IN Isaiah xlix., 2 we find the Messiah in addressing the isles of the Gentiles referring to himself as being made a “polished shaft.” This symbolic language indicates the way in which He was being prepared to be God’s salvation “unto the end of the earth.” As this was true of Him it is true also of those of His people who are destined by God to be useful in spreading the knowledge of that salvation, or who in other respects are to be useful in His Church on earth. They are made polished shafts by Him. Various are the ways God takes to make them polished shafts, and the means which men would discard as useless, or calculated to destroy are often the very means God uses in order to bring about His own purposes. In looking over the pages of the Bible, and examining the history of the Church of God down through the ages we see many instances of this where it is evident that many of God’s saints, were by very painful processes fitted for their life work in the church of God. These painful processes exercised the grace which was given them and the more it was exercised the more they grew in grace.
The Lord’s people in general have a large measure of afflictions in this world but individuals among them have a larger measure of these afflictions than is common. As a rule it is the case that these individuals are destined to occupy a more prominent place and be more useful than others. Joseph when he made known himself to his brethren in Egypt could say, “I am Joseph, your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt. Now therefore, be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life.” At the time he occupied the most exalted position in Egypt next to the king, but what pen can describe the pain connected with the process by which he was fitted for that exalted position. We are given a hint of that pain in the confession of his brethren, wrung out of them by an accusing conscience, when they said among themselves, “We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul, when he besought us, and we would not hear.” His renewed nature viewed with grief the hatred of his brethren towards him, and what that hatred revealed them to be; his love for his aged father marred the privileges of his exalted position when he would continually think of that father mourning day by day over a beloved son whom he had long given up as lost; his slavery in Egypt, his being falsely accused of a sin repugnant to his renewed soul, the ungratefulness of one to whom he had been a comforter and a messenger of hope, and the long duration of his degraded condition were things fitted to try grace in him. They were, however, but bitter ingredients in the cup which he was to drink in order to fit him for the exalted position he was to occupy. That exalted position, again, was but the platform upon which Joseph was to work as a polished shaft in the hand of the Lord in order to preserve and build up Zion.
Moses is another example of the Lord’s polished shafts. A great work was to be done in bringing the Church of God out of Egypt to that land which God gave to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and to their seed. None was fitted naturally to do that great work, but God made choice of Moses. It could hardly be said that Moses was a fit instrument for the work. It is true that he “was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds,” but this was to his disadvantage as it made him self-confident and rash as can be seen in the manner in which he avenged the oppressed among his brethren by killing the Egyptian. Moses was to deliver his brethren by his Egyptian wisdom, and by the might of his words and his deeds, but God showed him a more excellent way, and revealed a plan that would never miscarry. God was to have all the glory, and Moses must realise it, so God sent Moses for forty years to the land of Midian. The discovery of his mistake as to God’s way of delivering Israel and the disappointments resulting from the upsetting of his own plans had a salutary effect on Moses, for we find him a very different man at the end of these forty years from which he was at the beginning of them. It was after the end of this period that the Holy Ghost says of him, “Now the man Moses was very meek above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.” What a sharp contrast to the rashness he displayed when he slew the Egyptian, for that action might have turned the vengeance of the Egyptians upon the children of Israel, in such a way that, humanly speaking, their exodus from Egypt might never have taken place.
God moves in a mysterious way and no limits can be set to His power in preparing those who are to be polished shafts in His hand in advancing His own kingdom. He will storm the very citadel of Satan, lay hold, by His saving power, of the most active of his agents, and make them the most outstanding of His servants in advancing His cause in the world. This has been the case in an eminent degree concerning the great Apostle of the Gentiles. A Pharisee of the Pharisees, a persecutor, a blasphemer, and a rigid observer of that tradition of the elders which militated against the law of God, he went on in his mad folly crucifying the Lord Jesus in His members on earth, until that never-to-be-forgotten day when he was arrested on the way to Damascus, and changed in his state and nature, and then shown how great things he must suffer in bearing the name of Christ “before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel.” That he had his full share of, these sufferings can be seen from the following account which he himself gives. “Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.” As these sufferings increased it is clear that his zeal for the gospel manifested itself more and more, so that when the Holy Ghost witnessed in every city that bonds and afflictions awaited him, he could say, “But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God.” The success of his labours in Asia and Europe, and the epistles which he wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and through which God will be speaking to men and women to the end of time, manifest clearly what a polished shaft he had been made in the hands of the Most High by these afflictions.
In making His servants polished shafts in His hand God deals with them at times in such a way that they will have to say that He has shown them “hard things” and made them “to drink the wine of astonishment!” In the case of the Apostle Peter we can see that the ruling passion of his life from the day he was called by Jesus was to be of service to his Master, and all his natural zeal and fervency of spirit were employed towards that end. This would cause him to put up many a petition to Heaven for more ability to serve Christ but, Peter did not realise the terrible furnace through which he had to pass in order to become the polished shaft which he desired to be. God’s inheritance could say, “By terrible things in righteousness wilt thou answer us, O God of our salvation.” This was Peter’s experience. He had been warned of Satan’s sieve and assured of his Saviour’s intercession for him that his faith might not fail, and he had a personal experience of both in such a way that, though for a season he could not be distinguished from an apostate, he came out of the fiery ordeal a polished shaft to be instrumental with others in building up the Church of Christ by working miracles in the name of Jesus Christ, and exhorting those who “killed the Prince of Life” to repent “and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord,” and to strengthen his brethren when they were “in heaviness through manifold temptations.”
Many instances could be given from the Bible and from the history of the church since the canon of Scripture was closed to show the various ways by which God prepares His servants for the particular stations which they are to fill in His Church on earth. Many of them “had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; of whom the world was not worthy: they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth,” The worldling and the nominal Christian cannot understand why men should be willing to go through all these trials, and even the true Christian will find in himself what shrinks from them, but where it is the will of God to permit trials He will give grace to support and carry one through, for He has a gracious purpose both in sending the trial and giving grace to support under it.