If my steps have turned from the path, if my heart has followed my eyes, or if impurity has stuck to my hands, Sermons
I. THE JUSTICE OF AN EVEN BALANCE IS GREATLY TO BE DESIRED. People have taken a very narrow view of justice, so narrow a view as to be practically false and most fallacious. Justice has been regarded as the power that punishes sin, and while, of course, this is true, this is not a description of the true nature and ultimate character of it, but only a statement of one of its special functions - a function which would not exist if sin had not entered the world. Yet justice would have an ample field if there were no wickedness. It is not like the executioner, whose occupation would be gone with the cessation of lawlessness. Justice is righteousness. It is the principle that insists on seeing right done. Every lover of the good must desire to see such a principle flourish. Between man and man justice is fairness. When we say God deals justly we imply that he deals fairly. This may not mean equality. For to load a mule with the same burden we would put on an elephant's back is not fair dealing st all. Equity is not equality. But it is a suitable and proportionate dealing with each individual II. THE JUSTICE OF AN EVEN BALANCE IS RARE AMONG MEN. Job did not see it, and therefore he greatly longed for it. Many things falsify the scales of justice. 1. Prejudice. Truth should be on one side of the scales - as in the Egyptian legend of weighing the souls of the dead. But prejudice either pares the weight of truth and so lessens its value, or adds its own weight. 2. Self-interest. Justice should be impartial; but men are not. A pure detachment of mind is very difficult to acquire. Instead of considering merit, people take account of what pleases them or what may be. profitable to them. 3. Ignorance. When there is the utmost genuineness of desire to weigh justly, we may make a mistake simply because we do not put all the facts into the scale. III. THE JUSTICE OF AN EVEn BALANCE IS FOUND WITH GOD. 1. Pure equity. He allows no prejudice to warp his judgment, no self interest to pervert his verdict. God is perfectly just in his own character. Therefore he can judge men justly. Being righteous himself, he is never prompted to act otherwise than righteously. 2. Knowledge. God makes none of the unintentional mistakes that are so common with men. The whole tangled mass of events is unravelled by his perfectly penetrating gaze. When we despair of having a case truly seen by our fellow-men, we can lift up our eyes to the great Judge of all the earth and be assured that he knows all Surely, then, it is most necessary to stand right with the justice of God, that this may vindicate and not condemn us. But only the God-given righteousness in Christ can make this possible to us. ? W.F.A.
The words of Job are ended. Running like a golden thread through all this vehement and passionate language, we have seen a vein of thought which has given this half-rebellious questioner a claim upon our sympathy, and which even had the book ended here, would have prevented thoughtful men from joining his opponents, and from abandoning the solitary and tortured sufferer to the reproaches of his friends, and to the condemnation of the future readers of this great controversy. His soul, ripened by the hot blast of cruel affliction, is being prepared for a step, a long step forward, in that progressive revelation of God Himself to man, given us in Holy Scripture. He sickens at the sight and sense of wrong, and clinging to the conviction that, in spite of all appearances, God must be just — juster than his friends, or his own creed, or his own experience have declared Him to be — he struggles to be true, at once to himself, to his conscience, and his God. He yearns for a clearer sight of, and a nearer approach to the Divine Being against whom, as seen in the insufficient light given him, he has launched so vehement an indictment, so terrible a flood of fervid and poetic wrath. And while he has no sure and certain hope of a life beyond the grave, such as was revealed to the world in Christ, yet his pathetic moans at the finality of death give place, once to a dim aspiration, and once and again to a more loud assertion of his conviction — bursting forth like a flash of light from his darkest mood — that even if he is to die, die in his misery and desolation, God will yet be his Goel, his Vindicator; that somehow, he knows not how, he shall even after the shock of death have sight of God, and have his wrongs redressed; and therefore that he who has once been so dear to Him, and who has fallen so low in this life, will not be left to be "of all men most miserable." And we have noticed how, in his description of his early life, he moves in a serene and lofty atmosphere, puts before us a moral standard of practice and even of thought which a Christian might be thankful to attain and realise And now, he and his friends are alike silent, silent but unconvinced. Neither the one side nor the other have won the adhesion of those against whom they argue. They cannot point to any guilt on Job's part. He cannot convince them of his innocence. Neither one side nor the other have, we cannot but feel, laid their hands upon the whole truth. Yet each has exhausted his store of arguments, shot his arrows, and emptied his quiver. And deep as is the hold which Job has gained upon our interest and sympathy, yet "the light and shade has been so graduated that those sympathies are not entirely confined to one side."(Dean Bradley.). People Abaddon, Adam, JobPlaces UzTopics Aside, Blemish, Blot, Cleaved, Cleaveth, Defiled, Defilement, Followed, Hands, Heart, Led, Path, Property, Spot, Step, Steps, Stuck, Turn, WalkedOutline 1. Job makes a solemn protestation of his integrity in several dutiesDictionary of Bible Themes Job 31:5-8Library Thou Shalt not Steal. This Commandment also has a work, which embraces very many good works, and is opposed to many vices, and is called in German Mildigkeit, "benevolence;" which is a work ready to help and serve every one with one's goods. And it fights not only against theft and robbery, but against all stinting in temporal goods which men may practise toward one another: such as greed, usury, overcharging and plating wares that sell as solid, counterfeit wares, short measures and weights, and who could tell all the … Dr. Martin Luther—A Treatise on Good Works Question of the Active Life Whether virtue is in us by Nature? Whether after Christ, it was Proper to the Blessed virgin to be Sanctified in the Womb? Whether Corporal Alms are of More Account than Spiritual Alms? Whether Confession is According to the Natural Law? Whether one Can, Without a Mortal Sin, Deny the Truth which Would Lead to One's Condemnation? The Advanced Christian Reminded of the Mercies of God, and Exhorted to the Exercise of Habitual Love to Him, and Joy in Him. Trials of the Christian The Christian Business World The Seventh Commandment Tit. 2:06 Thoughts for Young Men Thoughts Upon Worldly-Riches. Sect. Ii. Job Links Job 31:7 NIVJob 31:7 NLT Job 31:7 ESV Job 31:7 NASB Job 31:7 KJV Job 31:7 Bible Apps Job 31:7 Parallel Job 31:7 Biblia Paralela Job 31:7 Chinese Bible Job 31:7 French Bible Job 31:7 German Bible Job 31:7 Commentaries Bible Hub |
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