August 7

"And if they be bound in fetters, and are held in cords of affliction; then he shows them their work, and their transgressions that they have exceeded. He opens also their ear to discipline, and commands that they return from iniquity." Job 36:8-10.

The very discipline which a covenant God employs with His child proves the existence and reality of grace in the soul. It is not the lifeless branch that He prunes, it is not the spurious one that He puts in the furnace. When He takes His child in hand to deal with him, it is with a view of drawing forth the grace which He has first implanted in the soul. The very trial of faith supposes the existence of faith; and the trial of any one grace of the Spirit supposes the previous indwelling of that grace in the believer. No man goes to a dry well to draw water from it; no man goes to a bank, in which he has made no previous deposit, to draw money from it. When God, the spiritual husbandman of the church, comes into His garden, and walks amid the "trees of righteousness," and in His sovereignty marks one here and another there for discipline, for pruning, whom does He select for this blessed purpose, but the trees which He has Himself planted? Jesus has declared that every plant which His heavenly Father has not planted shall be rooted up! And have we not often seen the solemn fulfillment of this threatening in the case of graceless professors?—the first blast of temptation has carried them away. God, perhaps, has brought them into deep trial; the storm of adversity has fallen upon them; death has snatched away the "desire of their eyes with a stroke;" riches have taken wings and flown away; character has been assailed; temptations have overtaken them; and what has been their end? We look for their religion—it has fled away like the chaff of the threshing-floor before the sweeping hurricane; their profession—it is all gone; their prayers—they have evaporated into empty air. The solemn "place of the holy," that knew them, knows them no more; the furnace tested the ore, and it proved nothing but tin; and so it will be with every plant that our heavenly Father has not planted; and so with all the wood, hay, and stubble, built upon an outward acknowledgment and profession of Christ.

But the true child of the covenant the Lord tries; and there is that in every believer, yes, the most eminent child of God—eminent for his holy and close walk—that needs trying. We cannot always see the necessity of the discipline; we wonder often why such a believer is so constantly and, in a sense, so severely dealt with. But what says God?—"I, the Lord, search the heart." Here is the secret revealed; the hidden evil of that holy man of God we could not discover. The powerful corruptions that dwelt in his heart—which he, in a degree, knew, and mourned over, and confessed daily before the Lord—were concealed from our eye; and while we were judging from outward appearance, the Lord was probing and searching the heart, and, for the subjugation of the evil that He discovered there, was thus disciplining His beloved child.

Afflicted believer, do not forget that it is "whom the Lord loves He chastens;" and again He declares, "Whom I love I rebuke and chasten." Then thank Him for the sanctified trial, that weans you from earthly things, that deadens your heart to every rival of Christ, and that imparts an upward spring to faith, hope, and love. Not one unkind thought is there in the heart of the God that now chastens you. True, He may have cut off all your earthly springs, He may lead you down into the deep valley of abasement; yet still is He love, and nothing but love. Could you look into His heart, not a spring would be found dwelling, nor a pulse beating there, that would not speak of love to you at this very moment. All that He seeks with regard to yourself is your increased fruitfulness; and to promote your real sanctification is to promote your real happiness. In all God's dealings with His covenant people, He seeks their greatest good, their highest happiness, and in nothing more manifestly than in this does he show the intense love which dwells in His heart towards them.