Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1262
“The Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the Lord ga ve Job twice as much as he had before.” Job 42:10.
SINCE God is immutable, He acts always upon the same principles and, therefore, His course of action in the olden times to a man of a certain sort will be a guide as to what others may expect who are of like character. God does not act by caprice, nor by fits and starts. He has His usual modes and ways. The Psalmist David uses the expression, “Then will I teach transgressors Your ways,” as if God had well-known ways, habits and modes of action. And so He has, or He would not be the unchangeable Jehovah. In that song of Moses, the servant of God and the song of the Lamb, which is recorded in the 15th chapter of Revelation, we read, “Just and true are Your ways, You King of saints.” The Lord has ways as high above our ways as the heavens are above the earth—and these are not fickle and arbitrary.
These ways, although very different if we view them superficially, are really always the same when you view them with understanding. The ways of the Lord are right, though transgressors fall therein by not discerning them. But the righteous understand the ways of the Lord, for to them He makes them known and they perceive that grand general principles govern all the actions of God. If it were not so, the case of such a man as Job would be of no service to us. It could not be said that the things which happened before happened unto us for an example, because if God did not act on fixed principles we could never tell how He would act in any fresh case—and that which happened to one man would be no rule whatever—and no encouragement whatever to another.
We are not all like Job, but we all have Job’s God. Though we have neither risen to Job’s wealth, nor will, probably, ever sink to Job’s poverty, yet there is the same God above us if we are brought high and the same God with His everlasting arms beneath us if we are brought low. And what the Lord did for Job, He will do for us, not precisely in the same form, but in the same spirit and with same design. If, therefore, we are brought low tonight, let us be encouraged with the thought that God will turn our captivity around and let us entertain the hope that after the time of trial shall be over, we shall be richer, especially in spiritual things, than ever we were before.
There will come a turning point to the growing heat of affliction and the fire shall cool. When the ebb has fallen to its lowest, the sea will return to its strength. When mid-winter has come, spring will be near and when midnight has struck, then the dawning will not be far away. Perhaps, too, the signal of our happier days shall be the very same as that of the patient Patriarch—when we pray for our friends, blessings shall be poured into our own bosoms.
Our text has in it three points very clearly. First, the Lord can soon turn His people’s captivity— “The Lord turned the captivity of Job.” Second, there is generally some point at which He does this—in Job’s case He turned his captivity when he prayed for his friends. And, third, Believers shall never be losers by God, for He gave Job twice as much as he had given him before.
I. First, then, THE LORD CAN SOON TURN HIS PEOPLE’S CAPTIVITY. That is a very remarkable expression—“captivity.” It does not say, “God turned Job’s poverty,” though Job was reduced to the extremity of penury, having lost all his property. We do not read that the Lord turned his sickness, though he was covered with boils. It does not say that He turned away the sting of bereavement, reproach and calumny, although all those are included. But there is something more meant by the word captivity. A man may be very poor and yet not in captivity. His soul may sing among the angels when his body is on a dunghill and dogs are licking his sores.
A man may be very sick and yet not be in captivity. He may be roaming the broad fields of Covenant mercy though he cannot rise from his bed. His soul may never enjoy greater liberty than when his body is scarcely able to turn from side to side. Captivity is bondage of mind—the iron entering into the soul. I suspect that Job, under the severe mental trial which attended his bodily pains, was, as to his spirit, like a man bound hand and foot and fettered—and then taken away
from his native country—banished from the place which he loved, deprived of the associations which had cheered him and confined in darkness. I mean that together with the trouble and trial to which he was subjected, he had lost, somewhat, the Presence of God. Much of his joy and comfort had departed. The peace of his mind had gone and the associations which he had formed with other Believers were now broken. He was, in all these respects, like a lone captive.
His three friends had condemned him as a hypocrite and would not have association with him except to censure him. And thus he felt like one who had been carried into a far country and banished both from God and man. He could only follow the occupation of a captive, that is, to be oppressed, to weep, to claim compassion and to pour out a dolorous complaint. He hung his harp on the willows and felt that he could not sing the Lord’s song in a strange land. Poor Job! He is less to be pitied for his bereavements, poverty and sickness than for his loss of that candle of the Lord which once shone about his head!