Then the mud appears – Thomas Brooks

God inflicts great and severe judgments upon men, and upon cities and countries that they may cease from sin, receive instruction, and reform and return to Him.

God’s corrections should be our instructions,
His lashes should be our lessons,
His scourges should be our schoolmasters,
His chastisements should be our admonishments.

God, by fiery afflictions, and by burning up our comforts round about us awakens us, and brings us to Himself. When iron grows rusty, we put it into the fire to purify it; and so when the people of God grow rusty, then the Lord brings them under fiery trials to awaken them, and to purify them.

God has several special ends that he aims at by all the fiery trials and sharp providences that He exercises His people with. He intends a further and a fuller discovery of their sins. In standing waters you cannot see the mud which lies at the bottom of the pond; but when once the water is drawn away then it appears. Just so, in times of prosperity there is a great deal of mud a great deal of unbelief, discontent, murmuring, impatience, passion, pride, etc. which lies at the bottom of men’s hearts, undiscovered. Oh, but when God shall once empty them of their estates, and burn up all their outward comforts, and set them with Job upon the ash-heap then the mud appears, then a whole army of lusts reveal themselves!

In times of fiery trials, you may say with the psalmist, “My sins are ever before me!”
My pride is ever before me,
my unbelief is ever before me,
my frowardness is ever before me,
my murmuring is ever before me,
my discontent is ever before me,
my impatience is ever before me, etc.

Godly men never come to know how bad they are, until they come to be exercised with severe and sharp trials. It was the speech of a holy man in a great sickness, “In this disease I have learned how great God is, and what the evil of sin is!” Afflictions are a Christian’s mirror, in which they may run and read the greatness of God, and the vileness of sin!