I. He looketh upon men, and if any say" He is listening to hear a rare saying. Sinning is not a rare thing, but repenting is. Yet such a saying isheard. God's ear is open when men speak, to what their hearts speak, if any of them are speaking to Him about sin.
II. This man has no good to say of himself; he has evil to say of himself, and that evil he speaks to God. We have here three heads of a long story of a sinful life. Mark the correctness of the man's view of sin. It is given in three particulars. (1) "I have sinned." I have transgressed the law, the commandment, of Him who is my liege Lord, and to whom I belong. (2) There is a recognition, not only that the law is authoritative, but that the law is right: "I have perverted that which was right." Law, considered simply as law, is the will of a superior; but God's law is moral law, founded on the will of God, but having a ground in the nature of God. The law is the expression of God's moral perfections. (3) "And it profited me not." Sin is an unnatural, suicidal thing. It is contrary to the constitution and nature of man as it proceeded from the hands of God.
III. The confession is not meritorious, entitling to forgiveness, to deliverance. For it is added, "Then He is graciousunto him;" it is an act of grace to deliver the self-confessed sinner. God hath found a ransom. The sinner's place is the pit, but the ransom came into his place, and he shall not perish, but shall live. And then the ransomed one belongs to the Ransomer. Thou art not thine own, but bought with a price; therefore glorify God in thy body and in thy spirit, which are God's.
J. Duncan, Pulpit and Communion Table,p. 354.
We have here:
I. The creed of penitence. (1) An absolute good and evil, right and wrong. Right and wrong, good and evil, are fixed and absolute opposites. Opinions of men may vary, but the things themselves do not vary; they abide immutable, because there is One who knows them, and before whom they are real, who abides immutable. (2) "I have perverted that which was right." No man knows what "I" means but the man who has felt himself isolated from God by transgression, alone responsible for it, alone bound to bear it, a solitary soul in a universe of solitude. (3) "And it profited me not." "The wages of sin is death." Can sin stand the test of possession? Is it proof against satiety? The test of profit is the ultimate test to which everything will be practically brought.
II. The penitent's confession. (1) "If any man say, I have sinned." This implies at any rate that if any man should think it, and not say it, he must miss the promised fruit. (2) God demands confession (a) because confession alone makes the penitence complete; (b) because confession alone re-establishes that filial relation without which the penitence can have no lasting fruits.
III. The fruits of penitence. "He will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the light " the light in which it was born to live, the light of the face of God.
J. Baldwin Brown, The Divine Mysteries,p. 131.
References: Job 33:27; Job 33:28. Parker, Fountain,July 26th, 1877. Job 33:27-29. W. P. Lockhart, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xi., p. 97. Job 33:29; Job 33:30. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xix., No. 1101; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons,p. 131.