Part 1.
THE truth of the Gospel could scarcely be more beautifully expressed than in this passage in Timothy. It is a paragraph that contains a volume of truth in a very little space, and if a soul once get the real meaning of it―lays hold of it for itself―it puts it into possession of peace with God.
In Job 33 we have the very same thought illustrated by Elihu. Job was as busy as ever he could be, justifying himself, and goes the length of saying, “My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go” (27:6). He could not hold out, however, for at the end of the story he is obliged to put his hand on his mouth and say, “Behold, I am vile” (40:4). The Lord seems to say, “I will never let you go, Job, till you have given up those filthy rags―your own righteousness; then I will justify you, I will give you My righteousness.” When you get into the presence of God, my unsaved reader, like Job, you must say, “I am vile.”
Job went a little further still in chapter 42:5, 6 and said, “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth THEE: wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” One of the strongest words in our language is “Abhor!” “I abhor myself!” Have you let go your own righteousness now, Job? “Ah! I repent in dust and ashes!” he replies. A sight of God produces this.
Only the presence of God can enable any to let go their own righteousness; not that they have really any to let go, only they think they have. When you have got to this place, to abhor yourself, then what a comfort it is to turn round and find that God loves you. Is it not wondrous to find Him revealed as God our Saviour, instead of our Judge?
The common thought is that God is our Judge, and so He is; but who made Him a Judge? Who put God on the judgment-seat? You did! I did! The sin and guilt of man have forced God into the place of judgment. God must judge sin, or else He and man would be both alike, neither of them thinking much about it, and there would be no righteousness; but, so far from His desiring to take the place of judgment, why, even here to Job He says, “I desire to justify thee” (33:32).
This is an answer to a question put by Job in the ninth chapter, when Bildad was putting barbed arrows into him, insinuating that he was a hypocrite, and informing him that “the hypocrite’s hope shall perish,” and, further, that “God will not cast away a perfect man” (8:13-20). In chapter 9:2, Job replies, “How should man be just with God? If he will contend with him he cannot answer him one of a thousand”― much less the other 999 sins. More, he says, “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” (9:30, 31).
Job saw it was all of no use to contend with God. He knew very well, however much he might try to justify himself before his friends, yet in his heart of hearts he knew he could not stand before God. And when he has learned this thoroughly, the grace of God comes in and shows him how he can be justified, how he can be saved; and that, beloved friend, is what I want to show you. How you can be justified: how you can be saved, and how you can know it, too; and I would go further, and say, how you may be saved just now, for God’s salvation is a present salvation.
Does the salvation of a sinner rest on what he can do? No! On what Christ will do? No! but on what Christ has done. The sinner is utterly helpless, he can do nothing. Christ can do nothing more, for He has done everything. “It is finished,” is the dying Saviour’s legacy to a lost, helpless, guilty sinner. The grace of God pursues a man, seeking his soul; it goes after him, when he does not care a bit about it; seeks him, that He may save him. He pursued Saul of Tarsus when he only hated Him. He is pursuing you, following you in grace today, though you do not care for Him, and though you have not yet been brought to care about the salvation of your own soul.
You ask, “Why do you single me out?” I will tell you. Because I want you to be saved. Oh! let His grace, let His goodness, who is thus pursuing you in love, win your heart for Him just now.
There are four different ways that Elihu speaks of in this 33rd of Job in which God goes after a soul, and I have little doubt that almost every reader of this paper has been sought, in one or more of these ways, by God, and will silently range itself in one or other of these classes. You will know, in your own soul, if any or all of these ways have been true of you.
But, first of all, God brings out the person of the Saviour. It is all very well for me to tell you to come to Jesus, and to believe on Jesus; but you say, I want to know who He is.
Now, in chapter 9:33, Job had said, “Neither is there any Daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both.” What Job calls a “Days-man,” Paul calls a “Mediator.” What depths of blessing are in the statement: “There is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:55For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; (1 Timothy 2:5)). He is one who, in the dignity and majesty of His own person, reaches up to the glory of the throne of God, ―One who can meet the heart of God, on the one hand; and, on the other hand, One who can come down to all the degradation, and misery, and sin, and sorrow, and wretchedness of man. One who, by reason of the very glory of His own person, can lay one hand in righteousness on the throne of God, and lay the other hand in tender love on the shoulder of the poor sinner.
“But,” you say, “do you know such an one?” I do! I do! His name is JESUS. Jesus, the man Christ Jesus. Elihu here presents himself as the type of Christ; and as Job had sighed for the Umpire, or Mediator, he now steps in and fills up the gap between Job and God, saying, “Behold, I am according to thy wish in God’s stead; I also am formed out of the clay” (Job 33:66Behold, I am according to thy wish in God's stead: I also am formed out of the clay. (Job 33:6)). That is, I am a man!
Such is Christ, a man, a real man; the One to whom, for whom, the heavens were opened more than once, when He was on earth, and whom the Father’s voice from heaven proclaimed to be His own beloved Son, yet laid in a manger. The reputed son of Joseph, the carpenter; actually the son of Mary; and really in His nature the Son of God. The reputed son of Joseph He must be, in order to claim the throne of David; actually the seed of the woman He must be, to redeem man; but really the Son of God He must be, if He is to meet the claims of God!
Oh! think of being loved by this One. Son of God! Son of man! If Son of God, what is there He has not power to do? If Son of man, He can understand and meet the needs of my heart. Trace Him through His life. Was there ever such a One? Think of those unknown thirty years at Nazareth. We get glimpses of it which let us know that, spent as it was at home, it was a life of perfection. He was the only One who ever lived a life absolutely suited to God, perfectly pleasing to God.
When He emerges into public life, at His baptism, the heavens are opened for the Father’s voice to be heard proclaiming His pleasure in Him. Jesus is One who, in the dignity, beauty, and moral glory of His own person, delights the very heart of God; but One whose heart is so ineffably tender, that there lives not the poorest or most wretched sinner who could not go to Him, and tell out to Him all his woe and sin.
He bore my sorrows in His life, that He might sympathize; He bore my sins in His death, that He might save. This is the “Daysman,” the “Mediator,” this is “the man Christ Jesus.” This is the One that God presents for your acceptance this very moment, dear unsaved one. Are you afraid of such a One? The hypocrite might be afraid of Him, the Pharisee, the Sadducee might be afraid of Him; but should there ever be a trembling sinner afraid of Christ? Never! Never! “My terror,” He says (vs. 7), “shall not make thee afraid.” But ah! impenitent, hardened, and careless reader, there is a day coming when the terror of the Lord shall make you afraid; there is an hour coming when, if you despise His love and mercy, you shall quake before Him. But now is the day of His grace, and “My terror shall not make thee afraid” is the soft and thrilling word of the Saviour to the chief of sinners now.
Perhaps you say, like Job here, “I am clean without transgression, I am innocent; neither is there iniquity in me” (vs. 9). That is a lie to begin with. Never was there one innocent since the pair God put in the garden of Eden sinned and fell. If you are innocent, you have no need of Christ, the Christ of Scripture, the only Christ that I can present to you―the One who died because you are not innocent―died to make atonement for your guilt.
I commend my Saviour to you. Christ brings such boundless happiness to the soul, such wellsprings of unfathomable joy. There is nothing good, nothing really happy, out of Christ. Have you everything the world can give you? its luxuries, its pleasures, its gaieties, its smiles? Soon you must leave them all behind, and pass away alone into eternity; and if you have not known Christ in time, will you ever know him in eternity? No, never! If you have not slaked your thirst at the fountain of the water of life in time, think you that you will ever get one single draft through the dewless ages of eternity? No, no! never! If you will not have Christ in time, you cannot have Him in eternity. If you enter eternity without Him, you must spend its long, its gloomy, its endless ages without Him. The Word of God tells you so. It is now you must be His, if you would be His then.
But Job says, “He findeth occasion against me, he counteth me for his enemy; he putteth my feet in the stocks, he marketh all my paths” (vers. 10, 11). Well, and do you not think it is a good thing for God to mark the paths of a man when he is going farther and farther from Him; to mark his paths and arrest him?
Elihu replies, “In this thou art not just: I will answer thee, that God is greater than man. Why dolt thou strive against him? for he giveth not account of any of his matters?” (verses 12, 13.) I will tell you the truth about God―show you the injustice of your thoughts of Him.
I would ask you, Has the fear of the Lord ever made you tremble yet? “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Have you never felt it yet? If you are quarreling with His greatness and grace, you are very far from having this wisdom. It is true that ruin and wretchedness are all around, but who has made the ruin? It is man that has caused it, aided and abetted by Satan. It is not God who has caused it; but it is God who has come in to repair the breaches, to remedy what man has ruined. Nay, more than this, man has ruined himself, and God brings in redemption through Christ. If I come to the cross, what an answer do I get to the thought that God is my enemy! Why, He has bruised His own Son that He might deliver me! So far from having a hard thought towards us, Elihu shows us here four ways which God takes to seek to deliver us.
W. T. P. W.
(To be continued.)