Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2682
“You have granted me life and favor, and Your visitation has preserved my spirit And these things have You hid in Your heart: I know that this is with You.” Job 10:12,13.
BEFORE I speak upon these two verses, I will read the four which precede them, that you may note the connection in which they are found. Job is in great trouble, in sore distress of soul. His heart is very heavy and his unfriendly friends are casting salt into his wounds instead of trying to heal them. In his distress, he turns to his God and appeals to Him in this fashion (beginning at the 8th verse)—“Your hands have made me and fashioned me together round about; yet You destroy me. Remember, I beseech You, that You have made me as the clay; and will You bring me into dust again? Have You not poured me out as milk and curdled me like cheese? You have clothed me with skin and flesh, and have fenced me with bones and sinews.” Then follows our text—“You have granted me life and favor, and Your visitation has preserved my spirit. And these things have You hid in Your heart: I know that this is with You.”
You see that Job is appealing to the pity of God and this is the form of his argument—“You are my Creator—be my Preserver. You have made me—do not break me. You are dealing very harshly with me, I am almost destroyed beneath the pressure of Your hands. Remember that I am Your own creature. Weak and frail as I am, I am the creation of Your hands. Therefore, despise not Your own work. Whatever I am, with the exception of my sin, You have made me what I am. ‘Tis You who has brought me into my present condition—consider, then, O God, what a poor, frail thing I am and stay Your hand and do not utterly crush my spirit.”
This is a wise prayer, a right and proper argument for a creature to use with the Creator. And when Job goes still further and, in the language of our text, addresses God not only as his Creator, but as his Benefactor, and mentions the great blessings that he had received from God, his argument still holds good. “Do not, Lord, change Your method of dealing with me. You have given me life, You have shown me special favor, You have hitherto preserved me. Cast me not away from Your Presence. Dismiss me not from Your service, let not Your tender mercies fail, but do unto me, now, and in days to come according as You have done unto me in the days that are past.”
In speaking about these two verses, I am going to use them in two senses. The first in one sense and the second in another, but both and each of them in its own true meaning, so far as I understand it. First, here is a song for bright days. “You have granted me life and favor, and Your visitation has preserved my spirit.” Secondly, here is a solace for dark nights. “And these things have You hid in Your heart: I know that this is with You.”
I. First, then, let us use the former part of our text as A SONG FOR BRIGHT DAYS—“You have granted me life and favor, and Your visitation has preserved my spirit.”
Whatever we have received that is good, has come to us from God as a matter of pure favor—certainly we have deserved nothing at His hands but displeasure, and everything short of death and Hell is a mercy—and a thing for which to magnify the goodness of God. In this first portion of our text, there is a mention of three blessings that must never be forgotten. The great charter of God’s bounty includes three notable things which He has granted to us—life, favor and His visitation which has preserved our spirit.
Now, then, you joyful ones, unite with me while we, first, bless God for granting us life. To a Christian, life is a blessing in itself. Considered alone, it is a blessing. But to the ungodly man it may turn out to be a curse, for it would have been better for that man if he had never been born. But to a godly man like Job, it is a great mercy even to have an existence. Blessed be the Lord who brought us into the world and gave breath to these lungs, and the flowing life to these veins! Blessed be God for having made us! Sometimes, as I gaze upon the world in springtime, or in the summer, it appears to me that it is a great happiness to all Nature to simply exist. Look at the lovely lily, as it stands quite still and never speaks—it seems to praise God in silence by its beauty. But a Christian should go beyond a mere flower. He ought to feel that it is a great favor to be made by God. The man who knows that his eternal future is secured by the unfailing Grace of God may forever praise the Lord who has given him life!
I find that in the Hebrew, this word, “life,” is in the plural—“You have granted me lives” and, blessed be God, we who believe in Jesus have not only this naturallife which we share in common with all men, but the Holy Spirit has begotten in the hearts of Believers a new life infinitely higher than mere natural life—a life which makes us akin to Christ, joint-heirs with Him of the eternal inheritance which He is keeping for us in Heaven! A Christian is lifted into quite another sphere of action—he is no longer in the carnal but in the spiritual’realm and, therefore, he understands things that are hidden from carnal eyes—and he lives in the midst of a world into which the unregenerate cannot possibly come. An unconverted man cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. He cannot even see it until he is born again, regenerated by the Holy Spirit! But once he is born again, he can bless God for giving him a second life infinitely better than the first one! Our well-being is a far higher thing than simply our being! The new creation is vastly superior to the first creation, good as that was, and the life of God in the soul is infinitely above the mere ordinary life of man!