ACTINGS OF FAITH UNDER CHASTISEMENT
Preached al Ebenezer Chapel, Clapham, on Lord's Day morning
21 November 1937
by Frank L. Gosden
"Rejoice not against me, 0 mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; When I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me. I will bear the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned against him, until he plead my cause, and execute judgment for me: he will bring me forth to the light, and I shall behold his righteousness." (Mic. 7:8,9)
The prophet was commanded by God to contend before the mountains and hills with respect to the controversy He had with His people. In the sixth chapter there is the controversy that God had with His people for their unkindness and ignorance, and fit the 7th chapter we have the effect of that controversy. It was effective. In the two verses that we have read there is a summary, the gathering up of the effect of the controversy of God with His people. It is the language of faith; faith under particular and peculiarly trying circumstances. The prophet, was speaking for the Church, and therefore of the experience of the individual child of God, whose condition was far from realizing liberty, for as it says here, 'I will bear the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned against Him,' and yet it is a demonstration of, the actings of faith when the soul is under the chastisement of God. A very blessed experience though solemn! You will notice that in the 8th and 9th. verses there are two distinct attitudes of the soul, and the two directions of the heart in these two verses are both from the blessed influence of faith. In the 8th verse we have the child of God looking at his enemies, and in the 9th verse the soul is looking to God. In the first case this, "Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy,' is not pleading to the enemy for mercy. It is not ascribing to the enemy a kind of victory, and beseeching the enemy not to rejoice over him, but rather it is faith under the mighty hand of God, looking at the enemies that have brought desolation into his soul for which he is now mourning, and a desiring to vindicate the honor and glory of God under that heavy hand. It is a looking at the enemies and saying, 'Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy, it is not for thee to rejoice,' 'I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him.' I have sinned, but 'rejoice not against me, 0 mine enemy. 'There was a zeal there for the honor and glory of God, an acknowledgment that the responsibility for the state discovered to him was procured to himself by his own sin. 0,mine enemy, my hope is yet in God, in His time He will deliver me. 'Rejoice not against me, 0 mine enemy;' and this act of faith was not when the man was upon the mountains, when the candle of the Lord shone about him. Have we this experience, those of us who may be under the chastening hand of God? Look at the condition here. As though he would with indignation look at his enemies and vindicate the honor of God. In the next place notice how he bows his head to the Lord. He would look at his enemies, and his enemies are the Lord's enemies, but he looks to the Lord, and in the indignation he would bear to his sin, he bows to the Lord. This is the attitude of faith, being made submissive and prostrating oneself before the Lord under His heavy hand.
Well, my friends, the enemies of the Church are peculiar to them; their joys are peculiar, their trials are peculiar, the dealings of God with His people are distinct, different from His dealings with any other. 'He hath not dealt so with any other nation,' 'Rejoice not against me, 0 mine enemy.' It will be well for us if the Lord's enemies are our enemies. Let us try to look at some of these enemies, and see what our attitude toward them is. In the first place one of the great enemies to the child of God is the world, both the world within and the world without. Is the world our enemy? Not easily answered. A simple question which may too easily be dismissed. Is the world our enemy? The Psalmist said, 'Do not I hate them, 0 Lord, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them mine enemies.' Are they your enemies? Are they my enemies? The world is nearer to us than sometimes we think. The channels through which the spirit of the world creeps in, pass through every faculty of our body; it is natural to us, it belongs to our flesh, and we shall never rise above that level unless grace lifts us above it. So, you see that it is no small thing to be really an enemy to the world and for the world to be an enemy to us. What a solemn place the world is! If you notice as it is described in the Word of God, the exact position of the world to God, there is nothing to be envied there. You take some of those chapters in the gospel according to John, and see there the position which the Lord assigns to the world. 'I pray not for the world.' 'If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.' 'Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world,' He that is the friend of the world is the enemy of'God. A solemn thing if we are the friends of the world, to be found at last an enemy to God. But Oh, the world hates grace in the people of God! Both the religious and the profane world hate the Person of Christ. Everything outside of the Lord Jesus is in opposition to a child of God. We are in an enemy's land, and Oh, how the world waits for our halting, how they would rejoice to see us overthrown, and how the devil rejoices to see the Lord's people entangled with the spirit of the world! Oh, the fruits of the flesh, the world within, the covetousness! Oh, how, left to ourselves, we run after some idol here, how we number our days, not to apply our hearts unto wisdom, but left to ourselves we seek a nest in this world! It is not a small thing to hate the world, not the persons in it, but the spirit of the world which is enemy to God, 'Rejoice not against me, 0 mine enemy.
Another enemy to the child of God is a carnal heart; a carnal heart in which dwells unbelief and infidelity. Do you know this enemy? It is an enemy to God, and it is an enemy to God as He is in the hearts of his people. It is the Person of Christ that Satan is against and if he sees in a man the grace of God, i.e. the image of God in that man, he will torment and worry whom he can't destroy, and he will know that Satan is his enemy. And we have a nature in league with Satan, so that it makes it not easy. There is only one way in which we can live to the honor and glory of, God, and that is by faith. There is nothing here to help us, nothing in this world to help us in the way to heaven. If we are to honor God, we shall have to receive our food from God, our help must come from heaven. There is nothing on this side of the grave that will ever waft its to God. All the powers within us, all the powers in the world, are hell-ward.
We ever into ruin run
So there is no power or faculty within us to help us. Oh, what a mighty work is a work of grace in the heart, and all these enemies are against us. But faith in the heart says, 'Rejoice not against me, 0 mine enemy.' Sometimes faith enables a soul to speak with himself as before God, and say under the oppression of his enemy, 'Why art thou cast down, 0 my soul? Hope thou in God.' It will take the soul beyond his enemies, and lead him to the Rock that is higher than his greatest enemy, and so he is enabled to look at his enemies and say, 'Rejoice not against me, mine enemy, for when I fall, I shall arise.' This is not underrating the enemy. The next most powerful thing to the power of God is the power of sin; it is a great power, a power too much for any of us; it will carry thousands down to hell. So the prophet here does not belittle the power of his enemies. 'When I fall.' There is a fall; the Scriptures reveal this; some of the saints of God have been left to fall foully. But, 'When I fall, I shall arise ' 0 enemy, I have known thy power. David knew it; he had the mark of that sin which he himself afterwards felt, 'My sin is ever before me,' and he could say to the enemy, 'When I fall (and the meaning here's "though"), I shall arise.' I have a good God, I have sinned against Him, but I will hope in Him. Unbelief, the great enemy of the soul would close the mouth and show the poor soul every reason why his mouth should be closed, but faith in him will open it and say to the enemy, 'Rejoice not against me, 0 O mine enemy, I believe the day will come when the distance I feel, the darkness I am walking in, will be removed; if He will but lift upon me the light of His countenance it will be sufficient, I will rejoice in Him; so rejoice not against me, O mine enemy.' 'When I fall, I shall arise.' When there is casting down then there will be lifting up. What a mercy it is, my friends, to be so dealt will under God's mighty hand in chastening, to be really humbled by it. "When thou with rebukes doth corrects man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away.' Some of us have had much beauty to consume away, we have shrunk considerably, but OH to be enabled to lift up the head by faith and see in Christ all that the soul can need for time and eternity! Oh, this discipline!
'When I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light
unto me.' He is speaking to his enemies; these enemies which had
brought him into darkness. 'When I sit in darkness.' This word
'sit' is very near to the word 'bear' in the ninth verse. 'When I
sit in darkness.' 'I will bear the indignation of the Lord.'
There is submission here when one is in darkness and the cause of
it has been discovered to him, as in the hymn we were just now
singing (958).
He looks back at better days and says,
Where is the blessedness I knew
When first I saw the Lord?'
Now in darkness, and by the controversy the Lord has with the soul, is discovered to him the reason for sitting in darkness. There is an activity in that sitting; it is not an idleness, it is not a mere saying 'If the Lord means to bless me, the end of this darkness will come, I will wait for it,' but it is an activity of faith, a prostration, a desire to walk in that Scripture, 'Be still, and know that I am God,'- to sit in that condition which he has brought himself into. Perhaps it is the darkness of a dark dispensation in providence that the Lord has sent in judgment, a chastisement wherein everything has been made crooked, and things put completely out of joint. Maybe He has reduced a prosperous business to ruin, or brought down a strong body to frailty and affliction. 'This is 'sitting' in it. Or it may be darkness in the soul or both together, and you are brought to look at it as the Lord brought the people in this sixth chapter to look where they had been, and to observe what the Lord had indulged them with and how unkind they had been. Oh, what a mercy it is, my friends, if the Lord's chastening becomes effective! One of the most solemn places we can be in, is for the dealings of God to be ineffective to us, to remain the same when we come out of trouble as when we went in, and one of the most perilous conditions we can be in is to be careless in trouble. If we are careless in trouble, the first thing we shall do will be to try to get out of it and be rebellious; there will be no 'sitting' in it. I wonder how many of you are sitting in darkness and recognized in the trouble your own folly and sin. You won't believe there is faith there; you won't think you have any faith; but this is the essence of humility, real humility. Humility is not what we may think it is; it is 'not a despairing, a despondency. That is unbelief; but humility is a sober mind, a level, balanced mind, a mind graciously sanctified by the dealings of God with it, and one's own sin is recognized in the condition, and therefore there is a sitting in darkness. This is carrying on the work of grace; this is where faith is living and laboring under load; damped here, but not dead. A comely sight to see it! I feel myself, to see a person really chastened, with a chastened spirit, is one of the most beautiful sights one can see. It is not deliverance, but Oh, to see one really sitting in darkness with faith active! Not a carnal mind active, ready to cut any way out, but sitting, bowing to the sovereignty of God. Do we know this experience? If you do, if any of you are sitting in darkness, you will know the experience of the prophet, and the Lord will be a light unto you. Faith and hope go together; and these two blessed graces can be in the same soul that sits in darkness. 'When I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me.' There is secret prayer then; there is a desire there and then for the Lord to search the heart. The heart is made honest, and it then becomes that pure heart that is spoken of as being blessed. That is the purity of that heart; it is open before God, no dissembling. Hypocrisy is then put down. The purging work of the Holy Ghost is operating and becoming effective in the heart and the leaven of grace is working. What a blessing it is to be delivered from our backslidings! This is to have the fallow ground broken up, to have a seared and hardened conscience awakened, to have stirred up those prayers, stagnant as ditchwater, which seem such a burden to one at times. But when the Lord brings us into this darkness, and causes us to sit there (as sometimes a parent will deal with a child, and tell it to sit there for so long), the conscience is made tender as it sits and examines itself in these afflictions. This is part of the work of grace, this is the north wind, the frost that breaks up everything., 'When I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a fight unto me.' And thus there will be in that case a refusing of any relief but this light of Lord. There will be many, perhaps, without grace, even professors who know nothing of this sitting in darkness. They have plenty of help, plenty of ways out. False teachers who know nothing of tribulation and deep waters have plenty of ways out of this darkness. The children of this generation are wiser than the children of light; they were not commended because of their wisdom but their subtlety. They found their way out of trouble and darkness, such darkness as they had" but with this soul there will be no way out. There is a wound made by the controversy of God; it is not a scratch which can be easily healed by any quack, neither will there be any comfort but such as comes from the countenance of the Lord. There will be many who say, 'Who can do us any good?' But in this condition there is only one good which the child of God will receive, and that is the lifting up upon him of the light of God's countenance. 'Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him who is the health of my countenance and my God.' This is the light, the only cure, the only way. I wish I knew more of this, a tried path, a shameful path in one sense, when brought to that condition. 'Woe is me! for I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits, as the grape-gleanings of the vintage: there is no cluster to eat: my soul desired the first ripe fruit.' You have and you inherit the barren places of the earth, and you are brought to be ashamed of your leanness. Oh, the discoveries made to a man sitting in darkness under the chastening hand of the Lord! Many of you are there, may the Lord enable you to sit there, and refuse any comfort but what comes from the light of His countenance. 'When I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me.' Oh, what a distinct work is the work of the Holy Ghost! That alone stands. The religion of the flesh may soar much higher; the fire that people light, and then walk in the sparks of that fire of their own kindling, may appear to burn up brighter than this work which we have been endeavoring to describe, but they will lie down in sorrow. But those that are walking in this path, humbled under the mighty hand of God, will come forth in due season, for He will lift them up in due time,. 'To this man will I look, even to him that is poor, and of a contrite spirit, all that trembleth at my word.' It is a path of affliction, seeing that through much tribulation they must enter the kingdom. It must be so. We are in the world with enemies; sin and death within us, and all about us; we have no anchorage in this world. If we are safe for heaven, our anchor must reach beyond this time state into that within the veil, and if we are on the way to heaven, made sojourners, pilgrims, and strangers in the world, we have no foundation here. Oh, may we be given to take heed to the word of the Apostle! 'But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none; And they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not; and they that use this world, as not abusing it: for the fashion of this world passeth away.' 'Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more. 'Poor world! There is nothing here to stand our feet upon. 0 poor, troubled people, you who may be sitting in darkness, and know what the chastening of the Lord is, whose deliverance seems to be far off, everything unfinished, and looking as though it would never be finished, and perhaps your own standing before God is causing you much exercise -- -sit in it, refuse any comfort, and seek no way out but the light of His countenance. His coming is the only cure. He is the only way out. 'Rejoice not against me, 0 mine enemy: when I fall I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me.' What a rebuke against the enemies! Oh, to be able to fall before Him; to have in your heart such a love to God, though in darkness! Look, this man is not on the mountain; Jonah, in the belly of hell, looked once more toward the holy temple. The activity of faith in a low state in this man here, looking at his enemies, ranging them, as it were, before him, all the enemies that would swallow him up; he had fallen evidently, and brought himself into darkness, and yet faith lived and labored there. Though he had brought it upon himself, he looked at his enemies with a zeal for the honor and glory of God and said, 'Rejoice not against me, 0 mine enemies.' World, rejoice, not against me, you are mine enemy, I declare it; unbelief, you are mine enemy; infidelity, you are mine enemy. Rejoice not against me; when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me.' 'I shall yet praise him,' I will wait His time and bear His indignation, but 0 enemy, you will not get the victory. Faith honors God in the dark, and believes it shall be done, therefore enemy, 'Rejoice not against me; when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me.' May you be led into this word, and may the Lord be a light unto you that may be sitting in darkness.
Please direct your comments to Mike Krall.