THE Christian life must be more or less a constant warfare. No zealous or faithful heart can go through many months together without some suffering for righteousness’ sake, and, though in the end victory will rest with the believer, very often circumstances will seem to be all against him, and his only honors will be the wounds he receives. Let no young believer be disheartened or discouraged because he has to endure suffering for the truth’s sake. The greatest conquerors for God’s honor have often been the greatest sufferers, and had they not had good courage in God they would have fallen back to the rear, and we, who now enjoy the fruit of their victories, should be under the government of darkness. If Luther had not been of good courage how should we Protestants fare? Had he swerved or given way before persecution when in the power of God he lifted up the banner of the truth, with justification by faith thereon emblazoned, how should we who rejoice in the liberty of our open Bibles now stand?
And in small circles the principle likewise holds good that the believer is called to pursue with courage his path for Christ’s glory, and that on that pathway he will have to suffer for his Master’s sake.
The long roll of the great witnesses of the Bible attest this truth. “Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted?” was the martyr Stephen’s testimony against the religious rulers who had betrayed and slain the Just One Himself! The world, whether wicked, moral, or religious, hated the truth, and the confessors of the truth have to face its opposition in their path of duty.
Jeremiah, the prophet, whose heart was full of grief because of Israel’s sin and rebellion in his day, declared the testimony of Jehovah against the people in the face of continual opposition, and through constant suffering. The Jews would not hear the truth of their defeat, overthrow, and captivity. His faithful words brought him almost to death. The willful princes petitioned the king against him: “We beseech thee, let this man be put to death: for thus he weakeneth the hands of the men of war that remain in this city, and the hands of all the people, in speaking such words unto them: for this man seeketh not the welfare of this people, but the hurt.”
The end was that, rather than humble themselves under God’s hand and before His servant, “took they Jeremiah, and cast him into the dungeon of Malchiah the son of Hammelech, that was in the court of the prison: and they let down Jeremiah with cords. And in the dungeon there was no water, but mire: so Jeremiah sunk in the mire.” (Jer. 38:4, 6). Men hate to hear the truth; still by the truth are they saved. Even in the terrible sin of these princes, one man—a foreigner, it is true—was raised up for Jeremiah’s deliverance.
How childish it is to be angry with the truth! Shall we content ourselves by living in a fool’s paradise? Certainly our life lived there will be but a brief one, and then will come the reckoning day. Those princes who SO maltreated Jeremiah were all of them shortly afterward slain. (Jer. 39:6).
Righteousness and truth must in the end prevail, for God has so declared; but since sin is in the world, and Satan rules over the world, there must be a battle between good and evil, falsehood and truth, right up to the great day of victory.
During their time of suffering, God stands by His people in a remarkable way; He gives not only the courage to endure the afflictions, but peace, so that they are borne with a heart at rest. We do not feel sorrow the less because our hearts are at peace, but we brave the sorrow in quite a different way from what we do when our hearts are fretting or uneasy. No one of the great men of the Bible seems to have had a heart more thoroughly broken than Jeremiah, yet amid his lamentations and his sorrows he gives us occasionally words of the deepest calm. He says even of the time we are thinking of, “They have cut off my life in the dungeon, and cast a stone upon me.... I called upon Thy Name, O Lord, out of the low dungeon.... Thou drewest near in the day that I called upon Thee: Thou saidst, Fear not.” (Lam. 3:53, 55, 57). When God Himself says to us “Fear not” He fills our hearts with peace. God’s “Fear not” kept Jeremiah’s soul, at rest even when the stone slab of the pit was fixed over his head, and he was, left, as the princes thought, to perish.