Charles Spurgeon saw the effects of the plague during his ministry in London. Reflecting on the ninety-first Psalm he noted the comfort and security of the words:
no evil shall be allowed to befall you, no plague come near your tent.
(Ps 91:10)
He told a story about seeing these verses in a shop window. My friend Paul Martin wrote about this incident recently.
With the COVID-19 virus pandemic requiring people to be “socially distant” it is a good time to consider where our security lies.In Spurgeon’s commentary on Psalm 91, he addressed the question:
Get into God and you dwell in all good, and ill is banished far away. It is not because we are perfect or highly esteemed among men that we can hope for shelter in the day of evil, but because our refuge is the Eternal God, and our faith has learned to hide beneath his sheltering wing.
This is the response of anyone in calamity. They get into God. They seek him, pursue him, and find refuge in him. Although they may be socially distant from others, they are secure “in Christ”.
As Spurgeon explained, there is a beautiful way that God gives comfort in calamities and security for those who are sick. Spurgeon said:
It is impossible that any ill should happen to the man who is beloved of the Lord; the most crushing calamities can only shorten his journey and hasten him to his reward. Ill to him is no ill, but only good in a mysterious form. Losses enrich him, sickness is his medicine, reproach is his honour, death is his gain. No evil in the strict sense of the word can happen to him, for everything is overruled for good. Happy is he who is in such a case. He is secure where others are in peril, he lives where others die.
Entering a hospital can be like walking into a furnace of suffering. When you’re there, you know everything is painful. Any type of serious medical problem can be an open invitation to enter a furnace of affliction that is unwelcome and without easy escape.
Since the pain that people feel can only be really understood by the person experiencing it, sometimes it’s hard for others to empathize sufficiently. So going through the furnace of affliction can be very isolating.
Who is Watching You in the Furnace?
You might be in the furnace, but you never know who is watching.
I was speaking with a church member the other day and she said that the way that she and her husband were responding to medical trials made other family members puzzled. Why weren’t they freaking out? Why weren’t they having a nervous breakdown? Why weren’t they collapsing?
Know that in the furnace, people are watching. And God’s people offer a strange, other-worldly witness to the comforting care of their Lord. Onlookers can’t explain it, which is why Christians must do so.
Inviting Inspection
The witness of the believer in the furnace is so distinct that it invites inspection. The experience is similar to the curiosity which Nebuchadnezzar had when he threw the Hebrews into the furnace (Dan 3:20). When they weren’t consumed, Nebuchadnezzar was without explanation. When he saw there was “one like the son of the gods” in the furnace with them, he was compelled to come closer to the door of the furnace and inquire.
The furnace itself didn’t invite inspection. But the fact that the believers were preserved in the furnace did. Nebuchadnezzar was drawn to ask questions of the sustained sufferers. And his conclusion was that “there is no other god who is able to rescue in this way” (Dan 3:29).
Shackled But Singing
How we suffer is observed by others. When the believer is trusting in God through suffering, they are given a relative peace that passes understanding (Phil 4:7). Their mind is “stayed” on God, so God keeps that mind in “perfect peace” (Isa 26:3). This is not to say that a believer doesn’t have pain or agitation. But what happens is that the believer has a relative peace that defies explanation. People will attempt to ascribe it to medication, or personality. Yet God is able to keep a believer in a category-defying peace of mind which invites inspection.
It is like the prison scene when Paul and Silas were immobilized and shackled in the stocks (Acts 16:24-25). Yet with all of the pain, discomfort, distress and fatigue that their situation brought, they were singing! When sufferers are shackled but singing, it invites inspection.
Of course, the earthquake and the near suicide attempt of the jailer added to the drama in Philippi. But when the smoke cleared and the men were still in the prison, the jailer had to enter and inquire at the feet of Paul and Silas. It is clear that God gave peace to these men, which could not be explained naturally by the jailer. This caused the man to ask, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30).
“Shake Their Heads in Wonder”
Another member of our church has been in the hospital for the past two weeks. The situation was extremely serious and the doctors had grim prospects for her. Two weeks later she is still recovering but the urgency has passed. What looked bleak before looks hopeful today. Aspects of her recovery have defied medical explanations. Her husband wrote that the doctors, “shake their heads in wonder”.
You may be in the furnace of affliction, shackled to suffering. Yet you don’t know who is watching. Maybe the relative peace of mind you are given in your sufferings will invite inspection. Maybe God’s deliverance of you will cause others to shake their heads in wonder. Whatever the trial, we know that God is able to work through it, and draw the lost to “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4:6).
I’ve tried to find a cure for what ails me, but I’ve never found the proverbial magic bullet.
Not many of us do.
I think of the young woman I was chatting with at the doctor’s office who was fighting tooth and nail against her illness. “Have you tried BodyTalk?” she asked me.
“No, I don’t know what that is,” I told her.
“It’s kind of hard to explain…the person kind of taps your body in different places. It’s an energy thing.”
I couldn’t quite think of how to respond. But she continued and spared me the need, “My practitioner is very good. She told me how I died in a previous life.”
I will spare you all the gory details about how she died, suffice it to say, it was more than I wanted to know. But her story did make me think. Don’t we all want someone to tell us deep, life-changing secrets about ourselves?
God sees all things clearly, but we see only partially, and sometimes I long to see what God sees. For instance, how and why does autoimmunity happen? There are clues, but no answers. I don’t know. My doctor doesn’t know. The specialists don’t know.
So I look to God’s word and find that Jesus has unlimited knowledge. Not only was he involved in the creation of all things, he now holds all things together.
For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible…And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together…
(Col. 1:16)
He was before disease. He was before human intelligence. He was there at the beginning of the world when everything was good. He created the forests, the oceans and the sun’s warm rays. He created love, and the angels, and every invisible process of life. And God saw that it was good. He created all things and in him they hold together (Col 1:17). Not one antibody in my system rebels outside his sovereign purposes (Rom 8:28).
