Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2457
“Then Job arose, tore his clothes, and shaved his head, and fell to the ground, and worshipped, and said, Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there: the LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD. In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.” Job 1:20-22.
JOB was very much troubled and he did not try to hide the outward signs of his sorrow. A man of God is not expected to be a stoic. The Grace of God takes away the heart of stone out of his flesh, but it does not turn his heart into a stone. The Lord’s children are the subjects of tender feelings—when they have to endure the rod, they feel the smart of its strokes—and Job felt the blows that fell upon him. Do not blame yourself if you are conscious of pain and grief, and do not ask to be made hard and callous. That is not the method by which Grace works—it makes us strong to bear trials, but we have to bear them! It gives us patience and submission, not stoicism. We feel and we benefit by the feeling—and there is no sin in the feeling—for in our text we are expressly told of the Patriarch’s mourning, “In all this Job sinned not.” Though he was the great mourner—I think I might truly call him the chief mourner of Scripture—yet there was no sin in his mourning. There are some who say that when we are heavy of heart, we are necessarily in a wrong spirit, but it is not so. The Apostle Peter says, “If need be you are in heaviness through manifold trials,” but he does not imply that the heaviness is wrong. There are some who will not cry when God chastises them and some who will not yield when God strikes them. We do not wish to be like they—we are quite content to have the suffering heart that Job had—and to feel the bitterness of spirit, the anguish of soul which racked that blessed Patriarch.
Furthermore, Job made use of very manifest signs of mourning. He not only felt sorrow within his heart, but he indicated it by tearing his clothes, by shaving his head and by casting himself prone upon the ground, as if he sought to return to the womb of mother earth as he said that he would. And I do not think we are to judge those of our Brothers and Sisters who feel it right to wear the common tokens of mourning. If they give them any kind of solace in their sorrow, let them have them. I believe that, at times, some go to excess in this respect, but I dare not pass sentence upon them because I read here, “In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.” If the black band should be worn for a very long while and if the sorrow should be nursed unduly, as others judge, yet we cannot set up a standard of what is right for others—each one must answer for his conduct to his own Lord. I remember the gentleness of Jesus towards mourners rather than His severity in dealing with them—He has much pity for our weakness—and I wish that some of His servants had more of the same spirit. If you who are sorrowing could be strong. If the weeds of mourning could be laid aside, it might indicate a greater acquiescence in the Divine will, but if you do not feel that it should be so with you, God forbid that we should rebuke you while we have such a text as this before us, “Job arose, tore his clothes, and shaved his head, and fell to the ground.” And, “in all this Job sinned not.”
I want you, however, to notice that mourning should always be sanctified with devotion. It is very pleasant to observe that when Job had torn his clothes after the Oriental custom and shaved his head, (in a manner which, in his day, was not forbidden, but which under the Mosaic law was prohibited, for they might not cut their hair by way of mourning as the heathen did), and, after the Patriarch had fallen to the ground, he “worshipped.” Not, he grumbled. Not, he lamented— much less that he began to imprecate and use language unjustifiable and improper—but he, “fell to the ground and worshipped.” O dear Friend, when your grief presses you to the very dust, worship there! If that spot has come to be your
Gethsemane, then present, there, your “strong crying and tears” to your God! Remember David’s words, “You people, pour out your hearts”—but do not stop there, finish the quotation—“You people, pour out your hearts before Him.” Turn the vessel upside down! It is a good thing to empty it, for this grief may ferment into something more sour. Turn the vessel upside down and let every drop run out—but let it be before the Lord. “You people, pour out your hearts before Him: God is a refuge for us.” When you are bowed down beneath a heavy burden of sorrow, then take to worshipping the Lord and, especially, to that kind of worshipping which lies in adoring God—and in making a full surrender of yourself to the Divine will—so that you can say with Job, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.” That kind of worshipping which lies in the subduing of the will, the awakening of the affections, the bestirring of the whole mind and heart and the presentation of oneself to God over, again, in solemn consecration, must tend to sweeten sorrow and to take the sting out of it.