(25) And if it be not so now, who will make me a liar, and make my speech nothing worth?
Job having finished his sermon, demands of his friends to confront it if they could. The man of Uz, it is evident all along, had his eye to himself, and their unjust censuring of him: therefore he makes from a long discourse, a short but striking application, that, if they could disprove what he had said, and show the reverse, agreeable to what they had insisted upon, that no good man was made to mourn, nor the wicked to rejoice, then his miseries might be supposed to be the result of his sins.
REFLECTIONS
WHAT a blessed resource is it, at any time, and at all times, when beholding the seeming prosperity of the wicked, and the apparent, misery of the righteous, we take shelter, not only in GOD'S sovereignty, but GOD'S justice. When we lay this down as a sure and unerring maxim, that GOD is true, let every man be false, we are enabled from thence to draw as sure a conclusion, that however unable we may be to explain what we see, or to reconcile what we behold, yet they are all easy to be explained by GOD'S right standard, and to be reconciled upon his divine principles of truth and justice. Shall not the judge of all the earth do right? Reader, make application of this doctrine in every difficult providence with which the LORD may be pleased to exercise you. Behold everything, and every event, as originating in his wise appointment. He cannot do iniquity. And when we are enabled to trace, in one point of view, the beautiful order that there is in all his dispensations concerning his church and people; what he hath done, what he is now doing, and what he will do: all the events thus brought into one connection; then the glory of his wisdom is made in some measure and degree to appear. Such views, as they concern ourselves in the common circumstances of life, serve to reconcile all things we behold in the apparent joy of sinners, and the seeming sorrow of saints.
But to what sublimity of thought doth the subject arise, when beheld with an eye to JESUS! The unequalled sorrows of the Son of GOD, when he tabernacled among us, and the taunts and reproaches he sustained from the ungodly, unless looked at in this point of view, would involve the mind in endless perplexity. But when I behold thee, thou blessed JESUS, as the sinners surety, sustaining the curse, being made sin, and standing forth the free-will offering of a righteous, spotless sacrifice for thy people, then, on these precious principles, I can well explain why it should have been, as it really was, that thou shouldest justly endure that wrath which was due to sin; and, having placed thyself in the sinner's stead, to receive all that was the sinner's due, that divine justice might be satisfied, the law of GOD magnified, and everlasting righteousness brought in, for the salvation of thy people. O sweet and glorious view of JESUS in his sufferings! Here Job, had he lived to these days, might have looked, and from hence drawn all his arguments, that GOD can be just in afflicting, as in the case of his dear Son, the righteous, and making him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might he made the righteousness of GOD in him. Precious JESUS! never, never let me lose sight of thee and thy sufferings, when anything perplexing ariseth. And when under my trifling exercises my mind is giving way, through unbelief; when all refuge fails me, and no man careth for my soul, then LORD be thou my refuge, my portion, and my hope, in the land of the living.