Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1845
“Behold, we count them happy which endure. You have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is full of pity, and of tender mercy.” James 5:11.
WE are far too apt to entertain hard thoughts of God. The horrible atheism of our depraved nature continually quarrels with the Most High and, when we are under His afflicting hand and things go cross to our will, the evil of our nature becomes sadly evident. When sorely distressed, we are too apt to think and to speak as we ought not to do concerning the Most High. Let us never forget that our hard speeches have all been false speeches and that our suspicions of our God have always been libels upon Him. When we have not thought and spoken well of His name, we have thought and spoken amiss! Looking back, we desire, if possible, to blot out every murmuring thought with our tears and we would cancel every complaining word with humble sorrow. We would eat our bitter words—they were all unwarranted and, therefore, with deep repentance we call them back. On taking a survey of our whole life, we see that the kindness of God has run all through it like a silver thread. Goodness and mercy have followed us all our days, always pursuing us even when we have wickedly fled from them.
Even our apparent ills have been real blessings. As I said in prayer, so I say now—I do not know for which I would bless God most—for my sorrows or for my joys. The best piece of furniture I have ever had in my house is the cross of affliction! Adversity is the richest field in all the farm of life. We have never reaped such a harvest from any seed as from that which fell from our hands while tears were falling from our eyes. When we have gone forth weeping, bearing precious seed, we have invariably come, again, rejoicing, bringing our sheaves with us! O Sufferer, when your bed grew hard beneath you and your pain was exceedingly great, it may be that your groans and complaints were not altogether those of sorrow, but a measure of rebellion mingled with them! For this, be ashamed and confounded! Confess those rebellions! Acknowledge that your hard thoughts were all founded upon error and ask for Grace to be forever at one with your Lord. You who have suffered the loss of property or the loss of beloved friends, you, too, perhaps, have thought of God foolishly—remember those thoughts with shame and be all the more eager, at once, to bear willing testimony that the Lord is good and that His mercy endures forever. It is true, however circumstances may look otherwise, that “the Lord is full of pity, and of tender mercy.” Whatever may or may not be, the Lord must be good! Set your seal to that Truth of God. Hold up your head and your hand as one who can speak well of His name and say, “I will bless the Lord at all times! His praise shall continually be in my mouth!”
Let each restored man say, “He heals all my diseases.” Let each tried one now say, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.” Let the aged man bring the spoils of his experience and lay them down at the feet of the Lord who, up to now, has helped him. Our desire, this morning, will be to help one another to avoid future murmuring. We have really nothing to complain about—even our disappointments will yet be causes for praise! O, may the Spirit of God now make us wise to avoid such hasty blunders in the future and teach us to know the Lord so well that we may henceforth be at peace with Him, whatever He may do! O that we may never bear false witness against our God! The Apostle James, in this passage, aims at setting us right in our judgments of the Lord’s dealings that patience may become an easier lesson.
Will you notice that the Apostle, first, in this verse, sites an instructive instance of the tender pity of God—“Behold, we count them happy which endure. You have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord.” Then,
secondly, he makes a consoling statement and lays it down as a matter of doctrine that “the Lord is full of pity, and of tender mercy.” When we have talked upon those two matters, we shall close by observing the precious lessons which we ought to gather from them, as bees fetch honey from the flowers.
I. Notice that when James is exhorting us to full confidence in God in the hour of trial, he gives us AN INSTRUCTIVE INSTANCE. He quotes the story of Job. In these days everything is doubted and a new theory is sure to run like fire among stubble, for this fickle age delights, like the Athenians, in anything new, however absurd it may be! Hence no part of Scripture has been left alone and, of the Book of Job, it has been said that it is a drama, a fiction, a fine piece of Oriental imagination. But see how the New Testament protects the Old! How can Job be an imaginary character? Does the Spirit of God quote for our guidance a fictitious person? Does He set Job before us as an example when Job never existed? The thing is too absurd to contemplate for a single moment! There was such a person as Job and possibly the present passage may confirm us in the belief that the Patriarch lived in the earliest ages, since this Apostle, when mentioning the Prophets, places Job in the forefront of them and quotes his case in preference to any other.