Job Chapter 17



In the 17th chapter Job carries on, and goes back to his dreadful condition. It was not yet a settled thing; it was merely a gleam. "My breath is corrupt, my days are extinct, the graves are ready for me. Are there not mockers with me?" - surely there were three of them - "and doth not mine eye continue in their provocation?" If that was the case with these three men who had been his friends, what was the feeling of all the people round about that knew? You may depend upon it it would be quite as bad as that of the three friends, or worse. We must not suppose it is limited to them. It is the natural conclusion of the natural mind, working upon this thought, that God's moral government is exact now, instead of knowing that God on the contrary, is waiting for His direct government, when Christ, who alone is capable of holding the reins and of governing, shall rule. Therefore, even when the church was formed, the church was perfectly incapable of judging the world; and of this Popery is a clear instance. There they have tried to govern the world, and what are they? Why, the most abominable thing in the eye of God on the earth. There is nothing more wicked than Popery. You may tell me about all the horrors of heathenism and Buddhism. Yes, but they do not mix up Christ, or Peter, or Paul, and all the rest. The Papists know enough of Christianity to make them verily guilty. It is a great deal more wicked idolatry to worship the Virgin Mary than to worship Juno or Venus; because the one was pure ignorance under the darkness of the devil, and the other is worshipping Mary after Christ came - after the true light shone. There is nothing more guilty than what people call Christian Idolatry. Worshipping the Mass - what is that? That is not confined to Papists now; now it is unblushingly done - I will not say by Protestants, but by people who masquerade as clergymen. Surely that is not too severe an expression for it? - and at the same time they are perfectly in the error of Popery, only they do not yet own the Pope; but they have all the falsehood of it in their souls.

Well, Job bemoans his condition in a very solemn manner, and compares what he once was. "Aforetime I was as a tabret," i.e., "I sounded music, as it were, in the ears of people as I had to do with them." But now a by-word not merely of the three friends, but "of the people!" "Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow, and all my members are as a shadow. Upright men shall be astonied at this, and the innocent shall stir up himself against the hypocrite. The righteous also" - you see it is turned for good - "shall hold on his way." That is where he looked onward to. His record was on high; his witness was in heaven; he clung to God. "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him." That was Job's language; that was his spirit. He had far more faith than any one of the three.