Evening, August 14

Charles Spurgeon · Morning and Evening: Daily Readings

"I know their sorrows."

  Exodus 3:7

   The child is cheered as he sings, "This my father knows;" and shall not
   we be comforted as we discern that our dear Friend and tender
   soul-husband knows all about us?

   1. He is the Physician, and if he knows all, there is no need that the
   patient should know. Hush, thou silly, fluttering heart, prying,
   peeping, and suspecting! What thou knowest not now, thou shalt know
   hereafter, and meanwhile Jesus, the beloved Physician, knows thy soul
   in adversities. Why need the patient analyze all the medicine, or
   estimate all the symptoms? This is the Physician's work, not mine; it
   is my business to trust, and his to prescribe. If he shall write his
   prescription in uncouth characters which I cannot read, I will not be
   uneasy on that account, but rely upon his unfailing skill to make all
   plain in the result, however mysterious in the working.

   2. He is the Master, and his knowledge is to serve us instead of our
   own; we are to obey, not to judge: "The servant knoweth not what his
   lord doeth." Shall the architect explain his plans to every hodman on
   the works? If he knows his own intent, is it not enough? The vessel on
   the wheel cannot guess to what pattern it shall be conformed, but if
   the potter understands his art, what matters the ignorance of the clay?
   My Lord must not be cross-questioned any more by one so ignorant as I
   am.

   3. He is the Head. All understanding centres there. What judgment has
   the arm? What comprehension has the foot? All the power to know lies in
   the head. Why should the member have a brain of its own when the head
   fulfils for it every intellectual office? Here, then, must the believer
   rest his comfort in sickness, not that he himself can see the end, but
   that Jesus knows all. Sweet Lord, be thou forever eye, and soul, and
   head for us, and let us be content to know only what thou choosest to
   reveal.