ELEVEN LECTURES ON THE BOOK OF JOB
PREFACE
Owing to the Author's decease within a comparatively short
time of their delivery, these "Eleven Lectures," reported in shorthand, were
denied the advantage of the Lecturer's careful revision for which they were
waiting before being committed to the printers. Under the circumstances, the
Editor has thought it best to depart as little as possible from the reporter's
transcript, and counts therefore upon the reader's kind indulgence in regard to
any imperfections that may appear in the work. Repetitions there are
throughout, as must be, more or less, in the case of oral delivery.
It
may interest the reader to know that the Author's "Notes on the Book of
Job" appeared in 1879; his "Three Lectures" on the same Book in 1909;
and now his latest commentary in the Volume here put forth. They will be found
mutually complementary, and most helpful. May the Lord richly bless these
Addresses to His own for their comfort and encouragement in trial, that they
may, from the heart, be able to say with the apostle: "Ye . . . have seen the
end of the Lord; that THE LORD IS VERY PITIFUL, AND OF TENDER MERCY" (James 5:
11).
LECTURE 5
JOB.
15-19
In this 15th chapter we have the second debate between Job's
friends and himself. I shall take a view of the greater part of it, if the Lord
will, in a general way tonight.
Although Eliphaz was the more grave and
solid of his friends, they were all infected with the same fundamental mistake.
That is an important thing for our souls. We are so apt to think that we never
make any important mistake. Why should that be so? Are we so different from
others? Are we not very liable to it? You must remember that this is a
practical mistake; it is not merely a dogmatic one. There is no question of
false doctrine of any kind here; but it is the application of truth to the
soul; and it is of great moment to us that God has given us a very early book -
Moses probably the writer of it; but the persons concerned are considerably
before Moses. We see that from the very age of Job, and from all the
circumstances.
There is no reference to the law of Israel; no
reference to the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt; it always speaks of a
particularly early time. Its great point is the dealings of God with man, and
particularly with men of faith. It is not merely unbelieving man; with him it
is always pretty much the same thing. His guilt may be aggravated; and, indeed,
I have no doubt that there is no man now so responsible as those that hear the
gospel - those that have Christianity in a living way presented to them. They
are far more guilty and more to be pitied in one way than even the wild
Tartars, or the subjects of that kingdom (Thibet) that seems now [1903] about
to be penetrated - that practically shut up and sealed kingdom which now is
about to be opened, as far as we can see; surely a rather solemn consideration;
for it would be hard to find another. No doubt, in the wilds and centre of
Africa there may be many tribes that are unknown; but this is a very old
civilization; and its rulers have managed to completely block out light from
every source - to pursue their own devices to their own destruction. But God
will not allow it to proceed further; and although we cannot look for much in
the present state, many may go there as a matter of commerce, or a matter
perhaps of politics, or a matter of ambition of one kind or another - still
there may be children of God mixed up with them, and these, at any rate, can
give a message from Christ.
However that may be, what I am drawing
attention to is the interesting character of this book as the revelation to us
now (and, of course, to the Old Testament saints long before us) of how God
deals with pious men, and that for their souls' good, before there is any
written revelation of God. For this is one of the very first books that ever
was written, as I have previously remarked. Sometimes people forget that
although Job appears far down in the Bible, it is the first book of a poetic
character; the prose books all come before Job, carrying you down past the
captivity to Babylon, and then returning from it; and then we go back to the
poetic books, and the Book of Job is the first one. It answers, therefore, very
much to Genesis; what Genesis is in the first portion of the Bible, Job is in
the second. Then we have the Prophets; but it is the first of the poetic books
that are not the Prophets.
Now as to the attack - for we cannot call
it anything else - that is a serious thing. It is not merely in modern times
that Christians have their differences. We see it is here radical - it belongs
to the human spirit, and it may have a very good source; because we are, as no
doubt Old Testament saints found themselves too, instinctively caring for one
another. These friends of Job were exceedingly troubled as to the man to whom
they had all looked up, and he was considered the most righteous of all men
within their scope; and no wonder, God pronounced him so. They did not know
that. It is a most important thing to make this remark, that we are in a very
different position, for hearing all these debates, from Job himself. How little
did Job know that all that came upon him was in consequence of what passed in
the presence of God in heaven! - everything spoken in heaven about the child of
God, even the trials! This was to be a peculiar trial, but it was all settled
there; Job knew nothing about it. The raid of these Chaldeans, and those we
call "Bedouins," and the like - all that was merely natural; and, no doubt, the
tendency was to regard it merely as the trials of a righteous man and his
family from natural causes.
No, beloved friends; it is not a mere
natural cause to the believer; he is under the eye of God. He was so always;
still more so now. Now we are brought into known relationship with God, and
into the nearest relationship with God. We are put in the place of His own
family; we are His own children, yea, sons of God, for this latter speaks of a
dignity before others; that is to say, we are no longer novices, no longer
babes in the nursery, as was the case with believers in the Jewish system. They
had not arrived at age. The Christian now, if he knows what it is to be a
Christian (a great many, alas! do not know, for they think themselves very much
like believers of old, but that is a mistake), has far superior privileges; and
it is one of the great means of Satan's hindering, to lead people not to
understand the place they are brought into, and, consequently, their
responsibility. However that may be, here we have these undoubted saints that
were all at sea in regard to this terrible calamity, this blow after blow,
tempest after tempest which blew away everything in which Job had once been so
favoured. For God has pleasure in blessing His people not merely in spiritual
things, but where we can bear it. You remember that word of the apostle John,
where he wishes that Gaius might prosper as his soul prospered. If the soul
does not prosper, adversity comes as a great mercy; but where the soul prospers
we may be allowed to feel, and God has pleasure in showing, His goodness in
everything - in family circumstances, yea, in everything, if it be for His
glory. He is the judge of that. But there are continually things that, in the
wisdom of God, are forbidden in this way or that way.
However, I do
not go into that new; but here we have the fact that the two things perfectly
coalesced in Job - that there was not a man upon earth that God had such
pleasure in looking upon as Job, and yet such a man passing through deepest
trial from God. It is a great difficulty with the Jews; they cannot understand
it. They want to make out that Job was an imaginary being, because it seems so
strange to them that after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, there should be a man
outside Israel altogether that God had such a high opinion of - and he not a
Jew! Yes. So there it was a great blow to their pride and their narrowness. Yet
were they not all in fact outsiders? They would seem to have been in the
Abrahamic line in one way; but they were not in the chosen line. You know that
Abraham had other children; and they would appear to have been sprung from an
Abrahamic line, but outside that particular covenant; and we have no reason to
suppose that they had the sign and seal of that covenant which, of course, the
Israelites have.
No; the point is God dealing with "man," and with
man's heart and conscience. And what is more, it was not because of any
particular evil. There was the radical mistake of Eliphaz which runs through
his speech that I have just read tonight. He cannot rise above the thought that
Job had seemed everything that was beautiful to our eyes and everybody's eyes,
and he was blessed of God in an extraordinary manner. For he was, as is said,
the greatest man in that part of the East. And now this utter reverse! this
casting him down from what seemed his excellency! How could it be but that, as
God is a righteous God, there must be some terrible iniquity there? So he also
felt that if there was an iniquity, Job must be conscious of it; and yet not a
word from Job! Not a sign that he was ashamed of himself, or that he had
anything to be judged! There was fault in Job; but not the least of the kind
they expected. The fault in Job was this, that Job had a good opinion of
himself, and that Job had great pleasure in everybody's so highly respecting
him. I wonder whether any of us have got that? I am afraid it is a very common
thing. And there is just what people do not find out. They do not learn; they
so little understand this wonderful mirror of the word of God. They do not
understand that here is their own case.
However, I perhaps anticipate.
But we find how very strong is the outburst of Eliphaz - a mild, grave, and
serious man - for this he undoubtedly was. There is no need of our running down
the three friends as if they were something very uncommon. They were very
common indeed. Job rather was uncommon, yea, decidedly uncommon; and that is
what made the example of Job so very pertinent to the object of God - that a
man might be spotless in his way, that a man might be justly respected, but
that when the man that is pious, God-fearing, prayerful and one so loved and
valued and cried up as Job was - when he accepts it as his due, and has great
pleasure in it, God is a jealous God, and will not allow that. And why not? Man
is a sinner! And Job, even though he was now a believer, had sin in him, and
self-judgment was wanting. If self-judgment had been duly exercised, Job would
not have needed this trial. And there is another thing too; that when God does
send a trial, the great call of man is to submit to it without a doubt, without
a question, giving God credit for it that there is no undue severity. Now, on
the contrary, Job felt a very great deal about it, and found fault with God,
and thought that God was dealing very hardly indeed with him. Thus it is that
the way in which this book has been sometimes treated for 1,500 years (perhaps
more) is an entire fallacy.
What I refer to is this: that Job was
considered to be a kind of type of Christ in his suffering. Nothing of the
sort. Quite the reverse. Look, for instance, at Psalm 38 and Psalm 39. There
you have not exactly Christ personally, but the spirit of Christ in the
Israelite, and this will be accomplished in the future day, when there will be
a remnant of Jews thoroughly marked by the spirit of Christ, which will follow
after we are taken out of the way to heaven. They will pass through tremendous
trial, and the remnant will have that spirit of Christ. Those Psalms are
prophetically written for them. No doubt all was written for us. All the Bible
was written for the Christian, and for his use, blessing and enjoyment. But it
is not all about us. This is the mistake that many people make, that because it
is all for our good and for our spiritual taste and enjoyment, therefore, we
are the persons that are meant in it! Not so. There is just what was falsified
- this trying to find the pattern of Christ in it! whereas the very point is
the contrast shown by the rebellious spirit of Job. For there is that. He
charges God with being his enemy, and with tearing him to pieces and casting
him down, making him to be an object of mockery for everybody. Job imputes to
God. Well, no doubt God had allowed all this to come to pass; it could not have
been without it. But it was not God's, it was Job's own mistake; and it was Job
also that had the most agonizing sense of that, because he could not bear the
shame of his friends coming. He bore it all beautifully till his friends dawned
upon the scene. A man when alone can bear; but when there are people that show
no sympathy and no understanding, he breaks loose and lets out, and flings very
improper language about his friends - perhaps they deserved it, but certainly,
certainly not God. And his friends were alive to that. They could see that he
spoke improperly about God; so that he put himself quite in the wrong there.
"Should a wise man utter vain knowledge," for they were quite aware
that there was something very able in what Job said - they called that vain
knowledge - "and fill his belly with the east wind?" No doubt he was
exceedingly wrong. "Should he reason with unprofitable talk, or with speeches
wherewith he can do no good? Yea, thou castest off fear, and restrainest prayer
before God." Now he did nothing of the kind; Job always clung to God, always
looked up to God, but he said, 'I cannot find Him; He has shut me out,
occupying me with this agony that I am passing through, so that I cannot get at
Him. I know if I could only get there I should find goodness and mercy.' It was
no doubt very inconsistent; but that is always the case with poor man when he
is not in the presence of God. That was one of the grand points that all had.
Job was living, for a man of faith, too much in the good opinion of other
people as well as in his own good opinion. There is where he was quite wrong.
And there is where Christ and Christianity puts us in our true place if we are
faithful - which is, that we have to face a hostile world; that we have to face
not only a hostile world, but even, it may be, fellow Christians, who, if they
are not faithful, are mad against any people that are; because it rebukes
themselves. We have to bear that, and consequently here we are now in the truth
of things suffering with Christ. That is what Christ suffered.
I am
not speaking now of suffering for Christ. Suffering for Christ is where there
is a decided break made. Perhaps we are cast into prison falsely, or it may be
transported falsely, or executed falsely as martyrs and the like - that is
suffering for Christ. But there is another kind of suffering that belongs to
the Christian - suffering with Christ. For instance, suppose that there was a
royal princess of England that was truly brought to God, and who entered really
into the place of the Christian - why, what would be the case of that young
princess? Always suffering. Why? Because every. thing that surrounded her would
be contrary to what belonged to her soul and to her position. Why so? Because
it is of the world, and of the world in its grandest shape, and consequently it
would mark the contrariety. What is the place of the Christian? He is not of
the world. How far not of the world? Why, like Christ. What did Christ do with
the world? Where did Christ ever contribute one iota to what the world likes
and values? Christ appeared to be the most useless of men for the world. He
never made a speech upon science; He never contributed one lesson in learning
or literature. He never gave a vote - if I may speak of voting or anything of
that kind. He never did the slightest thing of that nature. He would not even
judge a case, or arbitrate even when they wanted Him to judge in that informal
way; consequently, there never was a person more completely outside the world
while passing through it. That is where the Christian is. I say, therefore,
that the higher you are up in the world the more you find the difficulty of
being faithful. And that is suffering with Christ, where you feel it. There are
some people who get through things easily. That is not to be admired; it is a
kind of opiate - continually dramming oneself with opiates to drown feeling,
and take everything quite comfortably, no matter what it is, and entirely
losing sight of the fact that we do not belong to these things in which we take
part.
Oh, beloved friends, that is not the way. Our call is to take
part actively for Christ and according to Christ. Our call is to entire
separation to the Lord. Supposing that there was a house on fire next door; it
would be our business to immediately do all we could to help and save both life
and property. That is not worldly; but it would be worldly to go into the Court
and fight for our rights or to refuse to pay our dues if we are called upon to
do so. All that is not only worldly, but it is rebellious. I know what they
call themselves - "Passive Resisters" - but I do not understand that language.
They are active resisters of the law; and if they had any sense of propriety
they would pay their money quietly, or let people take their goods quietly, and
so make an end. I only mention it now to show how completely God's children
have lost the sense of what it is to be a Christian. I am speaking now
practically. I might go further. I maintain that Christians have lost the
doctrine of what a Christian is. It is not that there is a certain blessed
standard that we all acknowledge to be what a Christian is, and that we fall
sort, practically. I believe it will be found that they areas wrong about the
standard as they are about the practice; and one thing I can say for myself,
honestly and truly, that what has occupied me all my life, is cleaving to what
I have found to be the Christian pathway and duty, and seeking to help others
to see the truth and blessedness of it, and to act faithfully according to it.
I am sure I have plenty to judge myself for; but I thank God for every trial
and everything that has made nothing of me. And that is just what Job had to
learn as to himself. He did not know that God was working all this for Job's
own great good, even allowing also what was most repulsive to God - the
disease, and the sweeping away of his family. This was all the devil's doing;
but God allowed it for Job's good, and Job had not an idea of all that. If Job
had understood the end that was coming, and had understood the beginning which
was before all the trial, he would have lost a great deal of the blessing, and
why? Because, then, as now, the child of God is to walk by faith.
People like to walk by sight, and that was the great fallacy that lay under all
the speeches of these three friends. They looked at Job; they looked at what he
was; and they look at what he now is in all this terrible crushing to the dust,
and they said in effect, 'Well, God is a righteous God, and if there were not
some dreadful thing behind all this, God would never have allowed it.' They
were completely wrong, and Job was thoroughly right in saying, 'No, I know it
is not so, and all your talk cannot get rid of the fact that you have most
wicked men that are most flourishing, and you have pious men that are
exceedingly suffering, in the world as it is now.' How is that? Because Satan
is actively working here; because Satan is the one that men follow without
knowing. They are slaves and captives of the devil; and those that are not
slaves of the devil are the objects of his vengeance and hatred. God does not
remove that; He does not put down Satan yet; he is allowed his way. And there
never was a greater proof of it than his leading the world and the Jewish
people to crucify their own Messiah, the Lord of glory. Was there any fault
here? Here you have the crucial proof. Here was the absolutely sinless One and
never such a sufferer.
The whole theory, then, of the three friends
was a falsehood from beginning to end. Yet it is exactly what most people think
to this day. They have an idea that there must be something very wrong where
they see people passing through exceeding deep waters. Now there was something
that Job had not got, and that was to measure himself in the presence of God;
and God never stopped till He brought him into His presence. He interfered in
the most remarkable way; but I must not anticipate. Eliphaz, after having let
out strongly at Job, now falls back upon what was a very common feeling,
especially of the former. Eliphaz was a man that strongly stood for the great
value of experience. You know there are people that are very strong for
experience, and accordingly, as to the great and good men that have been before
- is that a standard? No one denies the honour due to elders, at least no
person with any propriety. But Eliphaz used it in a wrong manner, and told Job,
"Why, you are going against everything that has been held by the best of men
that have ever been. Are you the first man; are you as old as the hills when
you talk in such a manner as this, as if you knew better than any of these most
excellent men, older than your father? and you set up in this way." Well, he
carries on that for some time, and he comes to this; what it must be. "How much
more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water? I will
show thee, hear me; and that which I have seen I will declare." He meant Job
particularly there. "I will show thee, hear me; and that which I have seen I
will declare, which wise men have told from their fathers, and have not hid
it." He looks therefore at old experience, and of the best of men, when men
were not so bad as they were in his time. For that is quite true; man does get
worse and worse, and even he had remarked it.
A famous poet that I
used to read as a boy - a heathen poet - says the very same thing, that no
generation had been so bad as the present one, which is going to bear children
that will be worse than their fathers. At any rate they are not so bad as the
people who think the world is going to get better, for these are most
deplorably wrong. There will be a great change; but what will bring in that
change will not be preachers, nor tracts, nor books, nor education; nay, not
even the Bible, although that is the word of God. But the Bible demands more
than this. It requires that men be born of God; and even in the case of people
that are born of God they are called to judge themselves, just like Job, the
very best of them. That is what he was brought to, and what he was most slow to
come to. Therefore all this reasoning was entirely out of place, and the larger
part of the chapter is description, that when a man is carrying on in this way
it must be that he is always in dread of what is coming. Eliphaz was wrong
about that. Job had no such thought. Job was quite sure if he could only find
God that all would be right, and that He would speak to him, and God would do
all that was good. But he knew that somehow or other God was dealing, in
allowing all these terrible things to happen to him, why he did not know, and
for what end he did not know.
Now we come to Job's answer (Job 16). "I
have heard many such things; miserable comforters are ye all. Shall vain words
have an end? Or what emboldeneth thee that thou answerest? I also could speak
as ye do. If your soul were in my soul's stead, I could heap up words against
you, and shake mine head at you. But I would strengthen you with my mouth, and
the moving of my lips should assuage your grief. Though I speak, my grief is
not assuaged." And no doubt Job spoke perfectly truly. He would have been a
comforter of sorrow; he would not have been a physician without any medicine.
They brought poison into his wounds instead of something to assuage. He said,
'I have been pouring out my sorrow, but I am no better for it' - "Thou hast
made desolate all my company. And thou hast filled me with wrinkles." He now
speaks of his own person too. "He teareth me in his wrath, who hateth me." He
does not say it was God. I think it is rather too much to suppose that he means
that; but he does mean that God allowed it; and therefore, in a euphemistic way
he says "He." But it was God allowing the devil to do it - his enemy -
otherwise it would be a dreadful inconsistency with the rest of his language
which we are not bound to carry out to more than a superficial inconsistency;
it is not radical. "God hath delivered me to the ungodly" - and he in the most
graphic manner describes his intense affliction. But now (ver. 17), we find Job
in the midst of this making complaint as to prayer being restrained. "Not for
any injustice in mine hands" - that he could say truly. It was not a question
of injustice; it was a question of Job's too great complacency in himself.
"Also my prayer is pure. O earth, cover not thou my blood, and let my cry have
no place." He regards himself as if he were a victim to all this enmity that is
shown him. "Also now, behold, my witness is in heaven." You do not find the
others saying that. They did not know as much about heaven as Job; they did not
know God as Job did - not one of the three. "My record is on high." It is the
beginning of a little light that is piercing through the clouds. "My friends
scorn me; but mine eye poureth out tears unto God. Oh that one might plead for
a man with God, as a man pleadeth for his neighbour!" How the heart of Job was
made to pine for the very thing that Christ must do!
In the 17th
chapter Job carries on, and goes back to his dreadful condition. It was not yet
a settled thing; it was merely a gleam. "My breath is corrupt, my days are
extinct, the graves are ready for me. Are there not mockers with me?" - surely
there were three of them - "and doth not mine eye continue in their
provocation?" If that was the case with these three men who had been his
friends, what was the feeling of all the people round about that knew? You may
depend upon it it would be quite as bad as that of the three friends, or worse.
We must not suppose it is limited to them. It is the natural conclusion of the
natural mind, working upon this thought, that God's moral government is exact
now, instead of knowing that God on the contrary, is waiting for His direct
government, when Christ, who alone is capable of holding the reins and of
governing, shall rule. Therefore, even when the church was formed, the church
was perfectly incapable of judging the world; and of this Popery is a clear
instance. There they have tried to govern the world, and what are they? Why,
the most abominable thing in the eye of God on the earth. There is nothing more
wicked than Popery. You may tell me about all the horrors of heathenism and
Buddhism. Yes, but they do not mix up Christ, or Peter, or Paul, and all the
rest. The Papists know enough of Christianity to make them verily guilty. It is
a great deal more wicked idolatry to worship the Virgin Mary than to worship
Juno or Venus; because the one was pure ignorance under darkness of the devil,
and the other is worshipping Mary after Christ came-after the true light shone.
There is nothing more guilty than what people call Christian Idolatry.
Worshipping the Mass - what is that? That is not confined to Papists now; now
it is unblushingly done - I will not say by Protestants, but by people who
masquerade as clergymen. Surely that is not too severe an expression for it? -
and at the same time they are perfectly in the error of Popery, only they do
not yet own the Pope; but they have all the falsehood of it in their souls.
Well, Job bemoans his condition in a very solemn manner, and compares
what he once was. "Aforetime I was as a tabret," i.e., "I sounded music, as it
were, in the ears of people as I had to do with them." But now a by-word not
merely of the three friends, but "of the people!" "Mine eye also is dim by
reason of sorrow, and all my members are as a shadow. Upright men shall be
astonied at this, and the innocent shall stir up himself against the hypocrite.
The righteous also" - you see it is turned for good - "shall hold on his way."
That is where he looked onward to. His record was on high; his witness was in
heaven; he clung to God. "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him." That was
Job's language; that was his spirit. He had far more faith than any one of the
three.
Then, in the next chapter (18) we have another man, Bildad the
Shuhite, and he speaks still more violently than Eliphaz, "How long will it be
ere ye make an end of words?" He had no feeling for Job whatever; no
understanding. "Mark, and afterwards we will speak. Wherefore are we counted as
beasts, and reputed vile in your sight? He teareth himself in his anger; shall
the earth be forsaken for thee? and shall the rock be removed out of its place?
Yea, the light of the wicked shall be put out." There was a thrust, and a
bitter thrust, at poor Job - "and the spark of his fire shall not shine. The
light shall be dark in his tabernacle, and his candle shall be put out with
him." That is what he counted Job. "The steps of his strength shall be
straitened and his own counsel shall cast him down. For he is cast into a net
by his own feet, and he walketh upon a snare" - a mere dream of his own
imagination! And this he pursues to the very end of the chapter. I do not dwell
upon it, in order to come to Job's answer. For it was all a mistake.
"Then Job answered and said (Job 19), How long will ye vex my soul, and break
me in pieces with words? These ten times have ye reproached me: ye are not
ashamed that ye make yourselves strange to me." And now he takes this ground -
Be it that I have sinned without knowing; be it that I have done something
displeasing to God! - "mine error," he says, "remaineth with myself. If indeed
ye will magnify yourselves against me, and plead against me my reproach; know
now that God hath overthrown me" - that was his faith. He takes it all as from
God, without knowing what had taken place in heaven. He was to be made to pass
through the deepest trouble; but the man that was to be proverbial for patience
broke out in a total impatience. There came about the total failure of even a
pious man; not merely of a man; not merely of Adam - for Adam fell; he was not
born after Job, but Job was born after Adam; and yet after all, that a man so
noted for his patience should fail when he was tried! Ah! in Christ there is
the contrast. That is where people are so wrong to make this one the type of
Christ. No, it is a specimen failing, and a man born of God failing. We want
Christ, and cannot do without Christ. That is the true moral of the Book of
Job.
"Know now that God hath overthrown me" - it is perfectly true it
must have been God allowing all this." Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not
heard; I cry aloud, but there is no judgment. He hath fenced up my way that I
cannot pass, and he hath set darkness in my paths. He hath stripped me of my
glory, and taken the crown from my head." All this he felt very deeply. What
right has any believer to a crown now? What right has any believer to glory
now? Has he not an evil nature to be judged constantly, every day? Does this
deserve a crown? Or a man that has that nature to contend with; does that
deserve a crown? The day when we shall be crowned is when we have nothing but
what is of Christ, every bit of the old man completely passed away. There is
where Job had much to learn. "He hath destroyed me on every side, and I am
gone; and mine hope hath he removed like a tree. He hath also kindled his wrath
against me -" - there he was wrong - "and he counteth me unto him as one of his
enemies. His troops come together and raise up their way against me, and encamp
round about my tabernacle. He hath put my brethren far from me, and mine
acquaintance are verily estranged from me." You know what that is to the heart
if you have ever tasted it. "My kinsfolk have failed, and my familiar friends"
- he now gets closer - "have forgotten me. They that dwell in mine house, and
my maids, count me for a stranger: I am an alien in their sight. "I called my
servant" - his 'man' or in modern language, his valet "and he gave me no
answer" (vers. 1-20).
How pitiable! He had come down very low to call
upon his dear friends to have pity, and they had nothing but bad suspicion
which wounded him to the quick. "Why do ye persecute me as God, and are not
satisfied with my flesh?" Have not I suffered enough to satisfy you? "Oh that
my words were," etc., not exactly, printed in a book - but that they were
impressed upon stone, or whatever might be the way in which writing was
accomplished in those days. He refers to a very permanent form - "That they
were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever! For I know that my
Redeemer liveth; and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth."
This is a most wonderful expression of faith, and the more so when we compare
it with what we had last Wednesday evening in the 14th chapter - the
resurrection of "man" - not the resurrection of "the righteous," but the
resurrection of man. Job, you remember, begins, "Man that is born of a woman" -
not a word of any one born of God. Man without God, man without Christ, and
what is the end of all that? A tree cut down to the very root may sprout, but
not man; and so long will that sleep be that man will not awake - and the
resurrection of man will not be - "till the heavens be no more."
Is
that the case with the resurrection of the righteous? No. That is what he says
here. He says, "I know that my [Kinsman or] Redeemer" - the One that will
avenge the wrongs of God's people on their enemies; the One that will care for
them in the face of every difficulty and every enemy - "I know that my Redeemer
liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter" - He "the last" is probably the
meaning of it, not "at the latter day." He is the One that when all has failed
will appear. The First will be the Last, as it were, to take up not "man," but
the saint, the believer. "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall
stand at the latter [or, last] day" - as "last" is the word - "upon the earth."
This last word is a little stronger too. It is the "dust" - quite a different
thing from the heavens being no more. There will be no dust to stand upon then.
The heavens and the earth will all be dissolved, and it will be a question of
fire destroying everything, as we are told in more scriptures than one,
particularly by Peter. Everything will be dissolved - the very elements. There
will be no dust at all. But here He will stand upon it; His power may reach it;
and it may for aught I know refer to the dust of his people. He is going to
raise them. But at any rate the word is rather vague; and we must not expect
more than just a little gleam of light made known in those days. It is reserved
for Christ to bring out the life of the resurrection.
"And though
after my skin worms destroy this body" - i.e., after the skin is destroyed -
meaning all the frame of the body. "Yet in my flesh shall I see God." That is,
it will be a real resurrection - not indeed "flesh and blood" - but you
recollect it was really Himself when Christ rose. He asked them to feel and
know that there were flesh and bones, but not "flesh and blood," which is the
natural life of man now. When the resurrection comes there will be still the
flesh in a glorious way, and there will be bone in a glorious way; and instead
of it being blood as the source of life, it will be spirit; a divine character
of existence will then be. While there is life, blood can be shed, and the man
dies. The shedding of blood is the great figure of death by violence, and the
blessed Lord knew all that, and passed through it all. But risen from the dead,
the body possessed is a tangible body and can be felt; and although that need
not always be, there is a power of change in this form; and I have no doubt the
same thing will be true of every power. But there is the power. Now we are all
limited; so limited that even a powerful man can be stopped by an oak board of
only an inch, or two, thick. It stops him. And certainly a granite wall could
stop anybody. But when that day is come we shall pass through everything just
as our Lord did. Our Lord purposely came in when the doors were shut. You may
tell me the stone was removed from the sepulchre; but it was not to let the
Lord out; it was to let the disciples in to see that He was gone. What is all
the thickness of the earth to Him? The glorified body has a power of its own.
and can pass through anything.
This is not the case with man now. He
is very limited and feeble; a little thing stops or even kills him. But not so
when the body is raised in power and incorruption and glory; and here then the
Lord comes to claim, and stand upon, the dust as it were. That is the figure,
of course, of dealing with the lower state. The body is destroyed; not merely
the skin, but everything belonging to man in the natural state. But what then?
"Yet in my flesh shall I see God?" Job was to be raised and live again, and to
live in a glorious way, and in the way of power and incorruption. "Whom I shall
see for myself." Ah, he was not in the least afraid of the Lord. He loved to
think of Him, and looked for His intervention with certainty. "And mine eyes
shall behold, and not another." What a contrast with Balaam! Balaam could not
see except prophetically, but not for himself. He had no part nor lot. But Job,
with every part and lot, knew it perfectly. "Though my reins be consumed within
me." That will not hinder it at all.
So then you see this was a
resurrection of the righteous; it is before the heavens are no more. And though
the earth subsists, it will, when it is in a state of ruin, give place to a
complete change - not only one affecting the condition of the bodies of the
millennial saints, but also the earth itself. All creation meanwhile awaits its
deliverance from the bondage of corruption from which it now suffers. And
Christ will accomplish it, for this will be His work. No one need wonder,
therefore, that when that day comes, there will be righteous government on the
earth. No one need wonder that then Satan will be allowed no power. He will be
shut up, and not be allowed to deceive another moment until the end of the
thousand years, and then it will be to act as a kind of sieve, to separate
those that are not born of God from those that are. He will be allowed to do
that, and then will be cast into the lake of fire for ever. But the righteous
will have been reigning for a thousand years before, while the earth still goes
on. You see the great force of it there, and of the Lord coming upon that earth
in a state as low as it can possibly be reduced to under the power of Satan,
just before He comes and delivers it. Oh, may our hearts rest upon Him
entirely, beloved brethren. Let us cleave to the Lord now! and let us remember
that the Lord is served and magnified by simple faith day by day, having to do
with Himself about each thing, and with implicit trust in Him, and judgment of
ourselves! Amen.
LECTURE 6
JOB. 20 - 23
Chap. 20. Job was not a wicked man. There was
the great error of Zophar - of this hasty and violent man; for evidently this
was particularly his character. He was not so much looking at long experience
as did Eliphaz - that was his point - long experience. A valuable thing, but
still it may not be the mind of God. It may be right, or it may be wrong; and
it was wrong in this case, because Job's trial was altogether peculiar. God had
not dealt with any other man in the remarkable way in which Job was tried, and
that is the reason why we have a whole book about him - because he was tried so
specially. No one save the Lord Jesus was ever tried like Job. The trials of
our Lord were far more profound; but in Him. there was nothing but perfection,
and why? Because, to begin with, there was no sin in Him; there was in Job, and
Job did not think about the sin that was in him. Job had no idea of what the
New Testament calls "the old man." He had turned from Satan and from his sins
to God; he was a real, true, saint of God. But he had no notion, nor, indeed,
had anyone among the Old Testament saints, any definite conception of what our
evil nature is. That was a truth that came out after Christ came. It was Christ
that made everything clear, and till Christ came things were not plain. There
was quite enough light to guide; and for that matter all the three friends were
pious men, and Job particularly was; but for all that, Job had to learn that
there was that in him which was proud of the effects of faith in his soul. Job
had too good an opinion of himself.
This is not a very uncommon thing
with a Christian even. I think I know a good many who are not disposed to think
very lowlily of themselves; but I am quite sure (and I have nothing to boast of
myself) I desire to feel thoroughly what I am. Yet I admit we are very often
apt to forget it. There was no question of Job's end, no question but that God
would receive him, and had already received him in spirit; and therefore there
was no fear of death in Job; he looked at it and desired it even; but that
would spoil the great lesson. God would allow him to be tried thoroughly, but
would not allow Satan so to torment him as to end his life - that would
frustrate the lesson he had to learn by agony of suffering and suspicion of his
own friends - his dearest friends, those who had most respected him. They all
gave him up, and thought there was something very bad behind it - there could
not be so much smoke without fire.
That is exactly what people say
nowadays when they see anything particular. The eighteen on whom the tower in
Siloam fell must be the worst people in Jerusalem! 'Not at all,' said the Lord.
God has his own wonderful ways of which we know nothing; but "Except ye repent
ye shall all likewise perish" - by a worse perishing than the fall of a tower
upon you. We find how a man was kept - not faultless, far from it - but
entirely free from all the hidden evil that was imputed to him because of his
terrible suffering, which entirely alienated, therefore, the sympathy of his
friends; and instead of getting one grain of sympathy he got a good many tons
of scorn, and their suspicion that things were very wrong in him.
This
is what entered into all their speeches. And they get worse and worse for a
while, and particularly this one. This is the last of Zophar's; he poured it
out so strongly, that, somehow or other, he was afraid to come forward again.
We find that Eliphaz and Bildad do follow, and Job disposes of them all. They
were completely taken aback by Job's reasoning, and the reason is that there
was a truthfulness about Job that was not in them, although a good deal
remained for Job to learn. Therefore, in comes Elihu, a new personage in the
matter, and after that Jehovah himself. These are facts. This is not an
imaginary tale. There was a real person called Job who went through all this
trial; and there were these three friends; and there was Elihu too; and,
further, Jehovah made His presence and His mind known, and settled the case
brought Job out of all his troubles, and at Job's intercession pardoned the
other three for all their bad and groundless ill-feeling against Job.
Well now, here Zophar comes forward. "Therefore do my thoughts cause me
to answer, and for this I make haste" Yes, and that is just where haste
generally lands us. It is easy for those who are not in trouble to speak, and
to suspect evil of a man that is in the depths. And that is just what this
young man - for he was younger than the others - fell into."Knowest thou not
this of old, since man was placed upon earth" - are you the only man that knows
the mind of God? -"that the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of
the hypocrite but for a moment?" Is that all that Zophar had ever learnt? Did
he know of no dealings of God for the trial and good of His children here
below? Had he no thought of God disciplining us? - even before His proper
Fatherly relationship was fully made known and conferred upon us. For now we
are brought into that very place of privilege - we are children of God. The Old
Testament saints were so, but they did not know it. They were saints of God,
and they know very well they were separated to God, and that they were not like
the men of the world. They knew that perfectly, and they were waiting for One
who would settle all questions and make known all things. Even the woman of
Samaria knew that. "When Messias cometh, He will tell us all things." He would
clear up all difficulties.
But Zophar had no difficulty at all. That
is generally the case with people who know very little; they fancy they know
everything. Zophar, therefore, keeps up this - that there is the great fact,
there is a righteous God above, and there are unrighteous, wicked people below,
and God invariably deals with these wicked people now. That was not true. A
large part of the world has always been allowed of God to apparently prosper in
their evil, and the reason is that the time of judgment is not yet come. There
may be judgments; there may be exceptional dealings with the wicked just as
Job's case was a very exceptional dealing in the severity of his trial, and in
the manner in which Satan was challenged by God to do his very worst; and God
was secretly keeping up Job even when he was finding fault with God and
thinking He was very hard upon him to allow all this. But he was kept up not
only for his own good, but for ours. Now we have the Book, and are meant to
profit by it for ourselves and for other people. "Though his excellency mount
up to the heavens, and his head reach unto the clouds; yet he shall perish for
ever like his own dung; they which have seen him shall say, where is he?"
Zophar was not at all wanting in power of expression. He was what you
call an "eloquent" man; in fact, they were all eloquent. They all pleaded their
cause with ability - only there was short-sightedness. They had not before them
this - that it was out of the goodness of God, and for the blessing of Job
himself, that God made Job to recognize his nothingness, and also the evil that
was within, which he had never detected to be, as it is, a sin against God,
i.e., thinking too well of himself, taking credit for what grace had wrought.
For I do not deny that grace had done a good deal for Job. Grace had wrought a
fine character, full of benevolence and rectitude of purpose. Yes, but why did
Job dwell upon it, and think so much about it? Why did Job think so much more
highly of himself than others? All these things were working in Job's mind, and
they must all be brought out. That was a great lesson for Job to learn, and it
came out at the very severe cost of Job's trial and suffering. "He shall fly
away as a dream, and shall not be found." That was true of some cases; but
where were the eyes, where the discernment of Zophar? and this was all that he
saw going on in the world! It was a very narrow way of looking at the dealings
of God. "The eye also which saw him shall see him no more; neither shall his
place any more behold him. His children shall seek to please the poor" - he
supposes that God would still keep up the family, and would deal with his
children - that they would have to restore some of the ill-gotten goods that
their father had acquired.
All this was pointed at poor Job, but not a
particle of it was real. It was nothing but evil surmises. So, he describes his
case in very strong terms, which I need not follow- - all his inward trouble,
and the being forced to give up what he had swallowed down. "He shall not see
the rivers, the floods, the brooks of honey and butter." That is, Zophar
recognised that God delights in doing good. Yes, He does; and not merely to the
righteous, but to the unthankful and evil. Is it that He has any complacency in
them? Quite the contrary, but out of His own goodness, as our Lord put it so
simply and so grandly, He causes His sun to shine upon the evil as well as upon
the good, and He sends His rain upon the just as well as upon the unjust. Well,
before all I say now, he is a most wicked man, the greatest enemy of God alive
on the earth, who profits by all these benefits, and never thinks of God at
all. There he is, so utterly insensible - more insensible possibly than the
brute. There is less gratitude than with even the poor irrational brute who
owns his master's kindness and care. This is indeed, an awful thing in a man.
You might find men of the greatest education and of the highest ability, who
are like a stock or a stone before the goodness of God. That you have now. The
New Testament has come in and made it all plain. One word accounts for
everything - unbelief.
The beginning of God's goodness in a man is
when he comes to the sense of his badness, and that is produced by faith. It is
by what God sends. God's word is the foundation and the means by which a man is
brought out of darkness into light, and out of death into life eternal. And
why? Because the word of God reveals Christ. And the believer receives Christ
on God's testimony. Now the great mass of men in our country are rushing either
into infidelity or superstition. These are both of them making more progress
than the truth, at this present moment. God no doubt converts souls too; but if
there are a few souls truly converted, how many go back? and sometimes out of
the very families of those that love the Lord! So it has been for hundreds of
years. So it was at the beginning; so it is now. Some believe the words that
are spoken, and some do not believe them. And as some enter now into endless
and eternal blessing, so others will fall into absolute and everlasting ruin.
Here then, we see the all-importance of our getting the mind of God.
Neither experience will do, nor tradition. Bildad was as fond of tradition as
Eliphaz was of experience; but Zophar, I fancy, was pretty much confident in
himself. And this self-confidence is what makes a man still more biassed than
either the weakness of thinking too much of the wisdom of old age, or of the
tradition of the elders before us. No, God will have His own word; and God is
honoured by our receiving His own word and applying His word, not to other
people merely, but, above all, to oneself. Everything issues from this, "I
believe." That is exactly where all human knowledge fails. Human knowledge -
science for instance - is entirely founded upon the facts that are before our
eyes, or the facts that we gather even if they are invisible to our eyes, that
are ascertained through whatever means, sometimes by the microscope, sometimes
by the telescope - but however it may be, it is all founded upon what is before
man's eyes and before man's mind.
Now the blessing of God is entirely
founded upon divine testimony. You honour God by believing God against
yourself; by believing God against your sins; by believing God, receiving His
testimony about His own Son. But God has love enough in His heart to lay all
our case at all costs upon the Lord Jesus; and He has perfectly met all the
mind of God about it. That is Christianity now; and this, of course, in Job's
days, was yet to be. There was just enough light - a little distant gleam as it
were - a rift in the cloud that showed the Messiah that was to come, but that
was all. There was a little increase of light in the Psalms, and still more in
the Prophets; but the full light was never there till He Himself came. Then it
was not merely a gleam; it was not merely a promise; it was Himself. It was the
Son of God, and eternal life in the Son of God to be given to everyone who
believes in Him. By that I do not mean a mere nominal assent. No, beloved
friends, it is always through our conscience that we are brought into the
truth. There is no divine link with God unless it be the conscience that
acknowledges our sinfulness, and, therefore, casts oneself in faith upon the
Lord Jesus.
Well, now, we do not find anything of this in Zophar; it
is all looking simply at judging wicked men. The judging of a righteous man
never entered his mind, and that was the real question. So he puts to Job the
awfulness of what will come to pass upon the man that goes on in his
wickedness, and does not allow it, but only is clever in hiding it. And really
he had got that in his head about Job, and never could get it out until God
brought down everyone of them into the dust, and they were indebted to Job for
escaping the severe chastening of God. He finishes, "This is the portion of a
wicked man from God, and the heritage appointed unto him by God." Here is not
the slightest sense of God having chastening dealings with those that He loves
during this time of pilgrimage. Yet this is exactly what God does. This is what
He is carrying on today with you and me. The apostle Peter refers to it
particularly in the first chapter of his First Epistle, i.e., that after we are
born of God we become subjects of the dealings of God as Father. We are judged
every man according to his work now. He will not do that by and by; the future
judgment is entirely in the hands of Christ; and it is particularly said that
the Father has committed it all to the Son; and it is as the Son, and as the
glorified Man too, that the Lord will sit upon the Great White Throne, where
all the evil of all the unrighteous will be judged finally. That is the last
thing before the new heavens and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.
The Father has nothing to do with that; but the Father has everything to do
with watching over our faults, with pruning the vine, every branch of the vine,
and this is what goes on now. It is the Father who is the husbandman, and He
prunes that we may bear more fruit; and if there is no fruit at all, He takes
it away.
Job now answers in the twenty-first chapter. "Hear diligently
my speech." It was a great relief to the tried man to speak out. He had
entirely failed to win their sympathy, but still Job preferred to speak plainly
out, and had no difficulty in meeting anything they had to say. "And let this
be your consolation. Suffer me that I may speak; and after that I have spoken,
mock on." It was severe, but still it was not more than they deserved. "As for
me, is my complaint to man?" In the midst of all this he has the deep sense of
having to do with God, and that is true piety. "And if it were so, why should
not my spirit be troubled?" i.e., I do not understand it; that is the thing
that makes it so terrible. "Mark me, and be astonished, and lay your hand upon
your mouth. Even when I remember I am afraid, and trembling taketh hold on my
flesh." And what was it that made him so afraid? Why, he too saw just the very
opposite of what Zophar only saw.
Zophar confined himself simply to
the particular cases of God's dealing judicially with some specially wicked
men. And there are such cases every now and then. A man calls God's name in
vain, and swears to a downright falsehood - perhaps theft, or any other breach
- and, occasionally, a man drops down dead after it. Well, that is a very
unusual thing. Other people swear to it and keep their money, and try to keep
their character, but all the while they are heaping up wrath against the day of
wrath. Now what made Job tremble so when he saw wickedness prosper? As he says
here, "Wherefore do the wicked live?" He says, 'I can understand it so far; I
can perfectly understand God casting down wicked men - it is only what they
deserve; but it is not the fact, for the great mass of them seem to flourish in
their wickedness for the time.' "Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea,
are mighty in power? Their seed is established in their sight with them." It
was not at all passing away like a dream (as Zophar pretended) as a general
role; it was rather the other way. "Their houses are safe from fear." Many a
pious man's house is broken into by a robber; many a pious man's house is burnt
over his head; and here there might be wicked men of the worst character, and
they do not come into these troubles at all!
But there is the awful
end that awaits them, the awakening up like the rich man Dives, "in hades he
lifted up his eyes, being in torments." Ah! that was a solemn thing, but it was
the Lord that gave us that picture. Nobody could speak positively of that till
the Lord came. And that is not describing what will be after the resurrection;
this is what takes place directly after death. And it was not a wicked man as
he appeared in the eyes of the Jews; it was not a man who was a drunkard or a
thief, or a robber, or anything of that kind. He was a man highly respected; he
was a man characterised by self-indulgence. We do not hear of any swearing; we
do not hear of any scoffing. There he was; he acknowledged father Abraham even
in the midst of his torments; and the Lord is the One that describes it. Dives
is anxious about the souls of his five brethren; he was anxious about them.
That is to say, he was a man whom people might consider of high respectability,
but there was no faith, no repentance, no looking to God, no waiting for the
Messiah. He was quite content to enjoy all his wealth; and, as for poor
Lazarus, the dogs might look after him for all he cared about him.
"Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them." Ah! but
it will be. "Their bull gendereth, and faileth not; their cow calveth, and
casteth not her calf." Everything went flourishing. "They send forth their
little ones like a flock, and their children dance" - everything prosperous and
smiling - "They take the timbrel and harp, and rejoice at the sound of the
organ." It is rather serious to find all that with such bad company - a solemn
check for those that are given up. "They spend their days in wealth, and in a
moment go down to the grave. Therefore, they say unto God, Depart from us."
Job's words are far more solemn and more true than the violent Zophar had
painted. "For we desire not the knowledge of thy ways. What is the Almighty,
that we should serve Him? and what profit should we have if we pray unto Him?"
It is not meant that they say that to man, but that is what their conduct says
to God.
Therefore there is great force in what we read, "The fool hath
said in his heart, There is no God." Perhaps he never uttered that once in his
life, "There is no God," but it is what his heart says. God reads the language
of the heart. And the evil servant says in his heart, "My lord delayeth his
coming." Perhaps he preached what people call the "Second Coming"; he may have
preached it, but that is what his heart said. He was not really waiting for
Christ at all; he was glad that Christ stayed away. There never was such a
prayer with him as "Come, Lord Jesus." So that it is a very solemn thing - the
way in which the Lord takes the crafty and reads the heart; and therefore, it
is of all importance that we should judge ourselves, and look to the Lord, that
we may have Christ Himself before our souls so habitually that we are filled by
His mind and directed by His love, and led by the Holy Spirit who gives the
needed power and grace to those that look to Christ.
"Lo, their good
is not in their hand; the counsel of the wicked is far from me." Job was
farther from these people than his three friends. It is very possible that
these three friends liked to be on good terms with people that were so
flourishing, for that is a very common snare. People like to be in what they
call "good company," and to be respected by people that are respectable in this
life; but where is Christ in all that? Our hearts are called to be with that
which Christ values, and with those whom Christ loves. I do not say we are not
to have the love of compassion for the very worst of mankind - surely, surely;
but this is a different kind of love altogether. It is loving the family of
God. This is higher than loving an unconverted wife; higher than loving our
children if they are not brought to God. The family of God are nearer to us,
and for all eternity, and we are glad to walk in that faith and love now. "How
oft is the candle of the wicked put out!" There he allows the other side that
they were all harping upon; they only looked at that. "And how oft cometh their
destruction upon them!" There were such cases; he had seen and known them, and
in no way disputed them.
You see, what Zophar and the others press,
was only a half a truth. Now half a truth never sanctifies. What you leave out
is perhaps of equal, or, it may be, of still greater importance, and there was
just the difference. With all his defect, Job really was cleaving to the truth,
and he looked at it with a larger heart and with a more exercised conscience.
There are people moralised, or what you call "sermonised"; but this did not
come from their souls; it was merely their correct talk according to the
thoughts of men. It was not the language really of faith at all. Job's was, in
spite of all its defects. "They are as stubble before the wind, and as chaff
that the storm carrieth away. God layeth up his iniquity for his children; he
rewardeth him, and he shall know it. His eyes shall see his destruction" - he
allowed it might run in the family - "and he shall drink of the wrath of the
Almighty." "For what pleasure hath he in his house after him, when the number
of his months is cut off in the midst?" i.e., selfishness is at the bottom of
all these wicked men that flourish in this world. And even their children are
in no way an object to be compared with the number of their own months. That is
what they want - to live as long as possible.
"Shall any teach God
knowledge?" - now he turns to Him to vindicate him - "seeing he judgeth those
that are high. One dieth" - you see he took in the two sides. This very man had
spoken of truth being double; but it was all mere talk; it was not put into
practice at all. It was a wise saw; it was merely an apophthegm, without being
the true expression of his feeling and life. But Job had a reality about him.
"Another dieth in the bitterness of his soul, and never eateth with pleasure.
They shall lie down alike in the dust" - and the careless world goes to their
funeral, and thinks they are both all right, that it is all right with them
both. That is what is called "judging with charity" - charitable judgment! They
hope that everybody goes to heaven, unless they are too bad - openly wicked!
Now what is the judgment according to God? That if One died for all, then all
were dead. That is the state of man. There is no question at all of their state
or their end there. And He died for all - all mankind. They are all
inexcusable. And the death of Christ makes them in a worse state if they do not
believe than if Christ had never come and never died. He died for all, that
they which live - ah, there is the difference - they which live, should not any
longer live to themselves. That is what they all did. The dead - the
spiritually dead - live to nothing but themselves. It might be honour; it might
be seeking the applause of mankind and the world; but they live to themselves,
not to Him.
But the Christian, the believer, lives to Him who died for
us and rose again. That is not said to be for all. The resurrection of the Lord
is the pledge that He will be by and by the Judge of those that do not believe.
The resurrection to the believer is the sign-witness on God's part that his
sins are all blotted out. For the One that became responsible for his sins went
down into the grave, and God has raised Him up to show us that our sins are
gone. It was for all that believe, and for none others. And what for the
others? The risen Man is the One that will judge all. That is what the apostle
declared to the Athenians. They were not believers, and therefore he does not
speak of any being justified; but he tells them that the resurrection of the
Lord is the proof and pledge which God has given that He is going to judge all
the habitable world by that Man whom He has raised from the dead. What makes it
so solemn is that it was man that put Him in the grave; it was man that slew
Him. It was God that raised Him up. And that risen Man will judge them all that
are found alive, all the habitable world. It is not the White Throne judgment
here; it is the Lord judging the habitable world when He comes again in the
clouds of heaven. He does not speak here about taking up all that are Christ's,
but of His coming down in judgment upon all that are not Christ's.
"Behold, I know your thoughts, and the devices which ye wrongfully imagine
against me." Here you see he is now returning to their fault through this
narrowness of their view, and the impropriety of allowing people to surmise
evil without the slightest ground in fact for it. No, we are called upon to
live what we know; we are called upon to speak when we do know; but where we do
not know we look to God. "For ye say, Where is the house of the prince? and
where are the dwelling places of the wicked? Have ye not asked them that go by
the way? and do ye not know their tokens, that the wicked is reserved to the
day of destruction?" That is the reason why they flourish now. He laid hold of
the great truth morally in a very admirable manner. "They shall be brought
forth to the day of wrath." Not a question of now! These friends were all
looking at the present time as the adequate proof of what God thought about men
- that if He thinks we are all walking well we are flourishing, and if we come
into trouble it is because we are bad people. That was their theory, an utterly
wrong and corrupt theory. "Who shall declare his way to his face? and who shall
repay him what he hath done? Yet shall he be brought to the grave, and shall
remain in the tomb. The clods of the valley shall be sweet unto him" - looking
at the outward appearance - "and every man shall draw after him, as there are
innumerable before him. How then comfort ye me in vain, seeing in your answers
there remaineth falsehood? "
Well now, we begin again with Eliphaz
(Job 22). Eliphaz takes it up, and he says, "Can a man be profitable unto God,
as he that is wise may be profitable unto himself?" Yes, Eliphaz, but cannot a
man please God? It is not for profit that a pious man submits to God, and obeys
the word of God, but it is to please Him, and why? Because he loves Him. That
is not working for profit. That is a way in which a Jew did afterwards. "Is it
any pleasure to the Almighty that thou art righteous?" Yes, it was. He was
quite wrong about it. God was pleased with Job - that very man that they were
so insidious against, and against whom they insinuated all kinds of evil. God
pointed out, as you remember, at the beginning of the Book, that there was not
a man on earth that was all round like His servant Job, and yet there was
something there that God meant to bring out, of which Job had no idea, i.e.,
that he never recognized that it was wrong. "Will he reprove thee for fear of
thee? Will he enter with thee into judgment? Is not thy wickedness great? and
thine iniquities infinite? For thou hast taken a pledge from thy brother for
nought" - now come all his evil surmisings once more - "and stripped the naked
of their clothing. Thou hast not given water to the weary to drink."
Eliphaz is just imagining what he thinks Job must have done to account for the
troubles that he was passing through. "But as for the mighty man, he had the
earth" - Job was the mighty man - "and the honourable man dwelt in it. Thou
hast sent widows away empty, and the arms of the fatherless have been broken.
Therefore snares are round about thee." You see all the reasoning is quite
mistaken. "And sudden fear troubleth thee; or darkness, that thou canst not
see; and the abundance of waters cover thee. Is not God in the height of
heaven, and behold the height of the stars, how high they are! And thou sayest,
How doth God know?" That was not what Job said at all, but quite the reverse.
"Can he judge through the dark cloud?" Well, undoubtedly he was not a scoffer.
Nothing of the sort. He was a pious, narrow-minded man; and there are plenty of
such individuals. "Yet he filled their houses," etc. (vers. 1-20). There was a
little bit of tenderness in his heart toward Job. "Acquaint now thyself with
him, and be at peace: thereby good shall come unto thee. Receive, I pray thee,
the law from his mouth." Eliphaz certainly was nothing like Zophar, nor even
Bildad. "And lay up his words in thine heart. If thou return to the Almighty,
thou shalt be built up." And so it was. Little did he know that that return was
about to be made manifest, to their shame. "Then shalt thou lay up gold as
dust, and light shall shine upon thy ways" (vers. 21-28). And so it did, in the
most marvellous way, and much sooner than Eliphaz expected. "When men are cast
down, then thou shalt say, There is lifting up; and he shall save the humble
person. He shall deliver -"
There is a very old mistake in this verse
(30); that word "island" is all wrong. The same word in Hebrew means "island"
and also "not" To give you an instance - take "Ichabod," there you get the "I"
(ee) - used adverbially, meaning "not," for "Ichabod" means "not glory," or
"inglorious" - "the glory is departed." This was the name that the poor wife of
Phinehas gave, in her dying moments, to the son that was born to her - "Not
glory." Well now, that is the word here; and if you translate it as a negative
particle you get the true sense of it - "him that is not innocent." "Island"
only makes nonsense. Nobody could explain it as given in our A.V.; no person
has ever done it nor approached it, and it is an astonishing thing that it
remains. I believe it is all right in the Revised Version; but it is well worth
knowing, because I daresay you have been puzzled to find where "the island of
the innocent" came in. You know there is a proud little corner of Europe that
calls itself "the Isle of Saints." but the isle of the innocent is still more
extraordinary. There has never been such a thing. Man lost his innocence, and
has never recovered it. Man gains holiness by the faith of Christ, but no
recovery of innocence; that could not be. "He shall deliver [him, or] those
that are not innocent" - that is the point of it.
Yes, and God did
that, and who were they? Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. They were the people who
were "not guiltless"; they were guilty, they were "not innocent." So that here
are two words rather mauled in this version. The real force is, "He shall
deliver those that are not guiltless," and that was verified in the case of
Job's three friends, little as Eliphaz expected it. They were treated by God as
being guilty towards their dear brother whom they had so misjudged, to whom
they had imputed all kinds of hidden evil, and made him a hypocrite as well as
a naughty man. And Eliphaz here unconsciously gives utterance to words that
came true. We sometimes find that. Words said passingly by a Christian, who had
no idea perhaps that they would ever be verified - and yet how often they have
been - as I have known frequently, from very simple souls. Perhaps only some
poor brother that could not write, or from a poor old sister that could do very
little except mend stockings.
So here we find these words were true.
God has a great deal more to do with any good words which are uttered than we
at all realise. Eliphaz, although he was so wrong, was, nevertheless, allowed
to say words which came true in a marvellous manner about Job himself. "He
shall deliver him that is not innocent," or "not guiltless" - that is the
proper word - "and he shall be delivered by the pureness of thine hands." This
was what God compelled these three men to feel - that Job was more righteous
than they; that his hands were cleaner than theirs. They had defiled their
hands in setting upon Job so foully and so violently; and they owed it to Job
that they were spared their lives.
Job answers in the next chapter
(23) and that is all we can look at tonight. "Even today is my complaint
bitter; my stroke is heavier than my groaning. Oh that I knew where I might
find him!" Ah! there was a pious heart, although he felt and smarted under his
terrible sufferings. He was so pre-occupied that he could not find Him yet. He
did, however, before long. "That I might come even to his seat! I would order
my cause before him, and fill my mouth with arguments. I would know the words
which he would answer me, and understand what he would say unto me." Now that
is what he desired. He was not afraid of what God would say. He was sure to be
good because He loved, and because of what Job knew him to be. "Will he plead
against me with his power?" That is what they thought. "No," said he; nothing
of the sort; "but he would put [strength] in me." "Strength" goes a little too
far. It is rather, "he would give heed unto me." "There the righteous might
dispute with him; so should I be delivered for ever from my judge." I knew it
would be all right if I could only get a hearing. If I could come close to Him,
then He would listen.
"Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and
backward, but I cannot perceive him; on the left hand, where he doth work, but
I cannot behold him; he hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see
him; but he knoweth the way that I take." There, you see, was a heart always
turned towards the centre of attraction, always to God. He might waver under
the affliction - just as you knew the needle may be very unsteady for a little;
but leave it to rest, and it always turns to the pole. "My foot hath held his
steps, his way have I kept, and not declined. Neither have I gone back from the
commandment of his lips." He was perfectly conscious of a good conscience. Yet
he had nothing at all, and that was what he had to learn. God had to show him;
because it was not a question merely of an outward blemish that anyone would
notice. This is what people think very proper.
I have been at dying
beds of real Christians, and I am sorry to say, the principal thing that I have
heard from them has been, "I look back upon my long life of following the Lord
Jesus." If Job had said, "I look back upon the tender mercy and the forbearance
of God and His continual support when I never deserved it" - ah! that would
have been all right. I ought perhaps to add that those whom I have heard speak
in that way never had heard the gospel in the way which you all are familiar
with. Still, I do not doubt that they were Christians, but misled by bad
teaching. "My foot hath held his steps, his way have I kept, and not declined.
Neither have I gone back from the commandment of his lips; I have esteemed the
words of his mouth more than my necessary food." "But he is in one mind, and
who can turn him? and what his soul desireth, even that he doeth." Job allowed
His entire supremacy; he allowed His sovereignty in the fullest degree. "For he
performeth the thing that is appointed for me; and many such things are with
him. Therefore am I troubled at his presence." He was troubled that there was
something between God and him; something with which God had a question, but
what - he did not understand yet. "When I consider, I am afraid of him. For God
maketh my heart soft, and the Almighty troubleth me; because I was not cut off
before the darkness, neither hath he covered the darkness from my face."
LECTURE 7
JOB. 24 -
28
Chap. 24. This closes the answer of Job to Eliphaz that we
began on last Wednesday. Job makes it perfectly clear that all things now are
an anomaly - that you cannot judge of God's feeling about the prosperity of man
here below, for the righteous are often far more tried; and it is no proof of
anything wrong on their part, but, on the contrary, God putting them to the
test, to manifest that they really are His; consequently, submissiveness of
heart is what we are all called to under trial, and to perfect confidence in
God. Still, we have an advantage saints of old had not and could not have till
Christ came - not merely Christ's work accomplished, but the light of Christ
shining. They had not that. This was before the law. Nevertheless, we see
clearly that there was light enough for those that looked to God, and that
there was darkness unquestionably, just as there is now, for those that have
not faith in God. Only, the great profitable lesson of the book is the
difference between believers, and why it is. There was a mighty difference
between Job and his three friends, and I have endeavoured to point out wherein
that difference lay. Whatever might be the mistakes of Job, and whatever his
irritation at being accounted a hypocrite by his friends (and if we have ever
known anything like that we can know the bitterness of it), there is no blow so
keen and so deeply felt as that which comes from those who profess to love us.
And yet the devil is always working and trying to set God's children by the
ears.
Well, here we find it in a very extreme form. That is the grand
difference between the history of Job and that of other men. They only knew it
in a measure; but God brought it out in one great display in the case of Job,
who was more tried than any other man ever was. I do not mean that Paul and
Peter and others may not have had trials of their own kind, and, particularly
their life in their hand. That was not the case with Job. There was no question
of life; it was a question of endurance. His life was not to be touched; it
would have entirely spoilt the history if Job had died; but God took care that
whatever his sufferings might be, he was preserved; and preserved to pass
through such a scene as probably was in no other case since the world began,
yet turned to incomparable benefit. That was what God was showing.
Satan never does anything for good - always for evil But in this case Satan had
entirely failed, and it was God that wrought, and wrought particularly by the
unfaithfulness and the unspirituality of Job's three friends. That is the great
moral of the book. It was only then that he began to curse his day - never
before. Whatever came from Satan he bore, and bore it with the fullest courage
and with all confidence in God. But when his three friends began to insinuate
wickedness hidden, and hypocrisy, that was too much for Job; he could not stand
it. He broke out therefore into many a word highly unbecoming; but God made all
allowance for that, because in the main Job adhered to God, and whatever came,
he desired to accept it from God. He could not understand why, but he still
cleaved to God. Now he puts the case himself.
"Why, seeing times are
not hidden from the Almighty, do not they that know him see his days?" i.e.,
there are these times of evil, and how is it that God, who is a moral governor,
and who takes notice of all evil, yea even the words of people (words reveal
the secrets of the heart) - how is it that He allows it to pass` as He does,
and that there is no day of retribution now? Well, we can perfectly answer
that. It is all reserved for Christ. The Father will not judge any man; that is
not what the Father will do. He is showing love because He is a Father, and
showing love because He is God; because God is love just as much as He is
light. And therefore it is reserved for Christ, and the reason is plain. Christ
was the One whom, without the very slightest reason for it, without a cause,
they hated. They hated both Him and the Father; and therefore it is reserved
for the Lord Jesus to execute judgment. All judgment is committed to the Son,
because He is the Son of man, and as the Son of man He has been hated; His
Deity has been denied, and He was accounted as a companion of wicked people. He
was accounted as a Samaritan, and to have even a demon. There was nothing too
bad for man to say and feel.
And these were not the heathen; the
heathen were never so bad as that. It is God's people when in a bad state that
are worse than anybody. That is a thing that many cannot understand and do not
believe. There they are beating their drums and blowing their trumpets in
Christendom as if everything were going on right. Oh, they are ripening for
judgment indeed in England. It is not merely a Kamchatka or in the centre of
Africa; all that is quite a mistake. The more light there is, if people are not
faithful, the worse they are. And therefore our Lord was very clear in showing
that the Jews were the people. It was no question of Sodom and Gomorrah. They
talked about the horribleness of Sodom and Gomorrah. 'Oh,' said the Lord, 'it
is you that are worse than they. It will be more tolerable in the day of
judgment for Sodom and Gomorrah and Tyre' - and all those places that were
regarded as peculiarly wicked - 'it will be worse for Chorazin, Bethsaida and
Capernaum.' Capernaum was the place where He lived. It was accounted His own
city in Galilee. What He thought worse was the rejection of all His light and
all His love. And therefore the nearer you are to the blessing, if the blessing
is not yours the more guilty you are.
But then comes another very
important thing, and that is, that unless our self is judged - unless there is
continual self-judgment going on day by day, we get hard; we lose the unction
of the truth, we lose the power of it in our souls, and thus we may be very
self-complacent, because we know that we believe. That is just where the
friends of Job were. They were quite comfortable; there was nothing amiss with
them; they were all right, but Job! he must be very bad. That was their entire
misjudgment. Now Job faces this question - how is it, if the times are so bad,
that the day of retribution does not come? We do not see it. It is coming; it
awaits the only One that can perfectly deal with evil.
We are all apt
to be very partial. Sometimes there are certain evils very bad in our eyes -
man's eyes particularly. Some people are very hard upon drinking. Well, the
same people are not at all hard upon covetousness. Nevertheless I suppose there
is no one with any judgment but what avows that the spirit of covetousness is
far more blinding and injurious to the soul than even the debasement of a man
getting tipsy. No doubt a tipsy man is an object of contempt to those that are
temperate, and they pass very severe judgment upon him; and there is where the
devil attacks them all. 'Oh, no; I never drink; I never touch a drop; I am a
good man; and they are very bad, they are very wicked!' Well, I do not at all
doubt that they are bad; but I do say other people are worse who have a good
opinion of themselves. There is nothing that God has more an abhorrence of than
a man who thinks well of himself; for however lofty his thoughts he is nothing
but a poor, lost sinner, and if he has not one particular evil he has others
perhaps as bad or even worse. I do not say that to excuse anything.
There are many other ways in which people show that they have nothing in common
with the Lord Jesus, and that they have no knowledge of God whatever. But it is
the Lord that will be the infallible Judge. It is the Lord that will never
swerve to the one side or the other. Everything that is contrary to God will be
met solemnly by His judgment another day; and it is because people did not see
God in Him, but only a man, that therefore He as a man will be the Judge of all
mankind. All judgment is committed to the Son because He is the Son of man.
Well now, Job describes these anomalies that are going on now. He says, "Some
remove the landmarks." That is not at all an uncommon thing. We have the
evidence of it all round about us in London now. There are people that have
encroached upon - taken the common land of this very Blackheath. There you see
in various parts of it where people somehow or other have encroached; they have
laid hold upon what does not belong to them. But it has gone on so long that
the law cannot touch them. There they are in possession; and we know that is a
great thing in the eyes of lawyers although it is quite contrary to law in
itself, but still they cannot touch them. And there are all these anomalies
constantly going on - even in the face of all the censure of the law; here we
have it. If we were in Cornwall or in the south of Ireland nobody would be
astonished; there are plenty of anomalies there; but here you have it in London
before your eyes.
And so it is too in many other forms besides land
grabbing. But this is what is referred to - a very old trick of bad men, and
particularly of men of property, particularly of men of rank and the like,
because having land it gives them the opportunity of stealing a little more.
And so it is with kings. They see there is a nice province just outside France
that would make such a good addition to the Empire, and by and by it is stolen.
Well then again, Germany sees that there is a certain part that gives an outlet
to the sea that they have not, and they steal that and find a pretext of war in
order to take what belongs to Denmark or whatever country it may be. In that
case it was Denmark. That is in our own day - both of these things. And so it
has ever been; and that is in the face not merely of the law, but the gospel;
and these things are done by people that go to church or to chapel and the
like, and there they are professing Christians. And all that by the very
persons who by their position are the guardians of the execution of the law;
yet they are the people guilty of all this wickedness.
And the same
thing goes on in the lower strata of society. There they are prompted very
often by want; but then what is it very often that is the cause of want? Why,
for the most part it is dishonesty; it is recklessness as to performance of
their duty. They lose their post. They strive to get rich; they take money that
does not belong to them, and they come under public judgment. That is going on
constantly in the lower just as it is in the higher strata, and the fact of it
is, all is wrong, and will be wrong here below till the Lord Jesus is the One
that executes judgment and that reigns righteously. Nothing will be passed
over; there will be no favouritism, but all will be according to God, and never
before. For any measure of peace or quietness or allowance of what people have
- to be in their possession peacefully - we have reason to thank God very much
indeed. But I am speaking now of looking into things as they really are, and it
does not matter what country you take.
We in England think ourselves a
very righteous nation, and there are many that think we are, as compared with
others; but I have just been referring to things that prove how very hollow all
this pretension to righteousness is. And therefore there is the greatest
possible comfort in looking up to God. There there is absolute righteousness,
and not only that, but active goodness. There there is God caring for His own.
He chastises them because He loves them - where there is something that they do
not see; for very often it is that they do not. Sometimes we are buffeted for
our faults. That is a thing that ought not to be. We ought to suffer for
righteousness rather than for unrighteousness, because "for sins Christ once
suffered, Just for unjust," Who is made infinitely dear to us. But there we
come on Christian ground.
Now Job simply takes up the things that are
around him. "They violently take away flocks and feed thereof. They drive away
the ass of the fatherless, they take the widow's ox for a pledge. They turn the
needy out of the way" - these were what you may call the "respectables" of
society, the people who had flocks and herds, but they wanted more. "The poor
of the earth hide themselves together." Well, now we see another class; we see
the poor and distressed here below. "Behold, as wild asses in the desert, go
they forth to their work" - they are the people that have nothing, now the
"masses," that have no skilled work, but that live merely jobbing about, and in
all the precariousness and the suffering that this jobbery produces. "As wild
asses in the desert, go they forth to their work; rising betimes for a prey" -
before the light, and a prey, because it is not something settled - it is what
they can catch. "The wilderness yieldeth food for them and for their children."
Think of that - the barren sands of the wilderness, that is the only
thing, and why? Because they have got no land of their own. "They reap every
one his own corn in the field" - that is the corn of the rich man - "and they
gather the vintage of the wicked." Now they are called not "rich" but "wicked."
"They cause the naked to lodge without clothing" - that is what these wicked
rich do. They have not pity for them; they make use of them for their work.
"They cause the naked to lodge without clothing, that they have no covering in
the cold. They are wet with the showers of the mountains" - describing still
the indigent class that had scarcely any regular work to do, - "and embrace the
rock for want of shelter. They pluck the fatherless from the breast, and take a
pledge of the poor. They cause him to go naked without clothing, and they take
away the sheaf from the hungry." There might be a sheaf or two forgotten in the
case of harvest, but they have found it out, and they are at them to get back
their sheaf. "Which make oil within their walls." They are employed for their
abundance - they make the oil, but they never have a drop of it for themselves
- "and tread their wine-presses and suffer thirst." There is no wine for them.
"Men groan from out of the city, and the soul of the wounded crieth out; yet
God layeth not folly to them." God does not take any notice of it, and the
reason is that He is waiting for that day.
Now what a wonderful love
it is to the very persons to whom the gospel is preached. It was to the "poor"
the gospel was preached; they were peculiarly the object of the Lord Jesus.
There never was such a thing before, since the world began. Nobody ever made
them his grand object, and that for eternity. But Job could not know anything
of that. "They are of those that rebel against the light; they know not the
ways thereof, nor abide in the paths thereof." Then he describes a still worse
class. That is a man - whether higher or lower it does not matter - a man of
violence, the murderer. The man who has got his quarrel, and the man that
nothing will satiate but the life of his victim. "The murderer rising with the
light killeth the poor and needy, and in the night is as a thief" - who will be
ashamed to show that he was robbing the poor. "The eye also of the adulterer
waiteth for the twilight, saying, No eye shall see me" - the corrupt man -
violence and corruption, the two great characteristics of human evil - "and
disguiseth his face. In the dark they dig through the houses, which they had
marked for themselves in the day-time; they know not the light. For the morning
is to them even as the shadow of death; if one know them, they are in the
terrors of the shadow of death." They cannot bear to be known, what they are
and what they seek. There he pursues this terrible picture down to the end of
the chapter, showing that there is an eternal misery and a consciousness of
guilt - for that was a very wonderful working of God.
When man was
first created, he did not know anything about good and evil. He did not know
the difference between them, because no such thing here existed. He was made
perfectly without any evil. There was no evil in man when God sent him forth
from His hand. But directly he fell into sin he acquired the power of judging
what was wrong, and what was right in itself. That is conscience. There was no
need of conscience judging of what was right and wrong when all was good; but
directly man fell, he began to judge good and evil That is what God does
perfectly - man does it in an unhappy, miserable way. It is because he knows of
what is within that he detects it without, and pronounces judgment, but man is
none the better. Now when man is unconverted, he goes on in that kind of
misery, and his use of good and evil is this - there are other men he considers
as bad as, or worse than, himself, and he excuses himself on that ground, and
so he goes on. But when a man is converted conscience turns its eye upon
himself. That is the reason why repentance is indelibly and from the very
beginning bound up with the believer in Christ. Faith and repentance go
together, and the fact of our receiving Christ makes us judge self, and not
merely to spot other people's evil or excuse ourselves.
You see it in
the poor tax-gatherer. When the Pharisee was saying, 'God, I thank Thee I am
not like other men; I am a better-man; I do not drink; I do not swear; I do not
go to gamble or anything of that kind; no, I am a good man, much better than
other people' - there was the poor tax-gatherer, to whose soul God had spoken,
and who, instead of looking to find other people as bad or worse, can only say,
"God be merciful to me the sinner!" It is not merely "to me a sinner." For
many, many years I have been struck with the great beauty of that expression
"God be merciful to me the sinner, if ever there was one. I know my sins and
they are so overwhelming I do not think about others. God be merciful to me the
sinner; me only." That man went down justified rather than the other. It is not
what is called "justification by faith"; but it was the right thing that always
takes place in a converted soul - self-condemnation before God And it is the
light of Christ, somehow entering, that produces that. And therefore now that
the work of Christ is done He is exalted to give repentance and remission of
sins to every one that looks to Him.
So that repentance is a gracious
work; the very opposite of men having a bad conscience. It was man, at any
rate, having his conscience set right to condemn himself. He did not know it
yet. He did not know his sins gone - that is the consequence of redemption.
That could not be till the work of Christ came in. There might be a looking
onward to Christ and His work. Some had a confident hope that the Lord would
take their sins away; they did not know how. But now the gospel is the
proclamation on the part of God of that which clearly explains and fully
accounts for it. "The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth from all sin." We
are glad to believe that - "from all sin." If all our sins are not blotted out
none of them are. If one sin is gone they are all gone. It is only through
Christ, and never does Christ do a thing in a half or niggardly way, as man
does. No; it is complete. Here then Job is simply looking at the terrible state
of these bad consciences, and then goes on to his death, and there the worms
have their feast; that is all he says about it. And if the wicked are exalted,
it is only to go down the more.
Well now we come to Bildad (Job 25).
And Bildad only barely gives the appearance of a speech. It is a very short
one, and it has no kind of application really to Job. They are evidently
obliged to give in, and Bildad, the second of them, he it is that now descants
upon the glory of God. And it is all perfectly true, and very finely stated
too. There is a great deal of what is very beautiful in what Bildad said, only
it had no bearing on the matter at all. "Dominion and fear are with him; he
maketh peace in his high places." Yes, but what troubled Job was that he had
anything but peace in his low place. There he was in this terrible humiliation
and suffering, and he could not tell why it was. "Is there any number of his
armies?" That is all very true; was that any comfort to Job, or any answer?
"And upon whom doth not his light arise?" Well, there might be an implication
that Job was all wrong because he did not enjoy the light, and it was not that
Bildad did. The fact is that he was quiet; he was entirely without any trial;
and he could therefore talk reasonably, and so far quietly; but he had no
understanding of Job.
"How then can man be justified with God?" That
is exactly what Job had said in the ninth chapter, so that he was only
repeating what Job had said a great deal better than he. Job enters into it in
a very full manner, and so strongly that he even puts forth the need of a
daysman, i.e., a mediator, between God and man. He had far more spiritual light
than any of them. "How can he be clean that is born of a woman?" That again is
what Job had already taught. "Behold even to the moon, and it shineth not; yea,
the stars are not pure in his sight; how much less man, that is a worm, and the
son of man, which is a worm?" That was all true, but had no bearing.
Job answers (Job 26), and certainly with quite sufficient keenness, "How hast
thou helped him that is without power? How savest thou the arm that hath no
strength? "He was like the poor publican, the tax-gatherer. "How hast thou
counselled him that hath no wisdom? And how hast thou plentifully declared the
thing as it is? To whom hast thou uttered words?" He was talking in the air.
"And whose spirit came from thee?" Now he showed that he entered into God's
dominion far more fully and extensively than Bildad had admitted. "Dead things
are formed from under the waters, and the inhabitants thereof. Hell is naked
before him, and destruction hath no covering. He stretcheth out the north over
the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing" - a very remarkable
anticipation of modern discovery. "He bindeth up the waters in his thick
clouds; and the cloud is not rent under them" - i.e., whether it be the little
rain or the great rain, all is under God's control. "He holdeth back the face
of his throne," etc., etc. (vers. 8-13). "Lo these are parts of his ways" -
they are only the fringes of his ways, which would give the idea - "but how
little a portion is heard of him?" It is only the whisper that we hear now -
"but the thunder of his power" - ah I that is reserved for the day of judgment
- "who can understand?"
Well, in the next chapter (27) would have come
the time for Zophar; but although Bildad had very little to say, Zophar had
nothing. He is fairly out of the debate; and we shall find that Eliphaz does
not return. Job has it now all to himself, and accordingly he gives here what
might have been an answer to Zophar, but there was no Zophar to answer - he was
silenced. They felt now they were fairly out of court. They began with great
vigour; full of confidence that their judgment was a sound one; but Job had
completely answered all their foolish talk, and there they were silent. It is
not that they were yet convinced that they were wrong; but they do what many
people do - they shut up, and have not a word to say, and still are of the same
opinion. But God would not allow it to rest there. God brought them out of
their hiding place, and pronounced upon them; and it was through Job, as we
shall find by and bye, that they were saved, either from a terrible judgment or
death itself.
"Moreover Job continued his parable and said, As God
liveth,who hath taken away my judgment; and the Almighty, who hath vexed my
soul; all the while my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my
nostrils; my lips shall not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit." He
still stands to it that all their imagination was false. He said now more
solemnly than ever - it was a kind of swearing to it - As God liveth this is
true. "God forbid that I should justify you." Now he turns upon them; he says
"You are the culprits, not I". "Till I die I will not remove mine integrity
from me. My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go; my heart shall
not reproach me so long as I live." They were, on the contrary, imputing what
was very bad to him in most of their speeches. "Let mine enemy be as the
wicked, and he that riseth up against me as the unrighteous." That is what he
says. 'It is you that are acting the part of wicked men without knowing it. It
is you that are the unrighteous, not I.' "For what is the hope of the
hypocrite, though he hath gained, when God taketh away his soul?" It shows that
he had a great abhorrence of it - quite as much as or more than they had. "Will
God hear his cry when trouble cometh upon him" Here he describes it to the end
of the chapter. 'Do you think I am going to fight against God in that way?'
"Will he delight himself in the Almighty?" That is what Job did. "Will
he always call upon God?" He called upon God even in that terrible distress. "I
will teach you by the hand of God: that which is with the Almighty will I not
conceal. Behold, all ye yourselves have seen it; why then are ye thus
altogether vain?" 'You know very well that I have been cleaving to God; you
have heard my confession, and why do you impute such a thing as hypocrisy?'
"This is the portion of a wicked man with God and the heritage of oppressors,
which they shall receive of the Almighty." And even if they go on and have
their children multiplied, it will only be deeper sorrow in the end. "If his
children be multiplied, it is for the sword; and they shall not be satisfied
with bread," no matter what he may be appropriating (and so to end of verse
19). This is all totally opposed to their reasoning,and Job rather triumphs
over them in this way. "Terrors take hold on him as waters, a tempest stealeth
him away in the night. The east wind carrieth him away, and he departeth; and
as a storm hurleth him out of his place."
And now in the next chapter
(Job 28), which will close tonight, we have a very remarkable addition - one of
the most striking in the Book of Job. It seems very abrupt. He now turns away
from man altogether in his bad ways, or from vindicating those who really
looked to God; and he locks at the general state of mankind. Not any
particularly evil class or righteous class.
"Surely there is a vein
for the silver and a place for gold where they find it." Gold is not found in
veins like silver, it is in quite a different way - very often in the form of
dust, and sometimes of nuggets. But silver is found in large and rich veins.
"Iron is taken out of the earth, and brass is molten out of the stone." That is
just exactly where copper is found. Where we read "brass" it is very often
"copper" - chiefly so in the Bible. "He setteth an end to darkness." He now
gives us a remarkable sketch of mining in very early times. "He setteth an end
to darkness, and searcheth out all perfection" - in quest of these precious
metals, gold, silver or the like - "the stones of darkness, and the shadow of
death," i.e., he goes down to the depths of the earth after them. "The flood
breaketh out from the inhabitant" - water there is very dangerous, and so the
great point is to get rid of it safely - to drain it or turn it aside so that
they may work their mine. "Even the waters forgotten of the foot." That is,
waters that people do not walk beside; not the rivers and rivulets and the
like, but water deep in the earth. "They are dried up; they are gone away from
men." There is the drainage in order to carry it on.
"As for the
earth, out of it cometh bread; and under it" - that is deep down in it - "is
turned up as it were fire. The stones of it are the place of sapphires" -
precious stones as well as these metals - "and it hath dust of gold." They do
not enter into these depths; they go up into the heights and they traverse all
the surface of the earth, but the fowls do not venture into the mines where man
goes down. Not even the vulture. The vulture has a keen sight, as we all know,
especially for a dead body, and there they are - God's natural scavengers for
this poor world of death. "The lion's whelps have not trodden it, nor the
fierce lion passed by it" "He putteth forth his hand upon the rock; he
overturneth the mountains by the roots. He cutteth out the rivers among the
rocks; and his eye seeth every precious thing," They get a great sensitive
understanding of what is worth - not by any means that they are always right.
Sometimes the miners in our country have thrown away as rubbish what was quite
as valuable as all that their mind was set upon; but as a general rule they
learn what is valuable. "He bindeth the floods from overflowing; and the thing
that is hid bringeth he forth to light. But where shall wisdom be found?" No,
there is no wisdom in all that. There is self in all that. There is what will
make a man rich; there is what will bring money and perhaps distinction; but
where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding? Well, it
is not on the earth, and it is not down in these mines of darkness where man is
so prompt to follow for that which he values. Where is it to be found? "Man
knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living."
What a very solemn thing that is! True wisdom and true understanding
not found in the earth at all! It comes down from heaven. It is found only in
Christ; and Christ had not yet come; and further, this is what came out still
more by Christ's rejection and Christ's death. "Therefore the depth saith, It
is not in me." There are silver and gold in the depth, and other like
commodities, and precious stones. "The sea saith, It is not with me.... It is
hid from the eyes of all living, and kept close from the fowls of the air." It
is not in the skies as far as they are open to the eye. "Destruction and death
say, We have heard the fame thereof with our ears." Yes, it was just that very
thing. There was a report of that One who is Himself wisdom, and who is the
Giver of wisdom to the meek. It was by death that it came to us, but they did
not know it.
"God understandeth the way thereof, and he knoweth the
place thereof. For he looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the
whole heaven; to make the weight for the winds." It was many hundreds, yea,
some thousands of years after that when man discovered that the atmosphere had
weight. But it did not enter into the philosophy of the philosophers then; they
knew nothing about it. Here is mentioned the weight of the wind. "He weigheth
the waters by measure," so that no matter what comes, the sea is never too
full. There is always going on, the circle of waters - waters rising up in the
form of vapour, and in vast quantities; for the power of the son acts upon the
waters, and there are many tons going up every day. There was a measure for it
all, in God's mind. "When he made a decree for the rain, and a way for the
lightning of the thunder, then did he see it, and declare it; he prepared it,
yea, and searched it out. And unto man he said" - there is a wisdom above man -
"Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is
understanding." And that is just exactly what is felt when a soul is converted.
He may know nothing more than that; he sees how he has been in almost all evil,
and he departs from it. A real sight of Christ is enough to do that by the
spirit of God, and the fear of the Lord. That is what is abiding even when
souls are not occupied with their evil, and speaking of it - the fear of the
Lord and departing from evil.
But that is not the same thing as the
gospel; it is not the same thing as knowing that all our evil is judged already
in Christ's person on the cross, that our sins are completely gone, and that we
are brought in as children whiter than snow through the blood of Christ before
the eye of God. That is the gospel; and it is after his reception of the word
of truth that man receives the Holy Ghost, to delight in it, and to be the
witness of it; but enjoying it first. Not to speak unto other people at first;
oh, no; that is not the first thing. That is what the vanity of youngsters very
often thinks - but to enjoy it with thankfulness and praise of God, and in
worship of Him; that is what we come to. That is the true effect of the Spirit
of God working. But then there is often a great deal of energy, and people are
often more occupied with the wants of other people than with the infallible
grace and truth of God. If the Lord will, I hope to continue on next Wednesday
evening.
LECTURE 8
JOB. 29
- 32
This is the beginning of Job's last argument. The friends were
quite silenced; he now makes his final confutation; and, indeed, it is more an
appeal than an argument, for he rises above all that they had been pleading and
insinuating.
Here he gives us in chapters 29-31 a very interesting
pouring out of his feelings. The first of these chapters reviews his early days
of prosperity, and we can see the very great complacency that he had in all
that grace had wrought in him. But, alas! there was another thing that ought
not to have been. He took pleasure in his good character. He was therefore in
spirit too much of a Pharisee. "I thank thee that I am not as other men." It
was not but that there was great grace in Job, and that there was a very
admirable character sustained; but why should he talk about it? why should he
think upon it? why should he not think of the source of all the blessing? Why
should he not be boasting in the Lord - instead of an implied boasting in
himself? There was the very thing that God had a controversy with. And we see
that up to this time Job had not got to the bottom of that which God was
ferreting out. Satan had completely disappeared. He is always defeated with the
children of God. He may appear to gain a battle, but the campaign is always
against him; and so it is very marked in the case of Job.
But the
second of these three chapters looks at his downfall; that is the great topic
that is in it. He bemoans his terrible state; and up to the present he could
not withhold the expression that he thought God dealt hardly with him, and was
arbitrary. He could not understand His ways in the slightest degree; nor did he
take in the motive that God had - the gracious purpose. In short, he had not
reached the end of the Lord, because he had not done with himself. That is the
real secret of it.
And the next chapter - the last of his appeal - is
a most impassioned setting himself before God, and implicating judgments on
himself. So thoroughly was his conscience good, that he goes over all the
various snares of a man, and especially a man of position and wealth like Job;
because that always increases the danger, and always makes the difficulty more.
There is no greater mistake than to suppose that poverty is the hard place in
which to serve God. On the contrary, it is when people are no longer poor, and
no longer feel the need of continual dependence upon God - when they begin to
be independent - for the world is not ashamed to call it that. I am sorry to
say that Christians even drop into the language and the spirit of the world.
Job calls solemn judgments upon himself - looking at the various snares - if he
had been guilty in this or that or the other and so on - and the upshot of it
all is that "The words of Job are ended."
We have no more of Job now
in the way of self-defence. We shall find a very interesting new speaker on
which I may say a few words on chapter 32 tonight. But now, first of all Job
says: "Oh; that I were as in months past." Now it is always a bad sign when
people look back to dwell on the past. Are people not to grow? Are children of
God merely to be occupied with the immense favour of God? No doubt it is very
true that one is plucked out of the teeth of Satan; but what is that compared
with the positive knowledge of God? It is a great thing for us; but is not the
knowledge of God infinitely greater than merely the action of divine grace in
rescuing a poor wretched sinner? It is an admirable thing for the sinner always
to feel it; but it is a sad thing when he looks back to it as the brightest of
all things. Why, that means he has been making no progress at all; it means
that he has been all these years afterwards looking back upon that as the
divine moment. Surely divine life ought to be a growing enjoyment; and the more
so as you know of Christ and of God - I am speaking now to Christians, of
course.
But even for Job God never left himself without witness - and
God always met the souls that really walked with Him. Who can doubt but that
Enoch walked with God, and do you suppose that Enoch looked back at the first
glimpse he had of God, and would say he knew God by that? No, far from it, and
shame on all people who talk such language. I do not deny that it is the
language of many a Christian, but that is the most sorrowful thing now - that
Christians forget what it is to be a Christian. They only think of the moment
of becoming a Christian, and they seem to think that that is the great thing.
No doubt it is passing the border, but it is certainly not going into the
brightness beyond it. Where is the feast; where is the joy of the Father; where
is the best robe, and all the other accompaniments? Is that nothing? Well, that
was after. And that is what in an image presents us with the positive place of
blessing. The "grace wherein we stand" - not merely the grace that rescued us,
but the grace wherein we stand. It is a continual place of grace to be enjoyed
more and more as we learn more of God and judge ourselves. But there is where
Job failed. Job admired himself. And so he looks back. "Oh, that I were as in
months past." God was going to do far better. It is true that Job went through
very severe sifting, but that was all for his good; and more than that, it was
for your good and my good, and the good of every believer that has ever
profited by this book since God had it written down. It was meant for the
blessing of all. It was not intended that there should be perhaps another man
to go through the same. God has His economy of good; God has His reserve of
grace; God was pleased that one should have had a very broad back to bear the
trial. We have heard of the patience of Job; but that is the very thing wherein
he broke down, so that he became impatient at last even with God. And the
reason was because he was not yet an utterly broken man - he was given to
knowing about himself.
Oh, how very rarely one finds a saint of God
even now what every saint of God ought to be; but it is a rare thing even among
Christian people. "As in the days when God preserved me; when His candle shined
upon my head, and when by His light I walked through darkness; as I was in the
days of my youth." Why, that is a strange thing - "my youth." No getting on
with God in his maturity or in his old age! What was Job about? "When the
Almighty was yet with me, when my children were about me." Was not He with him
then? That is just what he did not see or know. "Whom He loveth He chasteneth";
and that is one of the great lessons of the Book of Job. I admit it was
terrible chastening. And that is where the friends were all wrong; it was so
terrible that they thought it was retributive, and that it was impossible for a
person to suffer to such an extreme degree unless he had been extremely wicked.
And what made it worse was that he looked so good, and therefore they thought
he must be a hypocrite. There they were completely wrong; and the consequence
was that they had to go down lower than Job, and that Job had to pray for them
that they might be spared. And this he did. But, however, I anticipate what we
will have another day.
"When I washed my steps with butter" - of
course it is not literal - "and the rock poured me out rivers of oil." You see
that petroleum is an old affair in this world! "When I went out to the gate
through the city, when I prepared my seat in the street! The young men saw me,
and hid themselves; and the aged arose, and stood up." All that was exceedingly
pleasant to Job. And we are apt to think so too - there is nothing, men say,
that succeeds like success, and there is not a more wicked maxim or one more
entirely contrary to God; nothing more thoroughly denying that we are now in
the place of suffering, and of being despised and rejected for Christ's sake.
But that is a worldly maxim, and it is just what the world delights in. Men
will praise you if you do well to yourself, that is, if you are successful -
make a good fortune, and have nice dinner parties, and so on. "The princes
refrained talking, and laid their hand on their mouth."
Now one of the
beautiful features about Job was that he did not pretend to be noble, and he
did not seek to be a prince. He was like a king in the nobility of his
character - what a king ought to be - he was truly noble in his ways; and all
that would have been admirable if he had not said or thought; for that is the
important point. "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth." It
does not mean that other people do not know it, but the wrong is that our left
hand should know what our right hand does, i.e., we ought not to think about
it. It is done to God; and it is merely returning a very little interest for
the wonderful capital - for the spiritual capital that the Lord has put in our
power.
Here you see it was not so. Job was highly pleased, and took
great pleasure in the world thinking so much of him. "When the ear heard me,
then it blessed me" - now he is looking at what you may call the objects of his
kindness and love. For there was both kindness and love in Job. "And when the
eye saw me, it gave witness to me." He was referring to the people that had
been helped out of their manifold afflictions. "Because I delivered the poor
that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him." And that
was really true. God delighted in Job; that was all right; and he found at last
that God did delight in him, but he did not find that till after the trial. He
was buoyed up and raised above the ordinary occupations of men by the homage
that was paid him and the perception of his exceeding kindness. All that lifted
him up. Well, that is a very natural thing; but it is not spiritual; and it is
the very thing that God was putting down severely in him; much more so than in
a very inferior man. The greatest trials that God inflicts are upon the
strongest, those that are able to bear them. Those that know most of His ways -
they come in for it. And that was the case with Job.
"The blessing of
him that was ready to perish came upon me; and I caused the widow's heart to
sing for joy. I put on righteousness, and it clothed me" - that was very true,
and he looked at his clothing too; - "my judgment was as a robe and a diadem."
Yes, very pleased was Job. "I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the
lame. I was a father to the poor; and the cause which I knew not I searched
out. And I brake the jaws of the wicked, and plucked the spoil out of his
teeth. Then I said, I shall die in my nest." No, no; God was going to disturb
that nice nest of his that was so warm and comfortable. "And I shall multiply
my days as the sand." Why, he had been very desirous that God should cut short
his days; for that was the only way that he saw out of all the trouble he was
passing through. "My root was spread out by the waters, and the dew lay all
night upon my branch. My glory was fresh in me, and my bow was renewed in my
hand. Unto me men gave ear, and waited, and kept silence at my counsel. After
my words they spake not again; and my speech dropped upon them. And they waited
for me as for the rain; and they opened their mouth wide as for the latter
rain. If I laughed on them, they believed it not" - it is too good to be true -
"and the light of my countenance they cast not down. I chose out their way, and
sat chief, and dwelt as a king in the army, as one that comforteth the
mourners."
You cannot be surprised that the Jews were the first
rationalists; they were the higher critics of a former day. They did not
believe that it was a true story - the philosophic Jews - they did not believe
that. How far it penetrated the synagogue generally we cannot say. I presume
there were simple-hearted men that fully believed every word of it. But one of
the great reasons why the Jews did not accept this history was that Job was not
a Jew. "Oh! that cannot be; why, they are all dogs. Everybody but a Jew is a
dog." And the idea that God did not say it of Abraham that he was of such
integrity that there was nobody like him in all the earth - nor of Isaac, nor
of Jacob! No, this they could not believe. They knew that it was of a patriarch
of those days, and therefore they were dead set against the possibility of such
a thing as God extolling one who was not of the chosen race, one of the family
and of the nation that had the promise.
What is it that makes people
higher critics? It is that they prefer their own thoughts to the word of God.
That is what it is to be an unbeliever; and if it is carried out thoroughly you
are an infidel; you are a lost man. I presume that these Jews fully held to the
other books of the Bible. It is to be presumed so. Perhaps they did not like
some others. I can understand their no more liking the prophecy of Jonah being
given to a Gentile city than that Jonah liked to be the prophet sent there. He
did everything to turn away from it; and when God told him to go east he went
west. When he was told to go to Nineveh he took a ship at Joppa to go west -
just in the very opposite direction.
Well, now, in the next chapter
(Job 30) we have a totally different story. Job now says, "But now they that
are younger than I have me in derision." You can suppose how very painful that
was to a man that had been living a good deal upon the witness of these grand
deeds and the high opinions of him, and the humbler classes, for once in a way,
being entirely along with the grandees. For at times they do truly love to
differ. "Whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my
flock." Ah! Job, you can be cutting; you can strike deep if you are so
disposed. He would not have set their fathers with the dogs of his flock! Just
think of it. And he gives his reason. He says, "Yea, whereto might the strength
of their hands profit me?" Job was a wise man, and if he had servants he had
servants that could do their duty. But as very often happens with the most
miserable of the world, they are weak, and unable to do a good day's work, nor
a good hour's work. Whatever they do, they do in a manner that is enough to
provoke any person to look at them. And so he says, "For want and famine they
were solitary; fleeing into the wilderness in former time desolate and waste.
Who cut up mallows by the bushes, and juniper roots for their meat. They were
driven forth from among men (they cried after them as after a thief)" - they
were most disreputable, and Job would not have had one of them on any account
to serve him. He would be very willing to give them food if they were hungry;
and if they had no clothing he would surely have abounded even then. But he
felt it very much that these men should mock him, and should do everything to
deride his sufferings, and not only that with these men in general, but that
the young men tried to trip up his tottering steps! For you know the soles of
his feet were intolerable - from head to foot not only was every nerve, as it
were, active, but the very worms were beginning to prey upon him while he was
alive, through all the sores that were open. It was a most awful case.
Yet what is that compared with moral suffering? Do you suppose the apostle Paul
did not suffer much more severely than with any bodily trouble? He suffered
from false brethren a great deal. And I think he must have suffered from true
brethren very often - perhaps even more, but in a different way. "To dwell in
the cliffs of the valleys, in caves of the earth, and in the rocks. Among the
bushes they brayed." He will not allow that they talked - they brayed. "Under
the nettles they were gathered together. They were children of fools, yea,
children of base men" - i.e. of fathers that had not a name themselves - "they
were viler than the earth. And now am I their song; yea, I am their byword.
They abhor me." Think of that - these words were all true. "They flee far from
me." They could not bear to look at him - at the agony, and the terrible effect
of all these sores on his body. They could not go near him. "And spare not to
spit in my face. Because he hath loosed my cord." There was after all what
grieved the heart of poor Job more than anything. It was God. He does not mean
the devil; it was not the devil. "Because He hath loosed my cord and afflicted
me" (and so to end of verse 16).
You see there is no reference to his
three friends now. He is looking really at this tremendous trial that afflicted
his body, and that exposed him to all this disrespect and contempt of the very
lowest creatures on the face of the earth. "My bones are pierced in me in the
night season; and my sinews take no rest. By the great force of my disease is
my garment changed; it bindeth me about as the collar of my coat." Look at the
pain all that would occasion. "He hath cast me into the mire, and I am become
like dust and ashes. I cry unto thee and thou dost not hear me." But God did
hear him. There was a reason why He did not answer; but God did hear. "I stand
up, and thou regardest me not. Thou art become cruel to me." There he was quite
wrong. "With thy strong hand thou opposest thyself against me. Thou liftest me
up to the wind: thou causest