, and enabled him to rise to God. "David strengthened himself in the Lord his God" (1 Samuel 30.6).

It is God who fills the cup, and apportions the ingredients to the needs of each. -Let us learn to take affliction from the hand of the perfect Dispenser. If we do so aright then we too one day will testify: "It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn Thy statutes." And again: " In faithfulness Thou hast afflicted me." Let us never forget that "it became Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Author of their salvation PERFECT THROUGH SUFFERINGS" (Hebrews 2.10).

G. Prasher | Jan 1944
General