Bible Heaven/Bible Heaven.iso/online/mhcc18/v20850

Text File | 1994-03-02 | 8KB | 146 lines

20850
 * Satan obtains leave to try Job. (1-6) Job's sufferings. (7-10)
 His friends come to comfort him. (11-13)

 #1-6. How well is it for us, that neither men nor devils are to
 be our judges! but all our judgment comes from the Lord, who
 never errs. Job holds fast his integrity still, as his weapon.
 God speaks with pleasure of the power of his own grace.
 Self-love and self-preservation are powerful in the hearts of
 men. But Satan accuses Job, representing him as wholly selfish,
 and minding nothing but his own ease and safety. Thus are the
 ways and people of God often falsely blamed by the devil and his
 agents. Permission is granted to Satan to make trial, but with a
 limit. If God did not chain up the roaring lion, how soon would
 he devour us! Job, thus slandered by Satan, was a type of
 Christ, the first prophecy of whom was, that Satan should bruise
 his heel, and be foiled.

20856
 #7-10 The devil tempts his own children, and draws them to sin,
 and afterwards torments, when he has brought them to ruin; but
 this child of God he tormented with affliction, and then tempted
 to make a bad use of his affliction. He provoked Job to curse
 God. The disease was very grievous. If at any time we are tried
 with sore and grievous distempers, let us not think ourselves
 dealt with otherwise than as God sometimes deals with the best
 of his saints and servants. Job humbled himself under the mighty
 hand of God, and brought his mind to his condition. His wife was
 spared to him, to be a troubler and tempter to him. Satan still
 endeavours to draw men from God, as he did our first parents, by
 suggesting hard thoughts of Him, than which nothing is more
 false. But Job resisted and overcame the temptation. Shall we,
 guilty, polluted, worthless creatures, receive so many unmerited
 blessings from a just and holy God, and shall we refuse to
 accept the punishment of our sins, when we suffer so much less
 than we deserve? Let murmuring, as well as boasting, be for ever
 done away. Thus far Job stood the trial, and appeared brightest
 in the furnace of affliction. There might be risings of
 corruption in his heart, but grace had the upper hand.

20860
 #11-13 The friends of Job seem noted for their rank, as well as
 for wisdom and piety. Much of the comfort of this life lies in
 friendship with the prudent and virtuous. Coming to mourn with
 him, they vented grief which they really felt. Coming to comfort
 him, they sat down with him. It would appear that they suspected
 his unexampled troubles were judgments for some crimes, which he
 had veiled under his professions of godliness. Many look upon it
 only as a compliment to visit their friends in sorrow; we must
 look upon it as a duty: if religion live in the heart, this will
 be a fruit in the life. And if the example of Job's friends is
 not enough to lead us to pity the afflicted, let us seek the mind
 that was in Christ.
20863
 * Job complains that he was born. (1-10) Job complaining.
 (11-19) He complains of his life. (20-26)

 #1-10 For seven days Job's friends sat by him in silence,
 without offering consolidation: at the same time Satan assaulted
 his mind to shake his confidence, and to fill him with hard
 thoughts of God. The permission seems to have extended to this,
 as well as to torturing the body. Job was an especial type of
 Christ, whose inward sufferings, both in the garden and on the
 cross, were the most dreadful; and arose in a great degree from
 the assaults of Satan in that hour of darkness. These inward
 trials show the reason of the change that took place in Job's
 conduct, from entire submission to the will of God, to the
 impatience which appears here, and in other parts of the book.
 The believer, who knows that a few drops of this bitter cup are
 more dreadful than the sharpest outward afflictions, while he is
 favoured with a sweet sense of the love and presence of God,
 will not be surprised to find that Job proved a man of like
 passions with others; but will rejoice that Satan was
 disappointed, and could not prove him a hypocrite; for though he
 cursed the day of his birth, he did not curse his God. Job
 doubtless was afterwards ashamed of these wishes, and we may
 suppose what must be his judgment of them now he is in
 everlasting happiness.

20873
 #11-19 Job complained of those present at his birth, for their
 tender attention to him. No creature comes into the world so
 helpless as man. God's power and providence upheld our frail
 lives, and his pity and patience spared our forfeited lives.
 Natural affection is put into parents' hearts by God. To desire
 to die that we may be with Christ, that we may be free from sin,
 is the effect and evidence of grace; but to desire to die, only
 that we may be delivered from the troubles of this life, savours
 of corruption. It is our wisdom and duty to make the best of
 that which is, be it living or dying; and so to live to the
 Lord, and die to the Lord, as in both to be his, #Ro 14:8|.
 Observe how Job describes the repose of the grave; There the
 wicked cease from troubling. When persecutors die, they can no
 longer persecute. There the weary are at rest: in the grave they
 rest from all their labours. And a rest from sin, temptation,
 conflict, sorrows, and labours, remains in the presence and
 enjoyment of God. There believers rest in Jesus, nay, as far as
 we trust in the Lord Jesus and obey him, we here find rest to
 our souls, though in the world we have tribulation.

20882
 #20-26 Job was like a man who had lost his way, and had no
 prospect of escape, or hope of better times. But surely he was
 in an ill frame for death when so unwilling to live. Let it be
 our constant care to get ready for another world, and then leave
 it to God to order our removal thither as he thinks fit. Grace
 teaches us in the midst of life's greatest comforts, to be
 willing to die, and in the midst of its greatest crosses, to be
 willing to live. Job's way was hid; he knew not wherefore God
 contended with him. The afflicted and tempted Christian knows
 something of this heaviness; when he has been looking too much
 at the things that are seen, some chastisement of his heavenly
 Father will give him a taste of this disgust of life, and a
 glance at these dark regions of despair. Nor is there any help
 until God shall restore to him the joys of his salvation.
 Blessed be God, the earth is full of his goodness, though full
 of man's wickedness. This life may be made tolerable if we
 attend to our duty. We look for eternal mercy, if willing to
 receive Christ as our Saviour.
20889
 * Eliphaz reproves Job. (1-6) And maintains that God's judgments
 are for the wicked. (7-11) The vision of Eliphaz. (12-21)

 #1-6 Satan undertook to prove Job a hypocrite by afflicting him;
 and his friends concluded him to be one because he was so
 afflicted, and showed impatience. This we must keep in mind if
 we would understand what passed. Eliphaz speaks of Job, and his
 afflicted condition, with tenderness; but charges him with
 weakness and faint-heartedness. Men make few allowances for
 those who have taught others. Even pious friends will count that
 only a touch which we feel as a wound. Learn from hence to draw
 off the mind of a sufferer from brooding over the affliction, to
 look at the God of mercies in the affliction. And how can this
 be done so well as by looking to Christ Jesus, in whose
 unequalled sorrows every child of God soonest learns to forget
 his own?

20895
 #7-11 Eliphaz argues, 1. That good men were never thus ruined.
 But there is one event both to the righteous and to the wicked,
 #Ec 9:2|, both in life and death; the great and certain
 difference is after death. Our worst mistakes are occasioned by
 drawing wrong views from undeniable truths. 2. That wicked men
 were often thus ruined: for the proof of this, Eliphaz vouches
 his own observation. We may see the same every day.