Job 8:8-14
“Ask the former generations and find out what their fathers learned, for we were born only yesterday and know nothing, and our days on earth are but a shadow. Will they not instruct you and tell you? Will they not bring forth words from their understanding? Can papyrus grow tall where there is no marsh? Can reeds thrive without water? While still growing and uncut, they wither more quickly than grass. Such is the destiny of all who forget God; the hope of the hypocrite shall perish! What he trusts in is fragile; what he relies on is a spider’s web!”
Religious controversy is rarely carried on with that meekness and candor, which are necessary to render it profitable to the soul. Even in such a sacred subject as religion, the generality seek for victory rather than for truth, and put such a construction on the expressions of their adversary as to distort his opinions and to calumniate his views.
The friends of Job, though good men, were guilty of this to a very great extent. In the chapter before us, Bildad begins his reply with a most unjustifiable misconstruction of all that Job had spoken; and accuses him of having represented God as “perverting justice;” when Job certainly never intended to make so impious an assertion. But still we must remember, that the general opinions of Bildad were just; and that, if Job had really been such a character as his friends imagined, the warnings which they suggested, and the advice which they gave him, were on the whole both beneficial and good.
In order to enter fully into the meaning of the words before us, we must particularly bear in mind that Bildad regarded the sons of Job as ungodly, and Job himself as hypocritical. Compare Job 4:7-11; Job 5:3-5 with 8:4, 6. In this view, he designates the former as “forgetting God,” and the latter as having acted “the hypocrite” before him; and both the one and the other he compares to “a reed,” which, when deprived of water, withers in a very short space of time.
I. We shall consider this comparison in reference to those who manifestly forget God.
Here, as we have observed, we must keep in view the precise character which Bildad considered as belonging to the sons of Job.
They were presently living in ease and affluence, happy in their family connections, and blessed with an abundant measure of harmony in their domestic circle. The apprehension which their father had, lest his sons should by any means have been led to dishonor God in their mirth, Job 1:5, shows that they were not, in his opinion at least, possessed of solid piety; while, on the other hand, it showed that they were not decidedly wicked. Now people of this description are very numerous, “There is a generation,” says Solomon, “that are pure in their own eyes, but are not washed from their filthiness, Proverbs 30:12;” they fill up their stations in life with credit to themselves, and with benefit to all around them; they are irreproachable in their character, as men of honor and integrity, of kindness and benevolence, of decency and decorum; and in all these respects they are, “like the rush in the mire, green and flourishing.”
In their prospects also and their expectations, they are happy. Not anticipating evil, they look forward to fresh gratifications, like travelers in a rich and fertile country. In early youth they form optimistic hopes of settling in the world; and then of advancing their rising families; and thus, having always some fresh object in view, they run their career of pleasure or ambition, and conclude that, at the termination of it, they shall stand as high in the approbation, of their God, as they do in the estimation of their ignorant fellow-creatures.
In their end an especial reference is made to them. Those of the foregoing character, while living in their proper element, the world, flourish; but when, through illness or misfortunes, they can no longer enjoy the world, like the rush in a season of drought, they wither; they need “not be cut down” by great calamities; small trials suffice to rob them of all their verdure, and to reduce them to a very pitiful and drooping state. “In the fullness of their sufficiency they are in straits, Job 20:22;” and they are compelled, however reluctantly, to inscribe on every created enjoyment, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity and vexation of spirit!”
But, if we look to the period of their departure hence, we shall find the text yet more awfully verified in them; then indeed “all their hopes perish, even as a spider’s web!” We have a most remarkable illustration of their state in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man seems to have been much such a character as we suppose these to be; he “lived to the flesh rather than to the Spirit,” and “to himself rather than unto God.” This was the rich man’s sin; (we charge him wrongfully, if we accuse him of oppression;) and it is the sin of those we are now speaking of, Romans 8:5; Romans 14:7-9 and 2 Corinthians 5:15.
They “forget God.” They forget, that God is entitled to all their love, and to all the service which they can possibly render to him; they forget, that, as he is the Author, so he should be also the End, of their being; and that, “whether they eat or drink, or whatever they do, they should have a single eye to his glory.” The end of such a course is seen in the rich man; who was no sooner taken from his present enjoyments, than he was cast into Hell, where he “lift up his eyes in torment, and entreated in vain for a drop of water to cool his tongue.” We find him too requesting that a messenger might be “sent to his five surviving brethren, to warn them, lest they also should come into the same place of torment;” for then he found, what during his life he would not believe, what must of necessity be the outcome of such a life; he found, what all must find, (either now by faith, or hereafter by their own actual experience,) that “the wicked shall be turned into Hell, and all the people that forget God! Psalm 9:17.”
II. We shall consider this comparison in reference to those who make a hypocritical profession of serving God.
As under the former head we have kept Job’s sons in view, so here we must keep Job himself in view.
In Bildad’s opinion of Job we find the true notion of a hypocrite.
Job had maintained a high reputation for sanctity, and had shown a great zeal for God’s honor in relation to others; but, as Bildad erroneously thought, Job had neglected to consult it himself, or to live agreeably to his avowed principles.
This, though not the true character of Job, is a just description of many among ourselves; they profess to venerate religion, and show much zeal in the propagation of it; they pretend also to feel deeply, when any depart from the good way, and bring a disgrace on their holy profession.
Many professing Christians appear fine to others, but are themselves under the dominion of some besetting sin. They are secretly indulging pride, envy, malice, covetousness, lewdness, or some other bosom lust. They do not live near to God in their secret chamber, or aspire after conformity to His will as revealed in His Word. They are more anxious to appear pious, than to be so; and to be applauded by men, than to be approved by God.
Now these people, while carried on by a conceit of their own superior knowledge of divine truth, and a desire of establishing a character for piety, are, like the reed in the water, green and flourishing; they seem extremely rapid in their growth; and are regarded, both by themselves and others, as people of a higher order of being.
But the hopes of all such people are most delusive.
It rarely happens that a hypocrite continues long to deceive those who are intimately acquainted with his private habits. He cannot maintain a consistency of character, for lack of an inward principle of saving grace. Like the seed sown in ground where it “had no depth of earth,” or like the reed destitute of water, he withers away, and exposes both himself and religion to general contempt.
For the truth of this we may appeal to the records of former ages; yes, “though we are of yesterday and know nothing,” as it were, we must have seen it but too frequently in our own day; that a person of high expectation has declined from the right path. Hypocrites eventually “make shipwreck either of their faith or of a good conscience.” Lot’s wife was a monument of a hypocrite in the Old Testament, and Demas was a monument of a hypocrite in the New. Just so, similar monuments of a hypocrite are yet found in every church today!
Let us follow the hypocrite into the eternal world—what is his condition there? Alas! alas! However high he was in his own estimation or in that of others—he is now fallen indeed; and all his towering hopes are now swept away with the broom of destruction! Even while he is here carrying on his deception, though it is unsuspected by himself or others, and though his hypocrisy is not in act, but in heart only—he is “treasuring up wrath for himself” for “the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Christ Jesus!”
Possibly he may carry his hope with him into the eternal world, and almost presume to argue with his omniscient Judge. But “He will say to them, I never knew you! Depart from me, you who practice iniquity!” And then their state shall be so superlatively wretched, that those who sink the deepest into perdition are said to “take their portion with the hypocrites!”
“But the wicked will lose hope. They have no escape. Their hope becomes despair.” Job 11:20
“Where is the hope of the hypocrite, when God takes away his soul?” Job 27:8
O that we might all learn from this subject:
1. The importance of genuine piety.
We are not disposed to undervalue the blessings of worldly prosperity, or domestic happiness; but in comparison with eternal blessedness we must say that everything in this world is only as the dust on the balance. Yet the highest ambition of parents for their children is, to see them precisely in the way that Job’s children were, all with separate establishments, living in sweet harmony with each other, and in the vicinity of their parents, where all as one family, may augment and enjoy the happiness of the whole. This state also is regarded by young people of both sexes as the summit of their ambition.
But even in this life we see how soon their gourd may be withered by a worm at the root; and after this life, nothing remains of it, but a fearful responsibility for every hour that has been spent in a forgetfulness of God. Indeed, indeed, however the ungodly may scoff at genuine piety, there is nothing that deserves a thought in comparison with it. If the whole world is no adequate price for one single soul, it is madness to be bartering away our souls, as so many do, for the smallest trifles that can be presented to our view.
To all then, and especially to the young, I would say, Remember God, “remember your Creator in the days of youth” or health; and let “the life which you now live in the flesh, be by faith in the Son of God, who loved you and gave himself for you.”
But if you are still disposed to hold fast your delusive expectations, go and sweep away a spider’s web, and then reflect, how suddenly, and irrecoverably, it is destroyed! Then say with yourself, Such is my hope, and such will before long be the termination of it. “O consider this, you that forget God, lest he tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver you! Psalm 50:22.”
2. The danger of self-deception.
We all see how others deceive themselves; yet none, of whatever class, imagine themselves to be in any great danger of self-delusion. But James tells us, that we may “seem to be religious,” and persuade ourselves that we are so, and yet “deceive our own souls, and our religion be worthless! James 1:26.” O remember, that we live in a deceitful world, and have an adversary whose wiles and devices are inconceivably subtle; and that our own “hearts also are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked!” Let the consideration of these things make you “jealous over yourselves with a godly jealousy.”
Do not be too confident that all is right with you; but say with Paul, “Though I know nothing by myself—yet am I not hereby justified; but he who judges me is the Lord, 1 Corinthians 4:4.”
Yet, if you have “the testimony of your own conscience that with simplicity and godly sincerity you have your conduct in the world, you may rejoice in it 2 Corinthians 1:12;” only “rejoice with trembling! Psalm 2:11.” And, bearing in mind that “God requires truth in the inward parts, Psalm 51:6,” beg of him to “search and try you, Psalm 139:23-24,” and to make you “Israelites indeed, in whom there is no deceit.”
Charles Simeon