The Sight of Iniquity
(No. 2711)
A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY JANUARY 27, 1901.
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT NEW PARK STREET CHAPEL, SOUTHWARK, ON A THURSDAY EVENING, DURING THE
WINTER OF 1858-9.
"Why do You show me iniquity, and cause me to behold grievance?"
Habakkuk 1:3.
IN this discourse, it will be my endeavor to assign some reasons why
God causes His people to see iniquity in themselves and in others
I. We wi1l begin with the first part and enquire, WHY DOES GOD CAUSE US
TO SEE INIQUITY IN OURSELVES? What is the reason of the discoveries
which the Holy Spirit sometimes makes to us, of the evil of our hearts?
It is well known, to all who love the Lord, that there are seasons when
the Holy Spirit takes us into the darkest chambers of our being and
there reveals to us evils which, perhaps, we had never suspected. "Son
of man," He says, "I will show you what great abominations there are
within you." He lays bare the loathsome kennel of the human heart and
lets us look at all our deformity and depravity. He takes us to the
rock from where we were hewn and to the hole of the pit from where we
were dug. He bids us look with horror upon our natural state and see
that awful and hideous corruption that still remains in our
hearts–even though we have been regenerated by Him. Why does He do
this? We will answer the question in several ways.
Sometimes, He does it to confirm us in the Doctrines of Grace. My
Brothers and Sisters, Arminianism is the natural religion of us all. I
think one of the surest ways in the world to put down all our
self-sufficiency and all our erroneous views of the Gospel is for God,
the Holy Spirit, to show us our own depravity. A man may talk glibly
concerning free will as long as he knows nothing about himself–but
when the Lord has shown him what he is by nature, he will say no more
about that matter. Or if he talks about it as a mere theory, he will
not believe it in his inmost spirit. A man untaught of the Spirit says
that sinners, of their own free will, turn to God. He says that they
do, by their own strength, at least to a great degree, though assisted
by the Holy Spirit, keep themselves and that, to some extent, their
final perseverance is dependent on their own diligence, and is not left
entirely in the hands of God.
But I am sure that if the Spirit takes him into the secret chambers of
his heart and lets him see his own iniquity, he may go on talking about
his own free will, but he will come out singing of God's Free Grace,
for he will say, "O Lord, if You had not begun the good work in me, it
never could have originated in such a filthy pool as my heart! And if
You do not carry on the work from first to last, it will soon come to a
standstill. If I am not robed in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus
Christ, I must stand naked before Your bar. And if the work is not
entirely Your own or if You are to be turned away by any sin or
sinfulness in the creature, then, O Lord, I know I must perish!" And
this right view of the subject will drive him to believe in
discriminating Grace, in irresistible vocation, in Omnipotent keeping
and in the Infallible perseverance of all the Children of God!
It is noteworthy how the belief of one of the Doctrines of Grace
naturally leads to the belief of all the rest. The system of the Gospel
is so logical, its Truths fit so well into one another, that you cannot
get a right knowledge of one of them without, at once, or in a very
short time, discovering the others! The Lord begins by teaching us His
foundation Truth of our utter depravity–He burns it into our
conscience by bitter experience and by terrible discoveries of our
sinfulness– and He knows right well that the other doctrines will
follow and that, when this Truth is really understood by us, it shall
not be long before we have orthodox views of the whole Covenant of
Grace and the great system of the Gospel of Jesus.
This, I think, is one reason why the Lord gives His people revelations
of their own iniquity and defilement, that they may be sound in the
faith and may believe nothing but the Doctrines of Grace.
Moreover, I believe that He does this to keep them humble. If our
Master did not sometimes let us have a look at ourselves, we would be
fearfully proud. The old Puritans used to say that God has given the
peacock black feet, that he may not be proud of his bright feathers and
that, in like manner, he has allowed His people to have the black feet
of their own sinfulness, that they may not glory in any of the Graces
which God the Holy Spirit has given them. And that while they have
those Graces, so bright and beautiful, they may still look down on
their own natural depravity, and humble themselves before God. We are
all, by nature, as proud as Lucifer. If any man thinks himself to be
incapable of pride, he is very proud, indeed. "Ah," says one, "I know I
can never be flattered." But, Sir, you flatter yourself to an
extraordinary degree when you say that! Pride is natural to us all–it
is woven into the warp and woof of our being. We shall never get rid of
it till the worm has eaten up our flesh–nothing will ever cover up our
pride except our winding-sheets–and when our bodies are wrapped up in
them, and our souls are caught up to dwell with God, then, but not till
then, shall pride be thoroughly cast out of us! Our communion with
Christ, our progress towards Heaven, our increased knowledge, our good
works–al1 these things have, through the evil heart of our unbelief, a
tendency to puff us up, though, in truth, being all given to us by the
Spirit, there is no legitimate cause for pride in any of us! And
therefore, God, to keep His people in their right place, humbles them
with discoveries of their own sinfulness. If their ships had all sail
and no ballast, they would soon be wrecked. So, when God fills His
people with abundant revelations, He also sends them a thorn in the
flesh–the messenger of Satan is sent to buffet them that they may walk
humbly with God and bow their heads in submission before Him–knowing
themselves to still be unclean, apart from the work of Christ Jesus
their Lord, which He has worked out for them.
Beloved, you can bear me witness that when you have had sad discoveries
of your own heinous guilt, you have been deeply humbled. Sometimes your
good works have been a great evil to you because you have prided
yourself upon them, and so brought yourself to the edge of the
precipice of presumption. But manifestations of your guilt, brought
home to your conscience by God's Spirit, have been of essential service
to you by teaching you not to be high-minded, but rather to fear and to
remember that your standing in Grace is not of yourself and, therefore,
you must not boast. That is another good reason, if there were no
other, why we may bless God for showing us our own iniquity.
A third reason why God sometimes shows His people their own wickedness
is to make them submissive in the hour of trouble. A Pharisee, of all
people in the world, would be the worst man to be in Job's position. If
I must be in a hospital, I would rather be there as a publican, than as
a Pharisee. For a Pharisee, nothing would be good enough–he would
think his pangs and miseries were great, indeed, for so righteous a man
to have to endure! He would think he had no right to suffer. But the
poor publican would say, "I am a great sinner and these miseries are
not a millionth part of what I deserve to suffer. These aches and pains
are nothing compared with what I merit at the hand of God. Therefore I
will bear them all with submission. Why should a living man complain? I
am still out of Hell and, therefore, I must not murmur."
Ah, Brothers and Sisters, we have a great difficulty to keep murmuring
down! There is very much meaning in that old English word, murmur. Just
sound it–it is mur-mer. Any child can say that! It is one of the
easiest words to speak and that is why, I think, we have that word for
complaining and grumbling, because murmuring is such a very easy thing.
Anyone can murmur, anyone can grumble, anyone can complain. Murmuring
seems to have been bred in the bones of the children of Israel, for, in
the wilderness, they were almost always murmuring–murmuring for water
when they were thirsty, murmuring for bread, then murmuring for meat,
murmuring because the Anakims were tal1–murmuring first, for one
thing, and then for another! They were always at it. They were
continually murmuring for 40 long years in the wilderness.
Yes, and many of us are all too apt to imitate them. But the surest way
to cure us of murmuring is to let us know our own evil. A man who has
been taught to realize his own wickedness and his own evil disposition
will be less likely to murmur than anyone else. The poor wretch who has
had the rope round his neck and has been ready to be hanged, when he
gets his pardon and goes his way–you will not find him murmuring at
the fare that is provided for him! He will say, "Oh, it is such a
wonder to me to be alive at all! It is such an act of mercy that I have
had my life spared, that this dry bread becomes like royal dainties,
and this cup of cold water tastes to me like the richest wine might do
to another man."
The Lord thus often take His children into the stripping-room and into
the starving-room, and lets them see that all their afflictions are
less than they deserve–that their troubles are but as the small dust
of the balance compared with the mountains of tribulation and anguish
which they deserve to have received in Hell!
Again, when the Lord reveals to us our iniquity, it is to put us on our
watchtower. When He shows us the sin that is in our heart, it is like a
captain pointing to a few skirmishers who have just come before an army
that is advancing. "There, my men," says the captain, "you see those
soldiers–they are the advance guard of the enemy. Look sharply after
them, for there is a great army behind them, so be on your watch." Thus
the Holy Spirit points out to us our evil desires and corruptions. He
wakes us up to see them and when we have seen them, he says to us,
"Take care! This little that I have shown you is to warn you of a great
army that is behind. These few evil ones that have just appeared to
your vision are but the outriders of a host of black things that are
ready to attack you, so, be always upon your watchtower, be constantly
looking out for foes." I think that soldiers need to have a few alarms
on their march. If they had none, they might become careless and relax
discipline–and then they might be enticed into a defeat–be surprised
and cut off. But when they have a few enemies to harass them on the
flank and rear, they are more likely to be watchful and to keep a sharp
look-out, so that, in case of a sudden attack, they would be ready to
repel the foe. The absence of enemies is apt to breed a slothfulness
which disables–times of ease seldom suit God's soldiers. Holidays
ruined the army of Hannibal and it is for our good that God stirs up
the Amalekites to make us ready for the battle lest we should be
surprised by even worse adversaries!
I will give only one more answer to this first question and then I will
pass to the other point. The Lord often shows us our iniquity to make
us value salvation all the more. You know that the man who thinks the
most of a doctor is generally the man who needs him most. When we are
well, we often make jokes concerning doctors–we talk about their
killing the people and so on–but when we get ill, we send for them! We
laugh at them while in health, but we are glad to make use of them when
sick. So it is with the Lord's people–they may, perhaps, think lightly
of Christ when they do not see or feel any present need for Him–but
when they discover their own leprosy, then it is that they value the
Great Physician! When they realize their own ruin, then it is that they
prize the God-given remedy. It is a great service to us, sometimes, to
show us our bankrupt schedule. Every man has had a bankrupt's schedule
because we are all bankrupts by nature. We set up in trade for
ourselves and we soon became bankrupts. We never paid even a farthing
in the pound, but our Lord Jesus Christ paid it all for us–yet we
would not know how great was His Grace in doing so, did He not remind
us of our debts and of how very poor we are in our own hopes of meeting
debts so immense, so infinitely beyond all our powers to discharge.
God says to His children, "I brought you out of prison, but you do not
think much of My deliverance, today, so I will take you back to prison
and let you see once more what kind of place it is. And then you will
think more of the Breaker who broke your chains and set you free. I
have opened a fountain that sparkles with Living Water. You have been
drinking of it day by day till you are full, but you do not know its
value. Come, I will put you in the hot, howling wilderness and you
shall feel the pangs of thirst–you shall have all the water in your
bottle spent–then you will know the preciousness of the rippling
Fountain which Grace has opened for thirsty sinners! You have been
feasting every day at My table. You have scarcely known what hunger is.
I will put you, again, in the desert of conviction and make you hunger
after righteousness–and then you will prize the bread that came down
from Heaven, and think more of Jesus Christ, My Son, than you would
have done had it not been for this showing of iniquity and grievance."
All these things of which I have spoken are matters of heart experience
to all true Believers. Many persons do not know the plague of their
heart. But you who love the Lord will acknowledge that however quaintly
I have put these things, there is great truth in them. It is even
so–we have had very solemn times, all of us who believe in
Jesus–since we first knew the Lord. There have been times when we
could not tell our right hand from our left in spiritual matters. If
anyone had asked us, "Are you the Lord's?" we dared not have answered,
"Yes, we are," for our corruptions were so strong, and unbelief had
become so rampant, and poor faith seemed to be so slumbering, like the
fire in the ashes, that we could not tell whether there was any fire or
not!
O Brothers and Sisters, do we not remember when we have sometimes knelt
down in anguish, and cried, "O Lord, I long to have this point decided,
"am I Yours, or am I not? If it is so, why am I thus? Why this
wrestling of two armies in the Shulamite? Why is it that these
contentions and these wars are carried on in my spirit? Show me why You
contend
with me, and why my sin contends with me! O Lord, show me where I am
vile"? And have we not found that these times of sore conflict have
been of essential benefit to us? We have grown strong by these griefs!
The sight of iniquity has made us wiser, more cautious, more prudent,
more humble, more affectionate–and made us more firm in our belief in
our Savior than we had ever been before!
II. Now I will try to answer the question of the text in another sense.
"Why do You show me iniquity, and cause me to behold grievance?"
Sometimes, the iniquity and grievance are not in ourselves but IN
OTHERS. Some of you may not have much of this world's goods. You,
perhaps, live in a house where there are very ungodly people–down in
your court the Sabbath is always broken. In the street where you
reside, you seldom hear anything on the Sabbath except oaths, curses,
profanity and everything which constitutes a breach of the day of rest.
And others of you, by your very connections, are called to mix with
evil companions whose speech, instead of being seasoned with salt,
seems seasoned with brimstone, flavored only with blasphemy and having
perpetually in it the very brogue of Hell! There are some of you who
are called to labor with workmen who, instead of endeavoring to help
you to Heaven, seem trying, like Christian's neighbors and wife, of
whom you read in, " The Pilgrim's Progress," to pull you back to the
City of Destruction. You are, perhaps, asking this question, "O Lord,
why am I in such a condition? Why has Your Providence put me where I am
thrown into contact with evil men? 'Why do You show me iniquity, and
cause me to behold grievance?'" I will tell you three or four reasons
why the Lord acts thus towards you.
The first is, to let you see what you might, yourselves, have been.
John Bradford–you have probably heard the story a hundred times–when
he used to see people going past his window, on the way to Tyburn, to
be hanged, said, "There goes John Bradford, but for the Grace of God.
If it had not been for the Grace of God, John Bradford, too, would have
been hanged." When you hear men swearing, you can say, "That is what I
would have done if the Lord had not kept the door of my lips." When you
see men taken up for robbery, you can say, "That is what I might have
been if God had not kept me from sin." When you hear of the drunken
brawl or the murderous affray, put your hand on your heart and say,
"Ah, the same sort of evils might have come out of this heart of mine,
for human hearts are very much alike. 'As in water face answers to
face, so the heart of man to man.' There is not much difference, by
nature, between one heart and another, so that man is a picture of what
I might have been if the restraining hand of God had not kept me back
from sin."
You know that, sometimes, drunks help to make men sober. Occasionally,
drunks are good Apostles of temperance, for, when they come reeling
through the streets, in all their bestial stupidity, a man very
naturally says, "What a fool that fellow makes of himself!" And it
leads him to say, "I must avoid that evil thing because I would not
make myself so foolish as he is." I think it was the old Greek lords
who used to make their slaves drunk in order to keep their children
from the vice–by letting them see how disgraceful a drunk looked.
Thus, perhaps, God allows wicked men to come in our way to make us see
the evil of sin, that we may turn from it, pass by it, abhor it and not
indulge in it I have no doubt that the wickedness of men may be
employed under the Divine Wisdom and the overruling hand of God for the
sanctification of His own people. Just as sometimes a book that is full
of bad spelling is one of the best things for teaching a child how to
spell well–by leading him to correct the mistakes in spelling–so the
Lord permits us to see this other kind of bad spe1ling in order to
teach us how to spell aright. We have to correct ourselves by the evils
of others and to learn from their wrong-doing to avoid the sins into
which they have fallen. Wrecks may sometimes be made into beacons–the
ruin of one man may be a warning to another. It is so with the
Christian, for he knows how to use his sight of iniquity and of
grievance, as he beholds it in others, as a reason for avoiding the
same iniquity in himself.
In the next place, God sometimes al1ows us to see the sins of others,
to teach us to admire His Sovereignty which plucked us as brands from
the burning. We look at our neighbors and see them drinking down sin as
a greedy ox drinks down water, and we say, "What has made us to differ
from them?" Grace–Free Grace. And then we ask, "Why has Grace come to
us, and not to them? Why have these favors been given to us, and not to
the rest of mankind?" And we are obliged to say, with Christ, "Even so,
Father: for so it seemed good in Your sight." When only one member of a
family is converted, what a proof that is of Divine Sovereignty! When
there is a holy mother with an ungodly husband, and wicked children,
what an illustration that is of the Sovereignty of God, in that one is
taken, and the others are left! And
when, in a house, two women have been grinding at the mill, and one has
accompanied her grinding with the songs of Zion, and the other has
accompanied hers with the voice of cursing, what a proof there has been
of the Sovereignty of God who, "has mercy on whom He will have mercy,"
for, "it is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God
that shows mercy."
Yes, Christian, God has put you in the very midst of sin to make His
Grace the more conspicuous. If you ride in the country and you see a
field of wheat, you will very likely not notice one of the ears at all.
But as you are going along, you see a hedge and, by some chance or
other, a grain of wheat has been dropped into the ground under the
hedge–and from it a single ear of corn has grown up through the
brambles–and there it stands alone. Very likely you nudge your friend
who is riding with you, and say, "There is an ear of wheat growing up
among the rambles." It seems the more astonishing and notable from the
place where it is growing! So, I think a Christian in the Church of
Christ is not a thing to be wondered at so much. The Sovereignty of God
is not so much seen among the righteous by themselves as it is when we
find the Christians growing up amid the bushes and brambles of an
ungodly world–and proving themselves to be "blameless and harmless,
the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse
nation."
Whoever noticed glowworms in the daytime? But, in the night, you will
see them shining among the leaves! They were there by day, I daresay,
but nobody saw them! But in the night, with their little lamps glowing,
everyone admires them. So the Christian, when he is in good company, is
a blessed man and great instance of Divine Love–but when, in the order
of Providence, he is put into a dark place where there is little of
Gospel Light and Truth–then it is that his lamp begins to be most
useful and he is more noticed than he ever was before. This is why the
Lord sometimes puts His people there, to make His Sovereignty, His
power, His might and His Grace the more apparent. Even as men sometimes
set jewels in foils to show their brightness and put dark spots in
their picture to make the lights more apparent, so the Lord, in His
Providence, permits His people, sometimes, to sojourn in evil places.
Like Lot, to dwell in Sodom, and like Abraham, to go down among the
Egyptians, or with the Philistines, in order that Divine Grace may be
displayed–and the Lord's name may be exalted!
I have another answer and, I think, a better one, to the question of
the text–"Why do You show me iniquity, and cause me to behold
grievance?" Why, my Brothers and Sisters, God shows us the sin of our
fellow men, that we may set more earnestly to work, and that we may be
the means of saving souls and extending the Kingdom of Righteousness.
When a captain takes his soldiers out to look at the enemy, it is like
what I heard of a celebrated Scotchman, whose words I am scarcely able
to pronounce correctly. "Now, lads," he said, "there they are! If you
dinna kill them, they'll kill you." That was their choice and so it is
with us. God brings us to walk in this city, where harlotry and vice
are to be seen on every side, almost at noonday. Now then, soldiers of
the Cross, if you dinna kill them, they'll kill you. If you do not
stand up for your Master and keep the banner of the Cross in the air,
the enemy will be more than a match for you! I have been struck,
sometimes, when I have looked in a window, and seen pamphlets full of
all manner of obscenity and infidelity and wickedness–and they have
had the most blessed effect upon my mind, for I have thought–"Well, if
there is so much wickedness, so much the more reason is there why every
minister should be in earnest, and why every Christian should seek with
all his might to do good."
Some of you live in very nice villas in the country. You do not go
among the poor people and you do not know what they are like. If you
were to walk through some of the back slums and narrow alleys of
London, you would say, "Oh, I never thought there could have been such
places upon Earth!" And if you could go where I have sometimes gone, up
an old creaking staircase where you have to stoop your head for fear of
hitting it against a beam. And go into a room and see a whole family
there. And go into another room and see a whole family there–and go a
little further and see another family all crowded and packed
together–and then hear their language and see their utter ignorance of
everything concerning Christ, almost as unenlightened as the Hottentots
in their kraals in Africa–you would go away after seeing them, and
say, "There is great reason that we should all be in earnest. We ought
to be up and doing, Sirs. We ought to be working well for our Master
after such a sight as this!"
Oh, but instead we cover up our iniquity in this land a great deal! We
border all London with fine streets so that when a foreigner rides
through them, he says, "What a grand city it is!" A varnished
hypocrisy! What is there behind those streets? What will you find
behind those palaces at the West-End? The very lowest places upon
earth, where the poor are stowed away together by hundreds! We border
the city with something that looks respectable, but, alas, for the
internals of this city–how much of wickedness and sin dwell there! I
bless God that there are some of you who are obliged to live where you
see the wickedness of this city. I thank God that some of you cannot go
to your houses at night without seeing wickedness on the road. "Why,"
you ask, "do you bless God that there is this wickedness?" No, I do
not, but I bless God that you have to see it, because you will be the
people who will go to others and say, "Strive for the salvation of men.
Work, I beseech you, to do good, because the world is still full of
wickedness and the dark places even of this city are full of the
habitations of cruelty."
It is a long time since I have made a good speech at a public meeting,
but I do remember doing it once. I stepped out as one of the speakers
was delivering a very pretty oration, and I went into a neighboring
house to speak with a woman who wished to join the church. It was not
in London. When I entered the house, there was the husband horribly
drunk. He had got his wife up in a corner and, with all his might, was
trying to beat and bruise her–he was even tearing her arms with his
nails till the blood freely flowed from her arms and face. Two or three
friends rushed in and dragged him away. She said she had endeavored, in
all meekness, to persuade him to allow her to go to the House of God
that night, and the only reason why he treated her so badly was because
he said she would be always going to that place of worship.
And when I had seen that sight and looked on the poor, bleeding woman,
with tears in her eyes, I went back into the place and spoke like a man
who had got his heart and his whole body full of fire! I could not help
it–I was all on flame against the sin of drunkenness and sought, with
all my might, to urge the members of the Church to do all they could to
scatter the Light of the Gospel in a neighborhood which was so dark and
black and filthy and abandoned. And I think it would do all of us good,
when we are about to preach, if we were, sometimes, to be dragged
through some of the worst parts of London–to let us see the wickedness
of it. It would do our Sunday school teachers good, many of them, for
they would then be more in earnest with their children. And I think it
would do good to some of our old friends who sit and sleep through
almost all the service and are never much more than sleeping partners
in the concern! If they did but know how the battle was going on–how
tough the struggle and how stern the conflict–they would wake up from
their slumbers and go forth to the battle! And they would stand
shoulder to shoulder and deal blow after blow against the common enemy
of our Lord Jesus Christ and of the welfare of man!
Ah, my Brothers and Sisters, we need to know more of the evil of men,
to make us more earnest in seeking their salvation! For if there is
anything in which the Church is lacking more than in any other matter,
it is in the matter of earnestness. Whitefield said, in one of his
sermons "O my God, when I think how this wicked city is perishing, and
how many are dying for lack of knowledge, I feel as if I could stand on
the top of every hackney coach in the streets of London to preach the
Gospel." Why did he say that? Why was his zeal so burning? Because he
had seen the sinfulness of men and marked their follies. We shall never
be thoroughly in earnest till we are thoroughly aware of the evil that
is before us. When the horse sees the precipice, he throws himself back
and will not madly dash himself down. So is it with the Church of
Christ–if she could see the evil that is before her, she would surely
draw herself back, with energy, to save her own children from plunging
into the yawning gulf!
Yes, Sirs, you have iniquity in your very midst and at your doors! You
have iniquity everywhere round about you and yet, how few of you are
striving to do anything for Christ! You are asked to help in this great
battle, but you have so many other things to do, you cannot help us.
You are asked to do something in this cause, to give it a little of
your time–but you cannot manage it. You are asked to speak, but you
have so little ability, you cannot do it. One half of the people who
call themselves Christians need to be asked 50 times to do a thing and
then, when they agree to do it, they are not worth having, because they
are only pressed men–they are not one half so good as volunteers! I
would that all of us knew the evil state of this world and the
wickedness of men–and then I think that all of us who love the Savior
would start up from our seats and each one would say, "Here am I! Let
me be a volunteer against the enemy! Let me, in my measure, whatever
little measure that may be, go forth to serve my God, to practice
virtue and, by a holy example and by every other means, seek to stem
the raging torrent of the iniquity of the age."
Now, my dear Friends, in closing, allow me just this one remark to
another class of hearers. There is one who, but a little while ago, was
an abandoned sinner. He could drink, he could swear, he could break the
Sabbath and curse God. One day he stepped into the House of God and the
Lord met with him, and now he is in misery–such as he cannot describe.
His heart is all broken, his conscience is as if it had been lashed
with the tenfold whip of the Law of God and as if salt had then been
rubbed into his wounds. He is smarting all over with the wounds of his
conscience, inflicted by the
angry and fiery Law of God. He is crying, in his agony, "O Lord, I must
perish, I know I must! I see such wickedness in my soul, that I must
perish and be cast away." No, poor Soul, no–that is not the right
answer to the question of the
text!
The question is, Why does the Lord show you iniquity? I will give you
the right answer. It is in order that He may deliver you from it If God
has broken your heart, He has broken it on purpose to give you a new
one. If He has killed you by the Law, He has killed you on purpose to
make you alive by the Gospel. If He has wounded you in your conscience,
He has done it that He may have room to pour in the oil and the balm of
Christ Jesus. If He has stripped you, He has only pulled off your rags
that He may put on you a perfect robe of spotless righteousness. And if
He has cast you into the ditch, so that your own clothes abhor you, as
Job words it, it is that He may take you to the Fountain filled with
blood and give you a perfect washing!
When the Lord pulls a man down, He does it in order that He may build
him up again! When He breaks a man's heart, it is not for the mere
breaking's sake–it is that He may make it anew! If you have misery in
your conscience on account of sin, God has had dealings of love with
you and He has purposes of love concerning you. "Believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved." If you are a convinced sinner,
Jesus died for you, for He died for sinners. If you can truly say that
you are a sinner, I can tell you that Christ Jesus hung upon the Cross
for you. Look at Him there, bleeding–every drop of blood says to you,
"I drop, poor Sinner, for you." Look at that gash in His side, from
where flows the double stream of water and blood–it say, "Sinner, this
stream runs for you." Are you a sinner? If so, Christ died for you and
He has not died in vain–you shall be saved. If you do but know
yourself to be a bona fide sinner, a real one, no mere complimentary
sham sinner, but a real actual one who means what he says, when he
declares himself to be guilty and vile–then, as the Lord lives, Jesus
Christ died for you on Calvary! You shall behold His face with joy! You
shall be numbered with the Church of the first-born, whose names are
written in Heaven, and you shall sing eternal hallelujahs around the
Throne of God and the Lamb!
EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: JOB 1:1-5.
Verse 1. There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and
that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed
evil. That was Job's character before the trial which made him famous.
Perhaps if it had not been for that trial we would never have heard of
him. Now, as the Apostle James wrote, "You have heard of the patience
of Job." God, by great afflictions, gave to His servant that usefulness
for which he had possibly prayed, without knowing how it would come to
him. A long-continued life of prosperity may not so truly glorify God
as a life that is checkered by adversity. And God, who intended to put
honor upon His servant, did as kings do when they confer the honor of
knighthood–they strike with the back or flat of the sword–so God
smote the Patriarch Job that He might raise him above his fellow men.
The Lord intended to make him Job, the Patient One, but to that end He
must make him Job the Sufferer.
From this Book I learn what Gospel perfection is. We are told that Job
was perfect and upright, yet I am sure that he was not free from
tendencies to evil–he was not absolutely perfect. As old Master Trapp
says, "God's people may be perfect, but they are not perfectly
perfect." And so it certainly was with Job. There were imperfections
deep down in his character which his trials developed and which the
Grace of God, no doubt, afterwards removed. But after the manner of
speech that is used in Holy Scripture, Job was a "perfect" man. He was
sincere, thorough-hearted, consecrated, and he was also "upright." He
leaned neither this way nor that way–he had no twist in him, he had no
selfish ends to serve. He was "one that feared God." Everybody could
see that and, consequently, he hated evil with all his heart.
2. And there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters. I t was
a great privilege to have such a family as this, but it brought to Job
great responsibilities and many anxieties.
3. His substance also was seven thousand sheep, and three thousand
camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses, and
a very great household; so that this man was the greatest of all the
men of the east. A man may be a good man and a rich man, but it is not
usually the case. I am afraid that what Mr. Bunyan says is all too
true–
"Gold and the Gospel seldom agree–
Religion always sides with poverty."
Yet it should not be so, for God can give a man Grace enough to use all
his substance to his Lord's Glory. I wish that it were more often the
case that we could see a holy Job as well as a godly Lazarus–a company
of men who would prove their consecration to God by never allowing
their wealth to become their master–but being master of all their
substance and realizing constantly that it is all the Lord's. This,
after all, is the noblest heritage a man has with the exception of his
God. Job, in adversity, could possess his soul in patience because, in
his prosperity, he had not let his riches possess him, but he had
possessed them.
4. And his sons went and feasted in their houses, everyone his day; and
sent and called for their three sisters to eat and to drink with them.
This showed that it was not drunken riotousness, or they would not have
wanted their sisters– the sweet, gentle, delicate influence of their
sisters would tend to keep their feasting what it should be. Besides,
they were the sons of a man of God and so they would know how to keep
their feasting within due bounds. Yet we are all mortal and
fallible–and feasting times are dangerous times. The Puritans used to
call fasting, "soul-fattening fasting"–but feasting they might call
"soul-weakening feasting." Solomon truly said, "It is better to go to
the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting." There is
always a risk about feasting and Job was, therefore, a little afraid
about how his sons might have behaved.
5. And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that
Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and
offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all, for Job
said, It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their
hearts, Thus did Job continually. They might have spoken unadvisedly
with their lips. They might have even taken God's name in vain. There
might have been something about their conduct which was not altogether
proper–so their father desired to put the sin of it away. Observe
Job's resort to burnt offerings. He lived before the Jewish law was
given, yet he felt the instinct concerning the need of a sacrifice
which every believing heart feels when it approaches the holy God. I
pray you never give up that idea of coming to God by means of a
sacrifice, for there is no other way of access. We may think as we
will, but there is nothing else that will ever quiet the conscience and
bring us near to God, but the Divinely-appointed Sacrifice. And Job
knew this. He did not think that his sons could be cleansed by his
prayers, alone, but he must offer burnt sacrifices according to the
number of them all, that they might, each one, have a share in the
blessings which those sacrifices typified.