And I will turn my hand upon thee, and purely purge away thy dross, and take away all thy tin: And I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellors as at the beginning: afterward thou shalt be called, The city of righteousness, the faithful city.
~ Isaiah 1:25-26
But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.
~ Job 23:10
For thou, O God, hast proved us: thou hast tried us, as silver is tried.
~ Psalm 66:10
How Affliction Produces This Spiritual Instruction, by Thomas Case. The following contains Chapter Three of his work, “A Treatise of Affliction”.
Chapter 3.
How Affliction Produces this Spiritual Instruction
I come now to the third thing propounded, namely, to inquire how affliction produces this spiritual instruction. What tendency does chastisement have to promote the teachings of God in the soul? What use does God makes of correction to this end?
It is true, there is need for an arm of omnipotence to make chastisement have a saving influence upon the heart; and likewise with reading the Word itself. The means of grace do not save by an intrinsic virtue, or power of their own, but there is an instrumental fitness in them to serve omnipotence for divine and saving ends; a fitness of instrumentality, as there is in a saw to cut, and in a wedge to cleave, and so forth. The instrument can do nothing alone, but there is a fitness in it to serve the hand of the workman.
Thus it is, in a proportion, with affliction. It is true, there is not so immediate and direct a tendency in the rod, as there is in the Word, to teach and instruct the children of God; yet there is in chastisement a subserviency to prepare the heart of man, and to put it into a better disposition to comply with divine teaching, than naturally it is capable of. Christ works in the hot furnace—the most excellent vessels of honor are formed there. Manasseh, Paul, and the jailer were all chosen in this fire; as God says, “I have chosen you in the furnace of affliction” (Isaiah 48:10). Grace works in a powerful, yet in an instrumental way. God speaks when we are most apt to hear, congruously yet forcibly, by a fit accommodation of circumstances, which you may discover in these four particulars:
1. By affliction, God takes down the pride of man’s heart. There is not a greater obstruction to saving knowledge, than pride and self-opinion, whereby man either thinks he knows enough, or that what God teaches is not worth learning. Therefore it is proclaimed before the word, “Hear and give ear, be not proud, for the Lord has spoken” (Jeremiah 13:15). In divine matters, as well as human, “only by pride comes contention” (Proverbs 13:10). It is pride which raises objections against the Word, and disputes the commands, when it should obey them. The proud men in Jeremiah, when they could elude the message of God by his prophet no longer, at length stiffened into downright rebellion. First, they shift, “You speak falsely” (Jeremiah 43:2); and then they resolve, “As for the word you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we will not hearken unto you”; be it Baruch, or be it God, we will have none of it: “But we will certainly do whatever goes forth of our own mouth” (Jeremiah 44:16-17).
Such a masterpiece of obduration is the heart of man, that it stands like a mountain before the Word, and cannot be moved until God comes with his instruments of affliction, and digging down those mountains of pride, levels them—and then God may stand, as it were, upon even ground, and talk with man. This pride of heart speaks loud in the wicked, and whispers too audibly even in the godly; it is a folly bound up even in the hearts of God’s children, until the rod of correction drives it out; and then the poor bleeding wretch cries, “Lord, what will you have me to do?” (Acts 9:6).
2. Affliction is God’s forge, wherein he softens the iron heart. There is no dealing with the iron while it remains in its own native coldness and hardness. But put it into the fire, make it red-hot there, and you may stamp upon it any figure or impression you please. “God makes my heart soft” (Job 23:16), says Job; melted vessels are impressive to any form.
So it is with the heart of man! Naturally it is colder and harder than the northern iron, and that native hardness is much increased by prosperity, and the patience of God towards sinners; the iron sinew will rather break than bend. It is only the hot furnace which can make it pliable and impressive to God’s counsels. Therefore God resolves on this course, “See, I will melt them down in a crucible and test them like metal. What else can I do with the sin of my people?” (Jeremiah 9:7). Sometimes God is forced to make the furnace seven times hotter, to work out that dross which renders men so unconformable to the ministry of the Word, while “God sends his prophets, rising up early, and sending them; and yet they will not incline their ear, but they harden their necks against divine instruction” (Jeremiah 25:4, 17:23).
When the earthly heart of a man is so dried and hardened by a long sunshine of prosperity, that the plough of the spiritual gardener cannot enter—then God softens it with showers of adversity, making it capable of receiving the immortal seed, and blesses the springing thereof. The seed falls upon stony ground—until God turns the stone into a heart of flesh.
3. By affliction, man is made more attentive unto God. In prosperity, the world makes such a noise in a man’s ears that God cannot be heard, “He speaks indeed once and twice,” again and again, very often, “yet man perceives it not” (Job 33:14). He is so busy in the crowd of worldly affairs, that God is not heeded.
In the godly themselves there is much unsettledness and giddiness of mind. Our thoughts are naturally vain and scattered, and the mind is slippery and inconsistent. This is a great impediment to our clear and full comprehensions of spiritual things. Therefore God deals with man as a father with his child playing in the marketplace, who will not hear or mind his father’s call. He comes and takes him out of the noise of the tumult, carries him home, lays him upon his knee with the rod in his hand, and then the father can be heard. So does God with his children, “He opens their ears” (Job 36:10) which the world had stopped, and then instruction will enter.
When Joab would not come to Absalom—Joab sets Absalom’s field on fire. In the same way, after many neglects of God—He brings us to Himself by affliction. God says, as it were, “Come, let us reason together” (Isaiah 1:18); and the soul echoes back again, “Speak, Lord, for your servant hears” (1 Samuel 3:10): and when the soul is thus silent unto God, he comes and seals instruction by his Spirit.
4. And lastly, affliction is an eye-salve, whereby God opens the eye of the soul to see the need and excellency of divine teaching—by the discovery of its own brutish ignorance of God, and of his ways, under all divine administrations. Just as Ephraim once bemoaned himself to the Lord, “I have been as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke” (Jeremiah 31:18). The prophet David will interpret it, “So foolish was I, and ignorant, and like a beast before you” (Psalm 73:22). By means of this discovery, God draws out the heart into humble and holy supplication for divine teaching, “Teach me what I cannot see; if I have done wrong, I will not do so again” (Job 34:32).
When or how does the sinner come to ask for instruction? “Why,” says he, “I have borne chastisement” (verse 31a). Correction discovered the need of instruction, “Teach me what I cannot see” (verse 32a); and thus Ephraim, “You have chastised me, and I was chastised” (Jeremiah 31:18a). But blows alone will not do it; therefore it follows, “Turn me—and I shall be turned” (verse 18b). Though chastisement alone could not turn Ephraim, yet it made him see an absolute necessity of divine power to his conversion.
And when God has brought the heart once into this frame, to see and be affected with the sense of its own ignorance and impotency, and to lie in the dust at God’s feet, humbly importuning an effectual teaching from Heaven—then God will cause his ear to hear. When God has engaged the heart in holy desires of saving instruction, it is not only mercy in God, but faithfulness, to satisfy the desire of his own creation, “Good and upright is the Lord, and therefore he will teach sinners in the way” (Psalm 25:8).
Thus much for the third particular thing propounded for the opening of the doctrine; I come now to the fourth and last point.
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