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June 11         Today’s Reading: Job 37-40

“Behold, I am vile!”

Job 40:4

 

Elihu declared the goodness, rectitude, wisdom, and mercy of our God. Then he asserted that God’s ways and works are unsearchable. His message (Job 32-38) to Job was noble and as full of instruction for us as it was for Job. “Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind.” Showing Job his glorious, universal sovereignty, he made Job to understand his nothingness before God. Then, in the opening of Job 40, the Lord God demands an answer from Job.

 

A Fearful Thing

It seems to me that there must have been a long pause between God demanding an answer for Job, and Job answering him. Job understood that, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31). He had asked God to answer him; but when he did, I can almost see the patriarch trembling before the holy, Lord God.

            David tells us that he trembled when he thought of God’s judgments. David, the man after God’s own heart, a man trusting Christ, looking to the Lord Jesus alone for acceptance with the Almighty, trembled when he thought of God’s judgments (Psalm 119:120). Oh, what horrors must instantly seize that soul that meets God after death without blood to cleanse from all sin, without righteousness to justify, without a Mediator to intercede, without the God-man to redeem, without Christ to present him before the presence of God’s glory!

 

Job’s Answer

How does Job answer God? — “Then Job answered the LORD, and said, Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth.” This is where we must be brought. Every awakened sinner is sweetly forced to see this fact about himself and confess it to God. Grace triumphs, and the sinner casts himself wholly upon God’s sovereign mercy in Christ.

            O sweet grace! O wondrous mercy! O magnificent love! When God comes to a sinner in the saving operations of his grace, he graciously convinces the object of his mercy of sin. That is the beginning of the Spirit’s work in us as our Divine Comforter. He who is convinced of his own sin is convinced of righteousness in Christ and of judgment finished forever by the sacrifice of God’s dear Son.

“Boasting excluded, pride I abase,

I’m only a sinner saved by grace!”

 


 

 

 

Don Fortner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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