Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2172
“In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.” Job 1:22.
THAT is to say, in all this trial and under all this temptation, Job kept right with God. During all the losses of his estate and the deaths of his children he did not speak in an unworthy manner. The text speaks admiringly of “all this.” And a great “all” it was! Some of you have many troubles—but what are they compared with those of Job? Your afflictions are mole-hills contrasted with the Alps of the Patriarch’s grief. “All this”! He was suddenly reduced from a peer to a pauper—from a man of great wealth to a person in absolute poverty—from a happy father to a childless mourner! Who can measure or fathom “all this”? Yet, “In all this Job sinned not.” Here was the triumph of a gracious spirit. Ah, dear Friends, if God could uphold Job in all this, you may be sure that He can support you! Look to Him for this Divine support.
“All this” also alludes to all that Job did and thought, and said. He was full to bursting with swelling grief. He shaved his head and tore his garments. And he lifted up his voice unto the Lord his God—but, “In all this Job sinned not.” He rose up, for he was a man of action, a man of a sensitive and powerful mind, a man of poetic energy who could not fail to express his emotions in striking symbols—but “In all this Job sinned not.” This is a great deal to say of a man when you see him in the extreme of trial. If in patience he can possess his soul when all the arrows of affliction are wounding him, he is a man, indeed.
May we ourselves so live that it may be said of us in the end, “In all this he sinned not. He swam through a sea of trouble. The roll of his life story is written within and without with lamentations—but in all this he did not dishonor the name of his Lord. He did and said many things—but in them all he was patient, resigned, obedient and never uttered a rebellious word.” Let us think of the wonderful case of Job in a practical way, desiring the Holy Spirit to make us like he was!
I. Our first head shall be, IN ALL OUR AFFAIRS THE MAIN THING IS NOT TO SIN. It is not said, “In all this Job was never spoken against,” for he was spoken against by Satan in the presence of himself and very soon he was falsely accused by men who should have comforted him. You must not expect, dear Friend, that you will pass through this world and have it said of you in the end, “In all this no one ever spoke against him.” I heard say of one man, “He was a man who never had an enemy.” I ventured to add, “nor a friend.” He has no friend who never had a foe.
Those who secure zealous lovers are pretty sure to call forth intense adversaries. A man who is such a chip in the porridge that he never offends, is pretty sure to be equally flavorless in the other direction. The trimmer may dodge through the world without much censure, but it will seldom be so with an out-and-out man of God. Because he is not of the world, the world will hate him! The blessed and holy Lord Jesus was slandered to the utmost. God, the Ever-Blessed, was Himself libeled in Paradise, itself, by an old servant who had turned into an old serpent! Therefore you must not wonder if you are also abused!
To go through life without calumny is not a thing to be expected—but it is anxiously to be desired that we may go through every phase of joy or of sorrow without falling into sin. Neither is it a chief point for us to seek to go through life without suffering, since the Lord’s servants, the best of them, are ripened and mellowed by suffering. Amos, the herdsman, was a bruiser of sycamore figs—a kind of fig that never ripened in Palestine unless it was struck with a rod and thus was bruised. I fear there are very few of the godly who will fully ripen without affliction. The vine bears but little fruit unless it makes the acquaintance of the knife and is sternly pruned. I fear that much fruit will seldom be forthcoming without much tribulation.
A high character might be produced, I suppose, by continued prosperity, but it has very seldom been the case. Adversity, however it may appear to be our foe, is our true friend and, after a little acquaintance with it, we receive it as a precious thing, the prophecy of a coming joy. It should be no ambition of ours to traverse a smooth path without thorn or stone. Rather let us ask—
“Shall Simon bear the cross alone, And all the rest go free? No, there’s a cross for everyone, And there’s a cross for me.”
Dear Friends, I think, also that it should not be our ambition to go through the world without sadness of heart. It is true that heaviness of heart is worse than bodily suffering—“A wounded spirit who can bear?” Some persons, however, seem to endure terrible trouble without much feeling. They are case-hardened, stout-hearted, thick-skinned persons— and truly I have half envied them at times and almost prayed to lose that sensitiveness which causes fear—but it would be a very doubtful blessing. We need to be tender that we may feel the slightest touch of God’s hand. “Be you not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding, whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto you.”