Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2666
“Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, and whom God has hedged in?” Job 3:23.
I AM very thankful that so many of you are glad and happy. There is none too much joy in the world and the more that any of us can create, the better. It should be a part of our happiness and a main part of it, to try to make other people glad. “Comfort you, comfort you My people,” is a commission which many of us ought to feel is entrusted to us. If your own cup ofjoy is full, let it run over to others who have a more trying experience. If you, yourself, are privileged to have flashing eyes and elastic steps, and a bounding heart, be mindful to speak words of good cheer to such as are in bonds! Feel as if you were bound with them and try to revive their drooping spirits. That is what I am going to aim at, tonight, so you will excuse me if I bid, “good-bye,” for a while to you joyous ones! I want to seek after those who have no such delight as you now possess—those who are, on the contrary, suffering from extreme depression of spirit. Sometimes, we must single out the wounded ones of the flock. That is what I am about to do, yet I feel sure that while some few will be distinctly sought after, there will be something that may be of use to the many who are in a less sorrowful condition. The 99 shall get their full portion although the shepherd goes especially after the lost one.
The question of our text was put by Job when he first opened his mouth in the extreme bitterness of his anguish. “Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, and whom God has hedged in?” His case was so sad and so trying that life itself became irksome to him. I suppose that by, “light,” here, he means the power to see the Light of God, the life which lives in the light. “Why,” he asked in his agony, “is that continued to a man when God has filled him with sorrow upon sorrow?” The verses preceding our text are to the same effect—“Therefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul which long for death, but it comes not; and dig for it more than for hidden treasures; which rejoice exceedingly and are glad when they can find the grave.”
The Patriarch was weary of living and, perhaps, we shall not wonder so much at his pitiful lamentation if we remember the extreme distress into which he had been brought. He had lost all his property. Stroke by stroke all his wealth had been taken away from him. He might have borne that if it had been his only loss, but close upon the heels of it had come sore bereavement. His happy children, for whom he daily cared and whom he had tenderly loved, were all destroyed in a moment—while they were feasting in the house of one of their brothers. The calamity seemed all the greater because it came in the very midst of their joys. Then, as if that was not trial enough, Job was, himself, smitten from head to foot with boils. If you have ever seen a person in that condition, I am sure that you must pity him. There is a dear friend of ours, now with God, whom I visited when he was in much the same state as that. Perhaps he had not to endure quite all that Job suffered, but something exceedingly like it had befallen him. The irritation, the pain and the depression of spirit that come with that particular form of disease all tend to make us treat very gently the petulant expressions of Job.
We may not excuse them, but only he among us that is without fault may take up the first stone to cast at him. I will warrant that if we had suffered as he did, been brought to poverty, left childless, and then been tortured as he was, from head to foot—and even his wife rendering him no comfort, but, on the contrary, adding to his grief and woe—we might have said even worse things than Job did! For remember, dear Friends, that he said nothing against God in the time of his deepest sorrow. He cursed most vehemently the day of his birth and wished that he had never existed, or that he might
speedily pass away to sleep with the generations that are dead. He used unwise and foolish expressions—but any of us might have used far worse words if we had been in his case, so we will not condemn him, but we will see what lessons we can learn from his experience.
I think that Job’s experience teaches us the very small value of temporal things. To have spiritual blessings and to enjoy them, is one thing, but to have earthly things, and to enjoy them, is quite another. You may have an abundance of them and yet they may be utterly tasteless to you, or they may even be bitter as gall to you—and you may curse the day that gave them to you. I am sure that it is so, because Job speaks thus concerning life, which is the chief of all earthly things. It is true, although Satan said it, “All that a man has will he give for his life,” yet we may be brought into such a condition that we may wish that we had never been born! Life itself may become so wearisome to us that we may even wish to escape from it, that we may be at rest, as we hope.