Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2676
“You shall forget your misery, and remember it as waters that pass away.” Job 11:16.
JOB’S misery was extreme and it seemed as if he could never forget it. He never did forget the fact of it, but he did forget the pain of it. That he had been utterly miserable would always remain recorded upon the tablets of his memory, but the wretchedness itself would not remain. It would be so entirely removed that it should be as a thing that has been altogether forgotten. Nothing better can happen to our misery than that it should be forgotten in the sense referred to in our text, for then, evidently, it will be clean gone from us. It will be as it is when even the scent of the liquor has gone out of the cask, when even the flavor of the bitter drug lingers no longer in the medicine glass, but has altogether disappeared. So is it with the sorrow that has so effectually gone out of the mind that it is just as though it had never been there.
If anyone here is in misery of any kind—whether it is misery of physical pain, or misery of need, or misery of soul on account of sin, or the loss of the light of God’s Countenance—I can only pray for you, dear Friend, that you may speedily forget your misery and only remember it as waters that pass away. The thing goes to be done—it is quite possible, and you may expect it. If you look carefully at the connection of our text and give earnest attention to the matter, I do not doubt that you will experience this blessed forgetfulness. When we are in pain of body and depression of spirit, we imagine that we never shall forget such misery as we are enduring. The sharp plowshare has gone down so deeply that we think it has made a mark in the soul that can never be erased. We seem to lie all broken in pieces, with our thoughts like a case of knives cutting into our spirit, and we say to ourselves, “We never shall forget this terrible experience.” And yet, by-and-by, God turns the palm of His hand towards us and we see that it is full of mercy. We are restored to health, or lifted up from depression of spirit and we wonder that we ever made so much of our former suffering or depression. We remember it no more, except as a thing that has passed and gone, to be remembered with gratitude that we have been delivered from it, but not to be remembered so as to leave any scar upon our spirit, or to cause us any painful reflection whatever. “You shall forget your misery, and remember it as waters that pass away.”
I. I am not going to limit the application of the text to Job and his friends, for it also has a message for many of us at the present time. And I shall take it, first, WITH REFERENCE TO THE COMMON TROUBLES OF LIFE WHICH AFFECT BELIEVING MEN AND WOMEN.
These troubles of life, more or less, happen to us all. They come to one in one shape and, perhaps, he thinks that he is the only man who has any real misery. Yet they also come to others, though possibly in another form. There is certainly a cross for every shoulder to bear. Simon must not bear the cross alone and all the rest go free. There is no road to Heaven without its stones, or without its Hill Difficulty. And I think that there are few pilgrims from the City of Destruction who get to the Celestial City without passing through the Valley of Death and having to fight with giants and even with Apollyon, himself. Cowper truly wrote—
“Thepath of sorrow, and that path alone, Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown.”
There is much joy in true religion. Wisdom’s “ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her and happy is everyone that retains her.” But, still, notwithstanding the joy, in addition to it there is sorrow. There is misery lurking close by the Believer’s pathway and it is always ready to pounce upon him somewhere between here and Heaven. The Lord of the pilgrims was “a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” And His disciples must expect to fare even as their Master fared while here below—it is enough for the servant if he is as his Lord.
You, dear Friends, who are just now enduring misery, should seek to be comforted under it. Perhaps you will ask me, “Where can we get any comfort?” Well, if you cannot draw any from your present experience, seek to gather some from the past. You have been miserable before, but you have been delivered and helped. There has come to you a most substantial benefit from everything which you have been called to endure. You must be conscious that when you think of your troubles, you can say, with Hezekiah, “O Lord, by these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit: so will You recover me, and make me to live.” Or you can say, with the Psalmist, “Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept Your word.” I believe that, very often, God sends His very choicest love tokens to us in black-edged envelopes—and many a time has it happened that the great rumbling wagons of tribulation have been those which have brought the heaviest weight of treasure to the doors of the saints! Do we ever learn much without the rod? I fear we do not. Most of us are quickest learners, I think, when we smart the most. Well, then, if affliction has been profitable in the past, let us rest assured that it will be so in the future.