Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2374
“Blessed is the man whom You chasten, O LORD, and teach out of Your Law; that You may give him rest from the days of adversity, until the pit is dug for the wicked. For the LORD will not cast off His people, neither will He forsake His inheritance. But judgment shall return unto righteousness: and all the upright in heart shall follow it.” Psalm 94:12-15.
THERE are times when the wicked seem to have things all their own way. This earth is not the realm of final justice—we are not yet standing before the Lord’s great Judgement Seat. God permits many things to be, for a while, in confusion. They who are highest with Him are often lowest with men and, those for whom He has no regard seem to heap up the treasures of the world till their eyes stand out with fatness, and they have more than heart can wish! Let no child of God be astonished at this arrangement. It has often been so in the past and it has been the great enigma that has puzzled the world. The children of God have also sat down and looked into it, but it has been, even to them, a great deep which they could not fathom. They have sighed over it, but their sighs have not altered the facts. It is still true that often the wicked triumph and the servants of iniquity delight themselves in the high places of the earth. The righteous need not wonder that they suffer, now, for that has been the lot of God’s people all along, and there have been certain times in human history when God has seemed to be altogether deaf to the cries of His suffering people. Remember the martyr age and the days of the Covenanters, who were hunted upon the mountains like the partridge. You must not wonder if the easy places of the earth are not yours and if the sentinel’s stern duties should fall to your lot. It is so, and so it must be, for God has so ordained it.
To comfort any of the Lord’s children who have begun to worry themselves because things do not go with them as they desire, I have selected this text, and I pray the Lord to bless it to them.
I. First, I shall ask you to notice that GOD’S CHILDREN ARE UNDER INSTRUCTION.
Other children may run about and take holiday. They may wander into the woods, gather the flowers and do very much what they like, but God’s own children have to go to school. This is a great privilege for them, although they do not always think so. Children are not often good judges of what is best for themselves. No doubt we should like to play the truant—we should be very glad to put away our schoolbags, quit the schoolhouse, go out by ourselves and wander at our own sweet will—but our heavenly Father loves us too well to let it be so with us. Because we are His children, therefore He will have us trained and prepared for that high destiny which awaits us, by-and-by.
Note how this tuition is described in our text. The very first word concerning it is, “chasten.” “Blessed is the man whom You chasten, O Lord, and teach,” as if the chastening were the primary part of the teaching, as if it occupied so large a share of it that it was put first. “Blessed is the man whom you chasten, O Lord, and teach.” In God’s school house the rod is still extant—with the Lord, chastening is teaching. He does not spoil His children, but chastens them, yes, even unto scourging, as the Apostle puts it. His chastening is the most severe with those whom He loves best—“Whom the Lord tenderly loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives.” Some of us know what it is to have this teaching by chastening. I have often told you that I am afraid I have never learned anything of God except by the rod and, in looking back, I am afraid that I must confirm that statement. I have forgotten some of the gentle lessons, but when they have been whipped into me, I have remembered them.
I met with a friend the other day who said that it was the very reverse with him. He could not remember any benefit that he had ever gained by chastening and he thought that all the good he had received from the Lord had come to him by tenderness and prosperity. I did not argue with him about the matter, for the experiences of God’s people may differ, but this I know, dear Friends, that some of us have learned much from the Lord’s chastening rod!
For instance, we have learned the evil of sin. “Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept Your Word.” There are some sorrows that evidently come as the result of our own folly. We have to reap the harvest of the seed that we sow and, by this process we are made to see that it is an exceedingly evil and bitter thing to sin against God. This is an important lesson. I wish that more had thoroughly learned it. I wish that some Christian professors had anything like a true idea of the exceeding sinfulness of sin, but I believe that instruction upon this point often comes from the chastening hand of God.