THE TRIAL OF JOB.

Chapter II.

FIRST ANSWER OF JOB.

JOB 3.

After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day. And Job spoke and said, Let that day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man-child conceived.

We have been accustomed to regard this as very extravagant and indefensible in Job, and, although indicating extreme misery, yet not at all consistent with the perfection and patience that are attributed to him. The truth is that he, still holding fast his integrity, is now uttering words that truly and fully express the great grief and pain which are upon him. Let us consider his and our case. The curse of God because of transgression is upon all the race of Adam. Man, therefore, by nature is totally depraved and abominable in the sight of God. But being totally corrupt, he does not see himself so. Could he discern his own condition, it would prove that there was a principle of soundness in him, for that power or faculty by which evil is recognized and felt must itself be good: it is indeed by the spirit of holiness alone that sin can be detected. So man is represented as dead in trespasses and sins–insensible as the dead of his condition; well pleased therefore, with himself, and with no doubt of his ability to please God. Paul represents himself thus when he says, "I was alive without the law once (Romans 7:9)." He had not yet received that holy principle of eternal life which "is the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord," and was, therefore, unconscious of his sinful state. "But when the commandment came," when the quickening power of God was applied to his soul, then with a new spiritual sight, that discerns all sin and depravity, he could look upon himself as he appears in the sight of a holy God, and witness with loathing and dismay his own death in sin.

This is the case with all the elect or Church of God, who "are by nature children of wrath even as others (Ephesians 2:3)." They are unconscious of their vileness; satisfied with their own imagined beauty; and confident that God is well pleased with them. But when the quickening word of God, sharper than any two-edged sword, pierces them, then they first feel the power of that death spiritually, the terror of that awful curse, which they have all the time been lying under since the fall. Then, under the awful rebukes that fall upon them from Sinai, under the dreadful chastenings of the Almighty, their beauty consumes away like a moth (Psalm 39:2), and they find no soundness in their flesh (Psalm 38:7; Romans 7:18).

Here is the condition represented by Job as, covered with sore boils, after seven days and nights of silent grief, he opened his mouth and cursed his day. We might think there was an inconsistency here in the theory, since the previous state of the awakened sinner was that of guilt, while Job was before this perfect; but we must remember that it is the Church in her whole history of which we regard Job as the type, and not the individual, until he comes into manifestation as a member of that Church, which is not until he is quickened. We consistently now, therefore, behold him as representing the conscious sinner, in representing, as we shall hereafter show that he does, the condition of the Church under the legal dispensation. Let us remember, however, that we did not cease to be sinners as natural men, our corrupt natures did not cease to be corrupt when we obtained a hope in Christ; neither did we then cease to feel self-abhorrence. What follower of Christ has been without great and often inexpressible grief on account of sin since the time when he first found peace in believing? Trouble of that kind, more or less heavy, must be with us till we put off this earthly tabernacle. Our Saviour declares it to be an essential mark of his disciples that they hate their own lives. (See Luke 14:26.)

We have never been able to express our pain and grief under the burden of sin, when experiencing the power of the curse, except by sighs and "groanings which cannot be uttered." But Job, to represent the Church, was enabled to give it full expression. We sometimes have great heaviness of heart and deep gloom of mind; if called upon to picture in language the feeling that we so name, could we do it? We can say that we mourn or that we have sorrow, but can we give that mourning, or sorrow, or heaviness itself as appropriate language by which it shall be uttered, and tell definitely the desires of the burdened soul?

You who now walk wearily, with your head bowed as a bulrush and a look of gloom upon your face, the Scriptures alone can suit words of expression to your trouble. You may not as yet even know its cause. It is not loss of friends or worldly misfortune, nor are you conscious of having committed any crime in act, yet there is a sense as of guilt and condemnation so great that sometimes the greatest criminal, whose crime you abhor and never had a temptation to commit, appears more deserving than you. But only by a groan can you come near any adequate expression of your feeling or picture of your desires. You only know that heavy oppression is upon you and deep, leaden gloom around you. You look over your life and it is dark, dark. You try all you have ever thought or done, and all is dark, dark; nothing good; no light or cheer in the past or future or about your present.

It may not have occurred to you that the language of Job when he cursed his day would suit you well. Yet you have condemned your day, your life; have felt its less than worthlessness–its sinfulness and depravity; have hated and abhorred it; have acknowledged in your feelings the justice of God's hatred, his curse pronounced upon it; and in all this have yourself cursed your day, the unholiness and darkness of which the light of truth has shown you. This darkness is not merely upon the present of your life, but it so reaches backward into the mist of obscurity that you have to say, "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me (Psalm 51:5)."

Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it. Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it; let a cloud dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it.

I understand Job in all this to have truly expressed the experience of the curse of God making his day darkness and terror, the self-abhorrence which a full sense of sin produces, and the extreme pain and bitterness of soul under it. Each one of the saints is not conscious of all this suffering, but some appear to have felt it most fully, so as to have made these utterances of pain and longing for the silence of death theirs; and considering Job as representing the full experience of the whole Church under the weight of its corruption in the Adamic head, giving full voice to the grief and terror which the sense of sin must produce in the whole body, we shall not find his words inappropriately strong.

Job is not alone among scriptural characters in cursing his day. Jeremiah gave similar utterance to the violence of his sorrow, saying, "Cursed be the day wherein I was born: let not the day wherein my mother bare me be blessed (Jeremiah 20:14-18)."

These are not the expressions of faith, as were Job's words at the first, when as yet he had not sinned with his lips nor charged God foolishly, but of suffering occasioned by sin. Their character as obnoxious to God's reproof will be considered hereafter, in connection with Elihu's answer and the answer of the Lord out of the whirlwind. My object now is to show here the common experience of God's people. If we are true followers of Christ, we have experienced that feeling concerning ourselves which our Saviour intended when he said, "Except a man hate his own life, he cannot be my disciple." In that sense we have hated our own life, and the feeling of hatred and extreme abhorrence, if fully expressed, would be in cursing. What we hate, we essentially curse.

While we may not have thought that our mind was ever in such a condition of violence and extremity of grief as is denoted by these words of cursing, how often have we followed Job in his longings for repose and quiet, and found a soothing influence falling upon our perturbed and weary spirits as we have repeated the pathetic words in which he describes the rest his soul desires! For now should I have lain still and been quiet. I should have slept: then should I have been at rest with kings and counselors of the earth who built desolate places for themselves. With what mournful interest the mind dwells upon the deep and abiding quiet which the imagination pictures as what might have been if he had not been born or as a hidden, untimely birth he had not been; as infants which never saw the light; the thought of such profound repose seems so sweet in contrast with the present trouble! How searchingly it looks abroad through the mysterious waste of darkness for the place of deepest silence and peace, lingering with longing desire upon particular descriptions of that uninterrupted solitude which it imagines others to have found in desolate places, and the comforts that belong to it, as though even the thought had power to soothe its weary aching! This is that time in the experience of the Christian referred to by Elihu (chapter 33), when the soul draweth near to the grave, and we look upon its quiet repose as most desirable. There the wicked cease from trembling, and there the weary be at rest. There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor. The small and great are there, and the servant is free from his master. The ills of life all quieted in the common place of rest. Can we tell why these words so often come with the effect of a hushing lullaby to our hearts? The Psalmist bears testimony that this is common to the saints–that it is Christian experience. When, under the terrors of death, fearfulness and trembling were come upon him, and horror had overwhelmed him, he exclaimed, "Oh that I had wings like a dove! For then would I fly away and be at rest. Lo, then would I wander far off and remain in the wilderness. Selah. I would hasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest (Psalm 56:6-8)."

Job returns from his momentary rest in the thought of oblivion to a renewed consciousness of his present miserable condition: Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul which long for death, but it cometh not, and dig for it more than for hid treasures; which rejoice exceedingly and are glad when they can find the grave? So our minds have often entertained, if we have not expressed, the question why there should have been sorrow and misery at all; thus opposing our short-sighted weakness to the ordaining wisdom of God, for which in a peculiar manner his rebukes are given out of the whirlwind.

Self-destruction does not suggest to the mind of Job the peace he desires. Though there is a longing of spirit for that mysterious change that might remove him from himself, and so ease him of his terrible burden, yet it must be at the hand of God.

Why is light given to a man whose way is hid and whom God hath hedged in? Jeremiah also in his Lamentations says, "He hath hedged me about that I cannot get out; he hath made my chain heavy (Lamentations 3:7)."

While we are left with some degree of confidence in ourselves and a complacent feeling in regard to our own faithfulness and firmness of purpose, our way appears comparatively clear. So Peter thought his way clear when he said, "Though all men forsake thee, yet will not I." But when and whenever God makes us fully to know and feel our entire lack of any spiritual goodness or strength, then our way is hid–we are hedged in–have no power to do what we see to be holy–see no way to escape from our miserable weakness and vileness; desiring to do good, "but how to perform that which is good," we have to say with Paul, we "find not;" miserably obliged to see with self-abasement that "with the flesh we serve the law of sin (Romans 7:18,25)."

Whose way God hath hedged in. What a forcible expression, and how well suited to our case! But there are times when we feel more especially its strong significance. It is only under the present experience of pain that we can really know what pain is, and appreciate an adequate description of it or its full expression. When the agony is past we may think the exclamations it has forced from us too violent, though while it was upon us our words seemed weak and we felt that our stroke was heavier than our groaning. Hedged in. We walk about as usual, talk with the friends we meet, eat and drink and attend to business, so that outwardly we appear as before. Yet all the time we are intent upon our trouble; our thoughts are wandering back and forth like birds in a cage or prisoners in a cell, searching for some place to escape, and going over and over again the same ground even when hope has gone. "He hath enclosed our way with hewn stone (Lamentations 3:9)." There is nothing for us but to die. By that way only can we get away from this "bondage of corruption," this wearing, wearying consciousness of sinfulness and depravity. Here is what we feel under the full experience of the suffering which the malady of sin produces. By showing us our worthlessness and making us feel it, God hedges us in and hides our way.

Did we fully realize our condition all the time, how could we endure it? We are graciously permitted to forget it in the contemplation of the hope of deliverance when Christ in glorious beauty is presented to our faith as the Way, through whom we are removed by faith from the prison and "set in a broad place."

How much of our time also is our condition forgotten or but faintly realized through the engrossment of worldly cares or the deceitfulness of the heart! I am speaking to the daily experience of the Christian. You have seasons of quiet when your way runs along evenly. Again, you have great and exulting joy in contemplating the salvation of God. There are other times when a sense of the depravity of your heart and your utter destitution of all holiness in yourself so weighs upon you that your life becomes very heavy to you, and you "groan, being burdened (II Corinthians 5:4)."

But recall your state of mind in your most favored hours, when for days and months you have walked comfortably in the Christian journey with no special weight upon you. Can you not remember from time to time a consciousness that your transgressions, your ingratitude, your worldly-mindedness–in a word, your sinfulness of nature–deserved heavy chastisement at the hand of God, and that it must be because of wonderful long-suffering on his part that it was withheld? And through your days of peace have you not feared that what you deserved would come? If it were only to feel the full weight and sense of your corruption, that would be terrible. But should God's tender forbearance cease, and the just deserts of your wanderings be visited upon you, how could you bear it? I do not speak of eternal death. It is not that you feared, but what may be received in this state. Sometimes you have tried to picture to yourself the punishments that would be adequate, but before you could satisfy even your own faint view of justice the afflictions you decreed overwhelmed you. How merciful is our God, and how wonderful the salvation wrought by him that we are so tenderly spared!

But Job, to fully represent the Church, could not be spared; and through what we have experienced, we can understand him when he says, For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me. How this expression opens to our view his afflicted heart and reveals the terrors that have made him sit silent for seven days and nights! While he only feared he could go tremblingly, hopingly forward; but now, at once, it is all upon him–all he could possibly fear, and he stands still in amazement of grief. It is not the literal loss of property, or children, or health that can account for this heaviness. It is not the physical pain that makes him "cry out of trouble." These, literally, he could not have feared, for they came unexpectedly upon him. He does not refer to them, nor would all that kind of affliction be a sufficient ground for his peculiar language. But, viewed in his typical character, his utterances are suitable to his condition, which well represents our afflicted state under the burden of corruption. And this expression will suit the case of any of the saints under the like state of mind, however the circumstances may vary. A more definite description cannot be given. Each heart knows its own bitterness. It is not necessary that there should be outward misfortune or trouble in order for these words to be ours. When our thoughts seem endued with a more than human power of scrutiny, and we have tried every act and motive of our lives by the light of holiness, and find all without good, we know then a deep but inexpressible meaning in the words, That which I greatly feared is come unto me. We will notice here that as a type it is not necessary that he should have done evil formerly in order to present the case of those who are under a sense of condemnation for sin, whether they have been guilty of outbreaking sins or not. It is his present condition, physically, that typifies their state, and his words we can understand as suited to their case more particularly than to his own temporal circumstances.

If he had been carelessly at rest, idly content with his state, sleeping the sluggard's sleep, taking his ease and filling his heart with the pleasures of this life, it would not have been so surprising that terror should overtake him as a thief and want come upon him as an armed man. But this was not the case. He was watchful, walking softly before the Lord, feeling that he had no safety in himself. He was careful, offering up sacrifices and prayer; not quieting himself, as the foolish man does in his own way, but seeking the way of God.

I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came.