313 XXII. THE ROUGH WIND STAYED. (Delivered on Thursday Evening, September 18th, 1844). "Hath He smitten him, as He smote those that smote him? or is he slain according to the slaughter of them that are slain by Him? In measure, when it shooteth forth, Thou wilt debate with it: He stayeth His rough wind in the day of the east wind. By this therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged; and this is all the fruit to take away his sin; when He maketh all the stones of the altar as chalkstones that are beaten in sunder, the groves and images shall not stand up.”— ISAIAH xxvii. 7-9. THE people of God are here spoken of as an afflicted people, and this supposition is well founded. Is it strange that a child should be corrected? or a vine pruned? or that a field should be ploughed? or that an ox should be proved? "Many are the afflictions of the righteous." "Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth." Well, but if they are sufferers, how do they suffer? The text presents two views of them: the first regards their alleviation, the second their design. I. THEIR ALLEVIATION. "Hath He smitten him, as He smote those that smote him? or is he slain according to the slaughter of them that are slain by Him? In measure, when it shooteth forth, Thou wilt debate with it: He stayeth His rough wind in the day of the east wind." They shall be tempered. This is exemplified in two ways. First, They shall escape the severer afflictions of others. Hath He smitten him, as He smote those that smote him? or is he slain according to the slaughter of them that are slain by Him?" That is, He does not deal with them as with their enemies. He distresses their enemies, He only chastises them. He deals with their enemies in wrath, with them only in mercy. They only feel the rod of a father, while their enemies feel the sword of a judge. Now this is true of Israel of old. He did not deal with them as with their adversaries. Amalekite He utterly destroyed. The Assyrians and Babylonians He completely vanquished, and the places that once knew them knew them no more, whereas the Jews are preserved even to this day. Thus we read the language of God by Jeremiah: "In those days, saith the Lord, I will not make a full end of you; but I will correct thee in measure, and will not leave thee altogether unpunished." "Behold, the eyes of the Lord God are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the face of the earth; saving that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, saith the Lord. For lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth." How often has God exempted His people from those calamities which have overwhelmed others! You see this in the case of Noah, in the case of Lot, and in the case of the Israelites with regard to the plagues of Egypt. "For the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly," while He reserves the ungodly to be punished. Others have no hiding-place, but God is "their refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." Others have nothing to support them in their sorrows, but God's everlasting arms are underneath these. Others say "they have taken away my gods, and what have I more?" These can say, "Although the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls; yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation." You should learn, therefore, from hence to compare your condition with others, especially with the wicked; you should say, "O what a mercy I am not like them in my sorrows, without hope, and without God in the world." "In Observe, secondly, their afflictions are moderate. measure, when it shooteth forth, Thou wilt debate with it. He stayeth His rough wind in the day of the east wind." That is, He will chide and check it, saying, "Hither thou shalt come, but no further." The east wind is sharp and piercing, and you all know if it were rough it would be withering too: but He stays its fierceness, even when He does not change the quarter whence it comes. "He stayeth His rough wind in the day of the east wind." This shews us that all your troubles are under the divine control, and it gives us such a view as will meet the desire of every afflicted believer. Who does not deserve correction? and who does not say with Jeremiah, "O Lord, correct me, but with judgment" (that is, with moderation): "not in Thine anger, lest Thou bring me to nothing"? An ungrateful mind always looks at the dark side, while a grateful mind looks at the bright side. The believer says, "'tis bad, but it might have been worse." Numerous are the alleviations God affords His people in their trouble, sometimes from the shortness of their afflictions, for says God, "I will not afflict for ever." Sometimes the alleviation is founded in the things in which they are afflicted. You have been deprived of affluence, but not support. One parent has been taken, the other has been spared to you. "Joseph is not, and Simeon is not," but Benjamin is left. You have been greatly afflicted; you might have been dead. You are become helpless, but you might have been enduring anguish and torture. Observe also their counterbalances. You are tried in one child, you are equally comforted and indulged in another. Your substance has been reduced, but your health has been improved; and improved, perhaps, by the very efforts you have been compelled to make. You have less outward, but you have more inward, joy. If you have tribulation, you have been enabled to glory in it; and as the sufferings of Christ have abounded, so your consolations have abounded by Christ, and you have had strength equal to your day. If you saw a man groaning under a heavy load, and you could give him strength to bear it, this would be equal to your taking the burden. Now this is the case with God. He has said, "As thy day so shall thy strength be." Latimer and Ridley suffered together at Oxford. When confined to the stake they were near enough to shake hands. "Give me your hand," said Latimer, adding, "my brother, God will either resist the violence of the flames, or give us strength to abide them;" and then he said in the sweetest strains, "God is faithful, and He will not suffer us to be tempted above that we are able." Another saint, in writing to his friend, said, "Do not, pray that I may be kept from pain, but pray that God may increase my patience, that in patience I may possess my soul." God sometimes gives you increasing views of your own unworthiness. Perhaps you have been ready to murmur and repine; but when God gives you enlarged views of what you are and what you deserve, then instead of wondering that your trials are so many, you will wonder that they are so few. Instead of wondering that they are so great, you will wonder that they are so small; for when a sense of sin lies heavy upon your conscience, trouble will always lie light. "Why should a living man complain? a man "I will bear," says the for the punishment of his sins?" church, "the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned against Him." Aaron held his peace, after both his sons had been slain, for he had been,-what? He had been engaged in making a golden calf. It did not become him to murmur and complain after this. If you have clearer and brighter prospects of the glory that is to be revealed in you, you have a counterbalance; therefore says the Apostle, "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal." II. Let us pass on to consider THEIR DESIGN; and here you will consider the general expression, and the particular reason of the thing. Consider first the general expression of the text: "By this therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged; and this is all the fruit to take away his sin." In this sense we are to understand this language as referring, not to meritoriousness, but efficiency; it is thus, and thus alone, that the blood of Jesus Christ taketh away sin. You read that the martyrs "washed their robes," not in their own blood, though they shed it so plentifully. Neither do afflictions possess any efficacy in themselves. In how many instances do they leave persons even worse than they were before; but though they cannot sanctify sufficiently, yet they do instrumentally; they are means used by the Spirit of God. How oft does He employ them to effect His gracious purposes. This was the case with the prodigal he began to be in want, and then he resolved to return to his father. This was the case with Manassah: in his affliction he sought the Lord. Where is the Christian who cannot say with David, "It is good for me that I have been afflicted, for before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I have kept Thy word"? These trials serve as incitements when you become insensible and indifferent to Divine things. "In their afflictions," says God, "they will seek me early." Thus it was with the Church in the days of Hosea. They were wandering after their lovers; God seemed determined to prevent it. Thus He says, "Behold I will hedge up her way with thorns, and make a wall that she shall not find her paths; and she shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them," and after her efforts to get through the one, or over the other, she will return and say, "I will go and return to my first husband, for then was it better with me than now." "O that it were with me," says the Christian, "as in months past!" "Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord." It fares with God's afflicted people as it did once with persons in this country who had the falling sickness. If they slept, they died. To keep them continually awake, they were smitten with a rosemary bush, and the patient cried, "Let me sleep, you will kill me;" but by this smarting they were kept alive. So is it with God's people now. God's rod is like Jonathan's, it has honey at the end; yea, it is "like Aaron's rod that blossomed and bore fruit; so that though no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous, nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruits of righteousness to them that are exercised thereby." Secondly, observe the particular illustration. "When HE maketh all the stones of the altar as chalkstones that are beaten in sunder, the groves and images shall not stand up." It will be easy to explain this. Let me refer you to the address of Moses to the Jews with regard to the idols of other nations: "Ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place." What they were required to do to the idols of others, these people were to do with regard to their own; that is, they were to abandon them; not only to abandon, but to destroy them. To shew the reality and intensity of their repentance, they would even crush them to pieces and beat them to powder as Moses did the golden calf. This was so with regard to the Jews as a people. They were effectually cured of idolatry by their seventy years captivity in Babylon. Ephraim said, "What have I any more to do with idols?" and says John to the Christians, admonishing them, "Little children, keep yourselves from idols." Ah, there are many idols, and these idols have been the ground of God's quarrels with you, and of the most trying dispensations. Happy is the man who is brought to say with our Cowper "The dearest idol I have known, Whate'er that idol be, Help me to bear it from Thy throne, Our discourse has been on the subject of afflictions: can it ever be unseasonable? Is not man "born to trouble"? and if you are exempt now, are you not continually exposed? and will you not remember the language of Solomon,-"Truly the light is |