BILDAD had said that God would not cast away a perfect man. Job then raises the important question: “How should [mortal] man be just with God?” v. 2, and he adds, “If he will contend with Him he cannot answer Him, one of a thousand.” This was the great difficulty of the Old Testament saint. Job believed in God’s faithfulness to His own, but the ground of it all was not revealed; thus far it was only a hope. Job believed his Redeemer would come, but he did not know that Christ would become the believer’s righteousness. It is when Christ is brought in that we find the fullest and complete answer to his question. And what a blessed thing it is to learn that Christ has answered to God for all that stood against us, that He was “delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification,” “that we are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Job then talks about the great power of God shaking the earth and commanding storms. In his wonderful discourse Job speaks of the majesty of God as the Creator of the stars. He mentions the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades. These great things, says he, “are past finding out; and wonders without number.” It is wonderful the understanding they had of creation in those patriarchal days, of things both in the heavens and in the earth, but when it came to God’s ways with him, Job could not understand them. He says, “Lo, He goeth by me, and I see Him not: He passeth on also, but I perceive Him not.” He could see that God was in his trial, and he knew something of the goodness of God, but what was He doing, and where was He going? This he knew not. But we know that God had a blessed end in view for Job. He was going to teach him that his uprightness was no ground at all to stand on before God, that in His presence “he was vile,” and that all goodness was found alone in God. God purposed that when Job had learned this lesson he would be a far happier man and brighter in his soul than ever before. And so it came about.
Job then speaks of God’s ways with him, of how He crushed him without a cause, but he adds, “If I justify myself mine own mouth would condemn me.” He contends that God destroyeth the perfect and the wicked. He could see that sometimes the righteous were taken away and seemingly the unrighteous were left alone. Often in a calamity it does happen that innocent people perish with the wicked: sometimes the righteous suffer, while the guilty escape, yet no one can hinder it. We need to remember that “all the foundations of the earth are out of course,” and will be so until that glorious day when the Lord will come Himself, and set all things right.
Then Job says: “If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean; yet shalt Thou plunge me in the ditch, and my own clothes shall abhor me.” It seems that Job was slowly beginning to have some misgivings as to his own righteousness, and rightly so. If we rest upon ourselves, we rest upon a ground that is not approved before God. Isaiah the prophet, writing many years later, tells us that all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags (Isa. 64:66But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. (Isaiah 64:6)). Job had not as yet found this out, but he seems to be slowly realizing that everything is not well. The only solid ground upon which we can rest our souls in safety is Christ.
ML-02/28/1960