Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2175
“Lo this, we have searched it, so it is; hear it, and know you it for your good.” Job 5:27.
THUS closed a forcible speech by Eliphaz the Temanite—it may be called his “summing up.” He virtually says, “What I have testified in the name of my friends is no dream of theirs. Upon this matter we are specialists and bear witness to truth which we have made the subject of research and experience. Lo this, we have searched it, so it is; hear it, and know you it for your good.” By this declaration he sets forth his teaching with authority and presses it home. He persuades Job to consider what he had said, for it was no hasty opinion, but the ripe fruit of experience. When we speak what we know we expect to be heard.
I shall not follow Eliphaz—I am only going to borrow his closing words and use them in reference to Gospel testimony which is to us a thing known and searched out. I shall use it in the following way. First, our text sets forth the qualification of the teacher. He must be a man who can say, “Lo this, we have searched it, so it is.” Secondly, we have the argument with the hearers—“We have searched it, so it is; hear it, and know you it for your good.” And lastly, we have here the exhortation for every enquirer who wants to know the truth concerning spiritual and eternal things: “Hear it, and know you it for your good.”
I. To begin with, I judge that these words may well describe THE QUALIFICATION OF THE TEACHER. He will be poorly furnished if he cannot run in the line which Eliphaz draws in the words of our text. He should have, first, an intimate knowledge of his subject. How can he teach what he does not know? When we come to talk about God and the soul, and sin and the precious blood of Jesus, and the new birth, and holiness and eternal life, the speaker who knows nothing about these things personally must be a poor driveller. Let him be quiet till he knows what he is to speak upon! Let him sweep chimneys, or cobble shoes, or break stones, or follow any other honorable calling—it will not be honest for him to profess to be a preacher of the Gospel unless he is acquainted with these sacred subjects.
I know well the place of the ministry of one who was ordained to be a preacher and drew the hire of which every true laborer is worthy. He delivered a discourse which greatly troubled the mind of a friend named Jonathan whom I knew and esteemed. The awakened young man went to him on the Monday and said, “Oh, Sir, your sermon last Lord’s Day has robbed me of my sleep and made me very anxious.” The preacher answered, “I am very sorry for it, Jonathan. I will never preach that sermon any more. If it troubles people, I will have no more of it, for I have something better to do than to make people miserable.” “But, Sir,” said the young man, “you preached about the new birth and you said we must be born again. In fact your text said so. What does it mean?” He answered, “Jonathan, I do not know anything about it and you are such a good fellow that I am quite sure you need not be afraid. If there is anything in being born again you had it when you were christened. In your Baptism you were made a child of God and an inheritor of the kingdom of Heaven. That is all I know about it.”
It is necessary that we say to some preachers, first of all—You must be born again, for, if not, you cannot interpret the new birth to the people. Without personal experience you will speak riddles of which you do not know the answers! The blind will lead the blind and both will fall into the ditch. There is a German story of a minister who had delivered himself very earnestly upon a vital theme and after the service he was waited upon by one in great distress of heart who was peculiar in his use of language. He generally said, “we,” when he should have said, “I.” And so he said to the minister, “Sir, if what you have been saying is true, what shall we do?” He did not mean to bring the minister into it, but
the use of the word, “we,” implicated the pastor so much that he began to search—and searching he found that he had no part nor lot in the matter—and that he had been preaching what he himself had never felt!
Have I anybody here who is doing this every Sabbath? A blind man who is teaching others about color and vision? A preacher of an unknown God? A dead man sent with messages of life? You are in a strange position, dear Friend. The Lord save you! I wish that it might happen to you as it did to my dear friend, Mr. Haslam, whom God has blessed to the conversion of so many. He was preaching a sermon which he did not understand and while he preached it he converted himself! By God’s Grace he began to feel the power of the Holy Spirit and the force of Divine Truth. He so spoke that a Methodist in the congregation presently cried out, “The parson is converted!” And so the parson was. He admitted it and praised God for it—and all the people sang—