Nehemiah 13:2

Howbeit our God turned the curse into a blessing.

The curse turned into a blessing

This was just like God, whose name and nature are love.

1. The devil turns the blessing into a curse. When God created man He endowed him with the power of choice, made his will free, so that he might choose good and evil. The creature was thus endowed with an inestimable blessing. The devil, by the subtlety and force of temptation, turned man’s dignity against himself and effected his ruin, and through successive generations he has sought to turn the blessing into a curse.

2. Man often turns the blessing into a curse. Physical strength, intellectual endowments, social position, wealth, opportunities for usefulness--things good in themselves--are often transformed by man’s depraved nature into instruments and occasions of evil. Of all the plots and assaults of the devil, all the mischievous purposes of wicked men, all the disasters of life, all the forms of evil we may have to encounter we may say, “Howbeit our God turned the curse into a blessing.”

I. God has turned the curse of sin into a blessing. The existence of sin is an awful and mysterious fact, permitted by God for wise and gracious issues. We can conceive of no greater curse. It separated man from God. It destroyed his original righteousness. It cut him off from happiness. It brought upon him condemnation and death. God comes to man in this state with the blessings of His grace.

1. The fall of man furnished an occasion for the exercise of the restoring grace of God. Sin prepared the way for salvation. “Paradise Regained” is more than “Paradise Lost.”

2. The curse of sin has supplied an opportunity for such an exhibition of the character and glory of God as we nowhere else behold. God’s brightest glory shines in the method of man’s salvation. God in Christ is more glorious far than God in creation. In the Saviour of the world we have the most perfect manifestation of God.

3. Throughout the earth, following in the track of the destroyer, God bestows the blessings of His great salvation. God is still “in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.”

II. God turns sorrow into a blessing.

1. Sorrow is a teacher. Sorrow seems sent for our instruction as we darken the cages of birds when we would teach them to sing. As the night brings out the stars, so trouble reveals to us many truths that would otherwise remain unseen. It clears our visions, so that we get new views of God and ourselves, of truths and duty, of this world and the next.

2. It awakens thoughtfulness.

3. Under this gracious ministry and discipline the noblest characters have been perfected. Poets, it is said, “learn in suffering what they teach in song.” Sorrow is one of the best nurses of godliness. Some plants thrive better in a poor than in a rich soil; so some virtues come to speedier and fuller perfection in grief than in gladness. When spices are crushed, then they emit their odours. After the diamond is ground and polished On the wheel, its facets flash with lustre. It is said that when growers of roses want to develop the bloom of a favourite tree in special richness and beauty they sometimes deprive it for a season of light and moisture. In this condition its leaves fall off. But while this process is going on, and the tree is almost leafless, a new life is springing, from which come in due season a tenderer foliage and a choicer and more abundant bloom. This suggests some of the sweet uses of sorrow,

4. In the gracious arrangements of God sorrow is often succeeded by joy,

5. God is preparing the way for the extinction of sorrow on the earth.

III. God turns the curse of death into a blessing. To the Christian man death ceases to be the king of terrors, and becomes a friend to call him home, He delivers him from the infirmities of the flesh, the corruptions of sin, the temptations of Satan, and the sufferings and troubles of life. Death is the gate of life. In conclusion--

1. The subject teaches us the benevolence of God.

2. Learn the loving confidence you may cherish in God. Let us learn to imitate God. Let us endeavour through life to turn the curse into a blessing. (William Walters.)

Sorrows turned to blessings

We might tell of the blessed effects of the captivity of Joseph--the means of preserving his father’s household and the lives of the thousands of Egypt. We might speak of the happy results of Israel’s national calamities; how they were led to seek the Lord in their sorrow, and the Lord hearkened and heard them. We might tell of Paul’s imprisonment issuing in the conversion of his jailor and his household; or we might speak of John’s banishment to the lonely Isle of Patmos, where his spirit was refreshed with those wondrous discoveries of God’s doings and purposes that form the last book in the Canon of Sacred Writ. In these instances sorrow is not to be denominated a cures, but a blessing--not a punishment, but a medicine. True it is that sorrow has been Styled the winter of the soul, because it freezes up the streams of comfort, and ices the soul over with the frosts of sadness; but, like as that season, rough and stormy and bleak as it is, is conducive to the ultimate fertility of the earth, so the moral Winter at once prepares for the fuller enjoyment of the coming spring of peace, and is productive of a richer harvest of righteousness to the praise and glory of our God. Affliction has been styled the storm of life; but, like as those tempests that agitate the bosom of the ocean serve alike to overpower the shattered bark, and to urge forward others more speedily to their desired haven, so these moral tempests, while they may overwhelm the wicked and impenitent, are ever conducive in speeding forward the journey of the children of the kingdom to heaven and to God. (J. Macnaughton, A. M.)

Curses and blessings

Nehemiah sees God at work in this transformation, and openly, gladly, gratefully acknowledge that the transformation of the curse was not the work of human good-will or of human genius, but a direct operation of the Divine almightiness itself. We lose so much by not seeing God immediately. Why do we allow God to go so far sway from our consciousness and appreciation and love? Why do we not cry for Him, and bid Him come to us, and give Him no rest until He draws near? This is the true religion; this is the noble piety.

I. To be cursed of man is really no proof of God’s disapprobation.

II. He ought to be a very great man, and a very pure, lofty, and godly soul, who under takes to curse anybody else.

III. To be blessed of man is no proof of God’s favour iv. The vanity of trusting in anything which can be turned into a curse. Application of these truths to your personal experience:

1. The frowns of society.

2. Wronged in business.

3. The seeming opposition of nature, God is willing and able to turn all curses into blessings.

But the blessing will not be given without action on our part. Art thou suffering? Go to thy knees; tell God thy sin; then the film shall be taken from thine eyes--thou shall see the great, mighty, redeeming Cross of Christ, and He shall say, “Thy sins, which are many, are all forgiven thee” The curse will be turned into a blessing, and thou shalt be the better for the abasement. (Joseph Parker, D. D.)

Sorrows keeping front worldliness

An evangelist tells of a young lad who left his father’s home to be a sailor. He was absent for three years, and on the return voyage, just as he was thinking of how soon he should see all the dear ones at home, his ship was wrecked off the coast of Norway. Many were lost, but he and some others managed to get into a boat. They tried to row for the shore, but the men being wet, and the cold so intense, many of them were frozen to death. The first mate had command of the boat, and the lad being a favourite of his, he was afraid that he should fall a victim to the cold, and whenever he saw him dozing, or showing any signs of sleeping, he thrashed him with a rope’s-end. In vain the lad expostulated, the thrashing continued until all drowsiness was gone. At length they reached land, and were hospitably entertained by the natives, and in time were forwarded home. That young man often says he owes his life to the mate who administered to him that timely discipline. The sufferings and sorrows which God puts upon His people are like that thrashing. Only to keep them from falling into the sleep of worldliness that leads to death, to keep them alive in grace, looking unto Him, does He afflict them.

God’s Providences not to be feared

We ought never to be afraid of God’s providences when they seem to break up our lives and crush our hopes, and even to turn us away from our chosen paths usefulness and service. God knows what He wants to do with us, how He san boot use us, and where and in what lines of ministry He would have us serve. When He shuts one door it is because He has another standing open for our feet. Whoa He breaks our lives to pieces it is because they will do more for His glory and the world’s good broken and shattered than whole.