Psalms 39:11. When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth: surely every man is vanity. Selah.
When God whips his children, he does not play with them. God is in earnest, if we are not; and when he corrects us, he means us to feel his rod, and he means us to bear the scars it leaves upon us. There must be real strokes, and real smarts, ere we are likely to be cured of sin, and, sometimes, when he is dealing in chastisement with his people, he makes their beauty to depart like a piece of cloth or fur when the moth gets into it, and utterly destroys it. What a poor thing beauty is if the moth can eat it up! If a little affliction can take away our beauty, we may well pray for that beauty for which Moses pleaded, "Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us." That is a beauty of quite another kind, the beauty of grace which no moth can consume. But if we have not that, our beauty is a poor thing. Let no man, let no woman, be vain of beauty which can so soon be gone.
Psalms 39:11. When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth: surely every man is vanity. Selah.
When God whips his children, he does not play with them. God is in earnest, if we are not; and when he corrects us, he means us to feel his rod, and he means us to bear the scars it leaves upon us. There must be real strokes, and real smarts, ere we are likely to be cured of sin, and, sometimes, when he is dealing in chastisement with his people, he makes their beauty to depart like a piece of cloth or fur when the moth gets into it, and utterly destroys it. What a poor thing beauty is if the moth can eat it up! If a little affliction can take away our beauty, we may well pray for that beauty for which Moses pleaded, "Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us." That is a beauty of quite another kind, the beauty of grace which no moth can consume. But if we have not that, our beauty is a poor thing. Let no man, let no woman, be vain of beauty which can so soon be gone.