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Job Chapter
Thirty-seven
Job 37
Chapter Contents
Elihu observes the power of God. (1-13) Job required to
explain the works of nature. (14-20) God is great, and is to be feared. (21-24)
Commentary on Job 37:1-13
(Read Job 37:1-13)
The changes of the weather are the subject of a great
deal of our thoughts and common talk; but how seldom do we think and speak of
these things, as Elihu, with a regard to God, the director of them! We must
notice the glory of God, not only in the thunder and lightning, but in the more
common and less awful changes of the weather; as the snow and rain. Nature
directs all creatures to shelter themselves from a storm; and shall man only be
unprovided with a refuge? Oh that men would listen to the voice of God, who in
many ways warns them to flee from the wrath to come; and invites them to accept
his salvation, and to be happy. The ill opinion which men entertain of the
Divine direction, peculiarly appears in their murmurs about the weather, though
the whole result of the year proves the folly of their complaints. Believers should
avoid this; no days are bad as God makes them, though we make many bad by our
sins.
Commentary on Job 37:14-20
(Read Job 37:14-20)
Due thoughts of the works of God will help to reconcile
us to all his providences. As God has a powerful, freezing north wind, so he
has a thawing, composing south wind: the Spirit is compared to both, because he
both convinces and comforts, Song of Solomon 4:16. The best of men are much
in the dark concerning the glorious perfections of the Divine nature and the
Divine government. Those who, through grace, know much of God, know nothing, in
comparison with what is to be known, and of what will be known, when that which
is perfect is come.
Commentary on Job 37:21-24
(Read Job 37:21-24)
Elihu concludes his discourse with some great sayings
concerning the glory of God. Light always is, but is not always to be seen.
When clouds come between, the sun is darkened in the clear day. The light of
God's favour shines ever towards his faithful servants, though it be not always
seen. Sins are clouds, and often hinder us from seeing that bright light which
is in the face of God. Also, as to those thick clouds of sorrow which often
darken our minds, the Lord hath a wind which passes and clears them away. What
is that wind? It is his Holy Spirit. As the wind dispels and sweeps away the
clouds which are gathered in the air, so the Spirit of God clears our souls
from the clouds and fogs of ignorance and unbelief, of sin and lust. From all
these clouds the Holy Spirit of God frees us in the work of regeneration. And
from all the clouds which trouble our consciences, the Holy Spirit sets us free
in the work of consolation. Now that God is about to speak, Elihu delivers a
few words, as the sum of all his discourse. With God is terrible majesty.
Sooner or later all men shall fear him.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Job》
Job 37
Verse 2
[2] Hear
attentively the noise of his voice, and the sound that goeth out of his mouth.
Hear — It
is probable that while Elihu was speaking it thundered, and that tempest was
begun, wherewith God ushered in his speech. And this might occasion his return
to that subject of which he had discoursed before.
Voice —
The thunder is called God's voice. Because by it God speaks to the children of
men, to fear before him.
Mouth —
That is produced by God's word or command, which is often signified by his
mouth.
Verse 3
[3] He directeth it under the whole heaven, and his lightning unto the ends of
the earth.
Directeth —
His voice: which he guideth like an arrow to the mark, that it may do that work
for which he sends it.
Verse 4
[4]
After it a voice roareth: he thundereth with the voice of his excellency; and
he will not stay them when his voice is heard.
After —
After the lightning, which is seen before the thunder is hard.
Them —
The lightnings spoken of in the beginning of the verse.
Verse 6
[6] For
he saith to the snow, Be thou on the earth; likewise to the small rain, and to
the great rain of his strength.
Strength —
Those storms of rain which come with great force and irresistible violence.
Verse 7
[7] He sealeth up the hand of every man; that all men may know his work.
Sealeth — By
these snows and rains he drives men out of the fields, and seals or binds up
their hands from their work.
That —
They may seriously contemplate on these, and other great and glorious works of
God.
Verse 9
[9] Out
of the south cometh the whirlwind: and cold out of the north.
Cold —
Freezing winds.
Verse 10
[10] By
the breath of God frost is given: and the breadth of the waters is straitened.
The waters —
The waters which had freely spread themselves before, are congealed and bound
up in crystal fetters.
Verse 11
[11] Also
by watering he wearieth the thick cloud: he scattereth his bright cloud:
Watering —
The earth. They spend themselves and are exhausted watering the earth, until
they are weary.
Wearieth —
Them with much water, and making them to go long journeys to water remote
parts, and at last to empty themselves there: all which things make men weary;
and therefore are here said to make the clouds weary by a common figure.
Scattereth — As
for the white and lightsome clouds, he scatters and dissolves them by the wind
or sun.
Verse 12
[12] And
it is turned round about by his counsels: that they may do whatsoever he
commandeth them upon the face of the world in the earth.
Turned —
The clouds are carried about to this or that place. Not by chance (though
nothing seems to be more casual than the motions of the clouds) but by his
order and governance.
Verse 13
[13] He
causeth it to come, whether for correction, or for his land, or for mercy.
Correction — To
scourge or correct men by immoderate showers.
Earth —
The whole earth, which is said to be the Lord's, Psalms 24:1; 50:12, and so this may denote a general judgment
by excessive rains inflicted upon the earth, and all its inhabitants, even the
universal deluge, which came in great measure out of the clouds.
Mercy —
For the benefit of mankind and for the cooling of the air and improving the
fruits of the earth.
Verse 14
[14]
Hearken unto this, O Job: stand still, and consider the wondrous works of God.
Consider — If
there be so much matter of wonder in the most obvious works of God, how
wonderful must his secret counsels be?
Verse 15
[15] Dost
thou know when God disposed them, and caused the light of his cloud to shine?
Them —
The things before mentioned, the clouds, rain, snow, and other meteors. Did God
acquaint thee with his counsels in the producing and ordering of them? His
cloud - Probably the rainbow, seated in a cloud, which may well be called God's
cloud, because therein God puts his bow, Genesis 9:13.
Verse 16
[16] Dost
thou know the balancings of the clouds, the wondrous works of him which is
perfect in knowledge?
Balancings —
How God doth as it were weigh the clouds in balances, so that although they are
full of water, yet they are kept up by the thin air.
Verse 17
[17] How
thy garments are warm, when he quieteth the earth by the south wind?
Quieteth —
The air about the earth.
From the south — By
the sun's coming into the southern parts, which makes the air quiet and warm.
Verse 18
[18] Hast
thou with him spread out the sky, which is strong, and as a molten looking
glass?
With him —
Wast thou his assistant in spreading out the sky like a canopy over the earth?
Strong - Which though it be very thin and transparent, yet is also firm and
compact and steadfast.
Looking glass —
Made of brass and steel, as the manner then was. Smooth and polished, without
the least flaw. In this, as in a glass, we may behold the glory of God and the
wisdom of his handy-work.
Verse 19
[19]
Teach us what we shall say unto him; for we cannot order our speech by reason
of darkness.
Teach us — If
thou canst.
Say unto him — Of
these things.
Order — To
maintain discourse with him, both because of the darkness of the matter, God's
counsels being a great depth; and because of the darkness of our minds.
Verse 20
[20]
Shall it be told him that I speak? if a man speak, surely he shall be swallowed
up.
Shall — I
send a challenge to God, or a message that I am ready to debate with him
concerning his proceedings? Speak - If a man should be so bold to enter the lists
with God.
Swallowed up —
With the sense of his infinite majesty.
Verse 21
[21] And
now men see not the bright light which is in the clouds: but the wind passeth,
and cleanseth them.
Light —
The sun; which is emphatically called light, and here the bright light: which
men cannot behold or gaze on, when the sky is very clear: and therefore it is
not strange if we cannot see God, or discern his counsels and ways.
Them —
The sky by driving away those clouds which darkened it.
Verse 22
[22] Fair
weather cometh out of the north: with God is terrible majesty.
North —
From the northern winds which scatter the clouds, and clear the sky. Elihu
concludes with some short, but great sayings, concerning the glory of God. He
speaks abruptly and in haste, because it should seem, he perceived God was
approaching, and presumed he was about to take the work into his own hands.
Verse 23
[23]
Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out: he is excellent in power, and in
judgment, and in plenty of justice: he will not afflict.
Find — We
cannot comprehend him: his power, wisdom, justice, and his counsels proceeding
from them are past our finding out.
Power —
Therefore as he doth not need any unrighteous action to advance himself, so he
cannot do it, because all such things are acts of weakness.
Judgment — In
the just administration of judgment, he never did, nor can exercise that power
unjustly, as Job seemed to insinuate.
Afflict —
Without just cause.
Verse 24
[24] Men
do therefore fear him: he respecteth not any that are wise of heart.
Fear —
Fear or reverence him, and humbly submit to him, and not presume to quarrel or
dispute with him.
Wise of heart —
Wise in their own eyes.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on Job》
37 Chapter 37
Verses 1-24
Verses 1-13
Hear attentively the noise of His voice.
What is Elihu’s message
What he really contributes to the main argument of the book is,
that suffering may be medicinal, corrective, fructifying, as well as punitive.
The friends had proceeded on the assumption, an assumption abundantly refuted
by Job, that his calamities sprang, and only could spring from his
transgressions. In their theology there was no room for any other conclusion.
But, obviously, there is another interpretation of the function of adversity
which needs to be discussed, if the discussion is to be complete; and this
wider interpretation Elihu seeks to formulate. According to him, God may be
moved to chastise men by love, as well as by anger; with a view to quicken
their conscience, to instruct their thoughts, and give them a larger scope; in
order to purge them, that they may bring forth more and better fruit; to rouse
them from the lethargy into which, even when they are spiritually alive, they
are apt to sink, and to save them from the corruption too often bred even by
good customs, if these customs do not grow and change. His main contention has
indeed, since his time, become the merest commonplace. But this pious
commonplace was sufficiently new to Job and his friends to be startling. To
them Elihu, when he contends that God often delivers the afflicted by and
through their afflictions, must have seemed to be either uttering a dangerous
heresy, or speaking as one who had received new light and inspiration from on
high. (Samuel Cox, D. D.)
The phenomena of nature
Elihu regarded nature--
I. As the result
of the Divine agency. He speaks of the thunder as the voice of God. “The sound
that goeth out of His voice,” “the voice of His Excellency.” He speaks of the
lightning as being directed under the whole heaven by Him, even unto the “ends
of the earth.” Modern science spreads out theoretic schemes between nature and
God. It speaks of laws and forces. This was not the science of Elihu; he
regarded man as being brought face to face with God in nature.
II. As the revealer
of the Divine character. He recognised--
III. As the
instrument of the Divine purpose. “And it is turned round about by His
counsels; that they may do whatsoever He commandeth them upon the face of the
world in the earth. He causeth it to come, whether for correction, or for His
land, or for mercy.” (Homilist.)
For He saith to the anew.
The lessons of the snowflakes
I. We learn that
what God gives is pure. The beautiful snow, in its purity, is a type of His
gifts. To be pure is certainly a state to earnestly desire, and strenuously
endeavour to attain. It requires the crucible of affliction and discipline to
reach it, and God often, yea, indeed, constantly uses it.
II. That what God
gives is beautiful. Nothing is so beautiful as a field of fresh-fallen snow.
The snow grows more beautiful when you examine it closely. But think of the
source from whence they come, and each little form will be to you a profitable
teacher. God gave the snow, and it is thus beautiful; so beautiful are all His
gifts. Beauty is a quality in objects not to be ignored. When God makes beauty,
how infinitely superior it is in beauty to the beauty constructed by the hand
of man.
III. That what God
gives is good. Were it not for the kindly snow, in some countries, not one
grain of wheat would live through the rigorous cold of the winter. But the very
wheat is warmed into life by the protection of the snow.
IV. The snow
teaches us to be impartial. In this it accords with the Word of God. It bestows
its benefits upon a community, it neglects none.
V. We learn a
lesson of caution. How easily soiled is the snow, because of its very whiteness
and cleanness. Its susceptibility to soil and dirt is a constant pleading that
one be careful not to soil it. The fairer, whiter, cleaner a thing is, the more
easily is it soiled.
VI. One more
lesson--the evanescence of all earthly things. The fields, now hidden from view
by their snowy covering, will soon be seen again; and when the snow is gone,
how brief will seem to have been the season of its sojourn! Out of this lesson
comes another--the duty of readiness to meet the Bridegroom. (Wallace Thorp.)
The snowstorm
I. The snow in its
interesting phenomenon. The snow falls in beautiful showers almost every year,
and covers the face of nature. Multitudes admire its beauties, but few
understand its singular formation, important uses, and varied design. These
things ought not so to be. We should make ourselves acquainted with the works
of God, especially such common gifts as the rain, and wind, and snow. This
would lead our thoughts from nature to nature’s God; and then His wisdom, and
power, and goodness as seen therein would excite our admiration. The snow, this
wonderful creature of God, has been thus described--“Snow is a moist vapour
drawn up from the earth to, or near the middle region of the air, where it is
condensed, or thickened into a cloud, and falls down again like carded wool,
sometimes in greater and sometimes in lesser flakes. The snow and the rain are
made of the same matter, and are produced in the same place, only they differ
in their outward form, as is obvious to the eye, and in their season. Rain
falls in the warmer seasons, the clouds being dissolved into rain by heat; snow
falls in the sharper seasons, the clouds being thickened by the cold. The place
where the snow is generated is in the air, from thence it receives a command to
dispatch itself to the earth, and there to abide.” Three things respecting the
snow may just be noticed.
1. Its whiteness. The whiteness of snow, observe naturalists, is
caused by the abundance of air and spirits that are in transparent bodies. “The
whiteness of snow,” says Sturm, “may be accounted for thus--it is extremely
light, and thin, consequently full of pores, and these contain air. It is
further composed of parts more or less thick and compact, and such a substance
does not admit the sun’s rays to pass, neither does it absorb them: on the
contrary, it reflects them very powerfully, and thus gives it that white
appearance which we see in it” (Isaiah 1:18).
2. Form. “The little flakes,” observes the pious author just named,
“generally resemble hexagonal stars; sometimes, however, they have eight
angles, and at others ten, and some of them are of quite an irregular shape.
The best way of observing them is to receive the snow upon white paper, but
hitherto little has been said of the cause of these different figures.”
3. Abundance. “Hast thou,” said God to Job, “entered into the
treasures of snow?”
II. The snow in its
efficient source. The philosopher may explain its secondary, or instrumental
causes, but the Christian recognises and acknowledges its first and original
cause. Elihu, in the text, and in other parts of this chapter, traces, or
notices, the thunder and the lightning, the snow and the rain, the whirlwind
and the cold, the frost and the clouds, to their Divine source. “For He saith”
(i.e., He commands)
“to the snow, Be thou on the earth.” The source from whence the snow proceeds,
illustrates--
1. God’s power. When the Almighty Maker wills a thing, He has only to
speak, and it is done.
2. God’s sovereignty. The sovereignty of God means His power and
right of dominion over His creatures, to dispose and determine them as seemeth
Him good. The snow affords an instance of the exercise of this attribute--on
God’s will depends the time, the quantity, and the place.
3. God’s justice. The text itself refers to this very attribute. “For
He causeth it to come, whether for correction, or for His land, or for mercy.”
And Elihu, in the end of the chapter, where he closes his conversation with
Job, on the attributes of God, as seen in His works, gives prominence to His
justice. “Touching the Almighty, we cannot find Him out: He is excellent in
power, and in judgment, and in plenty of justice: men do therefore fear Him.” And
the Almighty Himself, in the next chapter, tells Job that He sometimes sends
His snow and hail in justice, that sinners may be punished for their sins (Job 38:22-23).
4. God’s goodness.
5. God’s providence.
III. The snow in its
varied purposes. “He causeth it,” i.e., “the cloud, with whatever is its
burden, to unladen and disburden itself”--“for correction, or for His land, or
for mercy.” We must here observe--
1. The Lord sometimes sends the snow in the way of correction. The
Hebrew is, for a rod--so we put it in the margin. Thunder and rain is the rod (1 Samuel 12:17-19). And who can tell
but God may send His snow, and wind, and cold, to punish us for our
unmindfulness of His mercies, and opposition to His laws?
2. The snow may be sent for the benefit of God’s land. “For His land”
(verse 13). “The world is His, and the fulness thereof.” The clouds, therefore,
drop down their moisture for the benefit of God’s land, that the beasts may
have pasture; plants, nourishment; and that there may be provision for all
God’s offspring (Psalms 104:10-14; Psalms 104:27-28; Psalms 65:9-13).
3. The design of God in sending the snow may be merciful.
IV. Our duty as
implied in Elihu’s address to Job. “Hearken unto this, O Job: stand still, and
consider the wondrous works of God” (verse 14). The works of God are
wonderful--wonderful in their magnitude, variety, beauty, usefulness, and
order--these are to be considered. Consider them, therefore; many see them, who
never consider them. Consider them reverently. Patiently. Calmly. Closely.
God’s works will bear inspection. Frequently. Devoutly. Not merely that your
minds may be informed, but your heart drawn out towards God, in pious
affections. We learn from this subject--
1. The generality of men pay little attention to the wondrous works
of God, that such indifference is very criminal, and that it is the duty of
ministers to awaken the attention of their people to the subject.
2. Special and particular providences demand special and particular
attention. “Hearken unto this.”
3. The perfect ease with which God can punish the wicked, and hurl
them to destruction.
4. The present time affords a fine opportunity for the exercise of
Christian benevolence.
5. The precious privileges of those who are interested in the favour
of God. (The Pulpit.)
The snow and its lessons
I. We may learn
from the snow that it is possible to do a great deal of good without making very
much noise. The snow is a great blessing. The Psalmist says, “He giveth snow
like wool” (Psalms 147:16). Wool, as we know, is very
warm. Winter garments are made of wool, and so we keep out the cold. The snow
is God’s winter garment for the earth. It covers up the tender roots and plants
with its thick clothing, and protects them from the cutting frosts which would
otherwise destroy them. Then the snow is useful for the watering of the earth (Isaiah 55:10-11). When we look upon the
beauty of spring, and the many glories of the summer, we must not forget the
part which the snow took in producing these things. And yet, while the snow is
so useful to the earth, how silently it does its work (Matthew 6:2).
II. Take care what
footprints you leave behind you. The fresh snow is a very faithful record of
our footsteps. It is in a more serious sense that we also leave our footprints
behind us as we walk down the lane of life. I do not mean upon the snow, but
upon the memories and characters of those who have known us.
III. Another lesson
the snow has taught us is the power of little things. A snowflake is a little
thing, but many snowflakes make “a white world.” Success in life consists very
much in a constant attention to little things. We cannot always find
opportunities of doing great deeds.
IV. The last of our
lessons is that God loves holiness. Nothing is whiter than the snow. No sin can
enter heaven. (R. Brewin.)
Suggestions of the snow
The Old Testament far more than the New employs the
phenomena of nature to symbolise truth. The birth of snow, far up upon soft
clouds, or yet more tenuous ether, gives rise to pleasant suggestions of the
ways of God in nature. To a child, snow descending is like feathers, as if the
great globe were a bird coming to its moulting and shedding all its old plumes.
Or, if snow be likened to flowers, then the raindrops in the upper air are
buds, and snow is the blossoming or budding raindrops. Or, if the poet renders
his thought, the snow is the great husbandman, and plants the moisture borrowed
from lake and sea, and in due time shakes down upon the earth the plumy grains
that have been reared in the heaven above. Or yet again, as an emblem, Quarles
might have noticed the rare beauty of the snow. Each flake of snow is more
exquisite in structure than anything mortal hands can make. Why should not the
raindrops come pelting down rounded like shot--as they do in summer? The earth,
then, it might be thought, had all the beauty of form and flower that it
needed; but in winter, cold and barren, the sky is the gelid garden and sends
down exquisite bloom, fairer than the lily of the valley. Not only is each
flake beautiful, but so are all its weird and witching ways. If undisturbed the
snow falls with wondrous levity, as if in a dream or reverie; as if it hardly
knew the way, and wavered in the search of the road. It touches the ground with
airy grace, as if like a sky bird it touched the bough or the twig only to fly
again. But when once embodied, it hangs upon bush and tree, ruffling the black
branch with lace, or cushioning the evergreen branch with the rarest and
daintiest white velvet. Or, when winds drive it or send it in swirls around and
above all obstructions, drifting it into banks with rim and curvature, like
which no pencil or tool can match, it still, out of all its agitation, works
lines of grace and beauty that have been the admiration of the world from the
beginning. This child of the storm is itself beautiful, and the artist of
beauty. Consider the weakness and the power of the snow. Can anything be
gentler and more powerless? It comes not as a ball from the rifle, or an arrow
from the bow, or a swooping hawk descending from the sky for its prey. A
child’s hand catches and subdues it; and ere he can see it, it is gone. A baby
can master that which masters mankind. Boys gather it, and it is submissive; it
resists nothing. All things seem stronger than the snow new born. Yet, one
night’s weaving, and it covers the earth through wide latitudes and longitudes
with a garment that all the looms of the earth could not have furnished. One
day more and it sinks fences underneath it, obliterates all roads, and levels
the whole land as spade and plough, and ten thousand times ten thousand
engineers and workmen could not do it. It lays its hand upon the roaring
engine, blocks its wheels and stops its motion. It stands before the harbour,
and lets down a white darkness which baffles the pilot and checks the
home-returning ship. It takes the hills and mountains, and gathering its army
until the day comes, without sound of drum or trumpet, it charges down; and who
can withstand its coming in battle array? What power is thus in the hosts of
weakness! So the thoughts of good men, small, silent, gathering slowly, at
length are masters of time and of the ages. If such be the power of God’s
weakness, what must be the Almightiness of God, the thunder of His power?
Consider, also, that the descending snow has relations not alone thus to fancy,
but is a worker too. We send abroad to the islands of South America, and to the
coast quays, to bring hither the stimulant that shall kindle new life in the
wasted soils and bring forth new harvests. Yet from the unsullied air the snow
brings down fertility in the endless wastes that are going on,--exhaled gases,
from towns and from cities, multiplied forms that are vandals, wanderers in the
sky. Caught in the meshes of the snow, the ammoniacal gases and various others
are brought down by it and laid upon the soil; and it has become a proverb that
the snow, fresh and new-fallen, is the poor man’s manure. It gathers again,
then, the waste material of the earth, whose levity carries it above, and lays
with equal distribution over all the lands that which brings back to them their
needed fertility. (Henry Ward Beecher.)
Winter
What are its mute lessons to us?
1. Winter presents us with a special study, of the richness, wisdom,
and greatness of the Divine order of the world. The religion of winter worship
is preeminently the religion of the supernatural--the religion of Christ. It is
the impulse of a religious spirit to recognise the beauty, the wisdom, the
grandeur of these manifestations of the Creator. Power, beauty, and goodness
are revealed.
2. Winter may be made the text of an important social study. It has
potent influences upon character, and upon the duties and sympathies of life.
What a lesson it is in the distribution of God’s gifts. Everywhere
nature--God’s order--rebukes selfishness. Winter is potent as a social
civiliser. Home is fully realised only in winter climes. Winter appeals to
human charities and sympathies.
3. Winter is a fine moral study, full of spiritual lessons and
analogies, such as Christ would have elicited. It is something that there is a
break upon mere acquisition--a season when accumulation is arrested, when even
God does not seem to be lavishing gifts. Winter brings a due recognition of the
beauty and glory of the earth that God has made, its wondrous forms and forces.
It brings a sense of obligation to the marvellous providence of the earth’s
economy--the relation of seed time to sowing, of winter to summer; and all the
while the uniform wants of life supplied, one season providing for another
which produces no supplies. How transient all earthly conditions and forms of
beauty and strength! How unresting, how unhasting the law of change. The
supreme analogy of winter is death. To this winter of human life we all must
come. (Henry Allon, D. D.)
Lessons of the snow
I. Consider its
beauty. Its shape and colour have always charmed the naturalists and the poets.
Its beauty is its own, unique, artistic, Divine. This beauty suggests a higher
beauty, as articulated in thought, in character, and life. The beauty of any
life consists in that circlet of excellences called the fruit of the Spirit.
That life is beautiful whose touch is healing, whose words are comforting, and
whose influence is ennobling. Delicacy and sweetness belong to the highest
music. The purer the soul, the more of delicacy and sweetness will be in it. A
beautiful life carries the Christ heart. Not only is each snow crystal a thing
of beauty, but its ways are ways of pleasantness. How graceful the curves and
beautiful the lines of falling snowflakes! How gently they touch the earth!
With feathery softness they weave about the trees and bushes the rarest lace
work, defying all the looms of the modern world. The snow is an artist
unequalled in all the world. Its ways are full of grace and beauty. And beauty
in the soul expresses itself in comely ways and winsome deeds. Spirituality
will not only transfigure the countenance, but clothe the hands and feet with
tenderness and grace.
II. Consider the
purity of the snow. It is clean, white, and bright. But when it comes in
contact with soot, its purity is defiled and its comeliness destroyed. What a
pitiable sight is a soul defiled by the soot of sin! Snow undefiled is
bewitchingly beautiful, but when tainted it is repulsive. The sight of doves
and snow made David yearn for a pure heart.
III. Consider the
variety of the snowflakes. The snowflake has been examined by the microscope,
and its revelations disclosed. Revelations of crowns studded with brilliants,
of stars with expanding rays, of bridges with their abutments, and temples with
their aisles and columns. “Scientific men have observed no less than a thousand
different forms and shapes in snow crystals. While they shoot out stars like
chiselled diamonds, they reveal endless variety. O what a God is ours!
Everywhere in nature we see diversity. We stand amazed before the various types
of mind. When we say the snow crystal is a picture of God’s thought, we also
are forced to believe it is expressed in a thousand different ways.
IV. Consider the
usefulness of the snow. It is a stimulant and fertiliser. Exhausted soils are
enlivened and strengthened by the snow. Gases are captured by it, and they
descend in showers to enrich and beautify the fields. Utility is a widespread
law. Waste material is caught up and made to serve another purpose. See how the
snow covers with its woollen mantle uncomely objects, and simultaneously
protects those hidden potencies which under the vernal equinox unfold into bud
and leaf, blossom, fruit. Beneath that white shroud the forces of spring are
allying and marshalling, like soldiers on the field. Snow is a source of
irrigation. In countries of great elevation, where the rains are only
periodical, the inhabitants depend wholly on the snow to enrich and fertilise
their fields. Viewing human life in the light of a Divine philosophy, we are
forced to the conclusion that the winter of our trials is essential to
soul-fruitage. Lowell saw in the first fall of snow the picture of a great
sorrow, but a sorrow sweetened by the elements of hope. Reposing in the thought
of a universal Father, and having assurances that winter will give place to
spring and the melodies of birds, let us see in our trials and afflictions the
means ordained for our entrance into glory. In Haydn’s Creation the
opening passage abounds in dissonances, a fit representation of chaos; but they
soon give way to harmonies, choral and symphonic, that fill the soul with
dreams of immeasurable glory and unearthly peace. And as in music, so in life,
discords will end in harmonies, and sweet strains fill earth and sky. Death may
seem to silence the harp of life, yet it is only as a pause in music that is
preparatory to richer, sweeter, and fuller tones. (J. B. Whitford.)
Verse 7
He sealeth up the hand of every man.
God known by the sealing up of man’s hand
The primary reference to this statement is to the season of
winter. Then the earth is hard With frost, and perhaps covered with snow. This
brings to man a diminution of power. Scope for his usual activity is cut off.
Not only does the labour of the husbandman in great measure cease, but other
forms of outdoor labour as well, the necessary materials being no longer
plastic in the workman’s hand. The hand of man is so effectually sealed that,
for a time, numerous industries fail. While this is the primary reference of
the statement, it may be much more widely applied. On every side God sets a
limit to man. In relation to everything he comes to a point where he finds his
hand “sealed up.” This, no doubt, is a necessity of his limited nature.
1. God sealeth up man’s hand in the realm of nature, that we may know
His work in the supply of our necessary food. For that we are dependent on the
earth, and the elements: and we can do many things towards extracting from them
the food which we need. We can plough, and sow, and harrow, and weed. But in
this case man comes to a point where God sealeth up his hand. There is another
class of operations which is equally necessary to secure the desired result.
There must be apportionment of moisture and sunshine; and there may be mildew
and blight. But as regards all this, man is utterly helpless. We have no power
over the clouds and sunshine. All that kind of operation belongs entirely to
God. This is a special reason for adoration and gratitude when the work is
completed, seeing it is so peculiarly and manifestly the work of God. If the
harvest were, from first to last, our own work, how proud should we be! how
self-sufficient and how forgetful of God!
2. God sealeth up the hand of man by events in Providence, that all
men may know His work as the Ruler of the world. Providence is just God’s work
in this sense. It sets Him before us as the righteous Governor of the universe.
Men can do many things, but they cannot do everything. This comes very much
from the concealments of Providence. There is a thick veil spread over the
doings of God in order that men may fear before Him. This applies to nations as
well as to individuals. Both the one and the other must move very much in the
dark as regards circumstances and results, but not as regards principles. For
principles are immutable, and God intends us to act from these. How often does
God actually arrest courses of human action by sudden combinations in
providence which make them impossible--as in the confusion of tongues at Babel.
3. God sealeth up man’s hand by affliction, that men may know His
work in their individual life. Affliction is no doubt a part of providence, but
it is an isolated part. It is individual in its action, and it enforces the
knowledge of God’s work in the personal sphere. This it does by sealing up the
hand. Then we feel how little we had in our own power even when we were at our
best, and how completely we were at the mercy of a higher. And we see also how
well things can go on without us.
4. God seals up the hand of every man when, by His Spirit, He
convinces him of sin, that all may know His work in the matter of the soul’s
salvation. Here we are in the region of conscience. Practical lesson. We must
accept our weakness, and all the limitations of our present condition, if we
are ever to know God’s work. (A. L. Simpson, D. D.)
Verse 14
Hearken unto this, O Job: stand still, and consider the wondrous
works of God.
God’s wondrous working
The teaching of Scripture, both in the Old Testament and in the
New, impresses upon us a recognition of the most intimate connection between
God and all the forces and events of nature and providence. The thunder is His
voice, the clouds are the dust of His feet.
I. How is it done?
By what means is it brought about? Let us take the wind and the clouds to
illustrate this question. “The wind bloweth where it listeth: thou hearest the
sound thereof; but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth.” We
can exercise no control over it; it seems to be under no control. But closer
examination throws doubt upon the opinion that wind and cloud movements are
mere chance work. Some winds are found to be very fixed in their season, their
direction, and their force. To find out how the clouds are formed, and the
winds rise and fall, is the work of science. Law and order must prevail
wherever science can work. But suppose that, one by one, natural phenomena have
been traced to their proximate causes throughout the whole domain of nature and
natural law, and science brings us its final results, we have no reason, with
the Scriptures in our hands, and their truths hid in our hearts, to receive
those results with any other feeling than rejoicing. We know from Scripture that
God is not a God of confusion (1 Corinthians 14:33). But we must
not allow ourselves to be imposed upon by the use of ambiguous terms. Suppose
we could trace up the existing universe to its primeval germ or germs; we are
no nearer the discovery of the origin of things. The laws of nature, proximate
causes, or whatever other phrase may be preferred, are not forces, much less
are they powers; they are merely the modes in which the force or the power
operates. Underneath and beyond all these laws, or modes, or sequences, there
is a mysterious power which science cannot catch, which it knows to exist, but
which has ever evaded its search. Tyndall is right, because strictly
scientific, when he says that natural phenomena are, one by one, being
associated with their proximate causes; but he may be wrong when he adds that
the idea of personal volition mixing itself in the economy of nature is
retreating more and more, because here he ventures beyond his sphere, and makes
science speak as if it had something to say on a question concerning which he
himself allows that it ought not to venture an opinion. For what if this
mysterious Power at the back of things should itself be a Person whose volition
is the most potent factor of all? Professor Darwin says: “As man can produce,
and certainly has produced, a great result by his methodical and conscious
means of selection, what may not Nature effect?” We reply: Infinitely more,
provided Nature possesses infinite wisdom and power to adopt the methods and to
make the selections, along with the personal volition which originates them
all. But this “Nature” is none other than the God of the Bible, who created the
heavens and the earth, and who made man in His own image.
II. By whom is it
done? By what agent is it brought about? The world by its wisdom has never
known God. God reveals Himself. While science searches all His workings, it
finds everywhere the “hiding of His power,” but Himself it cannot find. God can
be known only by those who hear His own voice making Himself known. By faith we
understand the worlds were framed by the word of God. By faith also we know
that the worlds are upheld and balanced by the same Power which made them. The
laws of nature are the methods by which the God of creation and providence
disposes and balances the things which He has made. It is strange that the How
should be confounded with the Who, or that the reign of law should be imagined
to set aside the necessity, and render doubtful the existence, of a lawgiver. A
watch is made, so also is a tree. The method of making does not in either case
supersede the necessity of a maker. The laws of painting do not produce a
picture of a tree without the hand and skill and volition of a painter tracing
every detail. When we listen to the winds, or look upwards to the clouds, or,
standing upon the shore, look out upon the stormy ocean, there may be in these
no articulate voice to direct us to the character and name of that power which
made and moves them. But surely the Maker and the Mover of winds and clouds and
storms is not so weak and helpless but that He may speak for Himself, and make
Himself understood by intelligent creatures. It is true, and must in the very
nature of the case remain ever true, that to the mere scientific explorer God
remains unknown, “declining all intellectual manipulation.” When now we search
the Scriptures as those who desire to hear God’s own voice, to listen to His
own explanation of how the world was fashioned, and how it is upheld, we find,
it may be, many things hard to be understood; but we find also the constant
declaration of the Divine omnipresence, as superintending, directing, and
actively working, according to His own eternal purpose, whatsoever comes to
pass. The relation of God’s providential power to His creative power is a
matter rather of profitless speculation than of practical importance. Jonathan
Edwards suggests, as an illustration, the forming and sustaining of an image in
a mirror. The first rays of light from the object falling on the mirror form
the image, and there is a constant and unbroken stream of rays which sustain
it. The forming and sustaining powers are substantially one. The relation
likewise of God’s free and universal agency in providence toward other free
agencies and secondary causes, raises many interesting questions, which,
however, are also of little profit. Sufficient unto us are the facts that God
is not, and cannot be, the author of sin; that no violence is offered to the
will of the creatures; that the liberty or contingency of second causes is not
taken away, but rather established, inasmuch as the same providence which
causeth all things to come to pass, ordereth them to fall out according to the
nature of second causes. And again, the relation of God’s general to His
particular providence, the adjustment of events to the whole, and at the same
time to each and every one of its minutest parts, suggests many problems which
it is hard, perhaps impossible, to solve. Sufficient for us is the assurance
that, however complicated the task may seem to us, with God all things are
possible. And the God to whom all this power and wisdom belong, is revealed to
us in the person of Jesus, who is the effulgence of His glory, and the very
image of His substance, who says to us: “He that hath seen We hath seen the
Father.” In the earthly life of Jesus, as recorded in the Gospels, the man of
science will find problems as hard to solve, and mysteries as difficult of
comprehension, as those which meet him on the field of nature. There is the
same mysterious power, the same awful presence, and the same failure of an
intellectual manipulation to capture and define it.
III. Why is it done?
For what purpose is it brought about? This question is obviously two fold,
according as it is asked by science or religion, in reference to the modes of
action or the motives of the agent. The former may be answered in a single
sentence. Every event, regarded scientifically, is first an effect, and then also
a cause; whatever flows from it shows the purpose for which it was itself
brought about. Physically, the event is intended to produce whatever, according
to the laws of nature, flows from it. But the question remains whether,
speaking strictly of the material world and its phenomena, the God of nature
and of providence has, or can have, any ends in view which are outside the
domain of physical science. When He makes the clouds His chariot, or walks upon
the wings of the wind, does He confine Himself to purely physical work?
According to Elihu, in our text, it is far otherwise; for those clouds and that
wind may be carrying heavy loads of mercy or of judgment. The physical, the
moral, and the spiritual--the personal, the national, and the universal--are all
departments of the same government, and that government is personal and
absolute. It is sometimes affirmed that the teaching of Scripture--at least, of
the Old Testament--is not to be applied to modern life and the providence of
God in relation to it, inasmuch as God was then dealing in a special way with a
theocratic nation, which was specially under His authority, in a sense in which
no nation now is. But this involves an obvious fallacy: for
1. It can, at most, apply only to the particular methods of the
Divine government with that particular nation, and not the principles of the
Divine government generally.
2. We find those principles applied in Scripture to other nations
besides Israel.
3. We find the same mysteries exercising men’s minds then as now.
4. The same principles are carried into the New Testament, and are
there treated as universal in their scope. Even what might seem the most
exceptional dealings of the Lord towards His people are adduced for the purpose
of impressing upon us the principles involved, and supplying us with examples.
Elijah, for instance, was a man like ourselves, says James, and the efficacy of
his prayers teaches us that we, too, may pray with expectation. It is true that
Scripture reveals to us the presence of God manifesting itself by miracle, as
well as by ordinary providence. But we are not now concerned with the methods
of the Divine manifestation, only with the fact that the will and power of God
are present, and that they are supreme. Grant this, and the question of miracles
becomes a purely secondary one. Even the will of the creature man is a potent
force among those of the world around him, many of which at least are under its
control so far as to be directed towards particular ends which they would not
otherwise accomplish. In this respect also man was made in the image of his
Maker; and no account of nature and providence can possibly be adequate which
does not make allowance for the will of God as the Supreme Power over all. It
is not the extraordinary or miraculous merely in the natural world which may be
made subservient to moral and spiritual ends. But the ordinary laws of nature
are so disposed and balanced that they cooperate for such ends also. It is
well, no doubt, in view, for example, of bad trade, agricultural depression,
the prevalence of disease or personal, social, or national disaster--it is well
to examine carefully the natural causes of these things, and to remove them if
we can. But is that all our duty! Mr. Froude says: “The clergy are aware all the
time that the evils against which they pray depend on natural causes, and that
prayer from a Christian minister will as little bring a change of weather as
the incantations of a Caffre rainmaker.” Now, certainly, if the prayers of the
Christian minister are to be classed along with the Caffre rainmaker’s
incantations, as the same in kind and similar in their motive and design, Mr.
Froude is right,. But is this a fair or accurate description of the case? The
Christian minister, we submit, is called upon to pray, not because his prayer
can change the weather, but because his God can do so. Pestilence comes through
uncleanness and the neglect of sanitary measures; therefore in this department
let all due precautions be taken to avert it. It comes also from the hand of
God, and therefore it is a proper subject for humiliation and prayer. For
surely it is both irrational and profane to assert that we ourselves may so
overrule and direct the forces of Nature, by sanitary precautions and
otherwise, as to alleviate or avert the cholera, and yet to maintain that the
God to whom we pray has no power so to do. Depression in trade may be due to
economic causes, it is due also to the finger of God. We may, and often do,
err, however, in attempting to read God’s providence from the wrong end, by
asking what God means by it, instead of inquiring what lesson we ourselves may
learn from it. We may err in reading God’s providence for others instead of for
ourselves. We may err in directing too exclusive attention to what we call
special providences, and thinking too little of ordinary and everyday Divine
protection. All events have, at least, a two-fold aspect--one in relation to
their proximate causes and effects among the laws of nature, which reads its
appropriate lesson as to the use or neglect of means for averting evil, and
another in relation to the hand and will of God, which reads its lessons too,
no less clearly and impressively than the former. It is a narrow and unworthy
view of the Divine government, akin to that spirit which makes God altogether
such an one as ourselves, to suppose that when we have found one manifest
design and adaptation of any event in one department, there can be no other
designs or adaptations in other directions which we do not observe. It is one
evidence of the wisdom by which the forces of nature are disposed and balanced
that nothing is allowed to run to waste, but that all is economised and made to
go as far as possible. In conclusion, let me advert to three practical points
on which the subject under consideration has an important bearing.
1. In the sphere of social and national life, the hand of God, by
means of natural law, visits iniquity with chastisement, and His voice calls to
thankfulness, penitence, and prayer. God is supreme, but also immediate and
personal, Governor among the nations. As by means of natural law He visits the
iniquities of the fathers upon the children, and makes the show of the sinner’s
countenance testify against him, so likewise He assures us by His providence, as
well as by His word, that righteousness exalteth a nation, and that sin becomes
a nation’s reproach. Nations, as well as individuals, receive Divine calls to
gratitude, repentance, and prayer.
2. The duty and the efficacy of prayer are to be considered solely in
the light of our second question. The proper use of means for the
accomplishment of given purposes belongs to the first department--the How; and
this ought not to be neglected. But prayer looks directly to God, and has
nothing to do with secondary causes. The range of prayer is as wide as the
providence of God. Whatever difficulties may beset the philosophy of the
subject, we can pray best, most scripturally, most truly, when we forget all
about its philosophy and its difficulties. These all lie in the region of
natural law and secondary causes, with which prayer has nothing to do. It is
vain to attempt any compromise or division of territory between natural law on
the one side and effectual prayer on the other. All prayer must, in the nature
of the case, be limited and conditioned by the submission of the petitioner’s
will to the will of Him to whom he prays, and should involve thanksgiving and
adoration. Some attempt to exclude prayer from the physical world as a force
not provided for, and of no avail, and would limit it to things more purely
spiritual. But if the reign of law excludes prayer from the physical world, it
excludes it equally from every department. For the frames and feelings of the
human spirit, the workings of conscience, and all that belongs to the spiritual
world, are as much under the reign of law as the motions of the tides or the
phases of the moon, and events are as much settled in the one sphere as in the
other. And the same line of argument, if consistently carried out, would
paralyse all human effort in every direction whatever. If we are to have law
and prayer at all, we must have them cooperating as fellow servants in the same
sphere, and there is no possibility of an amicable division of the land between
them.
3. In all the work of the Church, specially in the work of the
pulpit, we have to do, directly and mainly, with the Word of God. Our work lies
in another sphere from that of the scientific explorer in the domain of natural
law. The world needs the Gospel; we have the authority of God for saying that
Christ Jesus can save to the uttermost. Paul said to Timothy, “Preach the
Word”; he charged him also to turn away from the oppositions of the knowledge
which is falsely so called (1 Timothy 6:20). The surest way to
drive all enemies from the field is to preach the Word, to let it speak for
itself. (James Smith, MA.)
Verse 16
Dost thou know the balancings of the clouds?
Clouds
Note, in the address of Elihu, his close observation of God’s
works in nature, and the admirable use he makes of them.
I. The fact in
nature. Wonderful creations of God are the clouds, well deserving our
admiration and our study. What a beautiful fact is the balancing of the clouds!
Think of the material of which the cloud is composed. There it is, a fleece
asleep on the bosom of the blue. Can we explain the balancing? How the hard ice
or heavy water turns into light steam, or how the steam condenses into water,
or hardens into ice again? Why it is that one day may frown with the storms of
winter, and the next smile with the light of spring? Heat, gravitation,
electricity, are useful names for the facts we observe, but how much
explanation do they give?
II. The fact in
experience. Elihu’s words were intended to carry the thoughts of Job beyond the
clouds of heaven: for the Book of Job is not a treatise of natural philosophy,
but of moral and spiritual truth. Are there no clouds in our sky? Is all
bright--without a single shadow? Such a sky would he more than we could bear.
Our heads are too weak to stand it. Blessed be God for clouds! They temper the
scorching sky, and make the atmosphere more sweet, more healthy. They open a
new field for the exhibition of the Divine attributes; they present masses for
the light of His character to irradiate and glorify. And is there no balancing
of our clouds? Does a single affliction ever gather over us which God does not
weigh and measure and control? Infinite Wisdom is at work to determine the form
and degree of our earthly trials; and He will not “suffer us to be tempted
above what we are able to bear.” Still, how little we know about it! We see the
purpose of some of our sorrows; the evil they lead us to correct, the danger
they teach us to avoid; but, for anything we can tell, God has many other
purposes in them, of which we shall never know till they are revealed to us in
heaven. (F. Tucker, B. A.)
Which is perfect in
knowledge.
Of the omniscience of God
These words are a declaration of that Divine attribute, the
perfection of knowledge.
I. God is a Being
indeed with perfect knowledge.
1. Knowledge is a perfection without which the foregoing attributes
are no perfections at all, and without which those which follow can have no
foundation. Where there is no knowledge, eternity and immensity are as nothing;
and justice, goodness, mercy, and wisdom can have no place.
2. That God must be a Being indeed with perfect knowledge, appears
from His having communicated certain degrees of that perfection. For whatever
perfection is in any effect, must of necessity have been much more in the cause
that produced it. Nothing can give to another that which it hath not in itself.
Though nothing can give what it has not, yet any cause may forbear to give all
that it has.
3. From the immensity and omnipresence of God may the same truth be
likewise clearly evinced. Wherever Himself is, His knowledge is, which is
inseparable from His being, and must therefore be infinite.
II. The particular
nature and circumstances of the Divine knowledge.
1. The object of this knowledge. It is a knowledge of all things
absolutely. Our knowledge is short as our duration, and limited as our extent.
The knowledge of God is a knowledge of all the actions of men; of all their
thoughts and intents; and even of future and contingent events. Even the most
contingent futurities, the actions of free agents, cannot be conceived to be
hidden from his foresight. How can foreknowledge in God be consistent with
liberty of action in men? Premise that our infinite understandings are not able
to comprehend all the ways of infinite knowledge, and that the question is not
whether men’s actions are free, but how that freedom of action which makes men
to be men, can be consistent with foreknowledge of such actions. If these two
things were really inconsistent, and could not be reconciled, it would follow,
not that men’s actions were not free (for that would destroy all religion), but
that such free actions as men’s are, were not the objects of the Divine
foreknowledge. Foreknowledge does not cause things to be. The futurity of free
actions is exactly the same, whether they can, or could not, be foreknown.
2. The manner of this Divine knowledge. We cannot, in particular,
explain all the ways, manners, and circumstances of infinite knowledge. We can
only make a few general observations. The Divine knowledge is not, as ours and
the angels, a knowledge of things by degrees and parts. It is a perfect
comprehension of everything, in all possible respects at a time, and in all
possible circumstances together. It is not, as ours, only a superficial and
external knowledge, but an intimate and thorough prospect of their very inmost
nature and essence. It is not, as ours, confused and general, but a clear,
distinct, and particular knowledge of every, even the minutest, thing or
circumstance. It is not, as ours, acquired with difficulty, consideration,
attention, and study, but a knowledge necessarily and perpetually arising of
itself.
3. The certainty of this Divine knowledge. It is absolutely
infallible, without the least possibility of any degree of being deceived.
III. A few practical
inferences.
1. If the Divine knowledge is perfect, it is a proper object of our
admiration and honour.
2. If God knows all, even our most secret actions; then ought we to
live under the power of this conviction, in all holy and godly conversation,
both publicly and in private.
3. Learn the folly of all hypocrisy; the obligation to purity of
heart.
4. If God knows all future events, we may safely depend and trust on
His providence, without being over-solicitous for the time to come.
5. See the folly of pretending to foreknow things.
6. If God alone knoweth the thoughts of men, we ought not to be
forward in judging others. (S. Clarke, D. D.)
Verse 18
Hast thou with Him spread out the sky?
The sky
For beauty, for inspiration, for health and refreshment, for a
sense of freedom and enlargement, is there anything like the sky when the earth
does not bury it out of sight by her vapours, nor foul and tarnish it by her
smoke? Or again, for teaching and for sublimest instruction, for tenderness and
for strength, for measurelessness and everlastingness, is there anything like
the sky? How it attracts us and draws us all out of doors, makes it impossible
for us to live within any doors! We must be under the sky. And how it rewards
us! The first step when we leave the threshold, what a meeting between a man’s
face and the face of the sky! It is a spirit and life to us. It bathes us. It
is anodyne in the evening, it kisses us in the morning. It is vital enough,
intense enough to enter and flow through the centre of every blood globule,
every nerve and every atom. More, it positively is soul for our soul, for it
kindles thought and affection; yea, still more, it is inmost spirit for our
inmost spirit, for God is in the sky and gives Himself to us through it. If you
do not receive God through the sky that is your fault; it is neither God’s
fault nor the fault of the sky. For I, at any rate, am conscious of receiving
God every day of my life through the sky. Hence the sky feeds our reverence;
quickens worship; teaches us how to worship; puts all littleness and partiality
out of our worship; makes our worship large, and grand, and impartial as the
sky; takes fear and distrust from us, creates in us faith and a hope that will
not die. When you feel dark and doleful within the narrow prison of your own
personality, do go out to God’s sky, liberate yourself, let your soul expand in
its openness. There is an infinite hope for us in the sky, and God has put it
there. All prophets, therefore, and these Scriptures refer us to the sky. You
know how full the prophets of this Old Book are of reference to the sky and to
Him who stretched it out. “God alone stretcheth out the heavens,” saith Job. “O
Lord, my God,” says David, “Thou art very great;. . .Who stretchest out the
heavens like a curtain.” The sky is a veil or a curtain between His glory and
the outer glory. But what we call the outer glory--sky--is His glory come
through. His vitality presses on the bike curtain. The blue curtain is pervious
in every point to His Spirit. The tender infinite sky is God’s remoter robe,
and His robe is full of Him--full of His virtues. He holdeth back the face of
His throne, and hangeth the blue curtain before it. Let me note here that the
word translated sky in our text is plural in the Hebrew, and means “the ethers”
or the tenuous atmospheres which are intermediate between our heaven and that
other glory which mortal eyes cannot see. And in justifying the words
“stretcheth out” and “spreadeth,” as applicable to the “ethers” or the sky, let
us observe, once for all, that the things most solid and those most attenuated
are all one substance. Strictly, there is but one substance in the visible and
invisible universe. The ether of the sky is just as metallic as gold, or
silver, or steel. These metals may any day be made ether again. Nothing is so
solid and nothing so strong as the everlasting sky. It is the “stretched out”
spirit substance; the sweet transparency. It is the image and the mirror of the
invisible God, and one word expresses both, the ether and His Spirit. The
breath of God is what we call Holy Spirit, and the “stretched out” sky simply
clothes His breath or spirit to us who are so dull of comprehending His
Spirit--the great, clear, infinite sky--so that it is the manifestation, the
image of the Spirit of God. We must allow God to hang the picture before us; He
knows what we want. We are wise enough to follow this Divine method in putting
pictures before the eyes of our little ones, and having awakened wonder and
secured their interest we then proceed to give them the ideas of which the
pictures are the signs. Now of all pictures, the infinite curtain dotted over
with its innumerable golden suns is the picture. It is God holding before our
eyes the shadow of Himself. The boundless, over-arching tent which is spread
over all the worlds and heavens of His children is simply the image of His own
boundlessness. It is one, like God--fathomless, measureless, strong, and
endless. As of all scenes the sky is first and largest, likewise among things
serviceable it is of the very first use. It is the infinite, the invisible
servant of God. It is the first of all His ministering angels. It is always
blessing us and without a sound. It is always teaching us. It teaches us more
than all sounds and voices ever taught us or ever can teach. It teacheth us
concerning the Spirit of God, concerning the face of God, and concerning the
operation of God. And if you want to learn what His Trinity is, I implore you
not to learn it from men, or books, but from God’s teaching. It is the Father
representing His own adorable Trinity to His children, and how unspeakably
superior to all our definitions, whether Athanasian or otherwise! “Lift up your
eyes,” He says, “and behold My infinite ether, behold it by day and behold it
by night. When you have considered with admiration and reflection My infinite
ether, then consider the sun which is in the bosom of the ether, the child, the
only begotten of the infinite ether. Then, thirdly, think of the breath of the
ether coming down into your blood and frame, and of the beam of light, both
alike proceeding from the Father, and the Son, from the infinite ether and from
the sun in the sky. It is impossible to imagine either a more expressive or a
more impressive teaching about Father, Son, and Holy Spirit than God has made
the sky. From the sky we have breath for the lungs and light for the eyes, and
from the adorable Trinity the breath and illumination of His Spirit for our
eternal life. Think of the infinitude of the living spirit which is behind the
ether, and think of that central light which lightens all the suns, which the
suns simply reflect, and think again of the living spirit and the living light
giving themselves to every atom child in the universe for the eternal life of
every child of the Father in His visible heavens. God has given to us the
sublimest teaching in the sublimest way. Now as if to insist that we must carry
over the whole sky and all that is in the sky into our Gospel--and if you do
not carry it into the Gospel then it is no Gospel of God, for wherever your
Gospel came from I am certain that the first teaching of God is in His infinite
sky--God shows us therein a mirror of Himself spread out before us. The sky is
“a molten looking glass” to reflect God’s face. Likewise we read, “Thy
tabernacle, thy tent in which thou dwellest with thy children.” But who can
speak of the children folded within the infinite curtain of the sky? All worlds
have, of course, their own atmospheres, but beyond their distinct atmospheres
there is one ethereal mantle, one sky that includes them all. One blue tent
comprehends all constellations and all planets, but nothing is so firm as this
fixed tent. Why do we call it firm? Because it is immovable. Winds blow and
storms rage in your planetary atmosphere, but never in the ether. If ten
thousand times ten thousand suns, which are now in the firmament, were to burn
out and become extinct tonight, it would not in the very least touch or affect
the infinite or the eternal ether which over-arches all worlds. It is
imperturbable because it is God’s image, like Himself, imperturbable, and yet
infinitely delicate and tender. God breathes through this skyey tent, and His
tent at every point inbreathes the breath of God. His sleeping and waking
children throughout the universe sleep and wake throughout their Father’s
all-breathing tent of azure and of gold. “He stretcheth out the heavens as a
curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent for His children to dwell in,” and He
breathes through into the tent, into every spirit and bosom of every child,
because the ethers are many. One ether above another, one ether within another,
adapted to the diverse requirements of His children, and yet all the inner and
inmost ethers of angels and of men, all the material heavens of immensity, and
all the invisible heavens are but one Father’s tent to dwell in. Lift up your
eyes on high and behold the countless homes in your Father’s infinite tent; the
children of each orb in the sky, of incomputable number. How ineffable then is
the thought of all the children of all the worlds and all the heavens in one
tent of an infinite God. Scope enough opens here to admit of foreign travel to
all eternity. There is also family enough here to occupy and interest us to all
eternity. We shall have an everlasting opportunity of entertaining strangers
and of being entertained by strangers. But the thing which specially concerns
us is that beautiful transformation we are undergoing from being grubs of the
earth to becoming God’s butterflies of the sky--the transformation of God’s
children from being planetary children to becoming His children of the heavens.
In the present form of our nature we can only live in the dense atmosphere of
our own earth, but God is generating an inner man within us. He who asked us
just now to think of Him who “formed us in the womb” asks us now to think of
our outer form as a womb in which He is forming the inner creature which shall
be able to breathe His ether, and after that the sublimer ether, until at last
in our highest refinement we shall be able to breathe the sublimest ether,
namely, the ether of His own presence and glory. Suppose, for an illustration
of our formation and our transfiguration, that we take those strange denizens
of our sky called comets, which appear to be planets in the making, that is,
they so appear to me, and I shall so think of them till I am better instructed.
They have all been generated and thrown off by some sun. All earths and comets
are children of suns. The comets have too much of the fiery energy of their
original. The comets are too recent; they require ages and ages to cool
down--as our own planet did--before they can become grass-growing,
fruit-growing habitations. But mark the beautiful process. To what immeasurable
distance from their parent sun these comets rush, as though they were bent on
entering the outer darkness! But behold in due time, perhaps in their hundredth
year, if not then, in their seven hundredth year, or in their thousandth year,
they begin to rush as fast back under the attraction of their parent the
sun--just as fast as they had all the centuries been receding from the sun.
What a process! Receive instruction. In travelling from the sun they are
cooling, cooling, and bathing themselves in distant and more distant
atmospheres, and impregnating themselves with foreign virtues, and then in
returning to the sun they renew their energy and are impregnated with solar
electricities. And this strange law of receding from and then advancing towards
the sun continues until the happy balance is struck, and they become mild and
temperate worlds. In the light of this law contemplate the present strangely
inconsistent earth life of man. Child though he is of God, shot out of His
bosom, yet there is in him a terribly strong tendency of turning his back on
God, and rushing away in the strength of his own will, as though he would rush
on to darkness, chaos, desert, hell, and find a region without God--without
hope. But the moment comes--the moment of his greatest distance, perhaps his
greatest sin--when he bethinks himself, pulls himself up and repents, bends
round, turns, moves towards his God with all the earnestness that heretofore he
went from Him, comet-like. Thus it is that he, too, acquires experience, w the
experience of distance, the experience of darkness, the experience of his own
fiery passions; and then the experience of God’s breath, of God’s harmonising
truth, of God’s pure, calm, changeless, eternal love, until ultimately he
attains to great riches of nature, the riches of darkness, the riches of light,
the riches of personality, the riches Of God, and becomes a divinely balanced
character, a noble son of God. (John Pulsford.)
Verses 19-24
Teach us what we shall say unto Him.
Man and God
I. Suggestions
concerning man.
1. The sublimest act, speaking to God. “Teach us what we shall say
unto Him; for we cannot order our speech by reason of darkness. Shall it be
told Him that I speak? If a man speak, surely he shall be swallowed up.”
Speaking to God is an act implying a belief in the personality, presence, and
susceptibility of God. Concerning this act, Elihu here intimates three things:
2. A sad tendency. This is suggested in the words, “Men see not the
bright light which is in the clouds.” Although the reference here is of course
to the physical fact, it is certainly suggestive of the mental tendency, which
is very strong in some, to look at the dark side of things. You see this
tendency--
II. Declarations
concerning God. There are four facts concerning God here declared; and as they
have been noticed more than once before, it will be sufficient just to mention
them.
1. His greatness is referred to. “With God is terrible majesty.”
2. His inscrutability is referred to. “We cannot find Him out.”
3. His righteousness. “He is excellent in power and in judgment, and
in plenty of justice.”
4. His independency. “He respecteth not any that are wise of heart.”
(Homilist.)
Verse 21
And now men see not the bright light which is in the clouds.
Light in the clouds
Faith can see light when to human sense all is dark and dismal;
can distinguish stars in the darkest night, sunbeams in the blackest clouds. I
do not profess accurately to determine the meaning of our text. Possibly the
words are to be interpreted in their literal signification, referring to
changes in the weather, by which God, in a manner unknown to man, accomplishes
His wise and benevolent purposes. But a cloud is so common a figure to denote
adversity, light to denote prosperity, a cold north wind a painful dispensation
of Providence, and fair weather a time of comfort and tranquillity, that I do
not hesitate to make application of the words to the present condition of
believers.
I. The clouds.
Clouds not infrequently gather around the path of the Christian in his
pilgrimage to heaven. To look for perpetual sunshine is a vain and foolish
expectation in passing through the vicissitudes of this stormy world. If man be
born to trouble, assuredly the Christian has no exemption from the common lot
of human nature. His example is Christ, and in conformity with Christ his
religious character must attain its purity and perfection. Like his great
Master, he must learn obedience in the things which he suffers You believe in
Providence; now is the time to trust it. You believe in the chastening hand of
your heavenly Father: then say to God, “Show me wherefore Thou contendest with
me.” How will the cloud disperse? In what way will it end? That must be left
between yourself and God. The order of Providence has been arranged with
reference to the character of the believer.
II. The bright
light. The light is here, though men see it not. Some people are not accustomed
to observe the monition of Providence. The events must come in all their
reality before they are correctly appreciated. Light and shade are mingled in
the dispensations of Providence, as in the scenery of nature; and in the
darkest shade we shall discern some light if we look for it in a right
disposition of mind. Some will not see shade; others will not see light. The
silvery margin of the cloud is a pleasant sign. Or is the bright light a pencil
of rays, breaking through an opening in the thin and fleecy cloud, as you may
often have observed it in the summer’s evening? It tells you the sun has not
set. It still shines through the cloud. Or is the bright light the bow in the
clouds, the reflected light of sunbeams separated in their rich and beautiful
colours? This is the emblem of promise, the token of good. It means promise in
sorrow, and promise is ever present in the darkest day of our lives.
III. The passing
wind. The wind here is not that which bringeth up the rain from the chambers of
the south, but that which disperses the clouds, and produces fair weather. You
may experience something of the same kind of dispersion of your gloom and
sorrow. The wind that drives away the cloud may seem rough and cold. But be the
wind what it may, rough or gentle, cold or warm, it is sent by the Lord. Our
troubles are of His appointment, our deliverance at His disposal; and He will
disperse the troubles, and send deliverance at such a time, and by such means
as He sees best. Be it ours, then, to see that the trials accomplish the good
purpose of God, and then we may expect their speedy removal. (R. Halley, D.
D.)
The bright light in the clouds
Prom Elihu we learn that any seeming defect in the Divine
arrangements must be attributable, not to any want of skill or wisdom in the
Divine Ruler of all things, but rather to the short-sightedness of man’s
imperfect vision. Taken in this point of view, the text presents us with ample
materials for deep reflection upon the Divine character, and at the same time
administers to us instructive reproof. How apt are we to indulge in a repining
and complaining spirit, when we cannot see the whole machinery of God’s
government working according to our notions of equity and goodness. “Vain man
would be wise,” says Zophar to Job; his restless and soaring spirit would fain
explore the whole treasure house of knowledge; and yet, with all this panting
after wisdom, how little does the most gifted of earth’s sons comparatively
know of God as revealed in the broad and thinly-leaved volume of the Divine
works. If there be so much that is dark and mysterious in the works of God so
richly spread around us, and in the works of God so warmly beating within us,
what wonder is it if we are unable to track out to our satisfaction the higher
dealings of God’s moral government? There is, however, always the bright light
of wisdom and benevolence shining in the darkest cloud; and it does not shine
the less really because unobserved by our short-sighted vision. In all God’s
dispensations, He doubtless has ever a reason of wisdom and love, though it may
be involved in the clouds of obscurity, and unknown to us. We see merely a few
of the cross wheels, and are at a loss to understand the meaning of their
revolvings. But to Him who ordereth all things, and who seeth the end from the
beginning, every wheel appears properly adjusted for its own special work.
Remember, then, that upon those who are really living by faith in the Son of
God, though they may not always recognise it, the bright light of the heavenly
favour is shining in the darkest cloud of Providence; and what we know not now,
we shall know hereafter. (W. J. Brock, A. B.)
Light on the cloud
The argument is, let man be silent when God is dealing with him;
for he cannot fathom God’s inscrutable wisdom. The text represents man’s life
under the figure of a cloudy day.
I. We live under a
cloud and see God’s way only by a dim light. As beings of intelligence, we find
ourselves hedged in by mystery on every side. All our seeming knowledge is
skirted, close at hand, by dark confines of ignorance. What then does it mean?
Is God jealous of intelligence in us? Exactly contrary to this. He is a Being
who dwelleth in light, and calls us to walk in the light with Him. By all His
providential works He is training intelligence in us, and making us capable of
knowledge. The true account is, that the cloud under which we are shut down is
not heavier than it must be. How can a Being infinite be understood by a being
finite? Besides, we have only just begun to be; and a begun existence is, by
the supposition, one that has just begun to know, and has everything to know.
How then can he expect, in a few short years, to master the knowledge of God
and His universal kingdom? There is not only a necessary, but also a guilty
limitation upon us. And therefore we are not only obliged to learn, but, as
being under sin, are also in a temper that forbids learning, having our minds
disordered and clouded by evil. Hence come our perplexities; for, as the sun
cannot show distinctly what is in the bottom of a muddy pool, so God can never
be distinctly revealed in the depths of a foul and earthly mind. The very
activity of reason, which ought to beget knowledge, begets only darkness now,
artificial darkness. We begin to quarrel with limitation itself, and so with
God. He is not only hid behind thick walls of mystery, but He is dreaded as a
power unfriendly, suspected, doubted, repugnantly conceived. We fall into a
state thus of general confusion, in which even the distinctions of knowledge
are lost. Reminded that God is, and must be, a mystery, we take it as a great
hardship, or, it may be, an absurdity, that we are required to believe what we
cannot comprehend. Entering the field of supposed revelation, the difficulties
are increased in number, and the mysteries are piled higher than before. God in
creation, God in Trinity, God incarnate. Man himself. Man in society.
Practically, much is known about God and His ways--all that we need to know;
but, speculatively, or by the mere understanding, almost nothing save that we
cannot know. The believing mind dwells in continual light; for, when God is
revealed within, curious and perplexing questions are silent. But the mind that
judges God, or demands a right to comprehend Him before it believes, stumbles,
complains, wrangles, and finds no issue to its labour.
II. There is
abundance of light on the other side of the cloud and above it. This we might
readily infer from the fact that so much of light shines through. The
experience of every soul that turns to God is a convincing proof that there is
light somewhere, and that which is bright is clear. It will also be found that
things which at one time appeared to be dark--afflictions, losses, trials,
wrongs, defeated purposes, and deeds of suffering, patience, yielding no
fruit--are very apt, afterward, to change colour, and become visitations of
mercy. And so where God was specially dark, He commonly brings out, in the end,
some good or blessing, in which the subject discovers that his heavenly Father
only understood his wants better than he did himself. Things which seemed dark
or inexplicable, or even impossible for God to suffer without wrong in Himself,
are really bright with goodness in the end. What then shall we conclude, but
that on the other side of the cloud there is always a bright and glorious
light, however dark it is underneath? Hence it is that the Scriptures make so
much of God’s character as a light-giving power, and turn the figure about into
so many forms.
III. The cloud we
are under will finally break way and be cleared. On this point we have many
distinct indications. Thus it coincides with the general analogy of God’s
works, to look for obscurity first, and light afterward. Illustrate--Creation;
animals blind at birth; the manner of our intellectual discoveries, etc.
Precisely what is to be the manner and measure of our knowledge, in the fuller
and more glorious revelation of the future, is not clear to us now; for that is
one of the dark things or mysteries of our present state. But the language of
Scripture is remarkable: it even declares that we shall see God as He is. It is
even declared that our knowledge of Him shall be complete. Let us receive from
this subject--
1. A lesson of modesty. Which way soever we turn in our search after
knowledge, we run against mystery at the second or third step. There is no true
comfort in life, no dignity in reason, apart from modesty.
2. How clear it is that there is no place for complaint or repining
under the sorrows and trials of life. God is inscrutable, but not wrong. If the
cloud is over you, there is a bright light on the other side; and the time is
coming, either in this world or the next, when that cloud will be swept away,
and the fulness of God’s light and wisdom poured around you. 3 While the
inscrutability of God should keep us in modesty, and stay our complaints
against Him, it should never suppress, but rather sharpen, our desire for
knowledge. (Horace Bushnell, D. D.)
Light in the clouds
These words illustrate--
I. That dark
season when clouds of unforgiven guilt overhang and oppress the soul. Like
those dense clouds which, long gathering, thicken into a distinct and compact
mass so is the huge guilt of the sinner who is alienate from God. As thick
clouds conceal the sun, and obstruct the light of day, so this accumulated
guilt hides from the wretched sinner all light of the favour of God.
II. Those dark and
sorrowful seasons that sometimes occur in the Christian’s career. There are
seasons and days when the light of the Lord is withheld, and he must walk on,
and work in the darkness. Yet never is his darkness altogether dark. At such
times there is no change in God, no withdrawment of Christ. The sun all the
while is in his proper place in the heavens.
III. The cloudy
seasons of adversity and affliction. It is part of the method of Divine
procedure in the education of the human race, and for the development of the
higher faculties of our nature, to subject us to suffering. Our lives would
become hard and unlovely were it not for the soft sorrows that fall on us, the
trials that beat on us, and the clouds that drench us. But whatever the sorrows
that overtake us, when they have accomplished their mission they pass away. (W.
T. Bull, B. A.)
The bright light on the clouds
There are a hundred men looking for storm where there is one man
looking for sunshine. My object will be to get you and myself into the
delightful habit of making the best of everything.
I. You ought to
make the best of all your financial misfortunes. During the panic a few years
ago you all lost money. Compression: retrenchment. Who did not feel the
necessity of it? Did yon make the best of this? Are you aware of how narrow an
escape you made? Suppose you had reached the fortune toward which you were
rapidly going? You would have been as proud as Lucifer. How few men have
succeeded largely in a financial sense, and yet maintained their simplicity and
religious consecration! Not one man out of a hundred. The same Divine band that
crushed your storehouse, your bank, your office, your insurance company, lifted
you out of destruction. The day you honestly suspended in business made your
fortune for eternity. “Oh!” you say, “I could get along very well myself, but I
am so disappointed that I cannot leave a competence for my children.” The same
financial misfortune that is going to save your soul will save your children.
The best inheritance a young man can have is the feeling that tie has to fight
his own battle, and that life is a struggle into which he must throw body,
mind, and soul, or be disgracefully worsted.
II. Again, I
remark, you ought to make the best of your bereavements. The whole tendency is
to brood over these separations, and to give much time to the handling of
mementoes of the departed, and to make long visitations to the cemetery, and to
say, “Oh, I can never look up again; my hope is gone; my courage is gone; my
religion is gone; my faith in God is gone! Oh, the wear, and tear, and
exhaustion of this loneliness!” The most frequent bereavement is the loss of
children. Instead of the complete safety into which that child has been lifted,
would you like to hold it down to the risks of this mortal state? Would you
like to keep it out on a sea in which there have been more shipwrecks than safe
voyages? Is it not a comfort to you to know that that child, instead of being
besoiled and flung into the mire of sin, is swung clear into the skies? So it
ought to be that you should make the best of all your bereavements. The fact
that you have so many friends in heaven will make your own departure very
cheerful. The more friends here, the more bitter good-byes; the more friends
there, the more glorious welcomes. Though all around may be dark, see you not
the bright light in the clouds--that light the irradiated faces of your
glorified kindred?
III. So also I would
have you make the best of your sicknesses. When you see one move off with
elastic step and in full physical vigour, sometimes you become impatient with
your lame foot. When a man describes an object a mile off, and you cannot see
it at all, you become impatient of your dim eye. When you hear of a healthy man
making a great achievement, you become impatient with your depressed nervous
system or your dilapidated health. I wilt tell you how you can make the worst
of it. Brood over it; brood over all these illnesses, and your nerves will
become more twitchy, and your dyspepsia more aggravated, and your weakness more
appalling. But that is the devil’s work, to tell you how to make the worst of
it: it is my work to show you a bright light in the clouds. Which of the Bible
men most attract your attention? You say, Moses, Job, Jeremiah, Paul. Why, what
a strange thing it is that you have chosen those who were physically disordered!
Moses--I know he was nervous from the blow he gave the Egyptian. Job--his blood
was vitiated and diseased, and his skin distressfully eruptive. Jeremiah had
enlargement of the spleen. Who can doubt it who reads Lamentations? Paul--he
had a lifetime sickness which the commentators have been guessing about for
years, not knowing exactly what the apostle meant by “a thorn in the flesh.” I
gather from all this that physical disorder may be the means of grace to the
soul. The best view of the delectable mountains is through the lattice of the
sick room.
IV. Again, you
ought to make the best of life’s finality. There are many people that have an
idea that death is the submergence of everything pleasant by everything
doleful. Oh, what an ado about dying! We get so attached to the malarial marsh
in which we live that we are afraid to go up and live on the hilltop. We are
alarmed because vacation is coming. Eternal sunlight, and best programme of
celestial minstrels and hallelujah no inducement. Let us stay here and keep
cold and ignorant and weak. Do not introduce us to the saints of old. I am
amazed at myself and at yourself for this infatuation under which we all rest.
Men, you would suppose, would get frightened at having to stay in this world
instead of getting frightened at having to go toward heaven. I congratulate
anybody who has a right to die. By that I mean through sickness you cannot
avert, or through accident you cannot avoid--your work consummated. “Where did
they bury Lily?” said one little child to another. “Oh!” she replied, “they
buried her in the ground.” “What! in the cold ground?” “Oh no, no! not in the
cold ground, but in the warm ground, where ugly seeds become faithful flowers.”
(T. De Witt Talmage.)
The bright light in the cloud
Take text to illustrate the disposition of men to look upon the
dark side of things.
I. the text will
apply to the sceptic in relation to the dark things of revelation. These men
see the clouds, and through the unbelief of their heart these clouds blacken
and spread until they cover the whole firmament of revelation. That there are
clouds hanging over this Book, it is far more Christian to admit than to deny.
But, thank God, though we see the clouds, the clouds which the sceptic sees, we
do not see them like him. We see a bright light upon them. There are several
things which give the darkest of them a bright light.
1. There is the love of the Infinite Father. This shines through all
its pages.
2. The unspotted holiness of our Great Example.
3. The provision He has made for our spiritual recovery.
4. The existence of a blessed immortality. Immortality is a bright
light upon all the clouds of revelation. The clouds give variety and interest
to the scene--they soften and cool the brilliant and burning rays.
II. The text will
apply to the factious faultfinders of God’s providence. Some people are
everlastingly musing on the difficulties of providence.
1. The permission of moral evil is a cloud.
2. The apparent disregard of God to the moral distinctions of society
is a cloud. “All things come alike to all,” etc.
3. The power which wickedness is often allowed to exercise over
virtue, is a cloud--chains, dungeons, stakes.
4. The premature deaths of the good and useful are a cloud. We feel
these clouds. But there is a bright light upon these clouds. The belief that
they are local, temporary, transitional, is a bright light upon all the clouds.
Out of their darkness and confusion will one day come a beautiful system. “Our
light afflictions which are but for a moment,” etc.
III. The text will
apply to the misanthropic in relation to the character of race. There are men
who have gloomy and uncharitable views of the character of mankind. All men are
as corrupt as they can be--virtue is but vice in a pleasing garb. Very dark
indeed are the clouds which these men see hanging over society; there is no ray
to relieve their darkness. Stiff, we see bright light upon the clouds--there is
not unmitigated, unrelieved corruption. There is the light of social love which
streams through all the ramifications of life. There is a light of moral
justice which flames forth when the right and the true are outraged. There is
the light of true religion. There are men who are throwing on society the right
thoughts, putting forth the right efforts, and breathing to heaven the right
prayers.
IV. The text will
apply to the desponding christian in relation to his experience. There are
hours in the experience of many of the good when all within is cloudy. The
proneness to fall into sin, the coldness of our devotional feeling, the
consciousness of our defects, the felt distance between our ideal and
ourselves, sometimes bring a sad gloom over the heart.” We walk in darkness,
and have no light. But here are bright lights, however, upon this cloudy
experience. In the first place, the very feeling of imperfection indicates
something good. “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” etc. “Blessed are they that
mourn,” etc. In the second place, most of those who are now in heaven once felt
this. Christ is ready to help such as you. From this subject we learn--
1. To cultivate the habit of looking upon the bright side of things.
2. To anticipate the world of future light. (Homilist.)
The light in the clouds
1. We live on the unilluminated side of the cloud between God’s
throne and His earthly children, and only needful rays shine through; and yet
the rays are quite sufficient for your guidance and for mine. We have quite
sufficient truth shining through the cloud for us to walk in the paths of
obedience, waiting for the time when we shall get above the cloud, and behind
the cloud, into the overwhelming brightness that plays forever round the
throne.
2. The infinite light behind the throne is infinite love. That cloud
is light and love, and every ray that streams through to us is a love ray from
the infinite, the abounding and inexhaustible love in the eternal Godhead. God
governs the world by most beautiful laws of compensation. Suffering has many
compensations, not only in its influence upon the sufferer, in humbling him,
bringing him into a sense of dependence, inspiring in him a spirit of prayer,
quickening his faith, and working out the principles of righteousness, but
suffering hath its happy influence upon others.
3. The future will clear up many a mystery. By-and-by shall come the
last great day of revelation, when nothing that is right shall be found to have
been vanquished, and nothing that is wrong shall be found to have triumphed.
Learn--
God usually orders it that through penitence come praise and
forgiveness, through trial comes triumph; yea, the cloud itself sends down
mercy. (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.)
Clouds with silver linings
How much is said in Scripture about clouds! Clouds are the
appropriate signs of mystery, and majesty, and mercy. It is impossible to look
upon a cloud without being impressed perhaps more with the appropriateness of
it as a vesture of God’s greatness and His divinity, than even sea or mountain.
Clouds have an interpreted force. They have gentle and bright teachings. They
are capable of daguerreotyping upon our paths bright letters, if we will but
stop to read them. See whether we can detect some of the light.
1. In the character of God, the cloud has silver linings. “Dark with
excessive light His skirts appear.” In nature, God appears to us very much more
as the God of mystery than as the God of mercy. To me nature is no gospel. The
character of God is a great, strange, dark cloudland; but it has its silver
lining. He dwells in incommunicable, inaccessible light. Yet on the fringes of
that cloud which vests Him, and passes before His throne, we see indications
and traces of the benignity and beauty of His character. The Bible is only
something like a cloud before the throne of God. He holds back the splendour of
His own Being, for we could not bear it.
2. In the pathway of providence the clouds have a silver lining. The
providence in which God moves is frequently as cloudy as even the vesture that
robes round His own being and character. How unreasonable it is for us to
suppose that all providential arrangements are to be known and seen by us.
God’s justice is terrible, but it is lined with mercy; God’s terror is
terrible, but it is lined with love; God’s power is terrible, but it is lined
with wisdom.
3. In the interpretation of truth, the cloud has often a silver
lining. The words of the Book have great darkness in them. It is much easier to
ask questions on the difficulties of Scripture than it is to answer them.
4. In the ordinances of religion the cloud has a silver lining. Learn
that we must be cheerful under the darkness. Finally, there are clouds in some
parts of the universe that have no silver linings. (E. Paxton Hood.)
The bright light in the cloud
God appears, the last of the dramatis personae. He comes in
the whirlwind, and out of the cloud, sweeping through the heavens: He proclaims
His majesty: “Gird up now thy loins like a man, for I will demand of thee, and
answer thou Me.” The cloud is God’s pavilion. It is the appropriate medium
through which the Infinite reveals Himself to man. In the nature of the case it
is not possible to have a revelation without a corresponding adumbration of
Him. He is like the sun, which cannot be seen without a dimness intervening
between it and the naked eye. This is God’s way of revealing Himself: He must
needs obscure His glory in manifesting it. The complaint of Elihu is that men
behold the cloud, but not the bright light within it.
I. As to God’s
personality. To know Him is the summit of human aspiration. This is life
eternal, to know God, and Jesus Christ who is the manifestation of God. It is
an easy thing to utter His name; but who can apprehend the tremendous truth
suggested in that little word of three letters! Infinitude is embraced in it.
When Simonides was entrusted by King Hiero with the duty of defining God, he
returned at the close of the day to ask for further time. A week, a month, a
year passed by, and then he reported, “The more I think of Him, the more He is
unknown to me.” There have been campaigns of controversy, centuries of
research, libraries of theology, and still here we are asking, What is God? The
cloud bewilders us. But one thing we know, God is Love. This is the bright
light. Whatever else we fail to grasp, this we may fully apprehend. If Jesus
Christ had done no more, as Madame de Gasparin said, than to reveal the Divine
Fatherhood, that would have compensated for His incarnation.
II. As to God’s
character. His attributes of truth, justice, and holiness, are the habitation
of His throne. The thought of the Divine holiness appalls us, for we are
defiled, and by our sins infinitely separated from Him. But again, love is the
bright light. The cross stands in the midst of the Divine holiness. The cross
is preeminently the manifestation of the Divine love. At the moment when Jesus
died, the veil of the Temple was rent in twain, and a new and living way was
opened up for sinners into the Holiest of all.
III. As to the
Divine decrees. Or, God’s dealings with us from the eternal ages. The very
suggestion offends us. Yet we must be aware that God would not be God if He had
not foreknown and foreordained whatsoever cometh to pass. It is vain, however,
to undertake to simplify the doctrine. But here, again, love is the bright
light. God’s decrees are founded in His mercy. Election has never kept one out
of heaven, but it has brought an innumerable multitude into it.
IV. As to Divine
providence. Here, surely clouds and darkness are round about Him. Pain, sorrow,
disappointment, are our common portion. We are all burden bearers. Why must we
be? Here, again, love is the bright light. All God’s dealings with us are
illumined by the thought that He does not willingly afflict us. He is making
all things work together for our good. Not long ago, in the Chinese quarter at
San Francisco, under one of the theatres, I saw a child of six years with her
mother in a narrow room, with joss gods all round them. For a coin, the little
one sang to us. It was a strange place for a gush of heaven’s melody. This is
what she sang:--
“Jesus loves me, this I know,
For the Bible tells me so.”
Oh, that we might all carry away with us the assurance of our
Father’s love! Whatever darkness may gather, this is the bright light. (D.
J. Burrell, D. D.)
Light in the cloud
Few things are so indefinite, or at least undefined, as darkness and
light. Grief and gladness are not any more alike to all, than darkness and
light are the same to every one of us. As I reckon my happiness according to
the memory of some past affliction, so I estimate my troubles by remembering my
joys. My past and future make one another. I never can take the weeping that
endures for a night, without preparing the way for the joy that cometh in the
morning. This cannot be other than a very gracious doctrine.
1. Nothing is more brilliant, nothing more simple, more available,
than the gospel of Christ; but nothing is more easily injured or covered up by
the fancies and fictions exhaling upwards from ourselves. Truth is truth,
always the same, do what you will with it; but you may put curtains and clouds
between truth and yourselves that shall leave you in the darkness of error. It
is not the fault of the sun when the clouds eclipse it.
2. We bring you to Christian hope as the light of the new life--the
sense of pardon through a surety, and the hope of glory as the purchase of
another. Only remember that your iniquities may have separated between you and
your God.
3. The countenance of the Father of lights may be covered and
concealed, when there is no false doctrine, no backsliding, directly from us to
make the barrier our own. (H. Christopherson.)
The bright light in the clouds
Here appears to be a figurative allusion to the occurrences which
are under the control of Divine providence, under the similitude of the clouds,
and the bright design which is sometimes beyond the reach of the human mind to
understand.
I. These
occurrences resemble the clouds sometimes.
1. In their sudden appearance.
2. In their various magnitude.
3. In their happy effects. Every cloud brings its proportion of
gloom, yet each cloud is a vehicle of blessing.
II. There is
something cheering in all the dispensations of Providence.
1. The character of God is a bright light. Giving splendor and beauty
to the events of Providence, as the rising sun fringes with golden brightness
the darkest cloud it meets in its course.
2. The promises are a bright light in the clouds. This is the light
of truth, bright with the faithfulness of the Eternal. There is no exigency can
arise, but there is an appropriate promise. Some of them are very
comprehensive. It is well to have the memory stored with these promises.
3. The past conduct of the Lord is a bright light in the clouds. The
review of the past should encourage confidence in reference to the present and
the future. The moral influence of reflection on past mercies is to awaken hope
even when God appears to clothe Himself with clouds and thick darkness.
III. Causes which
prevent us from seeing the bright light in the clouds.
1. Constitutional or physical dejection will do this. The health or
sickness of the body has a much greater influence over our spiritual enjoyments
than some Christians imagine. Body and soul are too closely allied not to
sympathise most deeply with each other.
2. There are, however, other causes, both intellectual and moral,
such as defective views of Divine truth. Some have such imperfect and erroneous
views of God’s Word that they seem to have no consolation in any time of
trouble.
2. Want of faith in the wisdom and goodness of God. Faith is just
that to the soul which sight is to the body. The sun shines though the blind
man sees it not: so Christ, “The Light,” shines, but only the believing mind
sees Him. Others see not this bright light. (Evangelical Preacher.)
The clouds, the light, and the wind
Three objects.
1. The “bright light,” which is the symbol of God’s personality.
2. The “clouds,” which are a symbol of those obscurities which hide
God from our eyes.
3. The “wind,” which is the symbol of that Divine power by which
these obscurities are removed, so that men may see God. The whole difficulty of
Job was that he could not see God. He could not understand why God afflicted
him.
I. The
difficulties of finding God are here set before us. The obscurity is often in
ourselves. It is often traceable to the infinite and illimitable nature of God.
How is God to reveal Himself so as to satisfy the human mind and heart? Only in
the way which God has chosen, could God effectually reveal Himself to creatures
like ourselves. There must be gradual approaches of His mind to ours. There
must be a condescension to our finiteness. God makes the path to Himself as
plain as He can, considering the difficulties which are naturally in our way.
Look first at the clouds. Our ignorance is a cloud. Finiteness is another name
for this ignorance; and finiteness means fallibility, i.e. liability to
err. The nature of man, limited and feeble in comparison with the subject on
which his thoughts have to be engaged, makes man feel that about him are mists
and shadows which he cannot penetrate.
II. The removal of
the difficulties. They can only be removed by God. God can drive away man’s
feebleness by His own freely given grace, The will of God is engaged in our
salvation.
III. Few things in
nature are stronger than the wind. The wind is the symbol of God’s Spirit. God
has come to us in His Son Jesus Christ, and God speaks by His Spirit, through
His Word. (Samuel Pearson, M. A.)
Verse 22
Fair weather cometh out of the north: with God is terrible
majesty.
The testimony of nature to the terrible majesty of God
These words occur towards the close of that remonstrance of Elihu
which he addressed to Job his friend, and is immediately followed by the answer
of the Lord Himself out of the whirlwind. The text is simply one of those
propositions or evidences by which the speaker sought to establish the
greatness and inscrutableness of God. The operations of God in nature are given
in evidence of the wrongness of expecting to comprehend God Himself. If you cannot
understand the works and ways of the Almighty, is it any marvel that the
Almighty Himself quite baffles your scrutiny? Why should the fact that fair
weather cometh out of the north, suggest the inference that with God is
terrible majesty? If every operation and production of nature may be ascribed
immediately to the agency of God, then is every such operation and production a
direct evidence of the wonderfulness of God, not to be surveyed by a devout and
thoughtful mind, without emotions of awe as well as delight! It gives a dignity
to every blade of grass, that it may be considered as the handiwork of God. It
is not that each or any of the operations or productions is in itself
overwhelming in testimony to the greatness of God, but that each is part of one
vast system, each bears witness to the same stupendous fact, that God is
nature, or that nature is but God, perpetually and universally at work. And I
want nothing else to make me look on God with unbounded amazement and awe. If I
think of fair weather as coming out of the north, I must think of God as acting
in all the laboratories of nature, disposing the elements, bringing the winds
out of His treasures, gathering the clouds, and giving the sunshine. Nature,
nothing but nature’s God everywhere busy,--this is God in His inscrutableness;
this is God in His magnificence; this is God in His wonderfulness. “With God is
terrible majesty.” In the text there is also a testimony to the constancy and
the uniformity of the actings of God in the material world. “Fair weather
cometh out of the north.” You may always reckon on this. It has been thus from
the beginning; and so fixed and stable is the course of nature, that by
observing the signs you may calculate the changes with a precision little short
of certainty. Consider what effect ought to be produced on men, and will be
produced on the righteous, by the constancy which seems to encourage the
scoffers. If God be unchangeable in the operations of nature, does not even
this furnish some kind of presumption that He will be unchangeable in all other
respects? Our present lesson is not so much one taught by creation, when viewed
by itself, as one which creation traces in illustration or corroboration of the
Bible. If it be ordinarily true, that “fair weather cometh out of the north,”
then is this coming of fair weather another evidence of the constancy or
uniformity of nature, and because we are so made and constituted, that we
expect and reckon on this constancy or uniformity, therefore it is another
evidence of that faithfulness of God which insures the accomplishment of every
tittle of His word. Thus is there a voice to me in the constancy of nature,
confirming that voice which comes forth to me from the pages of Scripture. Fair
weather from the north, is neither more nor less than God’s accomplishment of
His word--a word which if neither spoken nor written, is to be found in the
expectation which Himself hath impressed, that nature will be fixed in her
workings; and whatever tells me afresh that God is faithful to His word, tells
me that vengeance may be deferred, but that it shall yet break forth on the
wicked in unimaginable fury, and that the righteous may wait long, but cannot
wait in vain, for an incorruptible inheritance that shall not fade away. And
there is yet a peculiarity in the text, which ought not to be overlooked, and
in considering which we shall again be led to the theology of revelation, yea,
to find the Gospel in our text. The expression which Elihu uses in reference to
God, is evidently one which marks dread and apprehension--“With God is terrible
majesty”; words which show the speaker impressed with a sense of the awfulness
of the Creator, rather than drawn towards Him by thoughts of His goodness and
compassions. And it would hardly seem as if this were to have been expected,
considering what the fact is on which the speaker’s attention had been
professedly fixed. I know when it is that God’s majesty is most commonly
recognised by those who observe the phenomena of nature. It is not when “fair weather
cometh out of the north”; it is rather when the Almighty rideth on the
hurricane--when He darkeneth the firmament with His tempests, and sendeth forth
His lightnings to consume. If any one of you be witness to the progress of a
storm, as it sweeps along in its fury, your sensations as the winds howl, and
the torrents descend, and the thunders roll, and the waves toss, are sensations
of dread and alarm; and if in the midst of this turmoil of elements your
thoughts turn upwards to God, who hath His way in the whirlwind, and at whose
feet the clouds are the dust, you are disposed to regard Him with unmingled
fear--to shrink from Him as manifesting, in and through this tremendous
emblazonry, the heavenly attributes at war with such creatures as yourselves.
And then if there come the hushing of the tempest, and the darkened firmament
be suddenly cleared, and the landscape which just before had been desolated and
drenched, be beauteously lit up with the golden rays of a summer sun, oh, then
it is that there will be awakened within you grateful and adoring emotions, and
that God whose terrible majesty you had been ready to acknowledge as the Voice
of His thunders was heard, will appear to you a bountiful and beneficent Being,
whom even the sinful may approach, and by whom the unworthy may be shielded.
But you will observe that it was just the reverse with Elihu. It is the fair
weather from the north which would make you exclaim, “How good, how gracious is
God”; but It was the fair weather from the north which made Elihu exclaim, “How
terrible is God.” And there is the theology of revelation in this, if there be
not the theology of nature. It is not so much the storm, it is rather the calm,
which should lead me to think on the tremendousness of God. (Henry Melvill,
B. D.)
Verse 23
Touching the Almighty, we cannot find Him out.
An unknown quantity
It is well that there should be an immeasurable and unknown
quantity in life and in creation. Even the unknown has its purposes to serve;
rightly received, it will heighten veneration; it will reprove unholy ambition;
it will teach man somewhat of what he is, of what he can do and can not do, and
therefore may save him from the wasteful expenditure of a good deal of energy.
“Touching the Almighty, we cannot find Him out.” All space leads up to the
infinite. There comes a time when men can measure no longer; they throw down
their instrument, and say, This is useless; we are but adding cypher to cypher,
and we can proceed no further. Space has run up into infinity, and infinity
cannot be measured. Nearly all the words, the greater words, that we use in our
thinking and converse, run up into religious greatness. Take the word “time.”
We reckon time in minutes and hours, in days and weeks and months and years and
centuries, and we have gone so far as to speak of millenniums; but we soon
tire; arithmetic can only help us to a certain point. Here again we draw up the
measuring line or calculating standard, and we say, It is useless, for time has
passed into eternity. These are facts in philosophy and in science, in nature
and in experience,--space rising into infinity; time ascending into eternity:
the foot of the ladder is upon earth, but the head of the ladder is lost in
infinite distance. Take the word “love.” To what uses we put it! We call it by
tuneful names; it charms us, it dissipates our solitude, it creates for us
companionship, interchange of thought, reciprocation of trust, so that one life
helps another, completing it in a thousand ways, great or small. But there
comes a point even in love where contemplation can go no further; there it
rests--yea, there it expires, for love has passed into sacrifice; it has gone
up by way of the Cross. Always in some minor degree there has been a touch of
sacrifice in every form of love, but all these minor ways have culminated in
the last tragedy, the final crucifixion, and love has died for its object. So
space has gone into infinity, time into eternity, love into sacrifice. Now take
the word “man.” Does the term terminate in itself--is the term man all we know
of being? We have spoken of spirit, angel, archangel; rationally or poetically,
or by inspiration, we have thought of seraphim and cherubim, mighty winged
ones, who burn and sing before the eternal throne, and still we have felt that
there was something remaining beyond, and man is ennobled, glorified, until he
passes into the completing term--God. They, therefore, are superficial and
foolish who speak of space, time, love, man, as if these were self-completing
terms; they are but the beginnings of the real thought, little vanishing signs,
disappearing when the real thing signified comes into view, falling before it
into harmonious and acceptable preparation and homage. So then, faith may be
but the next thing after reason. It may be difficult to distinguish sometimes
as to where reason stops and faith begins; but faith has risen before it, round
about it; faith is indebted to reason; without reason there could have been no
faith. Why not, therefore, put reason down amongst the terms, and so complete
for the present our category, and say, space, time, love, man, reason,--for
there comes a point in the ascent of reason where reason itself tires, and says,
May I have wings now? I can walk no longer, I can run no more; and yet how much
there is to be conquered, compassed, seized, and enjoyed! and when reason so
prays, what if reason be transfigured into faith, and if we almost see the holy
image rising to become more like the Creator, and to dwell more closely and
lovingly in His presence? All the great religious terms, then, have what may be
called roots upon the earth, the sublime words from which men often fall back
in almost ignorant homage amounting to superstition. Begin upon the earth;
begin amongst ourselves; take up our words and show their real meaning, and
give a hint of their final issue. He who lives so, will have no want of
companionship; the mind that finds in all these human, social, alphabetical
signs of great religious quantities and thoughts, will have riches
unsearchable, an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not
away. Why dwarf our words? Why deplete them of their richer and more vital
meanings? Why not rather follow them in an ascending course, and rejoice in
their expansion, and in their riches? The religious teacher is called upon to
operate in this direction, so far as he can influence the minds of his hearers;
it is not his to take out of words all their best significations, but rather to
charge every human term with some greater thought, to find in every word a
seed, in every seed a harvest, it may be of wheat, it may be of other food, but
always meant for the satisfaction and strengthening of our noblest nature. (Joseph
Parker, D. D.)
The inscrutable
Inscrutable--first connect this word with two other words,
responsibility and goodness. Did you say that only decrees that are indicated
by overwhelming misfortunes are inscrutable? Why, everything, the simplest,
runs towards and finally runs into the inscrutable. The more we know the more
are we brought into consciousness of the unknown, of the unknowable. “Behold,
we know not anything,” says the poet, and as he contemplates the good that
shall fall “at last--far off--at last, to all,” he adds, “So runs my dream: but
what am I?” Ah, there is the inscrutable thing. What am I? What are you? Is not
each of us an enigma? What strange, various, sometimes contradictory, opposing,
conflicting influences and forces have gone to make us the curious bundles of
inconsistencies that we are! Heredity, circumstances, companionships, and so
on, we say, have all gone to mould us, to cabin us, to confine us, to expand
us, or to contract us; to constitute, to define our liberty. Myself--thyself,
that is the inscrutable. And yet, for thyself thou art responsible! Whatever
theorists may argue or however they may talk, society--the world--holds a man
responsible for himself, the inscrutable. That it is the inscrutable does not
deny the responsibility. Neither does it with regard to the world in general.
At every point we feel ourselves fall against the inscrutable. There is not a
day, there is not a condition in life in which we are not brought face to face
with that which we cannot understand. Everywhere, and in all things there is
the inscrutable, and there is a responsibility for the world. There is
somewhere a will that is responsible for it. There is a government in it. The
world is a charge to some will, because if there is one thing that asserts
itself in this world it is will power. Things may be very strange, and they
often are so strange that we get bewildered, even frightened; but the very
strangest thing that could be, that which is disowned by the whole universe, by
a certain stream of tendency that runs through the whole universe, would be
that it is all a disorder, a blind drive and drift. Most certainly it is not
that. If you realise that you are responsible for the mass of inscrutability
that you call yourself, why should you hesitate to recognise that there is
providence--that is, a mind supremely responsible for the wide, vast
inscrutableness which we call the world? But are not the inscrutable decrees
which make it hard to submit incompatible with a perfect goodness? Ah, you are
putting a question on which treatises without number have been written since
the world began, and treatises without number may be written still, and the
question puzzle on. It is one not to be discussed now. Only, I pray you to note
two things. There is always a voice whispering that goodness will have the last
word, even in what is overwhelming. An appalling calamity happens. Yes,
“Terrible, terrible,” you say; but that appalling calamity calls
attention--attention that would not have been called if it had not been
appalling--to evils that can be remedied and should be remedied. It sets people
in motion for remedies. There is immediate suffering, and it may be on even a
terrible scale, but there is immediate gain, on a far greater scale, for the
world. The prince cut off in the flower of his age, your boy taken away in the
flower of his days--ah, broken hearts, indeed; but see how this young prince,
taken away, has preached to the whole nation, he has united the empire in a
wonderful sympathy, and so from a wide induction it might be proved temporal
loss transformed into spiritual and moral gains. Even when you feel that the
iron hand of judgment has descended terribly, there is a touch of the velvet in
that hand which speaks of mercy. And further, when you speak of perfect
goodness, remember that you and I do not know what perfect goodness is. We know
only in part. Our point of view is that of very limited conception. We speak of
nature, but who knows all nature? We speak of providence, but who knows all providence?
We would need to bring in eternity, the eternity in which God works. But one
full of promise, cut off in the flower of his age! Well, well. But does not
this suggest that a promise cannot be lost? Nothing--nothing is lost. Potencies
are not destroyed. There is a potency in that life which surely, surely is not
annihilated. May not the call hence be a way of bidding the young man arise
into a higher and nobler royalty? And those bereaved, may it not be a way of
purifying and cleansing in the fire, bidding them to arise and live more
earnestly, and live more nobly, and grasp the crown of life which the Lord has
promised? We cannot tell all that perfect goodness means. The surgeon hesitates
not to thrust his knife into the quivering flesh, and the poor patient cries.
It is agony, but agony for future blessing; and so is there not many an agony
for a future blessing, with an eternal weight of glory before it? Ah, we must
be still, or if not still we must stretch hands of faith, lame hands of faith,
and gather dust and chaff, and call to what we feel is Lord of all. (J. M.
Lang, D. D.)
God a mystery
Ignorance of the modes of the Divine operation forms no ground for
doubting the Divine intervention in human affairs. “Touching the Almighty, we
cannot find Him out,” because our faculties are unable to comprehend infinity;
but this disability no more warrants us in questioning the fact of His active
providence, than would the mystery of the works of a watch warrant us in
denying their existence or active operations. Consider this remark of Elihu in
reference to the Almighty. As to His being. Its nature is wrapt in impenetrable
mystery. We know that God is a Spirit, but what a spirit is we know not. Our
ideas on this subject are negative; we know what a spirit is not. In the
Scriptures no attempt is made to define the Divine nature. It is described only
by its attributes and perfections. But as to the Divine attributes, we are in
equal ignorance. We call God omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, infinite; but all
we can understand by these terms is, that He is not limited as to power,
knowledge, time, and space. Nor are we much more enlightened as to the work of
creation. With the broad fact we are acquainted, but of the mode we know
nothing. But how matter came into existence, and the mode by which it was
formed into these various shapes, we are entirely ignorant. If we presume to
penetrate the ways of providence, we find ourselves equally involved. Beyond
the bare fact we are lost. God is shrouded in mystery. And what is life? Of
what is it composed? Where does it reside? On what combinations does it depend?
How untraceable are the dispensations of providence as to the affairs of men!
The history of the world is an enigma. Nor is God less concealed in the
operations of grace. And the mode in which Christianity has been propagated is
full of mystery. As to the future, we are in almost equal ignorance. Think also
of the permission of evil in the world; the condition of the soul in its
intermediate state; and of humanity after judgment. What our text teaches is,
that ignorance of the mode of the providential dispensations forms no
justification for disbelief of their Divine origin, nor for doubts of their
equity. Many things are mysterious, because too abstruse for our faculties; but
assuredly God is originating and directing them in a spirit of wisdom and
goodness, which will make them issue in benefit to all. The more mysterious the
Almighty is, the more we are bidden to study Him. His works and His Word are
the deep things of God, of which a superficial reading is worse than useless.
What subjects there are for meditation! The grandest and most interesting
beyond all others--subjects which concern the High and Mighty One, creation,
providence, grace, the things of time and eternity, life, death, and
resurrection--subjects which even the “angels desire to look into.” But let our
studies be conducted with cautious reverence. Generally, freedom of inquiry is
safe; but there are points into which it is dangerous to pry. Usually, all
facts are open to inspection, but not speculation on mode and means. (J.
Budgeon, M. A.)
Inscrutable providence
It is no uncommon thing in these times to hear people saying that
it seemed as if God was careless--as if He had forgotten His people. Men call
upon God, but call upon Him to all appearance in vain. He does not hear them;
at least, no answer comes. But God did hear, and did answer. There is mystery
regarding the why of God’s working, and there is mystery regarding the how. We
cannot explain the one or the other. The path is invisible to us; but the path
is there. Chemists and students of nature generally hold that there is nothing
in nature deserving the name of providence; that force is eternal and that all
things go on in obedience to immutable law. But these students of nature
presume too much. It is a way they have. Self-conceit has made them blind.
There is much in nature which they do not know, and much which they can not
know. Can they indicate the lightning’s track or trace the course of the wind?
Even admitting that science has made a change in men’s minds regarding material
phenomena, what is to be said of the mind itself? Why was George Washington
saved amid the wreck of Braddock’s command? What if Major Andre had not been
captured? How different the history of those later years if General Grant had
been shot at Belmont! At that critical moment of the cornfield what restrained
the hands of the Confederates that they did not fire? And at a brief period
thereafter what tempted him to leave his tent and thus avoid the fatal bullet?
What is it that so miraculously preserves the equality of the sexes? But these
are stray examples of which there are millions. There is mystery everywhere.
There are three things which it is well always to bear in mind when thinking of
the ways of God. First, God may interfere in the affairs of the world without
men knowing it; second, God may influence motives without men knowing it;
third, God may touch the secret and subtle springs of nature without men knowing
it. Experience is a better teacher than science. (Judson Sage, D. D.)
He is excellent in power,
and in judgment.--
God excellent
“He is excellent . . . in judgment.” Is there any judgment
displayed in the distribution of things? Is the globe ill-made? Are all things
in chaos? Is there anywhere the sign of a plummet line, a measuring tape? Are
things apportioned as if by a wise administrator? How do things fit one
another? Who has hesitated to say that the economy of nature, so far as we know
it, is a wondrous economy? Explain it as men may, we all come to a common
conclusion, that there is a marvellous fitness of things, a subtle relation and
interrelation, a harmony quite musical, an adaptation which though it could
never have been invented by our reason, instantly secures the sanction of our
understanding as being good, fit, and wholly wise. “And in plenty of justice.”
Now Elihu touches the moral chord. It is most noticeable that throughout the
whole of the Bible the highest revelations are sustained by the strongest moral
appeals. If the Bible dealt only in ecstatic contemplations, in religious
musings, in poetical romances, we might rank it with other sacred books, and
pay it what tribute might be due to fine literary inventiveness and expression;
but whatever there may be in the Bible supernatural, transcendental,
mysterious, there is also judgment, right, justice: everywhere evil is burned
with unquenchable fire, and right is commended and honoured as being of the
quality of God. The moral discipline of Christianity sustains its highest
imaginings. Let there be no divorce between what is spiritual in Christianity
and what is ethical,--between the revelation sublime and the justice concrete,
social, as between man and man; let the student keep within his purview all the
parts and elements of this intricate revelation, and then let him say how the
one balances the other, and what cooperation and harmony result from the
interrelation of metaphysics, spiritual revelations, high imaginings, and
simple duty, and personal sacrifice, industry as of stewardship, of
trusteeship. This is the view which Elihu takes. God to him was “excellent in
power, and in judgment, and in plenty of justice; He will not afflict.” A
curious expression this, and differently rendered. Some render it, He will not
answer; or, He will not be called upon to answer for His ways; He will give an
account of Himself to none; there is a point beyond which He will not permit
approach. Yet the words as they stand in the Authorised Version are supported
by many collateral passages, and therefore may be taken as literal in this
instance. He will not willingly afflict; He is no tyrant; He is not a despot
who drinks the wine of blood, and thrives on the miseries of His creation: when
He chastens it is that He may purify and ennoble the character, and bring
before the vision of man lights and promises which otherwise would escape his
attention. Affliction as administered by God is good; sorrow has its refining
and enriching uses. The children of God are indeed bowed down, sorely
chastened, visited by disappointments; oftentimes they lay their weary heads
upon pillows of thorns. Nowhere is that denied in the Bible; everywhere is it
patent in our own open history; and yet Christianity has so wrought within us,
as to its very spirit and purpose, that we can accept affliction as a veiled
angel, and sorrow as one of God’s night angels, coming to us in cloud and
gloom, and yet in the darkest sevenfold midnight of loneliness whispering to us
Gospel words, and singing to us in tender, minor tones as no other voice ever
sang to the orphaned heart. Christians can say this; Christians do say this.
They say it not the less distinctly because there are men who mock them. They
must take one of two courses; they must follow out their own impressions and
realisations of spiritual ministry within the heart; or they must, forsooth,
listen to men who do not know them, and allow their piety to be sneered away,
and their deepest spiritual realisations to be mocked out of them, or carried
away by some wind of fool’s laughter. They have made up their minds to be more
rational; they have resolved to construe the events of their own experience,
and to accept the sacred conclusion, and that conclusion is that God does not
willingly afflict the children of men, that the rod is in a Father’s hand, that
no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous, nevertheless,
afterward it worketh out the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which
are exercised thereby. Believe me, they are not to be laughed out of that
position. They are reasonable men, men of great sagacity, men of affairs, men
who can deal with questions of state and empire; and they, coming into the
sanctuary--the inmost, sacred sanctuary--are not ashamed to pray. This is the
strength of Christian faith. When the Christian is ashamed of his Lord the
argument for Christianity is practically, and temporarily, at least, dead. Why
do we not speak more distinctly as to the results of our own observation and experience?
Great abstract truths admit of being accented by personal testimony. “Come and
hear, all ye that fear God,” said one, “and I will declare what He hath done
for my soul.” If a witness will confine himself to what he himself has known,
felt and handled of the Word of Life, then in order to destroy the argument you
must first destroy his character. (Joseph Parker, D. D.)
In plenty of justice.
The excellence of the Divine justice
Perhaps the foremost characteristic of God that men are tempted to
disparage is His justice. They do not relish that which is opposed to their
enjoyment, and to the successful issue of their purposes. And as they have a
sense of guilt, and cannot fail to see that their conduct brings them into
conflict with the Almighty, since He must be offended with the violation of His
law, they first wish that He were not the righteous Being that He is, and then
they deny Him this essential quality. By so weak a process is it they create a
God to their liking.
1. Justice ranks high from its own inherent character. In the old
mythology of Greece the Goddess of Justice sat by the side of Jupiter. In all
lands the tribunals of justice are next the altars of religion. When men would
ask for that which they prize the most among their fellow men, they ask for
justice. When the Athenians would most honour Aristides, they called him “the
just.” Justice is the parent of many virtues. The moral sense of every man
pronounces the excellence of this noblest virtue. It is excellent in God. It
gives a sense of security and repose that our God is a God of justice.
2. Justice is an attribute essential to the complete revelation of
God. This quality some men deny in God; if they do not deny it, they degrade
it. The first excellence in a judge is that he be just. God administers His
government with no respect of persons, and with an undeviating regard to the
principles of equity.
3. Justice guards the manifold interests of the Divine empire.
Justice to each and all is the result of only the choicest wisdom. No neglect,
or partiality, or injustice, can be charged against Him.
4. Justice ministers to the greatest happiness of God’s subjects.
This sense of the Divine justice gives solace in the trials of the world.
5. Justice admits the exercise of mercy. Biblical theology allows no
rivalry between these two cardinal attributes of God. God has devised an
atonement of such a character that, on the one hand, the majesty and sanctity
of His law are vindicated, and on the other hand, a full pardon can be granted
to sinners who embrace this Divine provision. That which it would not be safe
to do in civil society, it is safe to do under this Divine plan for human
redemption.
6. Justice demands the punishment of the guilty. Under the economy of
grace it demands the punishment of the finally impenitent. It is a strange
infatuation that has seized some minds, sensible on every other subject, that
there is to be no suitable punishment of sin hereafter. They claim that God is
too good to inflict merited penalty; that the doctrine of eternal punishment is
a censure upon His fatherhood; that hell has no place under the Divine
administration. But sin is here, and suffering is here. Sin causes suffering
now, and the penalties of wrong-doing are before our eyes everywhere. The
hardest problem is not to account for hell and future punishment, but it is to
account for sin and suffering at all. Under the government of a supremely good
and powerful God, why is there sin and its necessary woe? We know that sin is.
We know that dreadful penalty is. If sin shall go into the future life, if it
shall wax great and strong there, if it shall forever lift its defiance against
the eternal throne, it will bear--it must bear--its eternal penalty. It is not
the eternity of sin, nor the eternity of punishment, which challenges our
belief, it is not the duration of them, but the existence of them. Of their
existence we know. If, then, endless sinning continues, endless punishment
should. God is just. He has issued a just law, harmonious with His own
character, as an authoritative guide to men. Inasmuch as they have all broken
this law, He has graciously devised, if we may say so, a plan of salvation, by
which they can be pardoned and justified, while yet the law is sustained. Now,
if they reject this plan, if they will not be saved through Christ, if they
prefer to stand on the old basis of the law, it only remains that judgment
shall be given by the law. It demands perfect obedience. It imposes death as
the penalty of sin. The law, with its announced penalty, God, as a just God,
must sustain. The unbeliever in Christ, must, therefore, meet the penalty.
There is no recourse. Divine justice demands the punishment of the guilty. It
will inflict upon no one more than he deserves. (Burdett Hart, D. D.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》