C. H. Spurgeon

THIS COMFORT COMES FROM A PECULIAR SOURCE, THE BIBLE "This is my comfort ......: for thy word hath quickened me". The comfort, then, is partly outward, coming from God's Word; but it is mainly and preeminently inward, for it is God's Word experienced as to its quickening power within the soul.

It is God's Word that comforts. Why do we look anywhere else for consolation but to God's Word? Brothers and sisters, I am ashamed to have to say it, but we go to our neighbors or relatives and cry, "Have pity upon me! Have pity upon me, 0 my friends!" and it ends with our crying, "Miserable comforters are ye all". We turn to the pages of our past life and look there for comfort, but this may also fail us. Though experience is a legitimate source of comfort, yet when the sky is dark and lowering, experience is apt to minister fresh distress. If we were to go at once to God's Word and search it until we found a promise suitable to our case, we should find relief far sooner.

All cisterns dry up; only the fountain remains. Next time you are troubled, reach down the Bible. Say to thy soul, "Soul, sit thou still and hear what God the Lord will speak, for He will speak peace unto His people".

You read one promise, and you feel, No, that hardly meets the case. Here is another; but it is made to a special character, and I am afraid I am not that character. Here, thank God, is one that just fits me as a key fits the wards of a lock. When you find such a promise, use it at once.

John Bunyan beautifully pictures a pilgrim laid by the heels in Giant Despair's castle and there beaten with a crab tree cudgel until one morning he puts his hand into his bosom and cries to his brother Christian, "What a fool have I been to lie rotting in this noisome dungeon, when all this time I have a key in my bosom which will open every door in Doubting Castle!". "Sayest thou so, my brother?" says Christian. "Pluck it out, and let us use it at once".

When this key, which is called Promise, is thrust into the first lock, the door flies open; then it is tried upon the next and the next with quick result. Though the great iron gate had a rusted lock in which the key did terribly grate and grind, yet it did open and the prisoners were free from the durance vile of their mistrust.

The promise always has opened the gate, and every gate -ay, the gates of despair shall be opened with that key called promise if a man does but know how to hold it firmly and turn it wisely until the bolt flies back.

"This is my comfort in my affliction", says the psalmist - `God's own Word'

Dear friends, fly to this comfort with speed in every time of trouble; that you may do so, get to be familiar with God's Word.

I have found it helpful to carry Clarke's Precious Promises in my pocket and refer to it in the hour of trial. If you go into the market and are likely to do a ready -money business, you always take a checkbook with you; so carry precious promises with you that you may plead the word which suits your case.

I have turned to promises for the sick when I have been of that number or to promises to the poor, the despondent, the weary, and such like, according to my own condition; and I have always found a Scripture fitted to my case.

I do not want a promise made to the sick when I am perfectly well; I do not want balm for a broken heart when my soul is rejoicing in the Lord; but it is very handy to know where to lay your hand upon suitable words of cheer when necessity arises. Thus, the external comfort of the Christian is the Word of God.

Now for the internal part of his consolation. "This is my comfort in my affliction: for thy word hath quickened me". Oh, it is not the letter but the spirit which is our real comfort. We look not to that Book which consists of so much binding and so much paper and so much ink, but to the living Witness within the Book. The Holy Ghost embodies Himself in these blessed words and works upon our hearts so that we are quickened by the Word. It is this which is the true comfort of the soul.

When you read the promise and it is applied with power to you, when you read the precept and it works with force upon your conscience, when you read any part of God's Word and it gives life to your spirit - then it is that you get the comfort of it.

I have heard of persons reading so many chapters a day and getting through the Bible in a year-a very admirable habit, no doubt; but it may be performed so mechanically that no good whatever may come of it. You want to pray earnestly over the Word that it may quicken you, or otherwise it will not be a comfort to you.

Let us think of what our comfort is in the time of affliction from our soul's being quickened by the Word. Comfort comes thus: God's Word has in past days quickened us. It has been a word of life from the dead. In our affliction, we therefore remember how God has brought us out of spiritual death and made us alive, and this cheers us.

If you can say, "Whatever pain I suffer, whatever grief I endure, yet I am a living child of God," then you have a wellspring of comfort. It is better to be the most afflicted child of God than to be the merriest worldling. Better be God's dog than the Devil's darling. Child of God, comfort yourself with this: if God has not given me a soft bed nor left me a whole skin, yet He has quickened me by His Word; and this is a choice favor. Thus our first quickening from spiritual death is a sunny memory.

After we are made alive, we need to be quickened in duty, in joy and in every holy exercise. And we are happy if the Word has given us this repeated quickening. If, in looking back, you can say, "Thy Word hath quickened me; I have had much joy in hearing Thy Word; I have been made full of energy through Thy Word; I have been made to run in the way of Thy commandments through Thy Word" - all this will be a great comfort to you. You can then plead, "0 Lord, while Thou mayest have denied me much of the joy that some people have, yet Thou hast often quickened me! Oh, be it so again, for this is my comfort! "

I hope I am speaking to many experienced Christians who can say that God's Word has very frequently refreshed them when they have been in the depths of distress and fetched them up from the gates of the grave. If you can bear this testimony, you know what comfort there is in the quickening of the Word of God, and you will ask to feel that quickening influence again so you may be of good comfort.

Brothers and sisters, it is a very strange thing that when God wills to do one thing, He often does another. When He wants to comfort us, what does He do? Does He comfort us? Yes and no. He quickens us, and so He comforts us. Sometimes the roundabout way is the straight way. God does not give the comfort we ask for by a distinct act, but He quickens us, and so we obtain comfort.

Here is a person very low and depressed. What does a wise doctor do? He does not give strong drink to act as a temporary fillip to his spirits, for this would end in a reaction in which the man would sink lower; but he gives him a tonic to brace him up. When the man is stronger, he becomes happier and shakes off his nervousness.

The Lord comforts His servants by quickening them: "This is my comfort in my affliction: for Thy word hath quickened me".

I speak to some of you who have endured long affliction, and it is a joy to see you out again tonight. Has not God's word often quickened you in affliction? Perhaps you have been sluggish when in health, but affliction has made you feel the value of the promise, the value of the covenant blessing; then you have cried to God for it. You may have been worried about worldly cares before, but you have been obliged to drop them in the time of affliction, and your only care has been to get nearer to Christ and to creep into your Lord's bosom.

Sometimes in prosperity you could hardly pray; but I warrant you, you prayed when you were ready to perish, and pined at death's door. Your affliction quickened your prayers.

There is a man trying to write with a quill pen; it will not make anything but a thick stroke. But he takes a knife and cuts fiercely at the quill till it marks admirably. So we have to be cut with the sharp knife of affliction, for only then can the Lord make use of us.

See how sharply gardeners trim their vines; they take off every shoot until the vine looks like a dry stick. There will be no grapes in the spring if there is not this cutting away in the autumn and winter.

God quickens us in our afflictions through His Word. Our sorrows are made to have a salutary action on our souls. We receive by them spiritual revival and health, and thus comfort flows in to us.

It would not be wise to pray to be altogether delivered from trial, though we should like to be. It would be a pleasant thing to have a grassy path all the way to Heaven and never to find a stone in the road. But, though pleasant, it might not be safe. If the way were a fine turf, cut every morning with a lawn mower and made as soft as velvet, I am afraid we should never get to Heaven at all, for we should linger too much upon the road.

Some animals' feet are not adapted for smooth places. And you and I are of a very slippery - footed race. We slip when the roads are smooth. It is easy to go downhill, but it is not easy to do so with out a stumble.

John Bunyan tells us that when Christian passed through the Valley of Humiliation, the fight he had there with Apollyon was very much due to the slips he made going down the hill which descended into the valley.

Happy is he who is in the Valley of Humiliation, for "he that is down need fear nor fall"; but his happiness will largely depend upon how he came down. Gently, you that are on the hilltops of delight and prosperity. Gently, lest peradventure you slip with your feet and mischief come of it!

Quickening is what we want; and if we get it, even if it comes to us by the sharpest tribulation, we may gladly accept it. "This is my comfort in my affliction: for thy word hath quickened me".

PECULIAR COMFORT IS VALUABLE UNDER VERY SPECIAL TRIALS
There are certain peculiar trials of Christians in which this peculiar comfort is specially excellent.

Kindly look at the psalm and notice in verse 49 that the psalmist suffered from hope deferred: "Remember the word unto thy servant, upon which thou hast caused me to hope".

Long waiting for the promise to be fulfilled may make the soul grow weary, and hope deferred makes the heart sick. At such a time this is to be our comfort: "Thy word hath quickned me".

I have not yet obtained that for which I prayed, but I have been quickened while I have been praying. I have not found the blessing I have been seeking, but I am sure I shall have it, for already the exercise of prayer has been of service to me. This is my comfort under the delay of my hope, that Thy Word has already quickened me.

Notice verse 51, in which the psalmist was suffering the great trial of scorn: "The proud have had me greatly in derision". Ridicule is a very sharp ordeal. When the proud are able to say something against us that stings, when they laugh and laugh greatly and treat us like the mire in the streets, it is a severe affliction, and under it we need rich comfort.

If at that time we feel that if man's word stings yet God's Word quickens, then we are comforted. If we are driven more to God by being scorned by men, we may very cheerfully accept their contempt and say "Lord, I bless Thee for this persecution which makes me a partaker of Christ's sufferings"
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I say, it becomes a comfort to us to be quickened by the Word when the ungodly are despising us.

At verse 53 you see David under trouble of living among great blasphemers and doers of open wickedness. He says, "Horror hath taken hold upon me because of the wicked that forsake thy law".

He was horrified at their vices; he wished that he could get away from their society and never see or hear that which distressed him so much. But if the very sight and sound of sin drive us to pray and force us to cry to God, the result is good, however painful the process may be.

If men never swore in the streets, we should not so often be driven to cry to God to forgive their profanity. If you and I could always be shut up in a glass case and never see sin or hear of it, might be a bad thing for us. But if, when we are compelled to see the wickedness of men and hear their curses and revilings we can also feel that God's Word is quickening us, even by our horror at sin, it is good for us. We have great comfort in this peculiar species of affliction, though it is exceedingly grievous to tenderhearted, pure and delicate minds who dwell near to God.

Read verse 54 and see another of David's trials indicated: "Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage". He had many changes; he had all the trials of a pilgrim's life -the discomforts of journeying in places where he had no abiding city. `But this', he says, `has been my comfort in my affliction: Thy Word has told me of a city that hath foundations; Thy Word has assured me that if I am a stranger upon earth, I am also a citizen of Heaven. Thy Word hath quickened me'. I have felt myself so strengthened by the Word that I have been glad to feel that this is not my rest, I am glad to feel that I must be away to a better land, and so my heart has been happy, and "Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage".

Last, in verse 55, you see David in darkness. He says, "I have remembered thy name , 0 LORD, in the night, and have kept thy law". Even in the night he could derive comfort from the quickening influence which often comes to the soul from the Scriptures even when we are surrounded by darkness and sorrow. I will not go over that ground again, but certain it is that when our soul is shrouded in distress, it often becomes more active and gracious than when it is basking in the sunlight of prosperity.

All along then, dear friends, your comfort and mine is the Word of God, laid home by God the Holy Ghost to our hearts quickening us to an increase of spiritual life.

Do not try to flee from your troubles; do not fret under your cares; do not expect this world to bring forth roses without thorns; do not hope to prevent the up springing of briars and thistles; but ask for that quickening to come, not by new revelations nor by fanatical excitement, but by God's own Word quietly applied by His own Spirit. So shall you conquer all your troubles, overcome your difficulties and enter into Heaven singing hallelujahs unto the Lord's right hand and holy arm which have gotten Him the victory.