Job 9:1














Now, for the first time, Job admits the great principle for which Eliphaz and Bildad have contended, but in a bitter and sarcastic sense. True, he says, it is not for man to contend against God. But why? Because he is absolute Power, and hence there is no possibility of a flail mortal prevailing in his plea. His might is his fight. It is a dark conception of God to which Job's despair now drives him. He looks upon God simply as omnipotent Force, arbitrary and irresistible Will. Take the thought of power, and separate it from that of justice and of compassion, and we have the idea of an almighty Fiend rather than of a good and gracious Father. Yet the spark of true faith still lives, as we shall see, in the recesses of his awakened heart, - J.

Then Job answered and said.
Job was utterly unaware of the circumstances under which he was suffering. If Job had known that he was to be an example, that a great battle was being fought over him, that the worlds were gathered round him to see how he would take the loss of his children, his property, and his health, the circumstances would have been vitiated, and the trial would have been a mere abortion. Under such circumstances Job might have strung himself up to an heroic effort. If everything with us were plain and straightforward, everything would be proportionately easy and proportionately worthless. Trials, persecutions, and tests are meant for the culture of your strength, the perfecting of your patience, the consolidation of your hope and love. God will not explain the causes of our affliction to us, any more than He explained the causes of Job's affliction to the patriarch. But history comes to do what God Himself refrains from doing. What course does Job say he will take? A point of departure is marked in the tenth chapter. Now he speaks to Heaven. He will speak in the bitterness of his soul. That is right. Let us hear what Job's soul has to say. Do not be harsh with men who speak with some measure of indignation in the time of sorrow. We are chafed and vexed by the things which befall our life. Yet even in our very frankness we should strive at least to speak in chastened tones. Job says he will ask for a reason.Shew me wherefore Thou contendest with me? Job will also appeal to the Divine conscience, if the expression may be allowed (Job 10:3). We must have confidence in the goodness of God. Job then pleads himself — his very physiology, his constitution (Job 10:8-11). What lay so heavily upon Adam and upon Job, was the limitation of their existence. This life as we see it is not all; it is an alphabet which has to be shaped into a literature, and a literature which is to end in music. The conscious immortality of the soul, as that soul was fashioned in the purpose of God, has kept the race from despair. Job said, if this were all that we see, he would like to be extinguished. He would rather go out of being than live under a sense of injustice. This may well be our conviction, out of the agonies and throes of individual experience, and national convulsions, there shall come a creation fair as the noonday, quiet as the silent but radiant stars!

(J. Parker, D. D.)

Homilist.
I. He regarded Him as JUST. "I know it is so of a truth: but how should man be just with God?" His language implies the belief that God was so just, that He required man to be just in His sight. Reason asserts this; the Infinite can have no motive to injustice, no outward circumstance to tempt Him to wrong. Conscience affirms this; deep in the centre of our moral being, is the conviction that the Creator is just. The Bible declares this. Job might well ask how can man be just before Him? He says, not by setting up a defence, and pleading with Him; "if he will contend with Him, he cannot answer him one of a thousand." What can a sinner plead before Him?

1. Can he deny the fact of his sinfulness?

2. Can he prove that he sinned from a necessity of his nature?

3. Can he satisfactorily make out that although he has sinned, sin has been an exception in his life, and that the whole term of his existence has been good and of service to the universe? Nothing in this way can he do; no pleading will answer. He must become just before he can appear just before God.

II. He regarded Him as WISE. "He is wise in heart." Who doubts the wisdom of God? The whole system of nature, the arrangements of Providence, and the mediation of Christ, all reveal His "manifold wisdom." He is wise, so that —

1. You cannot deceive Him by your falsehoods; He knows all about you, sees the inmost depths of your being.

2. You cannot thwart Him by your stratagems. His purposes must stand.

III. As STRONG. "Mighty in strength." His power is seen in the creation, sustenance, and government of the universe. The strength of God is absolute, independent, illimitable, undecayable, and always on the side of right and happiness.

IV. HE REGARDED HIM AS RETRIBUTIVE. There is a retributive element in the Divine nature — an instinct of justice. Retribution in human governors is policy. The Eternal retributes wrong because of His instinctive repugnance to wrong. Hence the wrong doer cannot succeed. The great principle is, that if a man desires prosperity, he must fall in with the arrangements of God in His providence and grace; and wisdom is seen in studying these arrangements, and in yielding to them.

(Homilist.)

But how should man be just with God.
With respect to the relation in which man stands with God, two considerations are essential: the one regarding ourselves, the other regarding our Maker. We are His creatures, and therefore wholly and undividedly His, and owe Him our full service. Our employing any part of ourselves in anything contrary to His wish, is injustice towards Him; and therefore no one who does so can be just with Him in this. But since our wills and thoughts are not in our own power, whatever we do, it is hopeless to endeavour to bring the whole man into the service of God. Such a perfect obedience as we confess we owe as creatures to our Creator, is utterly unattainable. Are we then to lower, not indeed our efforts, but our standard? Will God be satisfied with something less than absolute perfection? Since we are God's creatures, we owe Him a perfect and unsinning obedience in thought, word, and deed. And God cannot be satisfied with less. If His holiness and His justice were not as perfect as His mercy and His love, He would not be perfect, or in other words He would not be God.

1. That man cannot be justified by the law — that is, by his obedience to the law, or the performance of its duties, — is clear from its condition, "This do, and thou shalt live." It makes no abatement for sincerity; it makes no allowance for infirmity. Mercy is inadmissible here; it just asks its due, and holds out the reward upon the payment of it.

2. Neither can he be justified by a mitigated law; that is, by its being lowered till it is within reach.

3. Nor yet can he be absolved by the passing by of his transgressions through the forgetfulness (so to speak) of God; as if He would not be extreme to mark what was done amiss.

4. How then shall man be just with God? It must be in a way that will honour the law. Christ hath "magnified the law, and made it honourable" —

(1)By keeping it entire and unbroken; and

(2)By enduring its curse, as if He had broken it; becoming "sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him."

(George Jeans, M. A.)

How is man justified before God? We speak of man as he is now found in the world — fallen, guilty, and polluted. Man was made upright at the first. The first action of his nature, in its several parts, was in harmony with the laws pertaining to each, and so for a short time it continued. When I speak of the laws pertaining to each part, I mean those of matter and of mind, of body, sense, and intellect. God had laid a prohibition upon him, and to the observance of this He had promised His continued favour, and to the non-observance He attached the forfeiture of that favour. The trial here was not whether man would attain to the Divine favour, but whether he should retain it. The danger to be apprehended, for danger is involved in the very notion of a probation, was, that Adam might fall, not that he might not rise, as is the case with us, his descendants. How was Adam kept, as long as he stood in a state of acceptance before God; i.e., how Adam was justified, so far as the term justification can be predicated of him? He continued in the Divine favour as long as he obeyed the law. He was justified by works. There is nothing evil necessarily in the idea of justification by works. Conscience naturally knows of no other mode of justification, and where that is impossible, she gives the offender over to condemnation and despair. Conscience knows of no justification but that of works. When it is possible, the first, the obvious, and the legitimate, the natural mode of securing the Divine favour is by a perfect obedience, in one's own person, to the Divine commands as contained in the moral law. How are Adam's posterity justified? Not in the same way that he was. Their circumstances are so different. He was innocent, they are guilty; he was pure, they are impure; he was strong, they are weak. The Gospel mode of justification cannot be by works. But what is it positively? A knowledge of this subject must embrace two things, namely, what God has done to this end — to make justification possible; and what man does when it is become actual. It has pleased God to save us, not arbitrarily, but vicariously. He has not cancelled our sin, as a man might cancel the obligation of an indebted neighbour, by simply drawing his pen across the record in his ledger. This may do for a creature in relation to his fellows. We are told in Holy Writ that God the Father has given His Son to be a "ransom" for us, a "sacrifice for our sins," a "mediator between Him and us," the "only name under heaven amongst men whereby we can be saved." The Father hath laid in His atoning death the foundation of our hopes, the "elect cornerstone" of our salvation. By the Holy Spirit and through that Son, He hath also granted to mankind, besides an offer of pardon, an offer of assistance, yea, assistance in the very offer. The mediatorship of the Spirit began the moment the Gospel was first preached to fallen Adam. So indeed did the Mediatorship of Christ, i.e., God began immediately to have prospective regard to the scene one day to be enacted upon Calvary. But the mediatorship of the Spirit could not be one moment deferred. In order to render the salvation of men subjectively possible, the Spirit must be actually and immediately given. What then is necessary on the part of man? This may appear to some a dangerous way of viewing the subject. I am not about to establish a claim of merit on the part of man. When a man is justified, as justification takes place on the part of God, there must be something correlative to it on the part of man — man must do something also. This great act of God must find some response in the heart of man. There must needs be, in a fallen, guilty, and polluted creature, emotions which were at first unknown in Paradise. Deep penitence befits him, pungent sorrow, bitter self-reproach, and utter self-loathing. If we look to the honour of God, or the exigencies of His moral government, we come to the same conclusion. As His honour requires that the obedient should continue obedient, so does it require that, having disobeyed, they should repent, and cease to be disobedient: it is, in truth, the Same spirit in both cases, only adapted to the adversity of the circumstances. If God should, in mercy, justify the ungodly, it must be in such a manner as shall not conflict with these first and manifest principles; and the Gospel, therefore, must have some contrivance by which men may attain to justification without impairing the Divine government, or degrading the Divine character, or thinking highly of themselves. What then is that contrivance? It is not the way of works. What suits Adam in Paradise cannot suit us, driven out into the wilderness of sin and guilt. We are inquiring, as the correlative to justice and law on the part of God is obedience on the part of man, what is the correlative to merely and atonement? it cannot be that self-satisfied feeling which belongs to him who has fulfilled the law. His present obedience, however perfect, could not undo past disobedience. The correlative to the Divine acts of justification cannot be human acts in obedience to law. "By the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified." But may not man be justified by obedience to a mitigated law? Is not the Gospel, after all, only the moral law with some abatements designed to bring it down to the level of our infirmity? This is the most plausible and deceptive supposition that could be made. It suits exactly man's natural pride, his fondness for his idols, and has withal an air of mingled mercy and justice. But, however specious, it is utterly unfounded in reason or Scripture. It supposes the law, which we regard as a transcript of the Divine character, to be found faulty, and its requirements in consequence to be cut down to the true level. Neither the violation of the law, nor yet its observance in its original or any mitigated form, can be the ground of our justification before God, in our present state, what way then remains to this infinitely desirable object? Are we not shut up to the way of faith? "Being justified by faith." Nothing that is morally good either precedes justification, or is simultaneously instrumental of it; all real good follows it. By faith we understand a reliance upon Christ as our atoning sacrifice, and the Lord our righteousness, for acceptance before God. It is reliance on another. There is no self-reliance or self-complacence here. This principle consults and provides for every interest involved in a dispensation of mercy to fallen creatures through a Divine Redeemer. It humbles the sinner. It exalts the Saviour. Holiness is promoted. If such then be the nature and tendency of faith, if it be the sole instrument of justification, and if it is only in a state of justification that man can render real and acceptable obedience, how earnest and ceaseless ought to be our prayer, "Lord, increase our faith!"

(W. Sparrow, D. D.)

What extorted this cry from Job was a crushing consciousness of God's omnipotence. How could I, the impotent creature I am, stand up and assert my innocence before Him? What prompts the exclamation now is something quite different. We have lost even Job's sense of a personal relation to God. The idea of immediate individual responsibility to Him seems in this generation to be suffering eclipse. The prevailing modern teaching outside Christianity makes man his own centre, and urges him from motives of self-interest to seek his own well-being, and the good of the whole as contributory to his own. In the last resort he is a law unto himself. Such moral rules as he finds current in the world are only registered experiences of the lines along which happiness can be secured. They have a certain weight, as ascertained meteorological facts have weight with seamen, but that is all. He is under no obligation in the strict moral sense. The whole is a question of interest. Now we hold that all this is not true to fact. Obligation pressing upon us from without establishes an authority over us; and conscience, recognising obligation, yea, stamping the soul with an instinctive self-judgment, as it fulfils or refuses to fulfil obligations — these go with us wherever we go, into school, college, business, social relations, public duty. If we recognise our obligations, and conscientiously meet them, we secure our highest interests. But that by no means resolves obligation into interest. The two positions are mutually exclusive. If a man from mere self-interest were to do all the things which another man did from a sense of obligation, not a shadow of the peace and righteous approval of the latter would be his. The selfish aim would evacuate the acts of all their ennobling qualities. While the conscientious man would find himself by losing himself, the selfish man would be shut up in a cold isolation, losing himself — having no real hold on any other soul — because his aim all along has been to save and serve himself. But if this is the true view of life, we must accept all that flows from it. Let us trust our moral nature as we do that part of our nature which looks out to the world of sense. If I be really under obligation then I am free. Obligation has no meaning such as we attach to it, unless we pre-suppose freedom. If the moral is highest in me, if every faculty and interest of right is subject to its sway, then in simple allegiance to facts I must infer that the highest order of this world is a moral order. But once grant that, and you are in the region of personality at once. The moment you feel yourself under duty you know yourself a person, free, moral, self-conscious. You are face to face with a Divine Moral Governor, in whom all your lower moral obligations find their last rest, since He established them; and who, as your author and sustainer, has a right to the total surrender of your whole being. The supreme meaning of life for you is, meeting your obligations to your God. Being made by a God of holiness, we must suppose that we have been called into existence as a means of exemplifying and glorifying the right. The right is supreme over every merely personal interest of our own. We exist for the right. The man can be justified with himself only as he pleases God: With the consciousness of disobedience comes guilt, fear, estrangement. When this unfortunate ease ensues, as it has ensued in the ease of all, the first point is settling this question of right as between man and God. Before anything and everything else in religion, before sanctification, before even we consider in detail how our life is to be brought into union with God, comes the great question of our meeting and fulfilling the claims of God's law. Atonement is our first and most pressing concern. The Bible commits itself to three statements about you. Take the last first. By the works of the law, or by your own actions, you cannot be counted a perfectly just man in God's sight. Secondly, you cannot clear yourself of guilt for this result. Thirdly, you see the Bible occupies ground of its own, and you must judge it on its own ground Now consider the chief difficulty exercising men's minds at this hour. We live in a practical rather than in a theoretical age. We say — How can a mere arrangement, such as the atonement, rectify my relations with God, separate me from sin, and secure my actual conformity to God's will? Taking the Gospel way as it stands, I go on to show what a real root and branch all-round redemption and restoration it confers. Where men err is that they leave out of view the great personality of Christ. They forget that the redemption is in Him.

(John Smith, M. A.)

1. Our subject is the atonement, and facts in human nature which demand it. Religion can account for all its principles and doctrines by an appeal to the facts of our being. The doctrine of reconciliation with God through the atoning death of Jesus is confessedly the chief and, in some respects, the most obscure doctrine of the Christian religion. Nevertheless, belief in its general features is essential to any honest acceptance of the Gospel. Without discussing obscurities, I wish, in aid of faith, simply to point out how true it is to all the facts of human nature.

2. "How should man be just with God?" It is not a question that is raised by recent ethical culture or by the progress of man in moral development, as some have thought. It is as old as the human soul, as ancient as the sense of sin, as universal as humanity, and is heard in all the religions. Beneath the burning skies of primeval Arabia this mighty problem is debated by an Arab sheik and his three friends. First —(1) Bildad, the Shuhite, states the incontrovertible premise from which the discussion starts — a premise grounded in universal consciousness, and axiomatic in its truth: "Behold, God will not east away a perfect man, neither will He help the evildoer." That is to say, God makes an everlasting distinction between and a difference in His treatment of righteous and unrighteous men.(2) Then up speaks Job: "I know it is so of a truth. But how should man be just with God? If he will contend with Him, he cannot answer Him one of a thousand!" "There is none that doeth good; no, not one."(3) Despondently, Job continues: "If God will not withdraw His anger, the proud helpers do stoop under Him. How much less shall I answer Him, and choose out nay words to reason with Him?" That is to say, all our repentances and righteousnesses, upon which we so much rely, are, for the nakedness of our need, but as filthy rags. The cry for mercy, instead of justice, must be our only plea.(4) Then Job continues again: "I am afraid of all my sorrows. I know Thou wilt not hold me innocent." "All my sorrows." There is the remorse, the hell that is in me, the sense of justice unsatisfied, "I am afraid of them!"(5) Then Job resumes once more: "Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that he might lay his hand upon both!" Ah, the blessed Christ, the Mediator, our Daysman, laying one hand on Justice and the other on our guilty heads, our Atonement, making God and man to be at one in peace — He had not come! "Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that He might lay His hand upon both!" Do you see now why Abraham and Job and all the ancient kings and prophets longed to see the day of Christ, and how hard it was for them to die without the sight? "We have no daysman!" Oh, the abysmal depth of longing in that word, "We have no daysman," and "How should man be just with God?" And then, for all we are told, that desert colloquy stopped there, in utter sadness and gloom. Oh, if some one of us had only been there, and had been able to smite out and drop into the abyss the years that intervened between Job's day and Christ's. Or, if we could have led John the Apostle up to that company of Job and his three friends, and could have bidden John speak up, with clear tone, on their debate, and had him say to those, ancient Arabs, as he said to us: "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous. And He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world!" But Paul says it again, in his exact, positive way, and insists upon it. "To declare, I say, at this time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus!" And then they are satisfied. And now Job, and Bildad, and Zophar, and Elihu spring to their feet upon the desert sands, and with John and Paul lift their eyes and hands heavenward, and cry with one voice: "Unto Him that hath loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood — to Him be glory and dominion, and honour, and power, forever and ever. Amen."

3. I affirm, as a matter of Christian experience, that all the necessary features and implications of the orthodox doctrine of the atonement are true to the facts of human nature. When I say the orthodox view, I mean that view in the highest form of its statement, the substitutional view, namely, that Christ's death becomes an actual satisfaction to justice, to that sense of justice which exists in our own bosoms and in the bosoms of all intelligent creatures, and which, in the nature of things, must be a duplication of the sense of justice within the bosom of God Himself; that Christ's sufferings and death become an actual satisfaction to justice for our sins that are past, when we accept it as such by faith. And the proof that it is a satisfaction, the evidence that it does take away the sense of demerit, the feeling that we owe something to justice, is that we are conscious it does. The philosophers have sometimes voted consciousness down and out by large majorities, but it refuses to stay down and out. It comes back and asserts itself. "A man just knows it, sir," as Dr. Johnson said, "and that is all there is about the matter." All that we Christians can do, all that we need to do, is to have the experience of it, and then stand still, and magnificently and imperiously declare that it does, for we feel it to be so. Men may tell us that it ought not to be so; we will rejoin that it is so. They may say that our sense of right and wrong is very imperfectly developed, or we could not derive peace from the thought that an innocent Being has suffered in our stead. Against our experience the world can make no answer. We aver that man feels his sin needs propitiation, and that, if he will, he may find that the death of Christ meets that need.

4. Let us go outside distinctively Christian experience, and note some facts in human nature which show its trend toward the atonement in Jesus.(1) We aver that repentance and reformation alone will not satisfy the sense of right in man. Twenty-five years ago a friend of mine, a boy, under circumstances of great temptation, stole, and then had to lie to conceal the theft. He did not afterward have courage to confess and restore. The opportunity to own his sin and to make restitution soon passed away forever. Within a few years, he has assured me that the memory of that early, only theft yet lies heavily upon his soul, and that he can never feel at ease until that matter is somehow made right. Standing by this blazing fact in experience, I aver that the moral sense demands satisfaction, Repentance is not enough — he has repented. Reformation is not enough — he has never stolen since. Still he cannot answer God nor himself. He is not innocent, and the "proud helpers do stoop under him." Propitiation of his own sense of right was necessary. He and my friend go and stand beside Job in the desert yonder, and say with him, "I am afraid of my sorrows. I know that Thou wilt not hold me innocent." They do not hold themselves innocent. Let me add some more specimens of the innermost feelings of representative men which look in the same direction. Byron was not a man given to superstition or flightiness. In his "Manfred," he is known to have spoken out the facts of his own guilty heart. There he says —

"There is no power in holy men,

Nor charms in prayer, nor purifying form

Of penitence, nor outward look, nor fast,

Nor agony, nor, greater than them all,

The innate tortures of that deep despair

Which is Remorse without the fear of hell,

But all in all sufficient of itself

Would make a hell of heaven — can exorcise

From out the unbounded spirit the quick sense

Of its own sins, sufferings, and revenge

Upon itself."

Now, recollect that this is poetry. In poetry we get the deepest philosophy — there the heart speaks. It has no voice but the voice of nature. Byron speaks true to nature when he declares not prayer, nor fast, nor agony, nor remorse, can atone for sin or satisfy the soul. Is there not in the confession of that volcanic spirit a fact which looks toward man's need of Calvary? I take down my Shakespeare and open it at "Macbeth," that awfulest tragedy of our tongue, matchless in literature for its description of the workings of a guilty conscience, to be studied evermore. Lady Macbeth — King Duncan having been murdered — walks in her sleep through her husband's castle at night bearing a taper in her hands. "Physician: How came she by that light? Servant: Why, it stood by her; she has light by her continually; 'tis her command." As she walks, she rubs her hands. A servant explains: "It is an accustomed action with her to seem thus washing her hands; I have known her to continue in this a quarter of an hour." Then Lady Macbeth speaks: "Yet here's a spot. What! will these hands ne'er be clean?...Here's the smell of the blood still; all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand!" Is there not something there which sounds like the echo of Job's words in the desert: "I am afraid of all my sorrows"? Does not Lady Macbeth, walking at night and repenting of her crime and washing her hands in dreams from Duncan's blood, look as if an accusing conscience and the sense of justice unsatisfied could make its own hell?(2) Still further, I aver that the moral sense is never appeased until atonement is somehow made. The atoning stroke must fall somewhere, even though it be upon himself, before a man can be at peace with himself. That is a profoundly instructive, because profoundly true, series of passages in Coleridge's tragedy of "Remorse," which sets out this fact. "The guilty and guilt-smitten Ordonio is stabbed by Alhadra, the wife of the murdered Isadore. As the steel drinks his heart's blood, he utters the one single word, 'Atonement!' His self-accusing spirit, which is wrung with its remorseful recollections, and which the warm and hearty forgiveness of his injured brother has not been able to soothe in the least, actually feels its first gush of relief only as the avenging knife enters, and crime meets penalty." Ordonio, shortly dying, expires saying —

"I stood in silence, like a slave before her,

That I might taste the wormwood and the gall,

And satiate this self-accusing heart

With bitterer agonies than death can give."

That seems to say to me that nothing will give the soul peace but atonement of some kind.

5. I think, therefore, that if you could bring Job and his three friends, and my acquaintance who stole in his youth, and Byron, and Shakespeare, and Coleridge here today, they would see eye to eye, and agree upon some things in the name of facts in human nature.(1) They would agree that repentance alone does not make a man to be at peace. All this company had most bitterly repented.(2) They would agree that reformation was not sufficient.(3) They would agree that the guilty soul's remorse, its "biting back" upon itself, was its own hell, enough for its punishment.(4) They would agree that the mind so sternly demands that atonement be made, somewhere and somehow, that it will sooner offer its own bosom, as Ordonio did, than that its own sense of justice should go unsatisfied.(5) They would probably agree with Socrates, when he says to Plato, as some of you may have said today, "Perhaps God may forgive sin, but I do not see how He can, for I do not see how He ought." That is to say, "I do not see how the man who has sinned can ever be at peace."(6) And then I aver that, if the years between could be dropped out and Paul could join that company and say, "Behold the Lamb of God, whom God set forth to be a propitiation by His "blood, to show His righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, that He might Himself be just and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus" — if Paul could say that to them, and that company could accept Christ as their Daysman, transferring by sincere repentance and faith their guilt to Him, and consenting in their minds that He should discharge its penalty by His body and blood, then I aver, in the name of millions of Christians, that they would find peace. And I aver that this feeling of indebtedness to justice, which is alike in the bosom of God and the bosom of man, being satisfied, Job and his friends, and Byron, and Shakespeare, and Coleridge, and all sinful men would spring to their feet and say, with John and Paul and all that other company of the saved in heaven, "Unto Him that hath loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, to Him be glory and dominion and honour and power, forever and ever. Amen!" Such are a few of the facts in the consciousness of men which a brief survey enables us to notice. The logic of human nature is Christ. No Humboldt, or Cuvier, or Darwin, with keen scientific eye, ever noted such an array of physical facts, all bearing toward one end in the physical world, as we find in the moral realm, all tending toward Jesus. claimed that the testimony of the mind was naturally Christian. His claim is just. Men may raft at these facts in consciousness; they may declare that they make God a Moloch, and that the doctrine of the atonement is the bloody invention of gross. minded men, but the facts remain still, and their scientific trend and drift is wholly toward the Blessed Man of Calvary. If anyone does not feel so now, he is drugged with sin; he has taken opiates; he is not himself.

(J. C. Jackson, D. D.)

People
Job, Rahab
Places
Uz
Topics
Answereth, Job, Replied
Outline
1. Job acknowledges God's justice
22. Man's innocence is not to be condemned by afflictions

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Job 8:22

     5578   tents

Library
March 16 Morning
What is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.--JAS. 4:14. My days are swifter than a post: they flee away, they see no good. They are passed away as the swift ships: as the eagle that hasteth to the prey.--Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep . . . in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up: in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.--Man that is born of a woman
Anonymous—Daily Light on the Daily Path

The Cause and Cure of Earthquakes
"O come hither, and behold the works of the Lord; what destruction he hath brought upon the earth!" Ps. 46:8. Of all the judgments which the righteous God inflicts on sinners here, the most dreadful and destructive is an earthquake. This he has lately brought on our part of the earth, and thereby alarmed our fears, and bid us "prepare to meet our God!" The shocks which have been felt in divers places, since that which made this city tremble, may convince us that the danger is not over, and ought
John Wesley—Sermons on Several Occasions

Washed to Greater Foulness
Turning to my text, let me say, that as one is startled by a shriek, or saddened by a groan, so these sharp utterances of Job astonish us at first, and then awake our pity. How much are we troubled with brotherly compassion as we read the words,--"If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean; yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me!" The sense of misery couched in this passage baffles description. Yet this is but one of a series, in which sentence
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 32: 1886

A Blow at Self-Righteousness
The sermon of this morning is intended to be another blow against our self-righteousness. If it will not die, at least let us spare no arrows against it; let us draw the bow, and if the shaft cannot penetrate its heart, it may at least stick in its flesh and help to worry it to its grave. I. Endeavouring to keep close to my text, I shall start with this first point--that THE PLEA OF SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS CONTRADICTS ITSELF. "If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me." Come, friend, thou who
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 7: 1861

"Wash You, Make You Clean, Put Away the Evil of Your Doings from Before Mine Eyes; Cease to do Evil,"
Isaiah i. 16.--"Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil," &c. If we would have a sum of pure and undefiled religion, here it is set down in opposition to this people's shadow of religion, that consisted in external ordinances and rites. We think that God should be as well-pleased with our service as we ourselves, therefore we choose his commands which our humour hath no particular antipathy against and refuse others. But the Lord will not
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning

The Power of God
The next attribute is God's power. Job 9:19. If I speak of strength, lo, he is strong.' In this chapter is a magnificent description of God's power. Lo, he is strong.' The Hebrew word for strong signifies a conquering, prevailing strength. He is strong.' The superlative degree is intended here; viz., He is most strong. He is called El-shaddai, God almighty. Gen 17:7. His almightiness lies in this, that he can do whatever is feasible. Divines distinguish between authority and power. God has both.
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity

The Wisdom of God
The next attribute is God's wisdom, which is one of the brightest beams of the Godhead. He is wise in heart.' Job 9:9. The heart is the seat of wisdom. Cor in Hebraeo sumitur pro judicio. Pineda. Among the Hebrews, the heart is put for wisdom.' Let men of understanding tell me:' Job 34:44: in the Hebrew, Let men of heart tell me.' God is wise in heart, that is, he is most wise. God only is wise; he solely and wholly possesses all wisdom; therefore he is called, the only wise God.' I Tim 1:17. All
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity

That the Self-Existent Being must be All-Powerful.
The self-existent being, the supreme cause of all things, must of necessity have infinite power.--This proposition is evident, and undeniable. For since nothing (as has been already proved,) can possibly be self-existent, besides himself; and consequently all things in the universe were made by him, and are entirely dependent upon him; and all the powers of all things are derived from him, and must therefore be perfectly subject and subordinate to him; it is manifest that nothing can make any difficulty
Samuel Clarke—A Discourse Concerning the Being and Attributes of God

"We have no Might. " 2 Chron. xx. 12
YET WE NEED IT VERY MUCH. We are in great weakness, and we need power, for there is a great multitude come against us. It is not the wisest policy to ignore the strength of our enemy. Jehoshaphat did not. It is well for us to know the strength of our foes, but let it not lead us to despair. Who shall number the host of the foes against whom we must fight? They come to rob us of our inheritance, and if we submit, we shall be enslaved. WE have no might, but WE KNOW WHO HAS. The pious king said
Thomas Champness—Broken Bread

Whether it is Lawful for a Man to Confess a Sin which He Has not Committed?
Objection 1: It would seem that it is lawful for a man to confess a sin which he has not committed. For, as Gregory says (Regist. xii), "it is the mark of a good conscience to acknowledge a fault where there is none." Therefore it is the mark of a good conscience to accuse oneself of those sins which one has not committed. Objection 2: Further, by humility a man deems himself worse than another, who is known to be a sinner, and in this he is to be praised. But it is lawful for a man to confess himself
Saint Thomas Aquinas—Summa Theologica

Whether Negligence Can be a Mortal Sin?
Objection 1: It would seem that negligence cannot be a mortal sin. For a gloss of Gregory [*Moral. ix. 34] on Job 9:28, "I feared all my works," etc. says that "too little love of God aggravates the former," viz. negligence. But wherever there is mortal sin, the love of God is done away with altogether. Therefore negligence is not a mortal sin. Objection 2: Further, a gloss on Ecclus. 7:34, "For thy negligences purify thyself with a few," says: "Though the offering be small it cleanses the negligences
Saint Thomas Aquinas—Summa Theologica

Whether Doubts Should be Interpreted for the Best?
Objection 1: It would seem that doubts should not be interpreted for the best. Because we should judge from what happens for the most part. But it happens for the most part that evil is done, since "the number of fools is infinite" (Eccles. 1:15), "for the imagination and thought of man's heart are prone to evil from his youth" (Gn. 8:21). Therefore doubts should be interpreted for the worst rather than for the best. Objection 2: Further, Augustine says (De Doctr. Christ. i, 27) that "he leads a
Saint Thomas Aquinas—Summa Theologica

God Holy, Just, and Sovereign. Job 9:2-10.
God holy, just, and sovereign. Job 9:2-10. How should the sons of Adam's race Be pure before their God? If he contend in righteousness, We fall beneath his rod. To vindicate my words and thoughts I'll make no more pretence; Not one of all my thousand faults Can bear a just defence. Strong is his arm, his heart is wise; What vain presumers dare Against their Maker's hand to rise, Or tempt th' unequal war? [Mountains, by his almighty wrath, From their old seats are torn; He shakes the earth from
Isaac Watts—The Psalms and Hymns of Isaac Watts

The King's Highway
'And straightway Jesus constrained His disciples to get into a ship, and to go before Him unto the other side, while He sent the multitudes away. 23. And when He had sent the multitudes away, He went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone. 24. But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves: for the wind was contrary. 25. And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea. 26. And when the disciples saw Him walking
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

Whether Man Can Know that He Has Grace?
Objection 1: It would seem that man can know that he has grace. For grace by its physical reality is in the soul. Now the soul has most certain knowledge of those things that are in it by their physical reality, as appears from Augustine (Gen. ad lit. xii, 31). Hence grace may be known most certainly by one who has grace. Objection 2: Further, as knowledge is a gift of God, so is grace. But whoever receives knowledge from God, knows that he has knowledge, according to Wis. 7:17: The Lord "hath given
Saint Thomas Aquinas—Summa Theologica

Opposition to Messiah in Vain
He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall have them in derision. T he extent and efficacy [effects] of the depravity of mankind cannot be fully estimated by the conduct of heathens destitute of divine revelation. We may say of the Gospel, in one sense, what the Apostle says of the Law, It entered that sin might abound (Romans 5:20) . It afforded occasion for displaying the alienation of the heart of man from the blessed God, in the strongest light. The sensuality, oppression and
John Newton—Messiah Vol. 2

Christ's First and Last Subject
IT SEEMS from these two texts that repentance was the first subject upon which the Redeemer dwelt, and that it was the last, which, with his departing breath, he commended to the earnestness of his disciples. He begins his mission crying, "Repent," he ends it by saying to his successors the apostles, "Preach repentance and remission of sins among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem." This seems to me to be a very interesting fact, and not simply interesting, but instructive. Jesus Christ opens his
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 6: 1860

The Preface to the Commandments
And God spake all these words, saying, I am the LORD thy God,' &c. Exod 20: 1, 2. What is the preface to the Ten Commandments? The preface to the Ten Commandments is, I am the Lord thy God.' The preface to the preface is, God spake all these words, saying,' &c. This is like the sounding of a trumpet before a solemn proclamation. Other parts of the Bible are said to be uttered by the mouth of the holy prophets (Luke 1: 70), but here God spake in his own person. How are we to understand that, God spake,
Thomas Watson—The Ten Commandments

Christian Standing and Christian Progress
PHILIPPIANS iii. 12-16 Christian exultation--Christian confidence--"Not in the flesh"--"In Jesus Christ"--The prize in view--No finality in the progress--"Not already perfect"--The recompense of reward--What the prize will be In a certain sense we have completed our study of the first section of the third chapter of the Epistle. But the treatment has been so extremely imperfect, in view of the importance of that section, that a few further remarks must be made. Let us ponder one weighty verse,
Handley C. G. Moule—Philippian Studies

The Value of this Doctrine
"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works" (2 Tim. 3:16, 17). "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works" (2 Tim. 3:16, 17). "Doctrine" means "teaching,"
Arthur W. Pink—The Sovereignty of God

Its Meaning
Deliverance from the condemning sentence of the Divine Law is the fundamental blessing in Divine salvation: so long as we continue under the curse, we can neither be holy nor happy. But as to the precise nature of that deliverance, as to exactly what it consists of, as to the ground on which it is obtained, and as to the means whereby it is secured, much confusion now obtains. Most of the errors which have been prevalent on this subject arose from the lack of a clear view of the thing itself, and
Arthur W. Pink—The Doctrine of Justification

Necessity of Contemplating the Judgment-Seat of God, in Order to be Seriously Convinced of the Doctrine of Gratuitous Justification.
1. Source of error on the subject of Justification. Sophists speak as if the question were to be discussed before some human tribunal. It relates to the majesty and justice of God. Hence nothing accepted without absolute perfection. Passages confirming this doctrine. If we descend to the righteousness of the Law, the curse immediately appears. 2. Source of hypocritical confidence. Illustrated by a simile. Exhortation. Testimony of Job, David, and Paul. 3. Confession of Augustine and Bernard. 4. Another
John Calvin—The Institutes of the Christian Religion

The Sinner Arraigned and Convicted.
1. Conviction of guilt necessary.--2. A charge of rebellion against God advanced.--3. Where it is shown--that all men are born under God's law.--4. That no man hath perfectly kept it.--5. An appeal to the reader's conscience on this head, that he hath not.--6. That to have broken it, is an evil inexpressibly great.--7. Illustrated by a more particular view of the aggravations of this guilt, arising--from knowledge.--8. From divine favors received.--9. From convictions of conscience overborne.--10.
Philip Doddridge—The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul

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