I have no idea that the uprightness of Job was mere natural uprightness. It was surely an uprightness which grace had wrought in Job's heart. It was an uprightness to which God Himself bore witness; first, by the pen of the historian in chap. 1:1; and then, in the most solemn direct statement of it, in proposing the case to Satan-" Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil." One special expression of this uprightness, noted by the Holy Spirit in chap. 1, is his praying and sacrificing in verse 5 for his children; for Job said, "It may be, that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually."
To accomplish the purposes of God's love to Job, He [God] proposes to Satan a question concerning him; and let me say here, I believe we often have vague and unworthy thoughts of God's ways in this. We speak of God permitting this and that, and, in one sense, it is well to speak thus. "God is not tempted with evil; neither (in this sense) tempteth He any man." So far, it is well to speak of Satan a, the agent, and of God as permitting his operations. But if we get the idea of Satan's originating a plan of trial, as though He were the architect of the fortunes of God's people, and think of God as looking on, and permitting what has had its origin in Satan, we get wrong, and lose the comfort and strength of what God has revealed to us. Satan originates nothing. God has plans of discipline for His children, in the conducting of which He avails Himself of the malice and envy which ever exist in the heart of 'the enemy, who is ready to do for his own wicked ends, what God would have done for ends of holiness and love, It was not Satan who invented the thought of putting Job into the furnace, and asked permission of God to carry it into effect: it was God who saw good for His own glory, and the deepening of His work of grace in Job, that he should be tried in the fire. And HE SAID TO SATAN, "Hast thou considered my servant Job?" etc. The trial originated with God. God, who saw it needful for His child to be thus tried, proposed the case to Satan for his consideration!
Then there is another thing:-God's question with Job, was as to an undetected root of evil in his nature, which it needed the sifting of the enemy to bring to light. Satan's question with Job was; as to the reality-the genuineness of what God had wrought in Job. Satan said, "Self-interest was at the bottom": God said, "You may try, if you can get at it." God knew that there was a secret root of self-confidence which Satan's sifting would make manifest in the end to Job himself, the detection and cure of which would be the prelude to far fuller blessing which God had in store for His child. But with Satan, God vindicates Job. So long too as Satan's direct assaults, as the adversary-the oppressing adversary-are continued, God upholds His servant, and Satan gets no advantage. "In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly." "In all this did not Job sin with his lips." It was in this part of the trial that Job, through God's grace, earned the character he bears in God's record of him in the New Testament. "Ye have heard of the patience of Job." When was this manifested?-After his failure and his restoration? No; there was no need for patience then. It was while the secret root of evil was still undetected in his heart, and after he was put into Satan's sieve for the detection and cure of it, that the grace was manifested, which God has been pleased to notice with such sweet words of approval in the New Testament.
As to what the root of evil was, that was brought to light in this devoted servant of God; chap. 3:25, 26, makes this evident enough. It was not that he desired freedom from evil for himself and his children; it was not that he earnestly and anxiously sought it by prayer-real prayer to God. It was, that he thought his prayers-his solicitude-had made God his debtor, to preserve him from what he, notwithstanding, found coming upon him. It was well to desire-well to seek-well to pray. But it was not well to reckon on his having desired, sought, prayed, as the reason why he should have the object of his heart. "I was not in safety (i.e., I was not careless and remiss); neither had I rest, neither was I quiet: YET trouble came." Evidently he had trusted his anxiety, and all it led to, for preservation from that which he was anxious about? What did this betoken? That he had not learned to have entirely done with himself, and to rest in the full consciousness of God's perfect love to a perfectly good-for-nothing sinner, as the infant rests on its mother's bosom. Now God is glorified in our dread of evil-our desire to be kept from it-and prayer to Him that it may be so. But there is that which honors Him much more than this. "It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows; for so He giveth His beloved sleep." And who are they, on whose lips we hear this sweet lullaby? They of whom Job was no doubt the type. The remnant of Israel, who connect in their own persons the two distinct histories of the nation-who for all these centuries have been at school to learn this lesson; and the generation that shall yet be born-the afflicted and poor people who shall trust in the name of the Lord, and over whom "God will rejoice with joy-silent in His love, joying over them with singing." Think of the process through which they learn thus to rest in God's love, while He is silent in His love over the one thus sleeping in His bosom.
I have spoken of the root of evil disclosed in chap. 3:25, 26. But this was only the root. As the root may be concealed beneath the surface of the earth, and need warmth and moisture to cause it to put forth its latent properties, and these never be discernible till stem; blossom, and fruit exist, as well as the unseen root from which they spring; so in Job's case. The state of soul expressed in those verses had existed in Job's best and happiest days; but it needed all the deep sorrows that he passed through under the hand of God, by the agency of Satan, to make this manifest. The fruits we have in such passages as those which follow:-" God hath delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands of the wicked. I was at ease, but He hath broken me asunder: He hath also taken me by my neck, and shaken me to pieces, and set me up for His mark. His archers compass me round about, He cleaveth my reins asunder, and cloth not spare; He poureth out my gall upon the ground. He breaketh me with breach upon breach, He runneth upon me like a giant. I have sewed sackcloth upon ms- skin, and defiled my horn in the dust. My face is foul with weeping, and on my eyelids is the shadow of death; not for any injustice in mine hands: also my prayer is pure " (16:11-17). " He hath cast me into the mire, and I am become like dust and ashes. I cry unto Thee, and Thou dost not hear me; I stand up, and Thou regardest me not; Thou art become cruel to me; with Thy strong hand Thou opposest Thyself against me" (30:19-21). " When I looked for good, then evil came unto me; and when I waited for light, there came darkness" (30:26). See also the whole of chap. 31, especially verse 35-37, " Oh that one would hear me I behold, my desire is, that the Almighty would answer me, and that mine adversary had written a book. Surely I would take it upon my shoulder, and bind it as a crown to me. I would declare unto Him the number of my steps; as a prince would I go near unto Him." What an attitude for mortal man to take with God
And yet it must be remembered, that along with the above and many similar words that fell from Job's lips, there were others of a widely different character. The whole of chap. 9 is perhaps as beautiful and touching an expression of the state of a soul humbled and gracious through grace working in it, yet ignorant of redemption, as can anywhere be found.
But immediately after, as he continues his strain in chap. 10, he begins to call God himself, in question (see verses 1 to 8, or rather the whole of the chapter). The same admixture of good and evil is very observable in 13. The 23 chap., too, affords affecting proof of the confusion of Job's thoughts.. The estimate he has of God's tenderness and condescension is wonderful; but he talks of using it to come to his seat and argue with him (ver. 4 and 5, also 7). He is confident in his own integrity (11, 12); still he cannot find God, and knows it is vain to attempt to turn him. Altogether it is a wonderful chapter, and shows how God could say of Job, that he had spoken of Him the thing that was right, even while the great question between Him and Job was as to his judging God's ways, instead of bowing implicitly to God's judgment of him.
Then besides, Job was not what Satan had represented, nor had he done what Satan laid to his charge. Chapter 28 shows blessedly how Job was in the secret place of separation from evil to God, which Satan could neither see nor have access to. "Where is the place of understanding? Seeing it is hid from the eyes of all living, and kept close from the fowls of the air." "God understandeth the place thereof," however, while "death and destruction have but heard the fame thereof with their ears." And what was this way of understanding-this place of wisdom? "And unto man he saith, Behold the fear of the Lord that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding." In this place Job was hid. God himself had declared that he was a perfect man and upright, fearing God, and eschewing evil. Grace had wrought this in Job; but when wrought, nature discerned, recognized, and relied upon it; and all the trial through which he passed (whether direct from Satan's hand or through the accusations of his friends) demonstrated on the one hand the reality of what grace had wrought; but manifested, on the other, Job's reliance on the fruits of grace, instead of utter self abasement, and entire reliance on the fountain of grace in God himself. The controversy with his friends closes in chap. 31, where he indignantly repels all their accusations, and invokes the interposition of the Almighty, declaring his readiness as a prince to meet him, and declare to him the number of his steps.
Here God begins to act; first, in the ministration of Elihu (type of Christ in his humiliation); then speaking Himself immediately to Job. To Elihu Job makes no reply; he does not answer him as he had done the others. After all the varied display in chaps. 38 and 39, of who He is that condescends thus to speak to Job out of the. whirlwind, the Lord, in chap. xl., explicitly informs Job what the point of the controversy with him is. "Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty instruct Him? He that reproveth God, let him answer it." Satan misjudged Job, and God had made that manifest. Eliphaz and the others have falsely accused Job, and they are put to silence. Elihu has reasoned with him on God's behalf, urging the very thing now spoken to Job by God himself. But now he hears God's own voice, he can neither contend as he had done with the three, nor be silent as he had been before Elihu; he acknowledges his vileness, but so shrinks from the presence of Him whose interposition he had invoked, that he would gladly be excused any further conference. "Once have I spoken; but I will not answer; yea, twice, but I will proceed no further." But Job cannot escape thus; he has called in question the rightness of God's ways, and called on God to clear them up, and terrible as is His voice now he does hear it, he must hear it to the end. Then answered the Lord unto Job out of the whirlwind, and said, "Gird up thy loins now like a man; I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. Wilt thou also disannul my judgment-wilt thou condemn me, that thou mayest be righteous?" Now this was the whole matter. Job's reliance on the fruits of grace, his hope to have been because of these preserved from evil (evil however which he still dreaded), betrayed him, when that evil had come upon him, into the disputing Whether God had acted righteously in allowing all this to be. And now God meets him as above. And observe how He goes on to deal with him. It is the declaration of His own wondrous, works, putting it to Job's conscience where he must be to have sat in judgment thus on God's ways, not the explanation of those ways, and his reasons for them, that we have in these chapters. If, as I suppose, the account of leviathan be a symbolic description of the power of him, in whose hands Jo b had been to be thus sifted, even here it is not the explaining to Job why or how it was he had been given into his hands; but the assertion of God's glory, as the Maker of this terrible one, and Job is left to infer God's right to use the creature of his power as it pleases him. Be this as it may, however, this dealing of God was effectual. He entirely bows-he is willing to hear all God has to say to him-he takes unfeignedly the place of self-loathing and self-abhorrence; and he owns that he has uttered what he understood not, things too wonderful for him, which he knew not. The root of the evil having been thus laid bare, and Job having been brought to see and abhor himself in God's presence, instead of vindicating himself and calling God's ways in question, the controversy is at an end. God has no further question with him; and it becomes manifest that His only object, " the end of the Lord," in raising this question with Job, was really that his servant might have greater blessing on a surer basis, and enjoyed with more quiet unquestioning confidence-confidence NOT that he had so prayed and sought, and that, therefore, God must answer-but that having been proved altogether vile-so vile as even to have condemned God, that he himself might be righteous; God was so good; His love and grace so perfect, as to have restored him twofold all that he had before; he could hold it now not on the tenure of his having so prayed that God must needs continue it to him, but that, being so vile and worthless, God had notwithstanding given all this. The knowledge of his own evil must have wrought two ways: first, should God take all away a second time he could, not have a word to say; self-abhorrence has no complaints to make of any but self, least of all can it complain of God; secondly, if such vileness had not hindered God from giving, what should induce him to resume what he had bestowed.