How then should we think about the relief we do receive in “this life” (as opposed to full restoration which we will receive in “the life to come”)? Should we despair that there will be no relief here? How should I think about any rest I might have? Why would I hope for that in the future which I cannot receive now?
2. However, there are some cases wherein this lifting up does take place. God gives his people some notable liftings up, even in time, raising them out of remarkable humbling circumstances. The storm is changed into a calm, and they remember it as waters that fail. Psal. 40:1–4. Two things may be observed on this.
The Psalm provides as follow:
Psalm 40:1–4 (ESV)
1 I waited patiently for the Lord;
he inclined to me and heard my cry.
2 He drew me up from the pit of destruction,
out of the miry bog,
and set my feet upon a rock,
making my steps secure.
3 He put a new song in my mouth,
a song of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear,
and put their trust in the Lord.
4 Blessed is the man who makes
the Lord his trust,
who does not turn to the proud,
to those who go astray after a lie!
The Scripture here gives us counsel. We we wait and call unto God. He sees our trouble to draw us out. When we have been saved, we give him praise. There is here a ground for consolation:
All sorrow can be borne when we feel that God has not forgotten us; we may be calm when all the world forsakes us, if we can feel assured that the great and blessed God “thinks” on us, and will never cease to remember us.
John Peter Lange et al., A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures: Psalms (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2008), 276.
(1.) One may be in humbling circumstances very long, and sore and hopeless, and yet a lifting up may be abiding them of a much longer continuance. This is sometimes the case of the children of God, who are set to bear the yoke in their youth, as it was with Joseph and David; and of them that get it laid on them in their middle age, as it was with Job, who could not be less than forty at his trouble’s coming, but, after it, lived one hundred and forty, Job 42:16. God by such methods prepares men for peculiar usefulness.
Look at your trial. Let us assume your trial has gone on longer than you think you can bear. God can lift your trial and give you rest for a longer time still. God is not a sadistic tyrant who gains joy at our distress. He seeks merely our good. God does not even take pleasure at the death of the wicked.
Ezekiel 18:23 (ESV)
23 Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord GOD, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?
If he has hope and compassion for the wicked, how much more for us. There are many things which we must learn which seem too great to bear. Yet when they have gone past, we can rejoice in how we have changed for the good.
The knowledge that our trial will resolve makes our current trouble a matter to bear.
(2.) One may be in humbling circumstances long and sore, and quite hopeless in the ordinary course of providence, yet they may get a clear and warm blink of a lifting up, ere [before] they come to their journey’s end. The life of some of God’s children is like a cloudy and rainy day, wherein in the evening the sun breaks out from under the clouds, shines fair and clear a little, and then sets. “And it shall come to pass in that day, that the light shall not be clear, nor dark—But it shall come to pass, that at evening-time it shall be light,” Zech. 14:6, 7. Such was the case of Jacob in his old age, brought in honour and comfort to Egypt unto his son, and then died.
Have you lost hope, thinking that God could not relieve your trial? Jacob spent 20 years or more thinking his (favorite) son had been killed by a lion, even after his son had been raised to the second highest position in Egypt.
It is often the case that we read the Old Testament as an utterly foreign world. Paul raises an event from Israel crossing the wilderness where God had brought judgment upon the people for their rebellion. Having applied the incident to the church at Corinth he writes:
1 Corinthians 10:11 (ESV)
Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.
The Old Testament has been given, in part, for “our instruction.” Jacob’s decades of sorrow for the loss of his only together with his unexpected revival of his son, have been given for our instruction:
Luther knew that human beings experience life in narrative form. The biblical stories present a picture of human life that can be described in other forms, but the narrative form conveys a special sense of reality as it records the events in which God interacts with his human creatures. The stories of Scripture beg for comparison with the lives of its readers.
Kolb, Robert. Luther and the Stories of God: Biblical Narratives as a Foundation for Christian Living (p. 31). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Rather than only believe the direct propositions given in the New Testament such as a command or a promise or the ground of our thinking, we must realize that the narratives in the Old Testament have been given for our instruction also.
(3.) Yet whatever liftings up they get in this life, they will never want some weights hanging about them for their humbling. They may have their singing times, but their songs, while in this world, will be mixed with groanings, 2 Cor. 5:4. “For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened.”—The unmixed dispensation is reserved for the other world: but this will be a wilderness unto the end, where there will be howlings, with the most joyful notes.
John Bunyan begins his book The Pilgrims Progress with the words, “As I walked through the wilderness of this world.” We live in a wilderness. We were created in a garden. The temptation of our Lord took place in a wilderness. We must not begin to think that even a moment of rest and blessing means that we are free of the wilderness. An Oasis does not transform a desert into a forest.
When we find that a difficulty persists even when a great trial has been lifted, we must not lose heart. We should not conclude from a momentary difficulty that we have been abandoned by God. In our best moments we will not be free from the weight of futility which still hangs upon creation:
Romans 8:20–21 (ESV)
20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
Lastly, All the liftings up the humbled meet with now are pledges, and but pledges, samples, and earnest of the great lifting up abiding them on the other side; and they should look on them so.
(1.) They are really so, Hos. 2:15. “And I will give her her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope; and she shall sing there as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came out of the land of Egypt.”
Our Lord Jesus is leading his people now through the wilderness, and the manna and water of the rock are earnests for the time of the milk and honey flowing in the promised land. They are not yet come home to their Father’s house: but they are travelling on the road, and Christ their elder brother with them, Cant. 4:8. who bears their expenses, takes them into inns by the way, as it were, and refreshes them with partial liftings up, after which they must get to the road again. But that entertainment by the way is a pledge of the full entertainment he will afford them when come home.
An engagement ring is given as a promise of marriage. A down payment is given as a promise to complete the purchase.
God gave his people food and water in the wilderness. They were not to conclude that they had reached the promised land because they were being fed in a miraculous manner. They were to look upon the present kindness as the promise of a greater reward.
On a piece of paper write down the trials you have suffered. Match that with the relief God has granted you. You have not been abandoned by God. But you are not yet home. Look upon the relief as a token given to give you ground and comfort in your faith and hope.
Song of Solomon 4:8 (ESV)
8 Come with me from Lebanon, my bride;
come with me from Lebanon.
Depart from the peak of Amana,
from the peak of Senir and Hermon,
from the dens of lions,
from the mountains of leopards.
The trials and the promises of God are mixed in this world; so that we neither feel at home, nor are we overly discouraged upon the way.
Just as all the testament narratives may appear distant not part of our life, so to the promises of the world to come may seem less real than our present experience. The difficulty to rightly understand the scriptures, because they stand in the past, and the new creation, because it stands in the future, stem from the weakness of our faith. The mix of trial and relief in this world are given to strengthen our faith.
Hebrews 11:1 (ESV)
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
What if my trouble is the result of my sin? I am burdened because of my own foolishness and sin, so I cannot expect anything from God. Boston cites to Hosea 2:15, that a place of misery becomes a door of hope. Read Hosea 2. God has brought trouble upon Israel, but does not leave Israel in trouble.
Yet is is easier for us to doubt than truly hope and believe, because the insistence and present reality of trouble is all around us:
Objection. But people may get a lifting up in time, that yet is no pledge of a lifting up on the other side: how shall I know it then to be a pledge?
Ans. That lifting up, which comes by the promise, is certainly a pledge of the full lifting up in the other world: for, as the other life is the proper time of the accomplishing of the promises, so we may be sure, that when God once begins to clear his bond, he will certainly hold on till it is fully cleared.
“The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me,” Psal. 138:8. So we may say as Naomi to Ruth, upon her receiving the six measures of barley from Boaz, Ruth 3:18. “He will not be in rest until he have finished the thing this day.” There are liftings up that come by common providence, and these indeed are single, and not pledges of more: but the promise chains mercies together, so that one got is a pledge of another to come, yea, of the whole chain to the end, 2 Sam. 5:12.
He cites to Psalm 138:8, in greater context it reads:
Psalm 138:7–8 (ESV)
7 Though I walk in the midst of trouble,
you preserve my life;
you stretch out your hand against the wrath of my enemies,
and your right hand delivers me.
8 The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me;
your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever.
Do not forsake the work of your hands.
The KJV does read, the Lord will “perfect that which concerneth me.” The phrase does present some translational difficulties. For instance, the NET has
Psalm 138:8 (NET)
138:8 The LORD avenges me.
O LORD, your loyal love endures.
Do not abandon those whom you have made!
The difficulty stems from the Hebrew word, which can mean either “fulfill” or “avenge”. With either way of taking the word, the general thrust of the passage is the same. Though I am in trouble, God will not abandon me to trouble.
Question. But how shall I know the lifting up to come by the way of the promise?
That which comes by the way of the promise, does at once come the low way of humiliation, the high way of faith, or believing the promise, and the long way of waiting hope and patient continuance, James 5:7. “Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.”
Humility qualifies for the accomplishment of the promise, faith sucks the breast of it, and patient waiting hangs by the breast till the milk come abundantly.
The imagery he uses is certainly different than we may expect in a pastoral volume.
Boston wants us to see that the very act of waiting and trusting while in a time of humiliation is the manner in which we are prepared to expect God to fulfill his promise to us.
If we are impatient or demanding or untrusting, we have no good ground to expect God to fullill His promise on our time schedule. Look carefully at the manner in which you have spent your time in this trial and ask whether you have a need to repent.
(2.) But no lifting up of God’s children here are any more than pledges of lifting up. God gives worldly men their stock here, but his children get nothing but a sample of theirs here, Psal. 17:14; even as the servant at the term gets his fee in a round sum, while the young heir gets nothing but a few pence for spending-money. The truth is, the same spending-money is more valuable than the world’s stock, Psal 4:7. “Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that their corn and their wine increased.” But though it is better than that and their services too, and more worth than all their on-waiting, yet it is below the honour of their God to put them off with it, Heb. 11:16. “But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for he hath prepared for them a city.”
Our trials are a time to evaluate our relationship to God and the world. Do we have more hope and what we may have now than in what God has promised us for the future?
For some, their hope is solely upon what they may amass in this world. The promise of a future world means nothing to them.
Boston gives the picture of the distinction between an employee and an heir. The one performs his service and expects his wages at the completion of his work. The one who stands in place to receive an inheritance may actually receive less in the moment than the employee. Yet the employee will never receive more than his wages. The sun stands to inherit all his father owns. Should we judge their material state upon what it appears to be at the moment or what it will become?
We stand with an expectation to inherit along with Christ the whole of creation. The worldling may have more the present world which will soon be burnt than we. If you were on the Titanic would you prefer a state room with the knowledge that you will drown or a small cabin and a place upon a life raft?
When we stand to have more of this world, we are easily tricked and the hoping for the most of this world. It is when we have little of this world, that our attention and our affections are turned more clearly toward the world to come.
memoirandremains 