Washed to Greater Foulness
A Sermon
(No. 1908)
Delivered by
C. H. SPURGEON,
At [9]the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
"If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean;
yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor
me."–Job 9:30, 31.
I FEEL certain that I am sent on a special errand at this time.
Before my mind's eye I see a soul whose awful reflections are hurrying
him to despair. He refuses counsel, and will not listen to direction,
for dread has made him desperate. I would have a word in the ear of
that worried and wearied one. See ye not the man? He has battled long
against a dark temptation, but at last he is beaten. He feels that he
can hold out no longer. He can scarcely take breath; the air grows hot
and stifling around him, as he faces the question–what next?
Accustomed as I am to look down on these crowded aisles and up at these
closely-packed galleries, I feel a strange curiosity as I gaze into the
mass; for I know that there is one man among all of you to whom I have
a private message. I carry despatches from the King of kings to one who
is grievously troubled, and is become as a woman forsaken and despised.
My Lord and Master described himself in parable as leaving the
ninety-and-nine to seek for one lost sheep: I must now copy his
example. You will not grudge me for this service, I am sure. I quit the
throng that I may find the bewildered one, and bring him safe and sound
to the fold.
Turning to my text, let me say, that as one is startled by a shriek, or
saddened by a groan, so these sharp utterances of Job astonish us at
first, and then awake our pity. How much are we troubled with brotherly
compassion as we read the words,–"If I wash myself with snow water,
and make my hands never so clean; yet shalt thou plunge me in the
ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me!" The sense of misery
couched in this passage baffles description. Yet this is but one of a
series, in which sentence after sentence reveals a fresh chamber of
horrors. The similitudes of grief are here piled up in heaps, with what
an old author has spoken of as the "rhetoric of sorrow." Physical
sufferings had produced a strain on Job's mind, and he sought relief by
expressing his anguish. Like some solitary prisoner in the gloomy keep
of an old castle, he graves on the walls pictures of the abject
despondencies which haunt him. His afflictions are aggravated by vain
efforts to alleviate them: he wounds his hand with the rough hammer and
nail with which he is engraving his griefs. Of such tortures many of us
have had a taste.
From my experience, as a patient myself, smitten down with
soul-sickness; and from my observation as a pastor, into whose ears the
woes of awakened sinners are constantly poured, I have somewhat learned
to understand the imagery of Job. The sufferer is in double straits.
While he is tossed about by Satan, his friends are discharging their
arrows at him, and the Almighty troubleth him. To help such a sufferer
we must be careful to distinguish between the causes of his sorrow, and
divide between his affliction itself and the further sorrows which he
has brought upon himself by his unwise efforts to escape from it.
Such, then, is the line of thought we will pursue. I shall make four
divisions; three of them are to be found in the text, and the fourth
will follow on, as an important consequence. First, we shall notice
that a quickened soul becomes conscious of guilt; secondly, the soul
that is quickened makes ineffectual attempts to rid itself of the stain
of guilt; thirdly, to deter his people from self-righteousness it
pleases God to plunge deeper into the mire those who attempt to cleanse
themselves; the fourth point is, that only by severe training are men
led to look alone to God for salvation,–it needs omnipotence to teach
us that salvation is of the Lord.
I. At the outset, then, we observe that QUICKENED SOULS ARE CONSCIOUS
OF GUILT. They see it; they know it; they feel it; and they blush to
find that they are without excuse for it. All men are sinners: to most
men, however, sin appears to be a fashion or the times, a necessity of
nature, a folly of youth, or an infirmity of age, which a slight
apology will suffice to remove. You will scarcely meet with an
Englishman who will not acknowledge that he is a sinner. Is it not the
General Confession stereotyped in the book of Common Prayer? But it is
one thing to call yourself a sinner, and quite another thing to feel
it. I have heard of a lady who owned to her minister that she was a
great sinner. He questioned her kindly as to which of the ten commands
she had broken. Beginning with the first, he asked her, "Did you ever
break this?" to which enquiry she indignantly answered, "No." In like
manner he dealt with the second, and right through the whole ten. She
professed in detail to have observed each one, and yet pretended to
confess that she had broken them all. By such equivocations multitudes
of men and women deceive themselves; and it is unhappily the custom of
many a preacher to address his congregation as if they were all good
people, and every one of them knew the Lord, from the least even to the
greatest. This is pleasing to the flesh, and clattering to pride; but
it is most pernicious. How many are being deceived by this want of
marking a difference where a vital difference exists!
Not till men are quickened by divine grace do they truly know that they
are sinners. How is this? Some diseases are so insidious that the
sufferers fancy that they are getting better, while in very truth they
are hastening to the grave. After such manner does sin deceive the sons
of men: they think they are saved when they are still unrenewed. How
often have I seen a poor girl, whose pale face, sunken eyes, shadowy
hand, and languid step have clearly betokened that she was on the brink
of death, yet she mistook the flush of consumption for the ruddiness of
health. Slowly she waned; but within a day of her departure she planned
cheerful projects which proved that she looked for life. Consumption is
not, however, so deceitful as sin. Where it has full power over the
soul, "the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked;
who can know it?" If sin were not so deceitful it would not be half so
destructive as it is.
How is this, you ask again? Few give themselves the trouble to think
about these matters at all. Ours is an age in which men's thoughts are
keen upon politics and merchandize, practical science and economic
inventions, financial schemes and Home Rule, and I know not what
beside; but sound doctrine and sincere piety are out of vogue. Few
people trouble themselves to think about their souls' everlasting
welfare. Men die at the same rate as of yore, but the mortality is
reckoned by a percentage; and as for the life hereafter it is ignored.
Friend, have you ever dedicated ten minutes of your time to a
consideration of your destiny? Days to your ledger; hours to your
amusements; years to your commercial engagements; would it not be wise
to reserve some moments for your soul's outlook beyond the grave? You
have made your last will and testament for the world that is fading
away, but you have laid up no treasure for the world to come. Is this
consistent with your usual prudence? I should have good hope for some
of you if I could make you sit for one hour alone, and think of nothing
but your souls, your God, and the final judgment. Alas! alas! as the
horse rusheth to the battle, so men rush to the heated competition of
the hour. They cannot be persuaded to consider. Poor mortals! They
concern themselves about everything that does not concern them, but
they persistently neglect everything that is needful to their eternal
well-being.
How is this? we enquire once more. To natural ignorance we may
attribute much of the ordinary indifference of men to their own
sinfulness. They live in a benighted age. In vain you boast the
enlightenment of this nineteenth century: the nineteenth century is not
one whit more enlightened as to the depravity of human nature than the
first century. Men are as ignorant of the plague of their own hearts
to-day as they were when Paul addressed them. I know that almost every
man you meet with talks as if he were qualified to set up for a doctor
of divinity; but is not this the confidence of ignorance? "Vain man
would be wise"–or read it, if you please, "vain man is void of
understanding–though man be born like a wild ass's colt." Until God
the Holy Ghost takes him in hand no spiritual light enters the man's
soul. Preaching is an effective means of instructing the mind, arousing
the conscience, and impressing the hearts of the people; and faithful
preachers are scattered up and down the country within measurable reach
of most of your homes. Why, then, is the doctrine of human sinfulness
so little understood, and so seldom accepted as an undeniable fact?
Many persons seem startled, and try to think that they misunderstand us
when we say plainly that in the very best man in the world there is no
virtue or grace that can be pleasing to God, unless he has been made a
new creature in Christ Jesus. Let me put the truth before you as
plainly as I can by speaking of your body in order to describe your
soul. You probably imagine that your physical constitution is sound and
healthy. I grant you all you ask on that score; yet you are but flesh
and blood, like the rest of our mortal race, and therefore you are
exposed to every disease which waylays your fellow creatures. Even so,
your deceitful heart is capable of as desperate crimes as the vilest of
sinners ever committed. The evil propensity lurks within, it needs only
the contagion of society, or the temptation of Satan to bring it out.
Does not this alarm you? It ought to do so.
Hardly a glimmer of the humbling truth of our natural depravity dawns
on the dull apprehension of the worldly-wise, though souls taught from
above know it and are appalled by it. In divers ways the discovery
comes to those whom the Lord ordains to save. Sometimes a preacher sent
of God lets in the dreadful light. Many men, like the false prophet
Mokanna, hide their deformity. You may remember the story. Mokanna wore
a silver veil upon his forehead: should he ever remove it the
brightness of his countenance would blind the astonished world. In
truth a foul disease had cankered his brow. God's faithful servants are
sent to tear off these veils, and expose men to themselves. This duty
demands courage. Men veil black villainy with self-flattery! Like
Jezebel, they paint their eyebrows, and tire their heads, till they
think themselves beautiful. It is ours, like Jehu, to cry, "Throw her
down." What have they to do with peace who are the servants of sin? How
dare they pretend to comeliness whose hearts are not right with God?
How comes it to pass, then, that the best of saints on earth are prone
to account themselves the chief of sinners? Their sincerity is
unquestionable. This discovery is due to the Holy Spirit. He it is who
convinces men of sin. By his mysterious but most blessed agency on the
hearts of men, a sense of utter ruin is wrought in the chosen, and this
prepares them to accept the full redemption provided by the sacrifice
of the Redeemer. We cannot explain to you the mystery of the Spirit's
operation. "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the
sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it
goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit." But this we do
know–the Holy Spirit withers all merely human hope and righteousness,
and thus makes room for trust in the work of our Lord Jesus. Man by
nature is blindly proud, and proudly blind. The moment the Spirit of
God comes into a man, the scales fall from his eyes, and he sees
himself in quite a different light. To each saved soul it seems a
strange miracle. I have heard the story from simple lips full many a
time. The new self talks of the old self with a kind of vacant
wonderment. Yesterday our friend was on good terms with himself as a
virtuous citizen, an honest trader, a sound churchman; in moral worth
all that his neighbors could wish. To-day he is vile in his own sight:
his hands are filthy, his heart is foul, his thoughts are loathsome. He
perceives that he has been walking in a vain show, and therefore he
writes himself down a hypocrite. No name too base by which to surname
himself.
Have I found you out, my friend? Wandering among the motley throng, I
am in quest of a soul that seeks the mercy of the Lord. Am I not upon
your track?
Mayhap I am at this moment addressing a person who has been the subject
of a mysterious gloom for which he sees no reason whatever. I am right
happy to have found him, for I trust I have met with a recruit for the
army of truth. But why, you may enquire, do I make such a remark? I
will tell you in a moment. There is a vital connection between
soul-distress and sound doctrine. Sovereign grace is dear to those who
have groaned deeply because they see what grievous sinners they are.
Witness Joseph Hart and John Newton, whose hymns you have often sung,
or David Brainerd and Jonathan Edwards, whose biographies many of you
have read. You seldom hear much of God's everlasting covenant in these
modern times, for few men feel that thorough conviction of sin which
comes directly from the teaching of the Holy Spirit. In the economy of
redemption the effectual operation of the Spirit in enlightening the
heart concerning its own sinfulness is sure evidence of the Father's
personal love to his chosen people, and of the special atonement that
the Son of God made for their transgressions.
"Ne'er had ye felt the guilt of sin,
Or sweets of pardoning love,
Unless your worthless names had been
Enrolled to life above."
You may walk through a dark cellar without discerning by the eye that
anything noisome is there concealed. Let the shutters be thrown open!
Bid the light of day stream in! You soon perceive frogs upon the cold
clammy pavement, filthy cobwebs hanging on the walls in long festoons,
foul vermin creeping about everywhere. Startled, alarmed, horrified,
who would not wish to flee away, and find a healthier atmosphere? The
rays of the sun are, however, but a faint image of that light divine
shed by the Holy Spirit, which penetrates the thickest shades of human
folly and infatuation, and exposes the treachery of the inmost heart.
Then the soul cries out in agony, "O wretched man that I am! who shall
deliver me from the body of this death?" When brought to feel this, we
think our doom is scaled, and everlasting destruction is close upon us.
But it is not so. This is the way of hope. Through death to life every
saved soul must pass. Ask us not to paint the sensations; nor blame us
if we usually describe that experience which is most distinct. Sharp
conviction, fainting heart, struggling hope, fear that haunts, terror
that appalls,–an awful fight of fiercely strange emotions! This is the
extreme measure of the life-change. In milder form, with one decisive
pang the true heart is born again. The Slough of Despond lies across
every pilgrim's pathway. The years or hours it takes to wade through it
must be left an open question. Sudden death is an occasional fact, but
more frequently the saints are peacefully welcomed to the realms above;
so in the church on earth, sudden conversions happen, but as a rule men
pass gradually into the kingdom of God. Between the sensual and the
spiritual there is a great gulf, and it must be passed. Of the wind or
weather in which you make the passage it is not for me to speak: the
voyage may be long or short; but in some sort the gulf must be
traversed. Conviction of sin is of the first importance: it cannot be
dispensed with.
You will say, "Why?" Well, we might suggest many reasons. It will make
mercy the more precious, it will excite horror of sin in the
future–burnt children dread the fire, it will teach you patience, for
no future trial will be so severe as this; and it will tend to keep you
persevering in holiness. But be the reasons what they may, be you sure
of this, that no soul is saved without being made conscious of its own
sinfulness.
II. We pass on to notice that it often happens that AWAKENED SOULS USE
MANY INEFFECTUAL MEANS TO OBTAIN CLEANSING. Job describes himself as
washing in snow water, and making his hands never so clean. His
expressions remind me of my own labor in vain. By how many experiments
I tried to purify my own soul! Like all my fellows, I was always foiled
in every attempt. See a squirrel in a cage; the poor thing is working
away, trying to mount, yet he never rises one inch higher. In like case
is the sinner who seeks to save himself by his own good works, or by
any other means: he toils without result. It is astonishing what pains
men will take in this useless drudgery. They prevent the dawn of day in
their anxiety to attend matins or observe mass; they are austere in
their fastings; they say prayers without stint and do penance to the
full. We should be sorry to impugn their sincerity. With what exemplary
zeal many in the Anglican Church go about to establish their own
righteousness! They practice ceremonies, with a claim to catholicity
which no Catholic will allow. Untiring is their diligence in one
department or another of amateur office, they hope for a reward for
doing what God never commanded. Without a Scriptural proof of being
right in anything, they would fain be righteous overmuch in everything.
The labor of the foolish in spinning a righteousness of their own, that
is neither accredited by the divine law nor by the holy gospel is
almost incredible: they would rather give their bodies to be buried and
their goods to feed the poor, than submit to salvation by grace, though
it is the only possible salvation.
In seeking to obtain absolution of their sins, to establish a
righteousness of their own, and to secure peace of mind, men tax their
ingenuity to the utmost. Job talks of washing himself with snow water.
The imagery is, no doubt, meant to be instructive. Why is snow water
selected? The reason probably was, first, because it was hard to get.
Far easier, generally, to procure water from the running brooks than
from melted snow. Men set a high value on that which is difficult to
procure. Whence comes it that the great majority of the so-called
Christian world prefer worship conducted with gorgeous ritual and
stately ceremonial? Is it not the rarity of the thing which creates a
sense of value? Enter a Popish cathedral, and try, if you can, to
understand the services. What are all these persons doing dressed in
red and white, or those other persons in more sombre color?
Manipulations, genuflexions, prostrations, waving of censers, and
elevating of hosts–an array of symbolism which it took ages to
conglomerate. What is the value of it all, unless it lies in its
complications and expenses? Our Protestant friends have their milder
predilections. Organs and orchestras serve them for snow water. In
measured accents let me speak of music. For psalms and spiritual songs
you all know I have an ardent passion. My spirit wings its way to the
very portals of heaven in the words and tunes of our hymns. But for
your instrumental melodies I have no mind, when you substitute mere
sound for heartfelt prayer and praise. The obvious simplicity of the
gospel is the only outward voucher I know of for its inward sincerity.
Praise is none the better because of the difficulty of the music; say
rather that the more simple and congregational it is the better by far.
Forms of worship which are expensive and difficult are greatly affected
by many, as snow water was thought in Job's day to be a bath for kings;
but, after all, it is an idle fashion, likely to mislead.
Besides, snow water enjoyed a reputation for purity. If you would have
a natural filtered water gather the newly-fallen snow and melt it. The
figure represents the religiousness which is of the most rigid
kind–the cream of the cream. Specimens yet remain among us of piety
more than possible to men, religiousness above the range of mortals;
which piety is, however, not of God's grace, and consequently is a vain
show. Though we should use the purest ceremonies, multiply the best of
good works, and add thereto the costliest of gifts, yet we should be
unable to make ourselves clean before God. You may wash yourself till
you deny the existence of a spot, and yet you may be unclean. You may
make rigid rules, and find much content in keeping them, and yet remain
in nature's filthiness. With all your shrewdness you have but practiced
a human device, and in refusing to trust in the Lord Jesus you have
failed to observe a divine ordinance; and therefore you will fail.
Once again, this snow water is probably extolled because it descends
from the clouds of heaven, instead of bubbling up from the clods of
earth. Religiousness which can color itself with an appearance of the
supernatural is very taking with many. Some folks are fond of
apostolical succession; it professes to come from heaven. No doubt the
notion originated in cloudland. Others are fascinated by Popery. His
holiness the Pope is accounted to be a great cistern, full of grace,
which is distilled in streams, and runs through capacious pipes called
cardinals, and then through smaller tubes, styled bishops. At length by
the still smaller pipes of the priests it comes to the people. No
pretext was ever more paltry than this, and yet many are deceived by
it. There is no peace in it for thoughtful minds. For such your snow
water has no solace, because they see no connection between outward
acts and the purifying of the heart.
Not all the outward forms on earth,
Nor rites that God has given,
Nor will of man, nor blood, nor birth,
Can raise a soul to heaven."
If I "make my hands never so clean," is an expression peculiarly racy
in the original. The Hebrew word has an allusion to soap or nitre. Such
was the ordinary and obvious method any one would take to whiten his
hands when they were grimy. Tradition tells that certain stains of
blood cleave to the floor. The idea is that human blood, shed in
murder, can never be scrubbed or scraped off the boards. Thus is it
most certainly with the dye of sin. The blood of souls is in thy
skirts, is the terrible language of Jeremiah (2:34). When ye think that
baptism can begin, that confirmation can further, and that other
sacraments can complete your purification, ye are mere dupes of your
own folly. "Though I wash myself in snow water, and make myself never
so clean; yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes
shall abhor me." There it stands, it is the testimony of one man, but
yet it is true; the Almighty attests it, and all human experience
affirms it. These worthless experiments to cleanse yourselves would be
ended once for all if you would have regard to the great truth of the
gospel: "Without shedding of blood there is no remission." "The blood
of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." God alone can
remove sin, and he does so by the blood of Jesus.
III. But AS SURE AS EVER QUICKENED BOWLS TRY TO GET PURITY IN THE WRONG
WAY, GOD WILL THRUST THEM DOWN INTO THE DITCH. This is a terrible
predicament. I find, on looking at the passage closely, that it means
"head over ears in the ditch." It is not merely some filthy puddle in
which a man treads till he is splashed all over, it is a slough of
despond into which he sinks. His eyes, his ears, and his mouth, are
filled with pollution; and his very clothes are so foul that he utterly
abhors himself. Old Master Caryl, a rare expositor of the Book of Job,
says that the original can only be equalled in English by the
expression–we would not touch such an one with a pair of tongs.
Often it happens with those who try to get better by their own good
works, that their conscience is awakened by the effort, and they are
more conscious of sin than ever. If a chosen man strives to save
himself from his sins by his own righteousness the Lord permits him to
see his own heart and he ceases from all glorying. The word here
rendered "ditch" is elsewhere translated "corruption." So in the
sixteenth Psalm: "Neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see
corruption." Language cannot paint abasement, reproach, or ignominy in
stronger terms. "THOU shalt plunge me in the ditch." Is it not as
though God himself would undertake the business of causing his people
to know that by their vain ablutions they were making themselves yet
more vile in his eyes? We read, in the second chapter of Jeremiah, of
God's remonstrance with Judah: "Though thou wash thee with nitre, and
take thee much soap, yet thine iniquity is marked before me, saith the
Lord God. How canst thou say, I am not polluted?"
May we not regard this as the discipline of our Heavenly Father's love,
albeit when passing through the trial we do not perceive it to be so?
Thus, in the apocalyptic epistle to the church at Laodicea,
expostulation more severe or more tender it would be hard to
imagine-"Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and
have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and
miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me
gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment
that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not
appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see."
Mark the gentle words, "I counsel thee," addressed to a people whose
lukewarmness excited nausea! Then follows a sentence of encouragement
so sweet and enchanting that it almost sounds like an apology for the
fierceness of the former censure. "As many as I love, I rebuke and
chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent." A revelation of wretched
sinfulness ends in a declaration of love and a visit of grace; for the
Lord goes on to say, "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock." Anyhow,
the Lord will end the conceit which is the source of the lukewarmness:
he cannot permit his chosen to remain in self-righteous pride; for that
his soul hateth.
Perhaps, my friend, the experience I am trying to describe will come to
you through the preaching of the Word. This sermon may dishearten and
distract you. Your hope was thriving like a plant. This sermon shrivels
every leaf; and though, at the scent of water, the branch of
self-righteousness will bud again, the next sermon you hear may wither
even the stem of your confidence. If another sermon soon afterwards
cuts it down to the very root, the ministry will be profitable to you;
for the root of pride must be cut up. Believe me, this is mild
treatment: I trust you may not be left to severer methods.
Frequently our great Lord leaves a poor wayward soul to eat the fruits
of its own ways, and this is the severest form of plunging in the
ditch. While striving after righteousness in a wrong way, the man
stumbles into the very sin against which he struggled. The young man,
of whom I am now thinking, resolved, by the help of God, that he would
be different henceforth from what he ever had been. His vows kept pace
with his devotions. He started them at early morn–
"And felt, good, easy man, full surely
His goodness was a-ripening."
To the shop he went, as was his wont; but his thoughts were no longer
set on earthly things: he stood, as he supposed, on heavenly ground.
Because he had taken snow-water and had washed his hands, he began to
think that he was singularly clean. Towards evening a temptation
suddenly crossed his path. At first he resisted, but it proved a feeble
fight. The argument of another young man, that it was policy to yield,
availed to break the covenant he had made with his own conscience. So
he was led astray to a place of amusement, where the light of God's
countenance never shines. The wretchedness of his reflections on the
morrow could not easily be told. He felt that his feet were fast in the
miry clay, and his garments foully soiled. His empty conceit might not
have been dislodged from its secret lurking-place in his depraved
nature without some such perilous downfall.
Mayhap, there sits out yonder a good sister who has grown familiar with
spiritual straits. Did you ever happen to hear of Mary Huntington, wife
of William Huntington, S.S., the famous Calvinistic preacher? When he
prayed for her, which he did with much affection, he confessed before
God–"O Lord, I beseech thee, hear me on her behalf. Thou knowest how
warmly attached she has ever been to MOSES, and what narrow and vain
searches she has made in order to find out his grave, which thou, in
infinite wisdom and mercy, hast thought fit to conceal." That prayer,
which was published about a century ago, is worth preserving in your
memory. For that "Mary," like many worthy housewives of these days, was
rather fond of collecting the rags and relics of self. If it had been
possible, she would have worn at least an apron of the linsey-woolsey
of self-righteousness. The Lord will not have his handmaids thus
arranged: they must be quit of self altogether.
Our lives through various scenes are drawn and vexed with petty
provocations. Paltry annoyances are the bane of our peace. Some of you,
dear sisters, spend your years and your thoughts in a narrow circle,
and I deeply sympathize with you therein. Without a wish to be great,
or to enlarge your coast, you intensely desire to be good. To do your
duty to the best of your ability, is your aim, and therein you are
worthy of all honor. The lot of many of you is to pass much of your
time in loneliness; your temptations are therefore peculiar. For many a
quiet hour you have been busy with domestic employments, distracted by
no acute anxiety, but cheered by much quiet meditation. At such seasons
you are apt to get on good terms with yourselves. Presently the shades
of evening begin to fall. Evening! of which Cowper sweetly sings:
"Come, evening, once again, season of peace,
Return, sweet evening, and continue long!"
You are prepared to welcome home the husband, brother, son, who will
look for his repast, and seek his well-earned repose. Possibly, my
sisters, this is your season of temptation. His rough word, his
needless complaint, his vacant look, when you pine for sympathy puts
you about. A sense of injustice stings you. It may be very natural, but
all the same it is very fatal to your sense of superior goodness. What
more treacherous than one's temper? In a sudden gust of passion, you
utter words of anger. How gladly would you recall them! but they are
registered. Down into the ditch of despondency you sink. For days to
come you feel that you cannot forgive yourself. Your rich mantle of
righteousness after this tumble in the ditch looks mean enough to
provoke your own ridicule.
Thus do we, in our different spheres, fly from this to that, and from
that to the other. Some hope to cleanse away sin by a supreme effort of
self-denial, or of miraculous faith. Men dream of being clean without
the blood of Jesus, they even boast of it, and yet their sin remaineth.
The eye of the judgment may be deceived till we half think we are
clean; but no sooner does the scale grow thin, or the light grow
strong, than the conscience perceives its error and learns the lesson
that no human endeavor can wash out the accursed spot. Let us not play
at purification, nor vainly hope to satisfy conscience with that which
renders no satisfaction to God.
Persons of sensitive disposition, and sedentary habits, are prone to
seek a righteousness of inward feeling. Let me describe these good
folks to you. They aim at a righteousness that renounces every fault,
and they cultivate such graces as are naturally lovely, watching from
moment to moment their own feelings of joy or grief. Yet these be they
who get to know, with the keenest anguish, the plague of their own
hearts. How it happens is sufficiently clear. They try to live by their
feelings and frames of mind; and what can be more deceitful than these
sensations? Treacherous as the sea on which you sail so smoothly on
sunny days, but which, at other times, wrecks your barque without
mercy, your frames and feelings are not in the least to be depended on.
One day you are all aglow, the flush of fervor is on your face, the
next day you feel so dead and cold that prayer would freeze upon your
lips. Your evidences are dark. You think you have none, and, seized
with despondency, you lament that "there is no hope." Ah, me! the
sin-sick soul, given to watch its own symptoms, is brought into
perilous straits; trying one nostrum after another, sometimes feeling a
little better, and anon feeling itself much worse. Oh, that it could
turn from feeling to faith; and look steadily out of inward sensation
to the work finished once for all by the Lord Jesus!
Poor Job was smitten with sore boils from the sole of his foot to the
crown of his head. No doubt he sent for the doctor–though we are not
actually told that he did so. It is likely enough that snow water was
prescribed to him for a relief. His hands may not have seemed very
sightly when he used it; there may, at least, have been some connection
between his physician's prescription and his poetry, when he said, "If
I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean."
Perfection in any one part of conduct would not secure cleanness for
the rest. Washed hands would be a small matter if the boils remained
over the rest of the body. This is another aspect of the same
unsatisfactory expedient that I am wanting to point out to you. You are
under bad treatment until you walk by faith in Jesus. Anything short of
grace will prove a mere mockery of your malady. Asa, King of Judah, was
diseased in his feet. He sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians.
Asa never recovered; but the Lord restored Job to perfect, health. The
gratuitous advice which the patriarch received in the time of his sore
sickness was not worth his gratitude. Of his three friends, he said:
"Ye are all physicians of no value." Then comes back the metaphor which
I have repeated so often: "Yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch, and
mine own clothes shall abhor me." After all is said and done by the
wisest of men the poor sinner is worse off than when they undertook his
case. All is vanity till God comes in.
Let us not forget that the man who thus described his own case "was
perfect and upright, one that feared God and eschewed evil." Such a
case is a puzzle to those who are not enlightened by the Holy Spirit.
Although Job was renowned for righteousness in his generation, a gleam
from God's countenance exposed the faultiness of his soul. Does this
prove him to have been a hypocrite? By no means. His friends supposed
him to be so, though they had no ground whatever for the suspicion: it
was their rough way of solving a hard problem. If the patriarch's
integrity had not been so firm, if his refinement had not been so
tender, if his piety towards God had not been so invariably accompanied
by his pity for his brother men; if, in a word, his character had not
been so complete, his trial and his deliverance could not have
exhibited the extraordinary lesson which has interested and instructed
every succeeding generation. He appears before us at first in the vigor
of health, in the height of prosperity, and in the charm of good
repute. But oh, the vanity of man! At a touch of God's finger, his
flesh develops a festering mass of corruption; at a glance of God's
eye, which searched him through and through, the total depravity of
human nature at its best estate becomes apparent. "He abhors himself in
dust and ashes." What next? Utter ruin? Nay, friend, it is full
redemption.
IV. By such severe training THE AWAKENED ONE IS LED TO LOOK ALONE TO
GOD FOR SALVATION, and to find the salvation he looks for. This is my
last point, and I have no time left to enlarge upon it. What I want is
that the truth may flash across your mind in a moment. There sits the
man who is menaced with despair because every effort to extricate
himself from the tangled web of his own strange experience has left him
worse than before. Did I attempt to comfort him he would repel my
kindest expressions. And why? He knows that it is God who condemns him.
In a British court of justice, when the judge sums up against the
prisoner, small cheer can he get from the honeyed words of his counsel.
But hark–"It is God that justifieth." Whom does he justify? The
ungodly. He first condemns them in their own consciences; and then he
justifies them according to his grace. If I receive the sentence of
death in myself it is the earnest of deliverance in my Redeemer. My
brother, has light beamed on your soul? I hope I have found you, and
that the Lord has visited you with his salvation.
I want you to notice a simple fact which seems to me to have escaped
your observation. When the Almighty justified Job he commended him, and
pronounced a high encomium on his conduct. Whatever mistakes he made
about himself or his circumstances, in one matter he was clear as a
bell; He has spoken right of me, saith the Lord. (Job 42:7.) Eliphaz
and his friends transgressed in this respect. Hearken unto me, ye that
follow after righteousness, ye that seek it in yourselves, you are all
on the wrong track. You begin below with the whole duty of man, and try
to work upward: you are sure to fail. You should begin up yonder, with
the righteousness of God; and then you could work downward to
righteousness of daily life. God give you knowledge of salvation by
grace, to the glory of his own name, and to your own sanctification,
for Christ's sake! Amen.
PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON–Job 9.
HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"–556, 476, 602.