The Sweet Uses of Adversity

A Sermon by C.H. Spurgeon · Based on Job 10:2

Introduction: A Contention of Love

Will God contend with man? If God be angry, can He not take away the breath of his nostrils, and lay him low in the dust of earth? Will the Almighty contend with the nothingness of man? Well might we cry out to Him, “After whom is my Lord the King gone forth? After a dead dog: after a flea?”

Yet our text saith so — it speaks of God's contending with man. Ah, surely, it needs but little logic to understand that this is not a contention of anger, but a contention of love. If He were angry He would not condescend to reason with His creature; much less would He stand up in battle and contend with such a creature as man. You will all perceive at once that there must be love even in this apparently angry word. Carry this consoling reflection in your thoughts: the very fact of God contending with you at all, the fact that He has not consumed you, may at the very outset afford consolation and hope.

I propose to address two classes of persons. First, the tried saint. Then the seeking sinner, who has been seeking peace and pardon through Christ, but has not yet found it.

Part I — To the Tried Child of God

I know I have in this assembly some who have come to Job's position. They are saying, “My soul is weary of my life; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. Do not condemn me; shew me wherefore thou contendest with me.” Let me offer several answers.

1. To Show His Power in Upholding Thee

It may be that God is contending with thee that He may show His own power in upholding thee. God glories in His children. He loves to have them tried, that the whole world may see that there is none like them on the face of the earth. Sometimes God on purpose puts His children in the midst of this world's trials — on the right, left, before, behind, surrounded. But there stands the child of God, calm amidst the bewildering cry, confident of victory. And then the Lord pointeth joyously to His saint and saith, “See, Satan, he is more than a match for thee. Weak though he is, yet through My power, he all things can perform.”

God to prove the strength of faith, sometimes Himself makes war on faith. Think not that this is a stretch of the imagination — it is plain simple fact. Have ye never heard of the brook Jabbok, and of that angel-clothed God who fought with Jacob there, and permitted Jacob to prevail? What was this for? Thus had God determined: “I will strengthen the creature so much, that I will permit it to overcome its Creator.” What noble work is this — that while God is casting down His child with one hand, He should be holding him up with the other.

2. To Develop Thy Graces

Perhaps the Lord is doing this to develop thy graces. There are some of thy graces that would never be discovered if it were not for thy trials. Dost thou not know that thy faith never looks so grand in summer weather, as it does in winter? Hope itself is like a star — not to be seen in the sunshine of prosperity, and only to be discovered in the night of adversity. Afflictions are often the black foils in which God doth set the jewels of His children's graces, to make them shine the better.

There is a little plant growing under the shade of a broad spreading oak. But a blessing is designed for this little plant. The woodman comes and fells the oak. The plant weeps, and cries, “My shelter is departed!” But the angel of that flower says: “Now will the sun get at thee; now will the shower fall on thee in more copious abundance; now thy stunted form shall spring up into loveliness, and thy flower shall laugh in the sunshine.” God may take away your comforts and your privileges to make you the better Christians. The Lord always trains His soldiers not by letting them lie on feather beds, but by turning them out to forced marches and hard service. God knows that soldiers are only to be made in battle.

3. Because of Some Secret Sin

It may be the Lord contends with thee because thou hast some secret sin which is doing thee sore damage. Dost thou remember the story of Moses? Never a man better beloved of the Lord his God — but the Lord met him on the way as he was going to Egypt, and strove with him. Why? Because he had in his house an uncircumcised child — a sin which had to be dealt with before he could go forward. Now, too often we have some uncircumcised thing in our house, some joy that is evil, some amusement that is sinful, some pursuit not agreeable to His will.

Search and look, for if the consolations of God be small with thee, there is some secret sin within. Trials often discover sins we should never have found out otherwise. God sometimes burns up our comforts to make our hidden sins run out — and then He enables us to knock them on the head and get rid of them.

4. To Give Thee Fellowship With Christ

We must bear the image of the heavenly — the image of Christ. We must have fellowship with Him in His sufferings, that we may be conformable unto His death. Hast thou never thought that none can be like the Man of Sorrows unless they have sorrows too? How can you be like unto Him who sweat as it were great drops of blood, if you do not sometimes say, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death”? God is chiselling you — you are but a rough block — He is making you into the image of Christ; and that sharp chisel is taking away much which prevents your being like Him.

Sweet is the affliction which gives us fellowship with Christ. Blessed is the plough that ploughs deep furrows, if the furrows be like His. This is a path which no unhallowed foot hath trodden — but the true believer can rejoice therein, for he has had fellowship with Christ in His sufferings.

5. To Humble Thee

The Lord, it may be, contendeth with thee, my brother, to humble thee. We are all too proud; the humblest of us do but approach to the door of true humility. Pride runs in our very veins. We shall have many blows before we are brought down to the right mark.

Don't you feel, in looking back on your past troubles, that you have after all been best when you have had troubles? There is a sweet joy in sorrow I cannot understand. There is music in this harp with its strings all unstrung and broken. Our joy is like the wave as it dashes upon the shore — it throws us on the earth. But our sorrows are like that receding wave which sucks us back again into the great depth of Godhead. We should have been stranded and left high and dry upon the shore if it had not been for that ebbing of our prosperity, which carried us back to our Father and to our God again.

Blessed affliction! It has brought us to the mercy seat; given life to prayer; enkindled love; strengthened faith; brought Christ into the furnace with us, and then brought us out of the furnace to live with Christ more joyously than before.

Part II — To the Seeking Sinner

I now turn to address the seeking sinner, who is wondering that he has found no peace and comfort — who has prayed, and knocked, and sought, and yet finds the gate seemingly shut. Let me give several answers.

1. Perhaps Thou Art Not Yet Thoroughly Awakened

Christ will not heal your wound till He has probed it to its very core. Christ is no foolish surgeon who would close up a wound with proud flesh in it — He will cut, and cut again, and lay the sore open, and then after that He will close it up and make it whole. Perhaps thou hast not as yet known thine own vileness, thine own lost state. Christ will have thee know thy poverty before He will make thee rich. Go lower, man — go lower; fall flat on thy face. Thou hast said, “Lord, I am nothing.” Go lower still; say, “Lord, I am less than nothing and the very chief of sinners.”

2. To Try Thy Earnestness

Perhaps God contends with thee in order to try thy earnestness. There are many Mr. Pliables, who set out on the road to heaven for a little time, and the first boggy piece of road they come to, they creep out on the side nearest to their own house, and go back again. But if you can hold your own, and say, “Though He slay me yet will I trust in Him” — if you can be importunate with God and say, “Though He never hear me, if I perish I will pray, and perish only there” — then you have got the mastery and you shall succeed. God loves to see a man mighty in prayer, intent upon getting the blessing, resolved that he will have Christ, or he will perish seeking Him.

3. Some Harboured Sin

May it not be that the reason why God contends with you and does not give you peace is because you are harbouring some one sin? Remember, Christ and thy soul will never be one till thou and thy sins are two. Sins given up are like goods cast out at sea by mariners in days of storm — they lighten the ship. The ship will never float till you have thrown all your sins overboard.

4. Come to the Cross Itself

Perhaps it is because you do not thoroughly understand the plan of salvation. Remember, if you would be saved, your salvation comes wholly and entirely from Jesus Christ, the dying Son of God. View Him yonder, sinner, sweating in the garden! See the red drops of blood as they fall from that dear face! View that head still marked with the wounds of thorns! See the eyes floating in tears with languid pity! Stand and listen while He cries, “Lama sabachthani!” Sinner, thy life is in Him that died; thy healing is in yonder wounds; thy salvation is in His destruction.

Oh my friend, you will never get faith by trying to make yourself have it. Faith is the gift of Christ — go and find it in His veins. Go to your chamber, sit down and picture Christ in holy vision, dying on the tree, and as your eye sees, your heart shall melt, your soul shall believe, and you shall rise from your knees and cry, “I know whom I may believe, and I am persuaded He is able to save that which I have committed to Him until that day.”