Comfort for Tried Believers

From The Sword & Trowel 2008, issue 2 by C. H. Spurgeon

This tender yet challenging message from a pastor’s heart deals remarkably with personal temptation, and includes many profound observations.

‘There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it’ (1 Corinthians 10.13).
This verse immediately follows the warning to ‘him that thinketh he standeth’ to ‘take heed lest he fall’. We none of us know what we are really made of until we are tried and tested. It is a very easy thing to imagine yourself to be strong, but it is a very different matter to find that you have sufficient strength when you actually need it.
Let none of us imagine himself to be proof against the temptations of Satan, or even the grosser vices to which the flesh is prone. It may only need for you to be attacked at a certain point, and in a certain way, and you will be overcome even as others have been. The wisest way is to believe ourselves neither to be wise nor strong, and therefore to lie humbly at the feet of him who can make us both wise and strong. It ought to cool the hot blood of self-conceit in anyone to remind him that, although he ‘thinketh he standeth’, it is simply because he has not been tempted as others have been who have fallen.
After the apostle Paul had, by this warning, rebuked the boastings of those who thought they were standing securely, he thought of the far larger number of persons who never think that they can stand, but who are in constant anxiety lest they should fall.

1. God’s Limitings

The first comfort, even in great trouble, is that we have not, after all, been tried in any very unusual way. ‘There hath no temptation [or trial] taken you but such as is common to man.’
You may think, my dear brethren and sisters, that you have been tried more than others but it is only your lack of knowledge of the trials of others which leads you to imagine that your own are unique. There are many others, besides yourself, in the furnace, and in quite as hot a part of it as that in which you are now placed. Note what Paul says: ‘There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man.’ It is a human temptation, not a superhuman one, which has assailed you; that is to say, one which can be withstood by men, not one that must inevitably sweep them away.
Satan has tempted you, young man, but God has allowed you to be assailed in a way which is suitable as a test to you. The trials that have come upon you have been moderated to your capacity as a man. The Lord knows that you are but animated dust, so he has not permitted you to be treated as if you were made of steel or iron. He has himself dealt with you as an earthen vessel – a thing of clay in which he has caused life to dwell. He has not broken you with his rod of iron, as he would have done if he had smitten you with it.
‘But I am very sorely tempted,’ says one. Yes, perhaps you are; but the Lord has given you the history of the children of Israel in the wilderness, to let you see that you have not been tempted more than they were. ‘Ah!’ says another, ‘but I find myself placed in a very peculiar position, where I am greatly tried. I have to labour hard, and I have much difficulty in earning my daily bread, and I am beset with trials of many kinds.’ Well, dear friend, even though what you say is perfectly true, I am not certain that your position is any more likely to bring temptation than was that of the children of Israel in the wilderness.
‘Ah!’ you say, ‘but they did not have to work to earn their bread. The manna came to them every morning, and they had only to gather it, and to eat it. They were not engaged in commercial transactions; there were no markets in the desert – no Corn Exchange, no Stock Exchange, no Smithfield, no Billingsgate – no taking down the shutters in the morning, and putting them up again at night, and going a great part of the day without any customers. They were separated from all other nations, and were in a peculiarly advantageous position.’
Yet, dear friends, you need not wish to be placed in such a position, because, advantageous as it was in some respects, the Israelites there were evidently tempted to all sorts of sins, and fell into them very grievously. Having often read the story of their forty years’ sojourn in the wilderness, you know their sad history. With so favourable a position granted to them, under the Lord’s own special guardianship, and enriched with many choice mercies, we might have expected that they would have been free from temptation – or, at any rate, that they would not have fallen into its snare. Yet it was not so, for the devil can tempt in the wilderness quite as well as in the city, as we know from the experience of Christ himself.
The devil would tempt you even if your bread were given to you every morning, instead of your having to earn it; he would tempt you if you had no business to attend to, and never had to go into the world to meet with your fellow men. In fact, the story of the Israelites teaches me that it is best for you to work, and best for you to be poor, and best for you not to make money as fast as you would like, and best for you to be surrounded by cares of various kinds.

If divine grace has helped others overcome the covetous desire, and the lusting of the spirit, it can help you do the same...

I think I judge rightly that the people of God, the saved ones, do not fall into such gross sins as the Israelites did in the wilderness; so that the saints’ position, though it may appear worse than that of Israel, is really better.
To what, my dear brethren and sisters, are you tempted? Are you tempted to lust after evil things? They lusted for the meat that was not suitable to the climate, nor good for their health; and they despised the manna, which was the very best food they could have. Do you ever get a craving for what you ought not to desire? Are you growing covetous? Do you long for ease? Do you wish for wealth? Do you love pleasure? Well, dear friends, this temptation has happened to others before; it happened to those people in the wilderness. You are not the first to be tempted in that fashion; and if divine grace has helped others to overcome the covetous desire, and the lusting of the spirit, it can help you to do the same. But, mark also that if others have fallen through such temptations, and perished in the wilderness, you, too, apart from divine grace, will do the same. Therefore you have urgent need to cry to the Strong for strength, lest you also should fall even as they did.