IN following up the further discussion between the friends of Job and the sufferer himself, I shall endeavor to give a sketch which by the Lord's grace may help souls. It cannot pretend to be more than suggestive; for it is needless to say that no more could be attempted in the few lectures now proposed. But this is what a considerable part of those conversant with Scripture most need. There is a time and a place for the most minute search into every word of God; but many a Christian craves something of a distinct outline, brief perhaps but comprehensive, so as to seize what it is that the Spirit of God is here setting before us; what is the main truth that God is now teaching us, as well as Job in that day. And this seems the first requisite if we would read the book intelligently and to profit, that we should have an adequate sense of the grand object of God in giving it to us. Of this, then, as far as the central part of the book is concerned, I hope to speak so far as time permits.
The first thing to which your attention may be well called, is the mistaken principle underlying the thoughts of not Eliphaz only but also Job himself. It falsified the application of every word of his friends; it was rebuked finally by Jehovah Himself at the close of the book. In due time we may the better for this show where it was that, with all his faults, Job was right, while his friends were wrong; for this is the clear issue at the end, although there was that which needed correction and called for self-judgment, as it surely came and was carried on deeply in his soul at last. This is not at all a question of anyone's opinion; it is the sentence of God for every believer's instruction.
Where was it then that there was so wrong a start? Wherein consisted a view that offended God so- deeply? The three were friends of Job and unquestionably pious men; yet did they err grievously, and needed God's pardon as we know. What was it then which vitiated the wisdom, experience, and friendly purpose of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar? What irritated Job, and made all their appeals powerless to deal with his conscience? What, in short, made them not only without ability to help his soul in the tremendous extremity to which he was reduced, but, further, exposed themselves to the unsparing rebuke of God Himself?
Their error was by no means a singular one, more particularly among the righteous, who, knowing God, have nevertheless never been thoroughly broken down as to themselves. Such persons one finds still among His own people on the earth. It was common to them all, yet there must have been some ground of righteousness in their thoughts, as every believer would allow. But here was where they went astray; they assumed that the present aspect of the world is an adequate expression of His judgment of men's ways. This assumption we find running through the speeches of the three friends, at first expressed with comparative calmness, but ripening at length into severity, as Job's passionate outburst resented what they increasingly imputed as the hidden explanation of the facts. Here was a soul suffering a succession of troubles beyond all example. Who could point out the man subjected to such dealings since the world began?
The difficulty increases at first sight, when we remember how precious he was to God, and the tender mercy of God to His children; when you think of such trial on earth, after hearing what God said about him in heaven. But then a main part of the profit which the book discloses depends on the fact that both God's estimate and Satan's trial were only made known in heaven; that the reason of the trial was a secret for the present—a secret not there, but here. Neither Job nor his friends knew anything of what God had said about him. Satan well knew; but could not conceive disinterested suffering integrity.
Consequently here we have the other side, not what was on high, but what was seen here below. No contrast could appear more complete. The whole reasoning of the friends of Job assumed, on the contrary, that what was permitted on earth must be the adequate reflex of God's mind in heaven. Hence, therefore, the more that Job had seemed pious and prayerful, and that his life had been one of the most even character—that he had been singularly blest, as indeed he had walked with habitual dependence on God, the more was all now turned to his disparagement as mere subtlety. We must remember that it was only a process of conviction going on. They did not arrive at this conclusion at first. There was anxiety first, then suspicion; and I have already passed with you over the chapters where the suspicion is seen growing up in the minds of his friends. Then was shown Job not only yielding to complaint under the unexplained trial, but stung and touched to the quick by the imputation of his friends.
Henceforth there was no more disguise. He treated them as those who had no knowledge whatever of his case, no sound understanding of God's ways. Nor had they really. Consequently there comes out on the one hand the impatience of Job, weakening their confidence in the reality of his goodness; on the other their yielding to the spirit of evil surmise and suspicion; so that all power, either of consolation or of godly reproof, was entirely destroyed on both sides.
This then seems exactly where we find ourselves at the end of chapter 14. So Eliphaz takes up the word in chapter 15 with no small degree of disgust at the state of Job's soul. He had judged from the surface. “Should a wise man,” he says, “utter vain knowledge and fill his belly with the east wind? Should he reason with unprofitable talk?” This he considered to be the character of Job's defense. “Yea, thou castest off fear.” Now it is no longer insinuation, he ventures to pronounce on Job. “Thou castest off fear, and restrainest prayer before God.” How did he know this? He had come too hastily to the inference; and it was false. Job had in no way restrained prayer before God, as we may find not only from his character but from his answers soon.
There cannot be a more instructive lesson to us of the danger of judging by appearances. It is beyond question a main point in this marvelous book. A superficial survey is never the way to form a righteous judgment; as the Lord Himself warned in His day. If it was wrong then in them, much more censurable is it in us? Here we find an entire book devoted to the purpose of guarding us from such a snare. “Thou castest off fear, and restrainest prayer from God. For thy mouth uttereth thine iniquity, and thou choosest the tongue of the crafty.” Therefore they found no more in their judgment than a gloss in all his expression of desire to draw near to God, and of confidence in God's acquitting him of the suspicion they had formed. Passing all the bounds of loving solicitude, they feared not to utter direct judgment. But their failure is exactly the way that God takes to warn us of like danger in our own ways. Appearances were against Job. “Thine own mouth condemneth thee,” says Eliphaz, referring to his undoubtedly improper expressions. “Thine own mouth condemneth thee, and not I: yea, thine own lips testify against thee. Art thou the first man?” Then he lets out a little of the evident feeling that Job had shown them disrespect. No doubt they were more aged than he, and from a distance had come to him as those best suited to console and comfort. But if disappointed, had they not themselves abandoned the ground of dependence on God? They had indeed done so, although they had preserved their silence for a considerable time. It was not merely a question of Job's breaking out; but what about them? It was not merely that God was holding up before all that tried sufferer, and how He would carry to a good end the bitter lesson that Job was passing through; but God was also showing the danger of misjudgment even for holy men of God. The profit of the book is entirely lost if we regard them as mere self-righteous men in the bad sense of the word. Not that there was not self-righteousness in them, or even in Job; for God convicts them all of it. There is no denying therefore that flaws and faults were found in the friends and in Job; but we may rightly seek to gather wherein they wholly and he in part missed the truth, and what it is that God would use the book to guard our own souls from.
Eliphaz then deals such a severe rebuke, that it is anything but in keeping with the calm with which the debate had begun; for he passes into a comparatively bitter setting down of Job as one who should feel his inexperience as compared with them, and the impropriety of such freedom of speech addressed to his elders. But all this shows us how solemn it is, and what a danger, even for a saint, to have self rather than God in one's thoughts, and this not meaning God in general, but above all the God of grace. The friends spoke much of God, but the manner in which they looked on Him was purely as a judge. This was surely a great defect, and the correction is just the moral of the whole book. Those who make the one question that is before God now to be His marking our deserts in the present life, must fail entirely to understand that God has taken advantage of the evil that is here to show the grace that is in Himself above the evil. It is true that the time was not yet come to show evil completely baffled and set aside, because this could not be till Christ and the cross. For all this, God is God and loves to be known as the God of grace, and it came out in the midst of all the evil that was in this world. Could it be said to be a new thing? The pledge of grace in Genesis 3 had testified, even when sin had just entered man's heart, that God is the God of grace. The woman's Seed to bruise the serpent's head was the very first intimation after the fall of man. I do not deny that there was judgment too; but while there was an expression of present judgment in the earth becoming a scene of curse and trial with thorns and thistles externally, with death and sorrow for the future life of man and especially of woman, there was the resource of grace above all, the suffering but victorious destroyer of the evil one, the Seed of the woman.
Is it not remarkable that not a thought of the woman's Seed is breathed through the friends of Job. On the contrary, in the portion that comes before us at this time, the Seed of the woman had a most central place in the heart of Job. It is not in the least denied that the others were believers; but “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” Why is it that they never once touch on that blessed One that was to make good and manifest the superiority of grace over all evil? Why was it that they could not rise above the fear of evil underneath? that they thought it useless, along with bright promises of present good in repentance, to do more than censure and warn and threaten, turning even to bitter account now the testimony of Job's former life? Their conclusion was that his evil was finding him out, that judgment was pursuing the hypocrite. Alas! not one man among them knew what it is to overcome evil with good. Doubtless there was present and open failure in Job, though not the hidden evil of their suspicious minds. But grace overcomes evil with good. Why did they not? There was deplorable failure in all but God; and this too the book clearly shows.
But there is another lesson which we find the more that they advance in their injurious insinuations. It is hard to conceive anything that is more crushing to the spirit of a godly man; for, as there is no plain distinct charge, so they allege no facts to be laid on the conscience. The judicial spirit that governed them withdrew their hearts from waiting till God manifested the truth of things, and disposed them hastily to take advantage unconsciously of the sufferer's intemperate speech, to found on it the suspicion of worse deeds behind it all. They could say here, “Thine own mouth condemneth thee; thine own lips testify against thee.” And what could poor Job say? Was it quite false? It was too true; but what did they gather from it? Some dark, deep iniquity that God was judging. Nay, but they were judging and judging wrongly.
There was faith underneath, and a believing in God incomparably stronger and truer in Job than in any one of those that blamed him, as God failed not to bring out in the end.
Let us pursue the book a little. Eliphaz, then, after reproving Job for his disrespect to his elders, comes to what God is in His perfect holiness, and on the other hand to man in his sinfulness. Perfectly true; but how did this meet the difficulty? Is that the whole case as it stands? Is there nothing but man suffering for his abominations in the world? Is there no room for a righteous man to suffer in this world? Is there no enemy to afflict, no God to chasten? To them there was but the one thought of judging sins. Their heart had never yet faced the solemnity of the righteous tried deeply, of God allowing His own to be put to the proof peculiarly and to suffer. They had narrowed their minds to the one thought that, whenever severe blows fell on a man they were the unerring indication of something uncommonly bad. If therefore unparalleled troubles had befallen Job (and who could deny it?), it must be that Job was the worst of men.
Such was the theory and their application of it. They were thoroughly wrong. It was not sin, nor was it ill will; yet equally uncharitable in result was the working of their ignorance of God's ways. And surely there is in this history grave matter for our reflection if we would not thus fail. There was no intentional flagrant mischief, nor indeed is this the usual way in which a child of God injures or is injured. As a rule, it is partial truth that damages his spirit. An unconverted man is swept away by his own will and Satan's lies; but he that fears God may be misled grievously by a partial view of God or man. Hence the immense moment of our seeking not merely a truth, but the truth. For us, too, there is the less absence of excuse now, because of the unspeakable privilege that we have the truth fully revealed in Christ, who is not merely a truth, but the truth objectively, as the Spirit is in power.
How then are we using the grace thus shown us? Is it Christ or our own thoughts that we bring in as a standard to judge whatever comes before us? Now had the friends turned, I will not say to such a revelation of God as we possess, but to what is given in the very first communication of God, the third chapter of Genesis to which we have referred, what would have been the result? How does God speak of Him there, and how would it have applied to the case in hand? Would it not have kept them from unrighteous judgment in this way? There surely, if anywhere, is the pattern of all perfection in this world. Was He to pass through without suffering? Would the serpent spare Him? Before his own head should be bruised he was to bruise His heel. The first revelation of God then about the Seed of the woman, the coming Deliverer, ought to have guarded them, like others, from the sad mistake which the book of Job is designed to correct. It is a bruised One that is to bruise Satan finally. He must suffer many things, whatever the glories that should follow. And what believer could think of evil in His case? Does suffering, if unequaled, suppose evil in Him? In no wise. The theory, therefore, that the sole cause of suffering for a man in this world is the evil of which God sees him guilty, is false, and not the less but the more mischievous a falsehood, because of a certain measure of truth in it. A narrow view may be most pernicious.
For it is untrue, on the other hand, that evil has nothing to do with man's suffering in this world. If there were no evil, there had been no suffering. Sin then, no doubt, has an immense deal to do with it as the general rule. Take man here below; take any one indulging in any evil: does he not suffer? Of course he does. Thus it is a positive principle of God's righteous government that evil never can be indulged in without entailing the solemn dealing of His hand, though room be left for the distinct working and even suffering of grace. It is true, not only in the future, but also in the present, that one reaps as one sows. But is it the sole or the whole truth? Is God limited to His government? In no way. There was where Eliphaz and his companions were wrong; and Satan knows well how to bend to his own purposes that particular side of truth which we either choose or overlook.
There comes in the immense importance of seeing the early lesson of the book, which is that we have to do with not only God but Satan. We have to resist one who is not only an accuser before God, but, as the last book of the Bible teaches like the first, a deceiver among men. It is inexcusable that we should be deceived, because we have now that scene, and a vast deal more, made known to us plainly. That which could not have been then rightly laid before Job and his friends, as it would have been altogether premature, is as a whole laid bare to us, who are now by redemption, and in a new life, responsible to walk according to the light of God fully revealed in Christ.
The Christian is now not in the dark, as they comparatively were. We walk in the light. And carefully remember, my brethren, that to “walk in the light” does not mean merely according to the light, important as this is, and our clear duty. That we walk in the light is universally true of the Christian. Thereby is not meant, as many assume, the special attainment or high measure of spirituality reached by some Christians. That we walk in the light flows from our being brought to God, who is light, and is the revealed place of nearness where grace has put all that are brought out of darkness into the marvelous light of God, that is, every Christian person now. We are light, and in the light; we are walking there, and not in darkness. And because by grace we walk in the light, we are bound to walk according to the light.
But our responsibility to walk according to the light is wholly different from, though founded on, our walking in the light. If we are Christians really, we follow Christ, and have the light of life; and so we walk in the light, as men do literally while it is day. It is precisely where the knowledge of Christ as the light places us all. For now no man can follow Christ, or, in other words, can be a Christian, without walking in that light. It is not the spiritual only but every Christian who enjoys this as his settled constant privilege. But although we walk there, it does not follow that we walk faithfully according to the light. This is where we see practical differences abound among Christians; but there is no difference at all in the great truth, that now we all walk in the light as God is in the light. As yet, however, it was not the time for that light to shine, and therefore we are far less excusable than they if we forget it; for all this is made known to us to preserve us from the mistakes into which even good men then fell.
[W. K.]
(To be continued)