Job 1; 14
My object is taking up Job now is a general one. It is to help souls towards a better understanding of a book full of interest and of great practical profit, but not so easy for most to seize, either in its design and scope as a whole, or in the way in which the different parts of it conspire to effect that design. There is nothing which can make up for the constant, habitual study of the word of God for our souls. And indeed ministry would be a positive curse, instead of a blessing, if it did not make the word of God itself to be more precious because more entered into, and God Himself more enjoyed. And this is exactly the measure of the value of that kind of ministry, at any rate, of what has to do with the interpretation of Scripture; for every truth must ultimately rest on that word. Indeed, not merely is the word the source and supply of truth, but God alone is capable of presenting thereby the truth perfectly and livingly. When therefore truth is taken out of its connections in Scripture there is always danger. Hence it is of the greatest moment that our souls should have the habit of reading the word of God. And I do not now mean merely as a matter of intelligence, but for the soul's healthy condition, that we might be refreshed day by day in the reading of it. In order to this, however, it is a very great help where we are enabled, by the grace of God, to take in the word as a whole, and not merely to have the blessing of certain parts which we all feel to be precious as isolated communications from God. But my object now, whatever it might be in speaking from time to time in an ordinary way, is to help to a general apprehension of what it is that the Holy Ghost intended for the people of God in the book of Job.
The first thing which it is well to hear in mind is that the book was written in the earliest days of revelation. It would be hazardous to say that any book of Scripture preceded it. That the writer of the book of Job (writer I say advisedly; for God of course is the real author of all Scripture), that the one used to give us the book was a contemporary of Moses, if not Moses himself, would seem to be not far from the mark. Of course one can only give a conjecture on such a point. Scripture has not defined the author; and, in my opinion, it would not become any man to do more than express a judgment as far as the Lord gives him a moral estimate of its character, without now discussing certain other marks of a more external kind. But it is very plain that, whether Moses was the writer or a contemporary of the writer, the groundwork of the book lies in a day previous to Moses. Nor should we doubt that it is the authentic account of all, a real history of Job and his friends, which is presented in the book. We see from the book itself, for instance, that the age of Job was extended after his trial, and he was by no means a young man when the trial came; so that, unless there were some singular exception in his age of which Scripture never speaks, Job himself must have been previous to the days of Moses. Now Moses was an exception, and Scripture itself speaks of Moses living so long in his day as a remarkable feature; and indeed it follows from his own words, from his own prayer, in Psalm 90, that the age of man, as a general rule at that time, had been reduced practically to very much what it is at the present. Moses was one that stood out from his fellows in more ways than one, even of an outward nature, not to speak now of his faith; for it is plain that both he and his brother were remarkable exceptions. Job, however, must have lived somewhat before them from the way the facts are stated.
There is another thing still more important to consider before we enter into the book: Job lived outside the chosen people. Surely this is a surprising fact in the midst of a revelation which, as a whole, has its root in Israel. The Old Testament, for that very reason, is called the law. Not merely the Pentateuch, or the Psalms, or the Prophets, but the whole book, as we know, is comprehensively and repeatedly called “the law.” The reason is, because what was said afterward to the people who had the law of God affirmed that character of revelation. Every part of the Old Testament derived its name from the central characteristic fact of the law that was given by Moses; and yet there, in the midst of it, from its earliest days, stands one book at least, where the person who most of all is brought before us is the object of the deepest concern to God, drawing out such terms as God never applied even to the fathers.
Abraham might be and is called the friend of God; but not even Abraham similarly arrested the attention of God, not even he was pointed out to Satan as a worthy object to be put to the proof. There is nothing, in my opinion, therefore more striking than that God should guard against the narrowing effect of ritual. He was about to give the law by Moses. He was about to make one people—a small population in a little land—the peculiar object of His dealings. And these dealings too were for a long while to come; it was no merely passing season. He was taking them up to be His people forever; and at that very time, not later than His call to Moses, not later than the law given to Israel, God gave a book entirely devoted to a single person, an individual. The nation must not blot out the grand truth that God interests Himself most deeply about a soul. And this is exactly the snare into which Israel came, spite of the book of Job.
But God took care that there should be not more surely the Pentateuch than the Book of Job. In Genesis everything prepares for the chosen nation. When the law was given, God treats the Gentiles as entirely outside. So they were. Alas! we see Israel narrowing more and more in their feeling, and denying that a Gentile was anything but a dog in the sight of God. We find them shutting up their bowels of compassion from others, and in every way denying, after all, what God took care, even in the law itself, to correct and condemn. But even before the law was given we see God, in this most remarkable book, guarding against the snare into which they were subsequently drawn. Is it not an anticipative and blessed vindication of God? Job was a Gentile; and one who, as far as the locality is concerned, seems to have been in anything but a favorable quarter. The land of Uz is connected by the prophet Jeremiah with the land of Edom. Nothing could be more suspicious to an Israelite. If there were any people that had a hatred toward the Jews, it was the Edomites; and this was not at all a new feature. It is not meant that Job was an Edomite; but to a Jew, ready to take fire at anything which did not allow the peculiar place of the chosen nation, I say that his locality was suspiciously near. For it was at the borders of Edom; and the reader of Genesis knows that hatred had shown itself from the earliest days, even in the forefathers; and hatred that had never been extinguished in the children up to the latest days, from Genesis to Malachi; Edom's undying enmity to Israel, if not on the part of Israel against Edom. The hatred is apt to be in that which has neither God nor His blessing; nay, which resents those that have it. So it was therefore with Edom, and there it abode, and the Jew would the more feel the testimony to one who lived near their borders.
The grace of God then was pleased to work in this individual man; and there was the great fact of one solitary soul being an object of the deepest interest to God Himself, and this revealed in His word, not merely before His heart silently. It was far more than this. There was a wise and worthy purpose in causing it to be written. It was expressly to be the revealed interest of God in Job, interest that He made known to heaven at once, interest that He has revealed to all time in the Holy Scriptures; so that when the day came for Israel to lose their place, and when the mighty grace of God could be pent up no more, when it refused to flow only in the narrow channels which He had been pleased to employ before in His government, when it was now a question of His grace undertaking to work for the glory of His own name, as well as by Him who came down Himself in His own person to make it known, and by His own work to cause it to flow out according to all the large thoughts and purposes of God, here was the book that could prove it was no afterthought. Here was the book that could at once be appealed to as the witness of His condescending mercy outside Israel. Could the Jew say it was a strange thing? Could he venture, with the Book of Job before him, to say that God thought nothing of a Gentile? Where of old was the man that God ever spoke so highly or so much about? They might search through all the books of the Old Testament: where was there one who has an entire and a long book devoted to his experiences?
And this is felt so distinctly that in modern Judaism—always the leader of infidelity-what does its spokesman say? That Job cannot have been a real person at all, seeing that it is impossible God should have spoken in such terms about a Gentile! But there is the pith and beauty of the book. It was about a living man, if we are to believe the prophet Ezekiel and the apostle James, and a man outside that elect people, but none the less a man in whom God had graciously wrought for the admiration of heaven and the provoking of Satan, which gave occasion to unheard-of trial, so as to set forth the best reality till Christ came; not a single act of faith in the giving of what was most dear (and given of God for blessed and glorious purposes) at His word, as in Abraham's trial, but where Satan was allowed to wreak his malignant and destructive power in vain on property, family, person, followed by the deepest trouble and exercise of soul before God. What could there be deeper until He came who above all suffered perfectly for righteousness, and alone for sin as it deserved from God? What there could be there is. The book is the witness and revelation of God's dealing with souls, and turning all things for their good, even where Satan, and men, and the saints fail. Hence experience of all these things comes before us. But in the end God shows what He is; and He is exceeding pitiful and of tender mercy.
As the first thing, however, we have Job himself introduced. We see a man sincere, true, and blameless; in the enjoyment of every element of happiness on earth, blessed in his circumstances as well as his family, and God-fearing habitually. If he was the greatest of the sons of the east, this was what gave the more point to the trial. But was he not blest? Exceedingly so. He had seven sons and three daughters. He had the most ample possessions of that in which wealth lay in those early days, and in that quarter; for it was not a pilgrim and a stranger that we find in Job. To that God called out the fathers. But Job was not of the fathers; he was outside the covenant of Abraham, yet evidently blest, and expressly by God. God doubtless blessed the fathers; but in keeping His promises He never bound Himself not to step beyond them. This is what we see in Job, and it is exactly what grace loves to do. Grace is never limited to promise; while it does faithfully accomplish the promise, as it most surely will, in the fullest manner and before all the world, by-and-by; but grace maintains its own sovereign title to bless beyond that measure. Covenant is in no way the measure of grace, which can go forth in its own boundless strength where promise cannot follow. Nor is there any excuse for us at least not to know this well, because, as individual Christians and as the church of God, we are in Christ brought into a fullness of blessing, to the glory of His grace, incomparably beyond the promises. And indeed it is one of the saddest causes of the ruined state of Christendom, and the low character of that which is taught, that men seldom rise beyond the promises, even those who hold what is called evangelical doctrine. For the very essence of evangelicalism as a system is to deny the special favor and glory displayed in the mystery of Christ and of the church, and make the law the rule of Christian life, thus reducing the New Testament to the standard of the Old, instead of learning that each of the so-called Testaments has its own proper character and distinct aim; and that it is no mere question, therefore, of promises for the earth, nor even of a deeper and higher promise than they, but that there had been always a secret in God, which in other ages and generations was undivulged, and, consequently, that our richest blessing in Christ was no question of promises revealed to man at all. If it is at all to be called a promise, it was a promise between the Father and the Son; but this is not what men commonly mean by promises. It was entirely outside Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob. What did they know of the purpose for heavenly glory revealed by the Spirit, as between the Father and the Son? But now it is made known; and therein is seen to be exactly where the New Testament claims for itself a totally new character, impossible to exist while God was dealing with Israel, till the rejected Christ had accomplished redemption, and the Holy Spirit was sent down from heaven in consequence to baptize Jew and Gentile that believe into one body. It is Christ exalted on high and the church united to Him, a mystery hid in God till the time came to reveal it all, and now to us of the Gentiles, who least of all could have expected it; for God would thus show out the full character of grace on every side—on the heavenly, in its being entirely above the fathers, however honored; on the earthly, in its going far beyond the children of Israel in indiscriminate mercy, and consequently finding objects, not only for salvation, but for union with the heavenly Head among the most despised and abject of this world. [W. K.].. (To be continued).