Job 33
It is often a long time before a soul that has known something of the graciousness of God is brought, thoroughly and practically in conscience, to bow to the truth of its condition before Him as He reveals it, and so to be cast over, simply and entirely, on grace. But to this, sooner or later, God does bring every soul that has to do with Him. This chapter reveals to us the way in which God brings about this blessed result for man, till then ignorant of Him and of himself. He speaks once and again, but man heeds it not. Then He makes His hand to be felt, as in Psa. 32, and for the same reason-because the soul is keeping silence and refusing to own sin. He lets the light of His holiness shine in and reach the conscience, and the life draws near the grave. But all this is God's own work in grace, to give man the consciousness of what he is before Him, and to put the truth into him; to bring him to be in the true knowledge and acknowledgment of what he, a sinner and a creature, is in the presence of a God of holiness and grace, whom he has despised and neglected. This is the first thing.
Then, secondly, a messenger comes; not to speak of grace in this instance, but of truth. And O, how rare is such an one-"one of a thousand"-to declare unto man his uprightness. And what is man's uprightness but confession? -the only true place a sinner can take before God. But there is uprightness for a sinner even before God; and that is self-judgment in the justifying of God's verdict against him-taking God's part against himself. This the Interpreter of God's ways explains. He explains that the hand of God is on the sinner just in order to this; and that the moment the soul comes to this-the moment it says with David, " I will confess my transgressions to the Lord," there is forgiveness. So here, " he will be gracious to him;" for the controversy is at an end. The sinner leaves himself self-condemned at the mercy of God, And O, what wondrous mercy is now revealed. " I have found a ransom." "Save," says God. He becomes the soul's salvation; and this, too, through a ransom. He finds the ransom; and He says, " Save." He becomes the Redeemer Himself of the soul that repents-that owns His righteousness in the confession of its own utter want of it.
Now mark the blessed result of it all. "He shall pray unto God, and he will be favorable unto him; and he shall see his face with joy." He is brought to God-to God as his Savior, his Friend. The whole state of his soul has been up in question before God in judgment. All has come out. He is in the truth-upright in the unpalliating confession of his utter want of uprightness. And, then, God is active. He it is who delivers. He says, " Save:" for He had found the ransom; and that, too, ere ever He began this process and exercise. He expected nothing from the sinner to give him a place with Himself: He had found all. But He must strip the sinner of himself. He must stain his fancied self-goodness, that He may fit him for the valuing and accepting—and of grace, too—that which is divine. God wants to have man with Himself in righteousness, so as to enjoy Him in love. But only a divine righteousness can suffice. Creature-righteousness there is none; though man, alas! goes about to establish one of his own. But in God's presence it all turns into filthy rags: his comeliness turns in him to corruption; and he can only lay his hand on his mouth, and say, " Unclean, unclean!" Thus does God strip off what is of man, that He may clothe him with what is of Himself, even Christ, His Righteousness for sinners.
But we must not forget another point -viz., that if the sinner needs a righteousness, if he needs to be clothed before God, he also, and first, needs a ransom. He is an heir of the pit. He is drawing nigh to the pit. All that is the deepest part. Here, again, Christ comes in. How possibly spare such a vessel of wrath? How let him escape? Here is the answer-" I have found a ransom." " Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world." "Without shedding of blood there is no remission." "He appeared once in the end of the world to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself." God now frees the man from all that he did and was because of the ransom which He Himself provided, even Jesus, " the propitiation for our sins." The sinner is saved from death because another passes under it in his stead. Herein is love. God provides the Lamb for the sacrifice. Oh I precious ransom! God's own provision for condemned and guilty man drawing nigh to the pit. But now He takes away the filthy garments and clothes him with change of raiment. Now all is changed, and forever. He has come to God, and in His presence all has been out and judged in the conscience; and, Oh, how welcome the pardon in the name of the Blessed One who gave Himself a ransom for our sins! Ah we have but to own our deserving the judgment; He bore it for us on the tree. How sweet such a reprieve; the witness of such divine love, and based on divine holiness and justice. The soul is brought to God: it sees His face with joy: and this is forever. He is to be with Him. He gets a place in and with Jesus. " Being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God." God grant each of my readers to stand clean and clear in the consciousness by faith of having had the whole question of his everlasting condition all settled by God and before Him; and in the assurance that all his salvation is Jesus: nothing that ever will be in himself or of himself; but that he starts with this divine settlement, which is the foundation of all progress, and which no progress ever can make more perfect; though we shall know its perfection and blessedness increasingly, and be growing in the knowledge of grace and of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
First, a ransom-the real actual bearing of our sins on the tree; then, the true place with God in Christ as our righteousness and our beauty. O, how dear and lovely God becomes then! And
" how our hearts delight to hear Him,
Bid us dwell in safety near Him."
One more remark: the exercises are needful, but they do not deliver; they "bring unto the truth; but nothing that goes on in us, or that comes out of us, can be a ground of deliverance. God delivers through Jesus Christ. He has found a ransom. Faith now welcomes salvation by grace; and says, " To him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood," be all the praise forever and ever. Amen.