Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2734
“Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one.” Job 14:4.
JOB considered himself to be unclean in the sight of God. Yet, if we speak the plain truth about him, we must say that he was as clean as any man who lived in that age, or, indeed, in any other! We have the witness of the Holy Spirit, in this very Book, that Job, “was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.” We have also the practical confirmation by the devil of the same fact, for, when the Lord said to him, “Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that fears God, and eschews evil?” he could not deny it, but could only insinuate that there was an evil motive at the back of the Patriarch’s uprightness—“Does Job fear God for nothing?” Sometimes the unwilling acknowledgment of an enemy is a stronger proof than the hearty declaration of a friend—and it was so in Job’s case.
He was one of the best, truest, sincerest, cleanest men to be found throughout the whole world, yet he called himself unclean and he probably did so because, just in proportion as a man becomes really pure, he discovers his own impurity. The impure man has a very low standard of what true holiness is, and possibly he thinks that he comes nearly up to it or, if not, he tries to lower the standard down to his own level. But the man who is really pure in heart has a very high ideal of what the Truth of God is, and uprightness is, and holiness is and, because his ideal is so high, he feels that he has not yet attained to it and he thinks more of the distance between his present condition and his idea of perfection than he does of all that he has as yet attained. Such a man says, with the Apostle Paul, “Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
It is always a bad sign when a man begins to think exceedingly well of himself. I had rather, a great deal, hear a man complain and cry out before God, under a deep sense of humiliation, than hear him utter a single word that reveals a spirit of complacency with his own condition. What we are in Christ is a thing to be perfectly satisfied with and rejoiced over, for, in Christ, Believers are justified and accepted. But as for what we are in our own personal character, the very best of us must still feel that there is much over which we have to mourn. However nearly we may have approached to the example of Christ, that very nearness will make us the more regret the points in which we have fallen short of a complete imitation of Him and we shall still cry out, “O wretched man that I am”—blessed to have come so far on the way of holiness, but wretched that I have not gone still further—“who shall deliver me from the present thralldom of the body of this death? Who shall perfectly emancipate me from its control, that I may live wholly unto God and be holy even as God
is holy?”
Then, as Job considered himself an unclean thing, we need not wonder that he should have despaired of ever, by his own power, bringing out of himself anything that should be perfectly clean in God’s sight. And we need not be surprised at his question, “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?” As I have already reminded you, what he brought out of himself in his daily life was clean in the eyes of men. He vindicated his character against false accusations with great earnestness and sincerity, and with considerable warmth of temper, for he felt that it was clean before men—yet he was conscious that it was not clean before God.
There are two kinds of perfection—there is a measure of cleanness in which a man may wash his hands in innocence, and say to his fellow men, “I am free from any transgression,” as the Prophet Samuel fearlessly challenged all Israel to produce anyone whom he had defrauded or oppressed. “And they said, You have not defrauded us, nor oppressed us, neither have you taken anything of any man’s hand. And he said unto them, The Lord is witness against you, and His anointed is witness this day, that you have not found anything in my hand. And they answered, He is witness.” That ought to be the character of every Christian—he should be white as the driven snow, aiming to always be honest and upright in all his dealings with his fellow creatures. But, Beloved, God’s judgment, and yours, and mine concerning cleanness, differ very greatly. Our weights and scales are rough and coarse, though they suffice for the common purposes of the life we live here on earth. But God’s scales will turn if a single hair falls upon them—the small dust of the balance will move them!
No, the metaphor is not a perfect one all round. I use it, but I make a reservation concerning it. God does not regard any sin of ours as the small dust of the balance and His judgment is right judgment. He does not find much evil where there is but little, for the great evil is there all the while! And because God is perfectly holy, He discovers what our impure eyes cannot perceive. In contrast with His absolutely perfect holiness, none of us are clean. Job’s friend Bildad said, “The stars are not pure in His sight. How much less man, who is a worm?” And Eliphaz said, “Behold, He puts no trust in His servants; and His angels He charged with folly: how much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed before the moths.” The purity of God is incorruptible—and when we look at ourselves, we despair of ever attaining to such perfection as His without His help!