Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2314
“You have granted me life and favor, and Your visitation has preserved my spirit.” Job 10:12.
IT is well, sometimes, to sit down and take a grateful review of all that God has done for us, and with us, from our first day until now. We must not be like hogs under the oak, that eat the acorns but never thank the tree, or the Lord who made it grow. We must not receive the dew and yet never think of the Heaven from which it comes. To be ungrateful is to be unmanly—to be ungrateful to God is to commit high treason against the majesty of His goodness. I think that an hour would be well spent, by any person here, in sitting quietly and going over his autobiography. Turn over the pages of your diary—if you have none written, turn over the pages of your memory—and think of all that God has done for you from the day when you hung upon your mother’s breast until the present moment—
“Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.” But God does not hear the songs ofpraise because we let the streams of mercy glide by unnoticed. Far too often, we—
“Let His mercies lie
Forgotten in unthankfulness,
And without praises die.”
We do not even put a tombstone over their graves, but let them lie as dead things, uncared for, forgotten, out of mind.
If there is any time when it is unlikely for us to think of God’s mercies, but when it would be especially wise for us to do so. If there is one time more unlikely than another, it is when we are in great trouble. Here is poor Job, covered with sore boils, sitting on a dunghill, scraping himself with a bit of a broken pot. His children are dead. His property destroyed and even his wife not giving him a word of comfort—and his friends acting in a most unfriendly manner. Now it is that he talks to his God and says, “You have granted me life and favor, and Your visitation has preserved my spirit.” You are very ill—think of the time when you were well. You are poor—remember when you washed your feet in milk and your steps with butter—and had more than heart could wish. Friends have forsaken you—remember when you had plenty of friends.
“Oh!” you say, “that will be rubbing salt into the wound.” No, no, I trust not. You will remember that you were not always unhappy, that you were not always full of pain. God has spared your life and given you many favors. If you do not feel that you can bless Him for the present moment, yet forget not to bless Him for the past. And when you once begin to do that, you will soon find that your praise will overlap the past and cover the present—if it does not even run into the future! Only begin to praise God and you will find that he who praises God for mercy will never be long without a mercy for which to praise Him! I therefore invite those of you who are sad, tonight, to think of God’s past goodness and, as I trust that the larger proportion here will not be found in that condition, I urge you to lead the way in taking a happy retrospect, tonight, of all that God has done for you in Providence and Grace.
Job gives us, here, a charter with three blessings in it—“You have granted me life and favor, and Your visitation has preserved my spirit.” These are choice favors! As we dwell upon them, may our hearts gratefully bless God for all that He has done for us!
I. The first blessing of this heavenly charter is LIFE—“You have granted me life.”
Well, I think that we ought to thank God that we have lived at all. I know the pessimist version of the psalm of life is that, “‘Tis something better not to be.” Perhaps it would have been something better if that gentleman had not been—
better, I should think, for his wife and family if they had not had to live with such a miserable creature! But the most of us thank God for our being, as well as for our well-being. We count it something not to be stones, or plants, or “dumb, driven cattle.” We are thankful to be intelligent beings with powers of thought and capable of mental and spiritual enjoyment. Truly, O Lord, it is no small thing to be, even to be a man, for what is man? Well, with all his sin, yet as You did make him, when he had no sin, he was but a little lower than the angels and You did make him to have dominion over all the works of Your hands. You have made him immortal! You have made him a king! You have crowned him with glory and honor and if he does but know his destiny, and works it out aright, You have made him to be glorified with Yourself—You have made him to stand even higher than the angels, now that You have redeemed him, for he has tasted of a love which unfallen angels could not know!
If you choose to make your being to be your eternal curse, why, you must do it, I suppose—but not without our tears. But if you are rational beings, and use your reason reasonably, you will thank God that you live and pray that your life may always be a blessing to you.