Job 38

Job 38:14

Seals Clay under the seal.—Job 38:14 Have you ever played at making seals? It is a fascinating game. All you require is a lighted candle, a stick of sealing-wax, a piece of paper, and a or a signet ring from father or mother. Hold the sealing-wax in the candle-flame until it is soft enough to drop on the paper. When you have dropped the spot of wax take your die or signet and stamp it quickly, evenly, and firmly in the hot wax. Keep it there for a minute, then raise it gently, and you will find that the motto or crest or initials on your die will be imprinted on the wax.

You may not make a very neat job the first time you try it, or even the third time, or the thirtieth—the wax may look black and smoked, the impression may be faint at one part, or the drop of wax may not have been the right shape, and a piece of the seal may be missing. It is all a case of practice, and practice makes perfect.

Go on trying if your parents don’t mind.If they do, I’ll tell you of an easier, cheaper, and safer way to make seals; it requires neither wax nor candle nor paper—only the seal or signet and your own willing hand. Press the die for a short time on the back of your hand. When you raise it you will find the device stamped perfectly on your flesh. Of course it will fade in a few minutes, but, since it costs nothing, you can do it over and over again, till you grow tired of the game.Most of the seals we are accustomed to see are made of wax, but seals have been and still are made of other materials—of metal, for instance. In the Middle Ages the Popes used to attach leaden seals called bullae (from the Latin word bulla meaning a circular ornament) to their decrees, and that is how we read in history books of Papal “bulls.”Sometimes, but rarely, the seals were made of gold. When a Pope wanted to confer a title on a monarch he sealed the document with a golden seal.

When one of the Popes gave King Henry the Eighth the title of “Defender of the Faith,” he sealed the paper with a golden seal; and you can see that very seal today if you look for it in the British Museum.But the kind of seal of which our text speaks is much older than that given to Henry the Eighth. It is a seal made of neither metal nor wax, for the material on which it is stamped is clay.

It was the kind of seal used by the Babylonians and Assyrians thousands of years ago. They took the moist clay and they stamped it with the die, and then they baked it hard in the oven or in the sun. There still exist some of these ancient clay seals with the marks where the string or strip of leather was fastened to them. And you may see too the very dies or stamps, or matrices, as they are called, which made the impression. These early dies were not shaped like ours; they were often round like a roller, and as they rolled over the soft clay they left a figured impression behind.Boys and girls, I think we are rather like that piece of clay. When we come into the world we are like the smooth soft mass without any marks on it, but as life rolls on it leaves, as the roller leaves on the clay, a lasting impression on us.

But though we may be like the clay in some ways we are unlike it in this—that we can choose the kind of impression or pattern that will be stamped on us. We can say whether it will be a good and beautiful impression that we shall bear, or whether it will be one both distorted and ugly.

It all depends on who holds the die. If we go to Christ and say to Him, “Here is my life all before me, help me to make it good and beautiful; help me to make the very best of it; help me to stamp it truly and well”—if we say that to Christ, He will take the die into His own hand, and He will stamp our life for us.And what do you think the impression will be? Why, it will be just a portrait of Himself. In olden days kings had on their royal seals their own portraits, and when they stamped anything with the royal seal everyone knew it belonged to the king for they saw his image there. So with Christ’s seal. Others looking on us and seeing the impression on our clay will say, “They too belong to Christ.”

Job 38:22

The Treasures Of The Snow Hast thou entered the treasuries of the snow?—Job 38:22.Today I want you to come with me into a wonderful treasure-house and we shall walk round and look at the treasures. It is the treasure-house of the snow. Perhaps you never thought very much about the treasures of the snow. You may have thought more of its pleasures, of the snow-balls and snow men you could make, and the sledge rides you could take. But its treasures are well worth looking at too.1. The first treasure we shall look at is its beauty.You go to sleep one night in a bleak, dingy world and you wake up next morning to find that the earth has put on its beautiful white winter dress.

Last night the brown earth lay cold and bare, a few dead flowers drooped their withered heads, and the tall trees shivered as they waved their leafless arms. But today all is transformed:—The snow had begun in the gloaming,And busily all the nightHad been heaping field and highwayWith a silence deep and white.Every pine and fir and hemlockWore ermine too dear for an earl,And the poorest twig on the elm-treeWas ridged inch deep with pearl. (J.

Russell Lowell, The First Snowfall.)And not only are the earth and trees and flowers changed, but the ugly walls and houses which man has built have got their share of the beautiful white dress.Then have you ever tried to look at a snowflake through a microscope? If you have you will have seen something very wonderful and beautiful, for each snowflake is made up of numbers of little crystals that take the form of six-pointed stars. Sometimes, when the flakes are very tiny, each one is a single star, but more frequently the little stars join together to make a flake. Nor are these crystals all alike. More than a thousand different varieties have been noticed. Some are quite plain like the spokes of a wheel, but in others the rays of the star are formed of the finest lacework.

Each little snow crystal is like a perfect little flower which God has sent down from His sky-garden.Now I wonder if you ever thought about the trouble God takes to make things beautiful. He need not have made the snowflakes so lovely.

It would have been enough if He had made them useful. But He could not make them otherwise, just because He is God, and God is love; He could not have made them otherwise, because He wanted to give us joy. Everything that God makes is beautiful. He made the flowers, and the trees, and the grass, the moon and the stars, the blue sea, and the everlasting hills. It is man who spoils things and makes them ugly. He digs up the beautiful green fields and plants ugly towns on them, or runs railways through the middle of them, or covers them with heaps of coal refuse.God meant our souls to be beautiful too, but we have allowed sin to spoil them.

Yet they can still be made beautiful if we will give them back into His keeping to mold them.2. The next treasure I want you to look at is the warmth of the snow.Perhaps you think it is a funny thing to call the snow warm.

You could have understood if I had called it cold, because you know how your fingers tingle when you try to make snow-balls. Nevertheless the snow forms a warm blanket for the earth. In the Psalms there is a verse that says, “He giveth snow like wool.” And snow is just like wool because it prevents heat from escaping. When it falls on the earth it helps to keep in the heat that the earth has absorbed during the summer-time.Scientists who have made experiments have found out that under two feet of snow the temperature is forty degrees warmer than above it, and in cold climates farmers depend on the snow to keep the hard frosts off their sown crops. Underneath the snow beautiful flowers have been found growing that would have perished in much milder climates if exposed to the air, and up in the Alps some of the loveliest flowers grow on the edge of the snow-fields.Little snowflakes falling lightly,Little snowflakes falling whitely,Cover up the sleeping flowers,Keep them warm through winter hours.Do you knowWhy the snowIs hurrying through the garden so?Just to spread A nice soft bedFor the sleepy flowers’ head,To cuddle up the baby ferns, and smooth the lily’s sheet,And tuck a warm white blanket down around the roses’ feet.I wonder what the flowers think when the snow comes on the top of them? Perhaps they think it is very hard to be shut away from the light.

But if the snow didn’t come they would never blossom next spring. And I think it is just like that with the hard things we have to endure.

It is the difficulties we overcome and the hardships we bear that make the sweetest and fairest flowers blossom in our characters.3. Another of the treasures of the snow is its power.If you watch it coming down so gently and softly you may think it is one of the weak things of the world, and if you weigh a snowflake on a pair of scales it will not even make the scales tremble. Yet a snowstorm can stop trains, block roads, break telegraph wires, interrupt labor. And up in the mountains avalanches of snow can destroy villages, tear great rocks from their foundations, change the face of a mountain-side.Now sometimes we are tempted to think we can’t be of very much use and can’t do very much good in the world. We are so weak and small, and the world is such a very big place, and we are tempted to give up trying. But remember it is each little snowflake doing its own part that makes for strength, each one falling in its own place without ceasing.

And if the tiny snowflakes that weigh next to nothing can be so powerful, surely we can be of very great value if we put our weight on the right side.4. One more treasure I want you to look at.

It the purity of the snow.Newly fallen snow is the whitest thing in the world. If you take out your handkerchief on a snowy day you know how grey and grimy it looks. But when the snow falls on a city street it does not stay white long. Soon it gets covered with soot, or mixed with mud and turned into slush, and then we get rid of it as quickly as we can by carting it away.Now you remember we noticed that sin spoiled our beauty. Well, there is another thing it does—it soils our whiteness. We are not long in the world before it begins to lay its ugly marks upon us. And those marks will never come off unless we ask God to wash them clean.God can melt the dirty snow in our city streets. He can lift it up into the clouds and turn it again into beautiful white snow.

And He can lift us up too and wash away all our stains and make us “whiter than snow”

Job 38:28

Who Sends The Rain? Hath the rain a father?—Job 38:28.The words of the text sound as if they were a bit out of a fairy tale. Where but in a fairy tale does one hear of such a thing as the rain having a father? You say to yourselves that if every verse in this wonderful Book of Job were like this one you would read it straight through without stopping.As most of you know, the Book of Job was written by an Oriental—that is a person belonging to a country far away to the east—and eastern people have ways of thinking very different from ours. Even the ancient Greeks, who were not Orientals, had a way of putting everything under charge of some god. The air, the winds, and the waters were peopled with spiritual beings, and everything in the natural world was under their control.

Iris was the goddess who brought the beautiful rainbow out of the dark clouds and formed with it a bridge between earth and heaven. Aurora was the goddess by whose power the dawn crimsoned the east and ushered in each new day.Your text is an example of the same thing.

Instead of asking, “Who made the rain?” the writer has put down, “Hath the rain a father?”Little boys and girls are like these people in a certain way. Before they go to school for the first time, they think of nearly everything about them as being alive. The wind is something that is very strong and is often cruel. The moon is a face that keeps laughing all the time. The huge guardian trees of the wood are hoary old men, older than any grandfather. Jack Frost is a funny little man who on cold mornings draws lovely pictures on the windows.But school soon drives away all those ideas. There you learn things about nature. You are very soon able to say, “I know where the rain comes from.

It comes from the clouds, and the clouds come from the sea; it is the sun that raises the vapors from the sea to form the clouds, and these clouds are driven by the winds and attracted by the mountains, and so reach places where they are to send down showers upon the ground. It is all very true, and as I said interesting also; but the more you study the more you want to put the question, “Who superintends everything? Who really does send the rain?”Not that you like it! We in this dim and cloudy country have rather a prejudice against rain. Once a boy had been promised a visit to a farm. He could hardly sleep for joy the night before the promised visit. He thought of all he would see there. There was the stable, and the big horse on which he would get a ride.

There were hens and ducks. There was the ploughman who might take him a drive in his cart, and allow him to hold the reins. But when the morning came, the rain was lashing on the windows. Even before he got up he knew that there was no chance of going to the farm that day, so he cried, and complained that his holiday had been spoilt by the nasty rain. But at the very farm which the little fellow was to visit, his uncle, when he rose and saw the rain falling, rubbed his hands, and was as happy as his young nephew had been the evening before. His land wanted rain, and if it had delayed coming what was growing in the fields would have been ruined.Even when the rain cheats you of a trip to the country don’t forget that it may be a great blessing to the farmer.

A traveler with his guide was on one occasion passing over the range of Carmel when rain began to fall in torrents. The guide threw a large Arab cloak over the traveler, saying, “May God preserve you, while He is blessing the fields.”There is a great English writer who speaks of the cloud that brings the rain as “The Angel of the Sea.” That is a beautiful thought; but this verse gives us one that is even finer.

It is that the God who sends the soft gentle rain, as well as the great dashing rains, is your Father and mine. He takes care of us, and will never really let anything hurt us. His plan for all of us must in the end be kind, for He is too wise to make mistakes and too loving to do anything that is against the real good of His creatures.Soft comes the April rain to bud and flowerAnd tender grass:—the shrinking violetUnharmed receives the gently falling shower,And scarce her petals by its gift are wet:The blue-bell, peeping from the trellised bower,Holds up her tiny goblet to the sky,Till on its rim a dainty pearl is set,Such as the Indies cannot give nor buy:—Hid in the fragrant blossom sits the bee,Secure; the oriole forgets his melody,And trails his scarlet wings, his ebon billUplifting gratefully; and as I look, the hillIs bathed in sunlight; ceased the gentle rain,And bird and bee take up their song again.(Robert F. Roden, in A Garland of Verse, 158.)

Job 38:32

Pointers The Bear with her train.—Job 38:32 We all know a pointer when we see it, don’t we? It is a long slender piece of wood which our teachers use to show us places on the map, or point out words or figures on the blackboard. Yes, but the school pointer is only one kind of pointer, and any of you who think a moment will be able to tell me of many more. There are, for instance, the signposts at the cross-roads with their long outstretched arms pointing to the different roads; there is the pointed hand with the sticking-out first finger which shows the way to any special place or object; there is the weathercock on the steeple which points in the direction from which the wind blows; there are the hands of the clock which point to the hours and the minutes; and last, but not least, there is the magnetic needle of the compass which always points to the north.Well, the pointers of which we are going to speak this morning are older than any of these pointers. The chances are that they are older than the world itself. For thousands, perhaps millions, of years they have pointed steadily to the same object, and for thousands of years to come they will point to it still.They are such important pointers that they each have a name.

These names sound rather odd, but here they are, and this is how you spell them! D-u-b-h-e, Dubhe; and M-e-r-a-k, Merak.

Have you guessed them yet? Though you may not know them by their names you know them well by sight. You must have noticed them many times shining up in the sky, for they are the two stars in the blade of the “Plough” which always point to the Pole Star. They are the compass of the sky.You know what the “Plough” is like. It is a cluster of seven stars. Three of them form the handle of the plough, and four form the blade.

The two which form the front part of the blade farthest away from the handle are our friends with the strange names.Now the “Plough” is part of a constellation or cluster of stars known as the “Great Bear.” The three handle stars are the Bear’s tail, and the four blade stars are part of the Bear’s body. You may have seen pictures of the various groups of stars showing the people and animals they were supposed to resemble.

From these they received their names. As far as we know it was the Chaldeans, five thousand years ago, who first named and studied the stars. At any rate by the time of Job this particular cluster was known as the “Bear,” and when our text speaks of God guiding “the Bear with her train” it just means that God guides the stars that form that constellation—the train being the tail stars.Different nations have given the “Great Bear” different names, according to the pictures they fancied it formed. The Greeks called it “a chariot”; and the ancient Gauls named it “Arthur’s Chariot”; while our own forefathers spoke of it as the “Churl’s Wain” —that is to say, the peasant’s waggon, now corrupted into “Charles’ Wain.” The Americans call it the “Dipper,” because they think that the part we know as the “Plough” is shaped like a ladle—and so it is.But the “Great Bear” is not the only bear. There is a “Little Bear” as well; and the bright star in the very tip of the “Little Bear’s” tail is to the sailor or the traveler the most important star in all the sky, for it shines always in the north, and from it they can find their way. Indeed, before the compass was invented the stars were all that men had to guide them.

By studying the map of the sky they found their way on the map of the world.We have got rather far away from our friends Dubhe and Merak, but now we are coming back to them. The marvelous thing about them is that though the “Great Bear” changes its place and circles round the Pole Star, these pointers, no matter where they may be, always point straight to the Pole Star.

Other stars and other constellations may come and go, but if the sky is clear and the stars are shining, there you will see the North Star and its faithful pointers.Now, I wonder how you would like to be a pointer star? It sounds a far-away sort of business, doesn’t it? and a cold one too on a frosty winter night! But there is no need for you to climb up into the sky in order to be a pointer. You can be a pointer here on earth; and you can point to a star more splendid than any that ever shone in the heavens. You can point to the Star of all the worlds, Christ Himself.You remember that when Christ came a beautiful star appeared and stood over the inn at Bethlehem; but the Baby that lay in the manger was greater than the star that shone over Him. He was the Star of stars, the Star that was to bring peace and hope and love into this dark world.

And we older people and you boys and girls can be pointers to that Star. With God’s help we can always keep true and faithful to Christ.

We can live and love and work and pray, so that looking at us the world will say, “There is one who points us to Christ.”