Preparations for Sufferings

Today’s “God” is a warm and fuzzy,
friendly and sensitive, touchy and feely
sort of fellow who bestows health, wealth,
fame and fortune upon all who believe in
him. This beguiling postmodern god is a
force for good, promotes peace, and knows
how to make friends and influence people. He
is a leader of the highest caliber, a
wonderful role model, and a charismatic man
who had good ideas for living. Surely a nice
god like this will not let anything bad
happen to his people.

We know from Scripture that this is not so.
While we flock to doctrines like these –
that placate the emotions, calm the fears
and please our desires – we miss the real
attributes of God that are revealed to us
from Scripture. It is important to know God
in Scripture when we are under trials,
tribulations, threats, revilings and
persecutions.

In Chapter 2 of his great work

Preparations for Sufferings** (circa
1600s)[1],
John Flavel explains:

“The mercies and compassions of God over His
people are exceeding great and tender, Psalm
103:13:
“Like as a father pitieth His children, so
the LORD pitieth them that fear Him.”
He delights not in afflicting and grieving
them, Lamentations 3:33:
“For he
doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the
children of men.” The Scripture
intimates to us a seeming conflict betwixt
the justice and mercy of God, when He is
about to deliver up His people into their
enemies’ hands, Hosea 11:8…:
“How shall
I give thee up, Ephraim? How shall I deliver
thee, Israel? How shall I make thee as Admah?
How shall I set thee as Zeboim? mine heart
is turned within me, my repentings are
kindled together.”[2]
Which shews us with what reluctance and
great unwillingness the Lord goes about such
a work as this.

The work of Judgment is His
strange
work, it pleases Him better to
execute the milder attribute of mercy
towards His children. Hence we find, when He
is preparing to execute His judgments, that
He delays the execution as long as the
honour of His name and safety of His people
will permit, Jeremiah 44:23.[3]


He bears till He can bear no longer: He
often turns away His wrath from them, Psalm
78:38-39.[4]


He tries them by lesser judgments and
gentler corrections to prevent greater, Amos
4:6.[5]


When His people are humbled under the
threatenings of His wrath, His heart is
melted into compassion to them, Jeremiah
31:17,20.[6]


And whenever His mercy prevails against
judgment, it is with joy and triumph, James
2:13:

“Mercy rejoiceth against judgment.“

Flavel then makes the most amazing
observation, particularly discomfiting to
our modern sensibilities, especially just at
the point we are becoming acclimated to the
feminine goddess imageries[7]
about God such as appear in

The Shack:

Seneca, though a heathen, could say, that
God loves His people with a masculine love,
not with a womanish indulgence and
tenderness: If need require, they shall be
in heaviness through manifold temptations, 1
Peter 1:6.[8]
He had rather their hearts should be heavy
under adversity, than vain and careless
under prosperity; the choicest spirits have
been exercised with the sharpest sufferings,
and those that now shine as stars in heaven
have been trod under foot as dung on the
earth.

I Cor. 4:11-13:

“We are fools for Christ’s sake, but ye are
wise in Christ; we are weak, but ye are
strong; ye are honourable, but we are
despised. Even unto this present hour we
both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and
are buffeted, and have no certain
dwellingplace; And labour, working with our
own hands: being reviled, we bless; being
persecuted, we suffer it:”

Flavel notes that the “eleventh chapter to
the Hebrews is a compendium of the various
and greivous sufferings of the primitive
saints,”[9]
and recounts various persecutions suffered
by the martyrs. In the 1600s persecution was
fresh on the minds of those who recalled
ravages of the various winds of trials that
raged during the early Reformation. He
observes that the

land, indeed, hath enjoyed a long rest, and
this generation is acquainted with little
more of martyrdom, than what the histories
of former times inform us of: But yet let no
man befool himself with a groundless
expectation of continuing tranquility….
Though millions of precious saints have shed
their blood for Christ, whose souls are now
crying under the altar,
How long,
Lord! how long![10]
yet there are many more coming on behind in
the same path of persecution, and much
Christian blood must yet be shed, before the
mystery of God be finished.

How Shall We Then Escape?

Here is the crux of the matter. Shall you
suffer or sin? Flavel explains that “God may
be said to call forth His people to suffer,
when He so hedgeth them in by providence,
that there is no way to escape suffering,
but by sinning.” He reiterates, “[W]hen our
way is so shut up by providence, that we
cannot avoid suffering, but by stepping over
the hedge of the command, God will have us
to look upon that exigence as His call to
suffer.” In other words, we may soon enter a
very clear situation where to obey God means
that we must suffer. God could put us in a
situation where we must take a biblical
stand, obey Him, and suffer the
consequences.

There are any number of ways that we can
escape suffering, but they aren’t biblical.
It certainly is easy in our day and age,
perhaps easier than it has ever been before
in human history, to willfully step over
that hedge and sin, rather than to stand and
suffer. Here is how it works: We are tempted
every day to compromise with biblical Truth!
Each small decision to go our own way, each
reinterpretation of the Word to suit our
desires, each disregard of God’s call to
obedience, each reinvention of who God is,
takes us one step away from being able to
endure trials.
If we are
doing this, we are walking in the wrong
direction!

David Wilkerson recently observed how easy
this happens in his poignant newsletter
message titled “It’s Time to Get Right With
God!”[11]:

Jesus warned that many believers would turn
away and grow cold:
“Because
iniquity shall abound, the love of many
shall wax cold” (Matthew 24:12). His
message is clear: Many who have been on fire
for the things of God are going to fall
away. They will drift into a spiritual
coldness. And some will turn to their old
fleshly ways. When will this happen? It will
take place at a time Jesus called
“the
beginning of sorrows” (24:8).

All of the backsliding we see today — the
turning away from faith to unbelief — comes
at a time when you would least expect it.
Rather, you would expect people to be
drawing nearer to God. We are at the
beginning of those days of
“great
sorrows” that Jesus referred to. Even
prominent voices in the world agree: These
are days of unspeakable wickedness, marked
by uncontrollable greed, rampant sexual
perversions, multitudes giving themselves
over to addictions of all kinds, from drugs
to alcohol to pornography.

Pastor Wilkerson continues on with a strong
call to believers, a very sober warning:

I ask you: Is today the time to neglect the
day of salvation? Absolutely not! If you
ever truly loved and followed Jesus but now
are cold and indifferent, the Holy Spirit is
speaking to you. He is inviting you to come
back to the merciful arms of Christ. With
compassion, I urge you to listen to what the
Holy Spirit is saying. He who has ears to
hear, let him hear.

Some who have backslidden tell themselves,
“I can get right with the Lord any time I
choose. I’m just not ready. I’m not mad at
God; I just need time with my friends, time
to enjoy myself. I know God is loving and
merciful. When I’m ready, I’ll come to him.
I’ll know when that time is.” I hear these
thoughts especially among young people who
are drifting away.

The Holy Spirit has compelled me to show you
the danger of coldness….
Spiritual
coldness leads to hardness of heart.
The term “hardness” indicates a condition
that is beyond the influence of any gracious
pleadings, any persuading from the Holy
Spirit. It begins with coldness — a
self-imposed exclusion from God, with no
intention of obeying the call of his gospel.
For those who continue in coldness to God’s
voice — who keep distant from the Holy
Spirit — hardness is the result.

This is a sober message with serious
ramifications. It isn’t something to
consider lightly. Flavel notes that

how well soever [God] loves [his people], He
will not indulge or patronize their sins; if
they will be so disengenuous to abuse His
favours, He will be so just to make them
suffer for their sins, and by those very
sufferings will provide for His own glory,
which was by them clouded in the eyes of the
world. He hates not sin a jot the less,
because it is found in His own people, Amos
3:2.[12]

And though, for the magnifying of His mercy,
He will pardon their sins, yet for the
clearing of His righteousness, He will take
vengeance upon their inventions, Psalm 99:8.[13]

This description obviously does not match up
with the modern god of semantic gymnastics
and clever disguises. It doesn’t fit with
the god who begs, “Can’t ‘we all get
along?'”[14]
and uses man’s machinations for
spiritual causes. This description of God
and his sovereignty is found in God’s Word.
How we respond to trials is directly
affected by our understanding about God and
His attributes. But more on that in the next
post…

Before continuing on with this series, may
we each pause to regard the condition of our
hearts and take immediate steps to repent
and walk in obedience to God’s commands in
His Word.

The Truth:

“For he
saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted,
and in the day of salvation have I succoured
thee: behold, now is the accepted time;
behold, now is the day of salvation.”
(2 Corinthians 6:2)