Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 528
Hebrews 12:11.
LAST Sunday morning we tried to show you how the uncleanness of sin is removed. By the application of the blood of Christ the guilt of sin is cleansed—by the water which flowed with the blood from the side of Jesus defilement is taken away forever. Our work this morning is to consider the destruction of the power of sin. This is a work which rests in the hands of God the Holy Spirit and is not comprehended under the head ofjustification, but of sanctification. Beware, my Brothers and Sisters, lest you mix these two different things. It is in the sense of sanctification that the trials and afflictions of this life have the blessed influence of purging us from sin.
It were a very great error to imagine that affliction ever cleans us from the guilt of sin. For if we could be afflicted with all the pangs of the lost spirits in Hell, and that forever, not a single spot of sin would be washed away by all our miseries and tears. Nor are we saved from the pollution of sin by our trials. Our conscience must be purged from dead works by the blood of Jesus alone. If the wedge of gold which Achan stole were accursed, you might have thrust it into the fire as many times as you would, but it would have been accursed still. There were fiery serpents which bit the children of Israel. Their way was long and their journey tedious, but yet I find that they needed the ashes of the red heifer, because that purification did for them what affliction could not do.
No amount of affliction can avail, either to take away the guilt or the defilement of sin. It is in this sense that Kent sings—
“With afflictions He may scourge us, Send a Cross for every day Blast our gourds but not to purge us From our sins as some would say— They were numbered On the Scapegoat’s head of old.”
Yet, as we have said, if you separate between sanctification and justification and make a clear distinction between the indwelling power of sin and the guilt of it, then you may clearly perceive the place which affliction holds. When the Holy Spirit acts as Christ’s representative and sits as a refiner, His furnace is affliction, the trials and troubles through which we have to pass are the glowing coals which separate the precious from the vile. They are, through Divine Grace, the means of restraining and destroying in us the tremendous power of indwelling sin until the day shall come when the blessed Spirit shall take away from us all corruption. And consequently, we shall need no more affliction.
Coming at once to the text, we shall notice, first, the outward appearance of our trials, or SORE CHASTISEMENTS. Secondly, the result of our chastening, or BLESSED FRUITFULNESS. And, thirdly, the characters benefited by these exercises, or FAVORED SONS.
I. First, we have very clearly in the text, SORE CHASTISEMENTS.
1. Keeping literally to the words of the text, we observe that all which carnal reason can see of our present chastisement is but seeming. “No chastisement for the present seems to be joyous, but grievous.” All that flesh and blood can discover of the quality of affliction is but its outward superficial appearance. We are not able by the eye of reason to discover what is the real virtue of sanctified tribulation. This discernment is the privilege of faith. Brethren, how very apt we are to be deceived by seemings! Why, to our senses, even natural things are too high for us. The world seems to stand still and yet we know, without any faith, that it is always moving.
The sun seems to climb the heights of Heaven and then to descend and hide himself in the west, and yet we are sure that the sun is fixed in his sphere. When the sun is setting, he seems larger than when he shone in his zenith, but we are well aware, in this case, that the seeming is not the truth and that the sun is no broader at his setting than when he was shining in the highest Heaven. Now, if even in natural things the seeming is not the truth, and the appearance is very often false, we may rest quite sure that though affliction seems to be one thing, it really is not what it seems to be. Understand that all that you can know about trial, by mere carnal reason, is no more reliable than what you can discover by your feelings concerning the motion of the earth.
Nor, dear Friends, are our seemings at all likely to be worth much when you recollect that our fear, when we are under trouble, always darkens what little reason we have! I remember one so nervous that when going up the Monument, he assured me that he felt it shake. It was his own shaking, not the shaking of the Monument. But he was fearful and timid at climbing to an unusual height. When you and I under trial get so afraid of this, and afraid of that, that we cannot trust the eyesight of the flesh, we may rest assured of this, that “things are not what they seem.”