DOCTRINE II

Doctrine II. There is a due time, wherein those that now humble themselves under the mighty hand of God, will certainly be lifted up.

This section begins some consolation and a basis for hope. The previous section read alone can be discouraging standing alone. We can think of God’s work as solely “law”. But rather the “law” is to protect us from ruin. The doctrine of repentance is our cure. If someone were dying of cancer, chemotherapy could offered. The cure is often very painful even if it results in cure. If cure meant merely the pain of treatment with no hope of a life afterward, it would be no difficult to carry. But God offers us more merely than a reprieve from a deserved hell. The purging of our sin (which in and of itself may be very painful, hence a “crook”), leads us to a blessing.

Yet, we must realize that even in our trials, Christ is there:

My love in Christ remembered to you. I was indeed sorrowful at my departure from you, especially since ye were in such heaviness after your daughter’s death. Yet I do persuade myself, ye know that the weightiest end of the cross of Christ that is laid upon you lieth upon your strong Saviour; for Isaiah saith, “In all your afflictions He is afflicted” (Isa. 63:9).

Samuel Rutherford and Andrew A. Bonar, Letters of Samuel Rutherford: With a Sketch of His Life and Biographical Notices of His Correspondents (Edinburgh; London: Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier, 1891), 34. To Boston’s general observations:

We shall take,
First, A general view of this point. And consider,
I. Some things supposed and implied in it. It bears,

1. That those who shall share of his lifting up, must lay their accounts, in the first place, with a casting down, Rev. 7:14. John 16:33. “In the world ye shall have tribulation.” There is no coming to the promised land, according to the settled method of grace, but through the wilderness; nor entering into this exaltation, but through a strait gate. If we cannot away with casting down, we will not taste of the sweet of the lifting up.

A song I learned as a child begins:
“Oh, you can’t get to heaven in a rocking chair,
‘Cause a rocking chair won’t get you there.”

There is no “easy way” glory:

21 When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, 22 strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.
Acts 14:21–22 (ESV) However, that does not mean the tribulation saves us. We do not earn salvation by suffering. There is no merit to our suffering. Rather, Paul’s statement is an observation, but not a theology that suffering has merit:
Let’s not try to find a theology of suffering in the latter part of verse 22. Some popular religions today argue that people must find salvation through suffering. I have watched faithful followers of Catholicism plod forward on bleeding knees at the shrine of Lourdes in Portugal. I have seen flagalantes beat their backs bloody in the Philippines to earn favor with God. No, salvation does not come through suffering, nor were the missionaries talking here about salvation since their encouragement came to people already in the family of God. Rather, they reflected the word of the Lord Jesus about sharing his sufferings along the way to heaven (Rom. 8:17; Phil. 3:10–11; Col. 1:24).

Kenneth O. Gangel, Acts, vol. 5, Holman New Testament Commentary (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1998), 236.
Jesus makes a similar observation: “33 I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” John 16:33 (ESV)
Thomas Boston, Paul, and Jesus raise the issue of suffering as an encouragement. Yes, will be humbled. If God were to leave us, that would be a curse to us:

If God should have let us alone to our own desires, we were posting to hell. It is the greatest misery in the world, next to hell itself, to be given up to our own desires. A man were better to be given up to the devil than to his own desires. He may torment him, and perhaps bring him to repentance; but to be given up to his own desires, leads to hell. It is merely of grace, grace. It was the grace of God the Father that gave his Son; and it was grace that the Son gave himself.

Richard Sibbes, The Complete Works of Richard Sibbes, ed. Alexander Balloch Grosart, vol. 4 (Edinburgh; London; Dublin: James Nichol; James Nisbet and Co.; W. Robertson, 1863), 512.

To see this as encouragement will be an act faith and cognition. Without this knowledge, we would not experience a trial as a step along the way to our destination. We will not come to this realization other than through coming to know and believe this to be true; to match our knowledge with hope and trust.

2. Being cast down by the mighty hand of God, we must learn to lie still and quiet under it, till the same hand that casts us down raise us up, if we would share of this promised lifting up, Lam. 3:27. It is not the being cast down into humbling circumstances by the providence of God, but the coming down of our spirits under them by the grace of God, that brings us within the compass of this promise.

Lamentations 3:25–27 (ESV)
25 The Lord is good to those who wait for him,
to the soul who seeks him.
26 It is good that one should wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord.
27 It is good for a man that he bear
the yoke in his youth.

The key to understand this passage is the word “wait.” The word “wait” has the connotation of at best “cooling your heals.” There might be resignation, there may be frustration in the delay, but the word “wait: has not element of hope. However the word used here. For instance:
Psalm 71:14 (ESV)
14 But I will hope [or “wait”] continually
and will praise you yet more and more.
Or:
Psalm 119:49 (ESV)
49 Remember your word to your servant,
in which you have made me hope.

Our trials must not crush us, but rather change us. The object of our hope is to change. The trial teaches us the things in which we hope are vain.

Consider the trial you are in or most recently have suffered. What thing that you trusted in have you learned to no longer trust?

3. Never humbled in humbling circumstances, never lifted up in the way of this promise. Men may keep their spirits on the high bend in their humbling circumstances, and in that case may get a lifting up, Prov. 16:19. But note this, that what they get will be a lifting up, to the end they may get the more grievous fall. “Surely thou didst set them in slippery places, thou castedst them down in a moment,” Psal. 73:18. But they who will not humble themselves in humbling circumstances, will find their obstinacy a need-nail, that will keep their misery ever fast on them without remedy.

What means to humble oneself in a humbling circumstance. We are to not trust in ourself or anything in creation. It is not a degrading but a change in the object of our hope.

If cling more fully to ourself and the false hope and use that false hope to apparently climb out of our circumstance, we have merely made our situation worse. This does not mean we do not make use of lawful means. It does mean that we do not pin our hope upon such things:
Proverbs 16:19 (ESV)
19 It is better to be of a lowly spirit with the poor
than to divide the spoil with the proud.

4. Humility of spirit in humbling circumstances ascertains a lifting up out of them some time with the good-will and favour of Heaven, Luke 18:14. “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself, shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” Solomon observes, Prov. 15:1. that “a soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.” And so it is, that while the proud through their obstinacy, do but wreathe the yoke faster about their own necks, the yielding humble ones, by their yielding, make their relief sure, 1 Sam. 2:8, 9, 10. “He raiseth the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory—He will keep the feet of his saints, and the wicked shall be silent in darkness; for by strength shall no man prevail. The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken in pieces.”—So the cannon-ball breaks down a stone-wall, while the yielding packs of wool take away its force.

These examples illustrate Boston’s point well:

Luke 18 is the story of a pair of men who stand before God. One man trusts in himself and his “righteous” life. One man knows himself to be a sinner in need of grace. The one has humbled himself by confessing his sin and relying up grace has humbled himself.

5. There is an appointed time for the lifting up of those that humble themselves in their humbling circumstances, Hab. 2:3. “For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it, because it will surely come, it will not tarry.” To every thing there is a time, as for humbling, so for lifting up, Eccles. 3:3. We know it not, but God knows it, who has appointed it. Let not the humble one say, I will never be lifted up: there is a time fixed for it, as precisely as for the rising of the sun, after the long and dark night, or the return of the spring after the long and sharp winter.

Our waiting is a waiting upon God We hope in God and for God’s resolution of our trouble. We do not know when God will resolve our trouble. Our trials are for our good and will last as best we need.

6. It is not to be expected, that immediately upon one’s humbling himself, the lifting up is to follow. No, one is not only to lie down under the mighty hand, but lie still waiting the due time; humbling work is longsome work: the Israelites had forty years of it in the wilderness. God’s people must be brought to put a blank in his hand, as to the time, and while they have a long night of walking in darkness, must trust, Is. 1:10. “Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God.”

The very act of waiting of being humbled, of humbling ourselves, is the process of change which the crook in the lot seeks to effect. It is not the bare act of being troubled which is the aim and method of God. The act of being humbled and waiting – that is trusting and hoping in God—which is the process of change.

7. The appointed time for the lifting up is the due time, the time fittest for it, wherein it will come most seasonably. “And let us not be weary in well-doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not,” Gal. 6:9. For that is the time God has chosen for it: and be sure his choice, as the choice of infinite wisdom, is the best; and therefore faith sets to wait it, Is. 28:16.—“He that believeth shall not make haste.” There is much of the beauty of a thing depends on the timing of it, and he has fixed that in all he does, Eccles. 3:11. “He hath made every thing beautiful in his time.”

There are two points made in this section. First that we continue in the midst of our waiting:

Christians have been justified by faith and cleansed from guilt, they have received the Spirit, but they must persevere in holy living and not rest on their oars. Paul knew the necessity of this in his own life (cf. 1 Cor. 9:26f.).

F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Galatians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1982), 265.

A second point, that God works a trouble into a thing of beauty. Even the timing of the thing is beauty.

Lastly, The lifting up of the humbled will not miss to come in the appointed and due time, Hab. 2:3. Time makes no halting, it is running day and night: so the due time is fast coming, and, when it comes, it will bring the lifting up along with it. Let the humbling circumstances be ever so low, ever so hopeless, it is impossible but the lifting up from them must come in the due time.

He ends with the point of encouragement. There is no point so low that God will not reach to it. That is a Resurrection: The legions of Hell sent their minions. The legions of this world sought to destroy him. He suffered even the Judgment of God But even there, God’s power is present. God will prevail:
Psalm 2:1–6 (ESV)
2 Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying,
3 “Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.”
4 He who sits in the heavens laughs;
the Lord holds them in derision.
5 Then he will speak to them in his wrath,
and terrify them in his fury, saying,
6 “As for me, I have set my King
on Zion, my holy hill.”