Job Chapter 13



But now he says (Job 13), "Lo, mine eye hath seen all this" - "you have been boasting of what the ancients had all thought" - "mine ear hath heard and understood it. What ye know, the same do I know also; I am not inferior to you. Surely I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to reason with God." That is just what he was doing. But how? He did not know. There was not the New Testament yet. There was not One to stand between God and man, like Christ. So he did not know how to get at Him. If he could only find Him; if he could only be before Him! He knew very well what he would find there - a faithful God. But somehow or other there were difficulties and riddles between God and his soul that he could not understand. He says, "But ye are forgers of lies." You see all their arguments were founded upon man and upon the world. Everything that a believer stands upon is what is in God, and what God gives and reveals. And there we find it, in all its perfection, in Christ. But they were all resting upon man's thoughts and man's experience, and the like. And further he says, "Ye are all physicians of no value." You have come to heal me; you have heard of my terrible state; you came to heal and cure me in my dreadful sickness and suffering, and what have you done? Why, you have poured poison upon my wounds; you have poured no wine, no oil. No balm have you poured upon the poor sufferer.

"Oh, that ye would altogether hold your peace I and it should be your wisdom." And it often is a man's wisdom when he sits quiet and holds his tongue. But directly he begins to speak about what he does not understand - well, what then? That is exactly where they were. "Hear now my reasoning, and hearken to the pleadings of my lips. Will ye speak wickedly for God? and talk deceitfully for him?" That is what they had been doing. They pretended this to be for God. "Will ye accept his person? will ye contend for God? Is it good that he should search you out?" Well, that is what He did. "Or as one man mocketh another, do ye so mock him? He will surely reprove you." How remarkably that was fulfilled! "He will surely reprove you, if ye do secretly accept persons" - and that is what they were doing. They were accepting persons falsely - according to appearance. "Your remembrances are like unto ashes, your bodies to bodies of clay. Hold your peace, let me alone, that I may speak. and let come on me what will." Now here I am, ready to bear whatever God sends. I feel the awfulness of it, and the terrors of God are on my soul; but here I am; let him do as seemeth good in his sight "Wherefore do I take my flesh in my teeth, and put my life in mine hand? Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him."

There was a far deeper faith in Job than in all the other three, or in any of them. He did not mean, 'though I am lost.' Oh no, he had no idea of that. "Though he slay me" - he knew that the best thing was not life on the earth; he is learning that; but the best thing is the life to come. There it would be all according to God; but here it is in confusion, and in every kind of moral anomaly. "He also shall be my salvation" - he has no doubt about that - "for an hypocrite shall not come before him." He was very far from that. I do not say that they were hypocrites; but certainly they talked very badly, for men of piety, to Job. "Who is he that will plead with me? for now, if I hold my tongue, I shall give up the ghost." That is, it was a relief to him, in the agony that he was passing through, to speak out; and all he wanted was to be put right if he was wrong. He says now, "Only do not two things unto me; then will I not hide myself from thee. Withdraw thine hand far from me" - the outward thing - "and let not thy dread" - the inward - "make me afraid: then call thou, and I will answer" - and so he did - "or let me speak, and answer thou me. How many are mine iniquities and sins? "

Did he say that there was no sin in him? He never said anything of the kind; he never had the presumption to say, "I am clean in thine eyes." No, no, far from it. Unfortunately he had rather rested in his cleanness in his own eyes, and in the eyes of other people; but he had to learn that it was a very different thing to be clean in God's eyes. He begins to learn that more and more deeply. "Wherefore hidest thou thy face, and holdest me for thine enemy? Wilt thou break a leaf driven to and fro?" Was that a person pretending to any strength? "And wilt thou pursue the dry stubble? For thou writest bitter things against me, and makest me to possess the iniquities of my youth" - it may be that they are coming upon me now. "Thou puttest my feet also in the stocks" - you make me an object of shame before everybody - "and lookest narrowly unto all my paths; thou settest a print upon the heels of my feet." That might have been thought to be hidden - "the heels of my feet"; but no, everything is marked. "And he, as a rotten thing consumeth, as a garment that is moth-eaten."