New Park Street Pulpit · Sermon No. 108
Delivered on Sabbath Evening, August 31, 1856.
“Will he plead against me with his great power? No; but he would put strength in me.”—Job 23:6.
I SHALL not to-night consider the connexion of these words, or what was particularly intended by Job. I shall use them in, perhaps, another sense from that which he intended. No doubt Job meant to say, that if God would allow him to argue his case before him, it was his firm belief that God, so far from taking advantage of his superior strength in the controversy, would even strengthen him, that the controversy might be fair, and that the judgment might be unbiased. “He would not plead against me with his great strength; no, but he would put strength in me.” We shall use the text, however, to-night, in another sense.
It is one of the sure marks of a lost and ruined state when we are careless and indifferent concerning God. One of the peculiar marks of those who are dead in sin is this: they are the wicked who forget God. God is not in all their thoughts; “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.” The sinful man is ever anxious to keep out of his mind the very thought of the being, the existence, or the character of God; and so long as man is unregenerate, there will be nothing more abhorrent to his taste, or his feelings, than anything which deals with the Divine Being. God perhaps, as Creator, he may consider; but the God of the Bible, the infinite Jehovah, judging righteously among the sons of men—condemning and acquitting—that God he has no taste for, he is not in all his thoughts, nor does he regard him. And mark you, it is a blessed sign of the work of grace in the heart, when man begins to consider God. He is not far from God’s heart who hath meditations of God in his own heart. If we desire to seek after God, to know him, to understand him, and to be at peace with him, it is a sign that God has dealings with our soul, for otherwise we should still have hated his name and abhorred his character.
There are two things in my text, both of which have relation to the Divine Being. The first is, the question of fear: “Will he plead against me with his great power?” and the second is, the answer of faith: “No, but he will put strength in me.” The fearful and the prayerful, who are afraid of sin and fear God, together with those who are faithful and believe in God, are in a hopeful state; and hence, both the question of the one, and the answer of the other, have reference to the great Jehovah, our God, who is for ever to be adored.
I. We shall consider, in the first place, to-night THE INQUIRY OF FEAR: “Will he plead against me with his great power?” I shall consider this as a question asked by the convinced sinner. He is seeking salvation, but, when he is bidden to come before his God and find mercy, he is compelled by his intense anxiety to make the trembling inquiry, “Will he plead against me with his great power?”
1. And, first, I gather from this question the fact that a truly penitent sinner has a right idea of many of God’s attributes. He does not understand them all, for instance, he does not yet know God’s great mercy; he does not yet understand his unbounded compassion; but so far as his knowledge of God extends, he has an extremely correct view of him. To him the everlasting Jehovah appears GREAT in every attribute, and action, and supremely GREAT in his Majesty. The poor worldling knows there is a God; but he is to him a little God. As for the justice of God, the mere worldly man scarcely ever thinks of it. He considers that there is a God, but he regards him as a Being who has little enough respect for justice. Not so, however, the sinner. When God has once convinced him of his sin, he sees God as a great God, a God of great justice, and of great power. Whoever can misunderstand God’s great justice or God’s great power, a convinced sinner never will. Ask him what he thinks of God’s justice, and he will tell you it like the great mountains; it is high, he cannot attain unto it. “Ah,” saith he, “God’s justice is very mighty; it must smite me. He must hurl an avalanche of woe upon my devoted head. Justice demands that he should punish me. I am so great a sinner that I cannot suppose he would ever pass by my transgression, my iniquity, and my sin.” It is all in vain for you to tell such a man that God is little in his justice; he replies, “No,” most solemnly, “No,” and you can most plainly read his earnestness in his visage, when he replies, “No.” He replies, “I feel that God is just; I am even now consumed by his anger; by his wrath am I troubled.” “Tell me God is not just,” says he; “I know he is; I feel that within an hour or two hell must swallow me up, unless Divine mercy delivers me. Unless Christ shall wash me in his blood, I feel I can never hope to stand among the ransomed.” He has not that strange idea of God’s justice that some of you have. You think sin is a trifle! You suppose that one brief prayer will wipe it all away. You dream that by attendance at your churches and at your chapels, you will wash away your sins. You suppose that God, for some reason or other, will very easily forgive your sin. But you have no right idea of God’s justice. You have not learned that God never does forgive until he has first punished, and that if he does forgive any one, it is because he has punished Christ first in the stead of that person. But he never forgives without first exacting the punishment. That would be an infringement on his justice; and shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? You have, many of you, lax enough ideas of the justice of the Divine Being; but not so the sinner who is laboring under a knowledge of sin.