Psalm 119:64-71; Psalm 94:12
The earth, O LORD, is full of thy mercy: teach me thy statutes. Thou hast dealt well with thy servant, O LORD, according unto thy word. Teach me good judgment and knowledge: for I have believed thy commandments. Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept thy word. Thou art good, and doest good; teach me thy statutes. The proud have forged a lie against me: but I will keep thy precepts with my whole heart. Their heart is as fat as grease; but I delight in thy law. It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes.
Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, O LORD, and teachest him out of thy law.
WILLIAM COWPER (1731-1800): He speaks not of that learning which is gotten by hearing or reading of God’s Word; but of the learning which he had gotten by experience; that he had felt the truth and comfort of God’s Word more effectual and lively in trouble than he could do without trouble; which also made him more godly, wise, and religious when the trouble was gone.
R. BEACON (circa 1857): The school of affliction, where the best lessons of faith are learned, is necessary, because even God’s saints do not learn in any other way—at least, few learn deeply, save in that school. Man’s nature being so inveterately evil, few lessons are learnt without tears; the Father has to chasten every son He receives.
OCTAVIUS WINSLOW (1808-1878): The believer, viewing everything God sends in the light of necessary discipline, cheerfully acquiesces to the wisdom and righteousness of the divine procedure. Discipline by trial is an essential element in the Christian’s sanctification and instruction. As a man, our Lord exemplified this truth in His own personal history. We read that, “Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered,” Hebrews 5:8. The lesson Christ learned, was the lesson of obedience to the will of His Father in suffering. As the curse grew before Him to more awful proportions, He came to learn more of the evil of sin and of the difficulties of redemption, and so more deeply the lesson of obedience—doing, and suffering, the will of God. Thus our blessed Lord was perfected through suffering. And this, beloved, is the school in which the “many sons” Christ is bringing to glory, learn submission to the Father’s will.
CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): It is in affliction chiefly that the children of God attain to any considerable eminence in religion.
GEORGE BOWEN (1816-1888): When Jonah came up from the depths of ocean, he showed that he had learned the statutes of God, Jonah Chapter 2. One could not go too deep to get such knowledge as he obtained. Nothing now could hinder him from going to Nineveh…He still, however, needed further affliction; for there were some statutes not yet learned. Some gourds were to wither, and he was to descend into another vale of humiliation, Jonah 4:7. Even the profoundest affliction does not, perhaps, teach us everything; a mistake we sometimes make.
NATHANIEL VINCENT (1639-1697): Saints are great gainers by affliction, because “godliness,” which is “great gain,” is “profitable for all things,” and is more powerful than before. The rod of correction, by a miracle of grace, like that of Aaron’s rod, buds and blossoms, and brings forth the fruits of righteousness, Numbers 17:8.
OCTAVIUS WINSLOW: The discipline which was fitting in the case of Christ, the Head, cannot be without its need and its blessing in the case of us, His members. There are many deep truths of God and many holy lessons of practical Christianity to be learned in the pathway trodden by the Saviour, and they can be learned on no other path than the path of afflictive discipline. But, oh, how needful and how wholesome is this discipline! Who would want to be exempt from it after plucking and tasting the fruit that clusters so richly on the blossoming rod! If submission to the divine will is ever learned, beyond all question it is where Christ learned it—by the things which we suffer.
JOHN FARMER (circa 1744): I shall show the various benefits of affliction, when it is sanctified by the Spirit of God to those persons who are exercised by it. God has made affliction the occasion of converting sinners, and bringing them into a spiritual acquaintance with Christ his Son, see Isaiah 48:10. After conversion, He sanctifies an afflicted state to the saints, to weaken the remains of indwelling sin in them, and make them afraid of sinning against Him in future time. In afflicting the saints, God increases that good work of grace, which His Spirit has implanted in them. He causes His saints to grow in grace, when He corrects them with the rod of sorrow; He assimilates and makes the saints like unto Himself, in a greater degree, by temporal troubles and distresses, Hebrews 12:10,11. God afflicts the saints for the improvement of their knowledge in divine things—to make them better acquainted with the perfections of His nature, and to make them more conformed to Christ His Son. God brings them unto Him with greater nearness and frequency, by prayer and supplication, and oftentimes discovers to the saints, in the season of their affliction, in a clearer manner, that grace which He has implanted in them, and refreshes their souls with the consolations of His Spirit. Lastly, God afflicts the saints, to divide their hearts more from the love of the world, and to make them more meet for heaven.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): A thousand benefits have come to us through our pains and griefs, and among the rest is this—that we have thus been schooled in the law. “That I might learn thy statutes.” These we have come to know, and to keep, by feeling the smart of the rod.
OCTAVIUS WINSLOW: Oh, what holy fruit this is: the will of God accomplished in us! The pathway may be through the furnace, whitened seven-fold with the heat, but your will has become more pliant with the will of your Heavenly Father. If the Christian character has become purified, the graces of the Holy Spirit strengthened, and a wider and freer scope given to faith, hope, and love, then should we not rejoice in tribulation?
J. C. RYLE (1816-1900): Affliction is one of God’s medicines. By it He often teaches lessons which would be learned in no other way. There are no lessons so useful as those learned in the school of affliction.
ABRAHAM WRIGHT (1611-1690): What fools are we then, to frown upon our afflictions! What do we care how bitter that potion be that brings health?
C. H. SPURGEON: We prayed the Lord to teach us, and now we see how He has already been doing it. Truly He has dealt well with us, for He has dealt wisely with us. We have been kept from the ignorance of the greasy-hearted by our trials, and this, if there were nothing else, is just cause for constant gratitude.
CHRISTOPHER FOWLER (1610-1678): “Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, O Lord, and teachest him out of thy law.” Whom God doth correct and teach, him He loves—and he is blessed. Sanctified troubles are tokens of special love.
OCTAVIUS WINSLOW: Thus, when we trace the discipline to its necessity, the chastisement to the evil it was designed to correct, meek and lowly hearts can say, “It is good for me that I have been afflicted.”
J. C. RYLE: Let us beware of murmuring in the time of trouble.
OCTAVIUS WINSLOW: The Son of God drank a deeper, more bitter cup, and trod a more suffering path than you, and yet could say, “Father…not my will, but thine, be done,” Luke 22:42. Will you then shrink from training and discipline, through whose courses God led the Elder Brother and High Priest of our profession?
C. H. SPURGEON: If we would be scholars, we must be sufferers.
