In the Book of Job we find the trials which God sent Job for his good; and the way in which his patience broke down under them. He is celebrated for patience, but he cursed the day that he was born. It teaches us how good is not to be found in the heart of man. In the end however (when broken down) God blessed him. It shows how blessing comes, and must come, in real knowledge of self. People speak of God’s goodness, but their only thought of it is His passing over all that they are with indifference: that is not the way God is good. If you were to take half the people that are round us and put them into heaven really, they would get out of it as fast as they could; they have no feeling in accordance with it, nothing is there that they like. Everybody likes to be happy. If you take the reality of the thing there is not in the natural state of each of us anything that would find a single thing there that we like. God knows that and says, man must be born again. He is full of patience, but it is not goodness that passes over iniquity, which is not possible in a holy God; but He brings us (and may it be so with you), to a definite knowledge of what we are, and what we have done, for He is above all the evil, but He must have what is in man exposed before Him. Some men’s sins go before to judgment, open to all to see that they are laying up a store of judgment. All must pass away; “the fashion of this world passeth away,” and yet people are occupied with them; pleasure, gain, and so forth, and everything that is real comes after: sin is real of course. The things that are seen are temporal; what is seen everybody knows, and all must go to nothing. Men are responsible; all that they are occupied with is done with when death comes in; they themselves are not done with, but the life and objects they are occupied with are over; everybody knows it—folly is bound up in our hearts. Men cannot tell what will come after in a future day.
We do not want revelation to know what is in this world; when we pass beyond it we do want a revelation; we want God to tell us and bring down to such as we are, a sure certain testimony that when all the fashion of this world passeth away, what will be then. He has done it, only it is another thing to have hearts inclined to things that are eternal. He has given us a full and complete revelation of our state here as sinners, and what His holiness is—God’s way of meeting man, rather the revelation that He has met us and given us sure and certain blessedness. Many say you cannot be sure. Now it is not true, God would not have us (if we are His) walking in uncertainty and misery. We have not the spirit of bondage but the Spirit of adoption by which we cry Abba, Father; we know relationship with God as children, He has fully revealed it—I speak of Christians of course.
The Lord was dealing with Job to bring him into the sense of this favor, and he had to learn himself; it is what makes the book so interesting. He was not a Jew, nor was he a Christian; it is bringing out the wants of the soul. He is different from us in that he had not got what we have got, that is Christ. He is in bitterness of spirit, plowing up the ground; at the end of the book you get his blessing when he is brought to a knowledge of himself. Everything works for his good. Job was not a wicked man; there is grace for the most wicked; he was quite the contrary. There is a spirit of self-righteousness in him, and God let Satan loose at him, and for a long while he went on better than ever, and asks “Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?” Suppose God had stopped there, and that he had got no exercise or trial after that, the effect on Job would be worse than ever. He might have said—When I was in prosperity I was gracious, “when the ear heard me then it blessed me, and when the eye saw it gave witness to me,” and now I are patient in adversity.
It goes on till his friends come, then he breaks down and curses the day he was born. Now says God, what have you got to say for yourself? That was an humbling thing; we often see it in not saying right things of God. If I could meet God, like you He would put words in my mouth. There was at bottom a right thought of God, but all this scum was coming up to make him know himself. The friends took false ground; they took the world and Job’s case in especial, as adequate testimony of the open government of God, and said he had been a hypocrite. No, says Job, I will not give up my integrity. Job says the wicked get put down, but other men die in comfort though just as wicked. The world is no adequate witness of the government of God; and we have clearer light of such in Christianity. You see a soul struggling with self and speaking against God, because it has not found Him in the light—the flesh breaking out so that Job should know it. There is no need for that in many cases, because there is open wickedness.
Job having been exercised, we get what he passes through as to how he should meet God. They had been telling him God hated iniquity, of course He does— “But how should man be just with God?” The righteous Lord loveth righteousness: are we righteous that’s another story. God requires righteousness, but are we in that condition when we have to do with God not with man could we say, I am righteous before Him that is the question. There is many a person who looks to the cross and says, I have no hope in myself, I am a poor sinner; all my hope is in the cross. I say to such, Put yourself before the judgment seat, and can you say, the judgment seat suits me? Ah, that will not suit! Many do look to the cross; but put them honestly before the judgment seat, and the soul is not at peace. When we know Christ is our righteousness, there is no place where our souls are so clear as at the day of judgment, because if we are the righteousness of God in Him, what can judgment do but prove that righteousness? We shall be in glory then.
To go on, the soul does not walk in peace that has not realized in the presence of judgment, as a present thing, what it is to be in righteousness before God now. It cannot walk in peace because it is awakened. We see it in a striking way in this chapter. There are haughty expressions; flesh breaking out, that he might learn himself; the soul put through right thoughts and wrong thoughts. First, God loves righteousness (substantially I mean), Job answers, I know it is so of a truth, but how can man be just with God? He can in his own, eyes; but if He contend with me, I cannot answer Him one of a thousand, he says. The instant the soul is awakened to me with God’s eye he sees in the light, the moment the light of God has shone into his soul, the soul is in presence of judgment in the light; now he says, I could not answer Him for one of a thousand. I could not answer for things I have done: could you? He is infinitely good, but cannot allow evil.
Could you answer Him, speaking of righteousness, for everything you have ever done or thought? Do you not expect to give an account of yourself? Have you nothing you could not answer for? It is not so we know perfectly well. If you take all that passes in your heart, all that you are from your youth up, what would it be? We all live in a vain show, we have characters which God cares nothing about, but He does care about conscience. He has given a blessed remedy for it all before judgment comes.
Not speaking now of Christ as your righteousness, could you stand up and say that is not true of you? No you could not answer Him one of a thousand. When you come before God He is not a man that you can contend with Him.
Job goes through several of these cases, he had not all the light we have of course, or he would not trust himself, all that mixture, and want of confidence in God— “let not His face terrify me”; then his wrong feeling breaks out” He breaketh me with a tempest, and multiplieth my wounds without cause, He will not suffer me to take my breath but filleth me with bitterness”; “if I justify myself my own mouth shall condemn me, if I say I am perfect it shall also prove me perverse.”
If you begin to justify yourself your own heart condemns you. You cannot justify yourself in God’s presence, then what is the good of doing it anywhere else? Your own mouth condemns you, you could not stand in the light and you know it perfectly well.
After that he goes on, “If I say I will forget my complaint, I will leave off my heaviness and comfort myself, I am afraid of all my sorrows.” You are so melancholy you cannot get on.
How comes it that thinking of God makes man melancholy? For the moment it does, and with good reason too. The light coming in terrifies him; what folly to hide his eyes from it when it must come in! It is self-deception. Is that a good thing to go on with? “I am afraid of all my sorrows.” God is breaking up his heart in consciousness of it. There is no such thing as innocence, we all know we have done evil. Are you going to carry that to heaven, and that is the breaking up of the heart—his heart being broken up—the crust of his heart. Now, “if I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands ever so clean:” he is going to cleanse himself. “Yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me:” If I have the thought of cleansing myself, I am like a man taken out of a ditch. So much for man’s thoughts, men are deceiving themselves. Suppose a man is brought up in a dirty house, he does not feel it, his mind is as dirty as his house. As sinners in a sinful would our habits of thought are according to man, not God.
It is dreadful; nothing proves more the ruin of man than his judgment of good and evil. A thief man thinks very bad; all that kind of thing is thought unfit for society. Suppose a friend of yours hates God in his heart; yet he is the best friend you have perhaps. If we only look things in the face, we are living in deceit.
Go through the history of all religion. Is the Mahommedan ashamed of his religion? Never! Are men ashamed of Juggernaut? of anything that is false? You never find men ashamed of false religion. Take the Christian, he is ashamed of confessing Christ. How comes that? Real Christians! “He that confesseth me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven.” How is it man is not ashamed of false religion? What a tale it tells of the world. Men may sing songs in the street; but when you get the light of God, and speak of God in the world, it is not borne with. When we come to the exercises of our own souls this comes up to the conscience.
If I talk of making myself clean, Thou shalt plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me. Some sin grossly; some in the secret of their own heart. Many I trust know it in grace, it is true of all of us, and are we to be with God unrighteous? It is true of me as of you, none of us could stand for a moment. Job takes these different cases and tries to comfort himself, but finds he is like a man out of a ditch, struggling as to this. Then he says, I want someone between me and God. “Let him take his rod away from me”; he was exercised; he had not what we have in Christ. God has taken away His rod, and we have a Daysman, just what God has given us in Christ. Was Christ a terror in this world? The law was. Moses says, “I exceedingly fear and quake,” and the people says, Do not let God speak to us. But it produced no real effect, it did not change the heart, it gave no confidence in God, no trust in God. The law threatens to curse, but not give strength, nor an object that wins the heart.
If you say you are a sinner, very well, says the law, you are cursed (Rom. 7). I do this though I hate it; so do I says the law, that’s the reason I am cursing you. It is a perfect rule—To whom? It is a perfect rule for a sinner. Are you a sinner? Yes, if you are in your sins, can I bring a just measure and say that it will inspire you with confidence? It detects a person, “By the law is the knowledge of sin,” a good thing to get it, that is what Job is getting here. Job was a converted man, but sin was brought to his conscience, and that never gives a man confidence, it brings us into the truth and is very useful, when we look to the Lord Jesus the soul is brought to a point like Abel. Cain says, I can worship God. It proved utter insensibility to his sinfulness, and that the curse had come in. Why should he labor and toil to be received of God? How come you to be away from God? How did judgment come in? Was there need to judge Adam innocent? He had left God, and therefore there was judgment; there is no need of judgment if we are as God made us—judgment is necessarily condemnation. If I make this desk and I judge it, I judge myself, for I made it; if it is broken that is not my fault. We turn God into a judge instead of a blesser, because we have left Him. Cain had no sense of it, but thought he would go and do his duty. He had no sense of being an outcast sinner. Abel brings a victim—death comes in. If I have not got something that has borne death and wrath, I cannot come to God at all. He had the sense of need because he had the sense of sin.
If we look at Christ, He meets the very thing Job felt the want of. I cannot go to God myself; if I pretend to be righteous I am proved to be perverse. What have we got in Christ? I have God come to me in this world because I could not go to Him—entirely another thing. His terror taken away. He did not stay up in heaven and say, Come before the judgment seat. He says There is none righteous, no, not one, and He comes to these unrighteous people. He does not stay in heaven and say, “Come”; but He says it on earth. What I get in the Daysman is God showing me that He is above all my sin. He is light and shows the sins where everything is manifest, in man’s heart and conscience. He has come as a fact into the world where men were sinners—proved in their own consciousness. I have this truth, God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses. He has visited me, not to hide my sins from me, but come into this world to put them away! He will come and talk to me; allow me to wash His feet, like the woman in the Pharisee’s house. If it was judgment of course it would terrify me, but it is not judgment, but the perfect blessed love of Man among men—the holy One who could not be defiled. He used the undefilableness of His nature to carry His perfect love of God to sinners, not concealing the sin. One with the Father, one with man down here, that I might see God in Him. I have this blessed truth that God has visited me just as I am. Not that I go to Him just as I am, but He comes to me. His source of all was in the heart of God, when I was not thinking of Him: going on in my sins, God comes to the sinner and makes him feel his sin. Are you so bad that nobody will trust you? You cannot show yourself to anyone though you can show yourself to me. I will not turn you out, I am come to seek and to save the lost. Can He wait for the day of judgment for that? He did it before the day of judgment.
The beginning of all sin was losing confidence in God. If I cannot trust God to make me happy I must trust myself; man lost confidence in God, and Christ came to say, Now you may have confidence in me no matter how bad you are. How blessed to trace Him going through the world; the poor woman is astonished that He talks to her. Did He ever reproach her? He came to bring blessings. The time will come when there will be judgment. Instead of waiting to the day of judgment, He has come into the world as a Saviour before judgment. God has come to say, I will save every poor soul who believes in Me. I am come because you are a sinner. I am come in the day of grace to you in your sins. What a way of dealing that is God in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing trespasses.
Did you ever see terror in it? To a Pharisee He gives a most withering rebuke. Did you ever see in Christ—God in this world—anything but love to lost sinners? I find divine love in that blessed One. Who put it into God’s heart to do this? Did the world seek Him? Not they! They would not have Him. Who put it into His heart? Nobody but Himself: His own heart was the source of it all!
I get to know God much better than I know myself. I cannot trust my own heart it is so deceitful. If I say I love the brethren, and I do, I find coldness springing up; the moment I know Him there is no shadow of it in Him. He is the Daysman who lays His hand on us both, and has come into a world of sinners just as they were, passing through the world as the One to meet every want in it.
Then sin must be put away; we could not go to heaven in our sins. I get in the cross, in that sense not God before man in the world, but man (He lays His land upon us both) before God, made sin. He is on the cross to be dealt with, stands there just as He stood before man, to show love, that He might be dealt with according to that. The insults He had to endure from man; all that He took in meekness, but He could not take the wrath of God in that way. It was strong crying and tears then, and He was heard because of His piety; if possible He would have had that cup pass from Him, but if any of you were to be saved that cup must be drank.
In 2 Cor. 5 you get both (19 to 21); first, “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses”; second, “for he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” I am the righteousness of God in Christ, as God He came in love to us here, and as man He has gone up in righteousness to God up there.
Suppose I follow Christ’s path a little: I find all these people He has been blessing crying, “Crucify him, crucify him”: the judge that ought to have protected the innocent washing his hands; the friends all running away, one betraying Him, another denying Him, no man to have compassion. I find Him setting His face as a flint, bowing to the Father’s will; I find Him on the cross, lifted up from the earth, and there made sin; but in Him was no sin. I brought Him there; my vile sins, my wickedness, my rejection of Him has brought Him there. If they have they are gone. Ah! what has come; He has put away sin, He was there, not as a judge but being judged; there is nothing like that atonement. I find the only one righteous Man forsaken of God.
The moment I get Christ there everything is shut out, and He is made sin before God—perfectly glorifying God as well as bearing sin. There only obedience was perfect, because fully tested, and there came out the sweet savor. There was no glorifying God perfectly except on the cross. There I get the whole righteous indignation of God against sin. He had no patience with Him, no gentleness with Him as there is with us. It was really drinking the cup of perfect judgment against sin, and showing perfect love to the sinner.
If I pass over the sin, people would say that is goodness; but I find God’s righteousness against sin, and in that perfect love to the sin I see the enmity of man against God, and perfect love towards those very men—God perfectly glorified. Terror there was, but not on me, man’s utter sinfulness learned in the act that put it away. Law will condemn the sinner, but you never get sin dealt with except on the cross. I find Him alone with God when in unutterable love He put all sin away, and when I go to God now I find Him there, the witness of having put away sin, and I can come as white as snow.
Let us go a step further to see the efficacy of it, let us go further in this journey. Suppose a man convicted of sin going to God, going to judgment in faith—who does he find there? That very person who put away his sins. When he stands before the judgment seat there is the very One who put all away. It is impossible He could impute sin.
Then He comes and changes our vile bodies and makes them like His glorious body—we are raised in glory. To get before the judgment seat I must be raised, and I get there in glory. I am not talking of those who neglect this great salvation of course. Christ comes Himself, is not satisfied to send, and takes us up, raised in glory. We must give an account of ourselves, but I am there, in glory. The first coming was about putting away sin (Heb. 9), “but unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time, without sin unto salvation.” He has nothing more to do with it. He appears the second time, what for? To salvation. He came first to put away sin, and then He has nothing more to do with that, and He comes the second time unto salvation.
If you have not got it you want simple earnest faith. He is at the right hand of God, having perfected forever them that are sanctified (Heb. 10). He brings the love down to me where I am. He came in grace into this world of sin, and has gone into heaven in righteousness, to sit at God’s right hand. Nothing in my heart put it into God’s heart. The question with me is, in that dark hour did He finish the work God gave Him to do? I believe He did. I now look up to Him as having accomplished the work. He is sitting there—God is resting, having accomplished the work—and I come to God by Him.
Abel’s sacrifice was a figure of it. He had the witness that he was righteous, God testified of his gift. I come with the lamb in my hand—Christ—owning I am an utter sinner, my heart is conscious that I could not answer Him, I would be like a man taken out of a ditch; but I have got a Daysman: God has rest, and so have I!
Another thought; it carries the blessedness further, that we are in Him through the Holy Ghost sent down. He not only appears for me, but I am in Christ, “in the Beloved.” In the seventeenth of John He says, “I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it, that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them and I in them.” If I have looked to this Daysman I have got to the spring of God’s heart. He has given His Son for me, and as a consequence He will give me everything.
The next thing He is righteous. God is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. He has looked at it in Christ and all is finished, my soul rests in the knowledge that He has loved me enough to give His Son for me, and that God has accepted His work. He has perfected forever them that are sanctified.
I only add this; when I say, you are in Christ, this other truth follows: Christ is in you. Then do not let me see anything but Christ in you. Being brought to God, Christ is your life; now manifest Christ’s life. You are bought with a price, you are not your own; if you want to be your own you do not want to be Christ’s. If I am not with God to detect the roots of evil in my heart, they come out, detected by the devil; and we have to look for grace, in dependence on Him. If you say you are a Christian, people should read Christ in you; Christ is my righteousness, I have my Daysman, my soul rests in the consciousness of what Christ has done, and I am waiting with earnest desire for Christ to come and take me to Himself. We have the spirit of adoption by which we cry, Abba, Father! May the Lord open your hearts, and turn your eyes to see His love and the perfectness of His work, to have your heart opened, so to speak, to lay your hand upon the Daysman, to know the love God had to you. The Lord give you not to neglect this great salvation, of course it is judgment if you do.