PURPOSE OF AFFLICTION – Part 3

 FRIDAY, 28TH APRIL, 2023.

Topic: PURPOSE OF AFFLICTION – Part 3

MEMORIZE: “Before I was afflicted I went astray, But now I keep Your word… It is good for me that I have been afflicted, That I may learn Your statutes.” Psalms 119:67, 71.

SCRIPTURE READING: Job 36:8-12.

  “And if they are bound in fetters, Held in the cords of affliction, 9 Then He tells them their work and their transgressions-That they have acted defiantly. 10 He also opens their ear to instruction, And commands that they turn from iniquity. 11 If they obey and serve Him, They shall spend their days in prosperity, And their years in pleasures. 12 But if they do not obey, They shall perish by the sword, And they shall die without knowledge.” 

EXPOSITION:

3. DISCIPLINARY AND PURIFICATORY

For those who are able to stand the test, suffering has a purificatory or disciplinary value.

(1) The thought of affliction as a discipline or form of Divine teaching is found in Job, especially in the speeches of Elihu, who insists that tribulation is intended as a method of instruction to save man from the pride and presumption that issue in destruction (Job 33:14-30; Job 36:8-10 , Job 36:15). The same conception is found in Psalms 94:12; Psalms 119:67, Psalms 119:71 . 

(2) The purificatory function of trials is taught in such passages as Isaiah 1:25; Zechariah 13:9; Malachi 3:2 , Malachi 3:3 , where the process of refining metals in fire and smelting out the dross is the metaphor used.

4. VICARIOUS AND REDEMPTIVE 

Read Isaiah 53:1-12 “1 ¶ Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? 2 For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, And as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him, There is no beauty that we should desire Him. 3 He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. 4 ¶ Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth. 8 He was taken from prison and from judgment, And who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; For the transgressions of My people He was stricken. 9 And they made His grave with the wicked-But with the rich at His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was any deceit in His mouth. 10 ¶ Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand. 11 He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, For He shall bear their iniquities. 12 Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, And He shall divide the spoil with the strong, Because He poured out His soul unto death, And He was numbered with the transgressors, And He bore the sin of many, And made intercession for the transgressors.”

The above are not fully adequate to explain the mystery of the afflictions of the godly. The profoundest contribution in the Old Testament to a solution of the problem is the idea of the vicarious and redemptive significance of pain and sorrow. The author of Job did not touch this rich vein of thought in dealing with the afflictions of his hero. This was done by the author of the Second Isaiah. The classical passage is Isaiah 52:13 -53, which deals with the woes of the oppressed and afflicted Servant of God with profound spiritual insight. It makes no difference to the meaning of the afflictions whether we understand by the Servant the whole Hebrew nation, or the pious section of it, or an individual member of it, and whether the speakers in Isaiah 53:1-12 are the Jewish nation or the heathen. The significant point here is the value and meaning ascribed to the Servant's sufferings. The speakers had once believed (in accordance with the traditional view) that the Servant suffered because God was angry with him and had stricken him. Now they confess that his sorrows were due, not to his own sin but to theirs (Isaiah 53:4-6 , Isaiah 53:8 ). His sufferings were not only vicarious (the punishment of their sin falling upon him), but redemptive in their effect (peace and health coming to them as a result of his chastisement). Moreover, it was not only redemptive, but expiatory ("his soul guilt-offering," Isaiah 53:10 ) - a remarkable adumbration of the Christian doctrine of atonement.

PRAYER POINT: Lord, let your resurrection draw me closer to you in unbroken relationship with you in Jesus name.

DAILY BIBLE READING IN A YEAR –  1 Chronicles 18-20.