06. Jobs comforters

Job”s comforters But to return to Job. We may form some idea of the bitterness of his anguish, by its effect on his three friends. ’They sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word to him; for they saw that his grief was very great’.

Such was the grief of Job; and such do I take to be a picture of the deep anguish of heart of many a true child of God, who, like Job, knowing redemption, but not knowing the living, loving, and all powerful priesthood of Christ, and finding, it may be, after years of happy enjoyment of Christ, so far as known, that the flesh is still so fearfully corrupt, beholds, it may be in one moment, every fond hope of a mended self blighted and destroyed.

Job could not put a finger on a spot that was not a running sore. And the believer, sooner or later, must find that there is not a spot in his old self in which he can rest. It is one thing to talk, it is another thing to find, that all that I am of the first Adam is withered and dead before God. Very blessed, when this is learnt, to learn also the bright resurrection-side of sorrowing Job.

Job at last opened his mouth, and oh! what grief and wormwood, ending with these words, ’For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me; I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet, yet trouble came’ (Job 3:1-26).

It may have been just so with my reader. The true believer dreads nothing so much as sin, and yet that which he most feared, yea, sin — to find sin, sin, sin, and to hate it, to fear it, to try hard to be entirely without it, and sometimes hope it is all gone, and still to find it turn up again, and to find oneself no better, it seems to take away all safety — no rest, no quiet, but, as it was with Job, trouble comes.

I know that, until Job’s lesson is learnt, it is so with every child of God. Yes, and just in proportion to your love of God, and hatred of sin, is the bitterness of your sorrow. Has not sin, since conversion, felt so loathsome? Has it not weighed down your soul until, like as Job wished he had never been born, so have not you wished almost, that you never had been converted? Ah, you might have to sit longer than seven days with your dearest friends before you could open your heart. You little expected to find that you were as bad as you find you are.