John 11:4

John 11:4

The Christian Uses of Sickness

I. We do not sufficiently consider sickness in a Christian light. Undoubtedly, the failure of health is, and will ever be, esteemed a misfortune to any man. It would be going counter to the current of nature to attempt to think of it otherwise. But at this point comes in the difference between the man of the world and the Christian. The man of the world looks upon sickness simply as a misfortune nothing more. The Christian regards sickness as a misfortune true, but it is only his infirmity that he thus regards it. He may speak thus, but his faith corrects him as he speaks, and the stronger it becomes, and the more prevalent, the more it will correct him, till he almost ceases to speak and think of sickness as a misfortune; till the current of nature is turned, and the sacred fountain of his thoughts tends upward and flows not with the world.

II. The blessed uses of adversity have been sung and spoken, even by the thoughtful ones of this world, and how much more of them do we Christians know. How often have we seen a man enter into sickness, a giant in the strength of nature, but a babe in grace, and how often has the same man come out of it prostrated indeed, shattered for the world and its uses, but mighty in spiritual achievement, victor of himself, victor of the world. For wonderful are the remindings at such a time, of things lost, past words whose sound has long gone out of mind; the bringing up out of the depths of the memory of hidden knowledge; the life with which dead formalities suddenly become clothed; the divinity which begins to stir amongst long laid up texts; the real conflict with self-deceit and pride in one who has been only talking about such a conflict all his life; the dropping away of exaggerated phrases of self-loathing; and of confidence in God, and the coming, like the flesh of a little child, of real utterances of self-abasement and the first genuine whisperings of Abba Father. To how many of us sickness may be the sanctuary of earth; to how many the vestibule of heaven.

H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons,vol. v., p. 95.

References: John 11:4. Spurgeon, Evening by Evening,p. 232; R. Tuck, Christian World Pulpit,vol. vii., p. 11 3 John 1:11 :5. Preacher's Monthly,vol. x., p. 230; W. Braden, Christian World Pulpit,vol. vi., p.. 417; A. Mursell, Ibid.,vol. xxii., p. 259; J. Keble, Sermons for Sundays after Trinity,Part ii., p. 299. John 11:6. Preacher's Monthly,vol. x., p. 290. John 11:7; John 11:8. Parker, Hidden Springs,p. 348.