Job to God: the progress of the third controversy: 2. An inexplicable contradiction.
I. GOD'S FORMER LOVING CARE.
1. Minutely detailed.
2. Skilfully employed. As Job recalls the time when he was thus an object of God's paternal solicitude, he cannot help lingering over the sweet memories with which it floods his soul. Setting up, too, these tender reminiscences against the dark background of his present sorrow, he feels melted and softened. The thought of that Divine love which had fashioned him and favoured him enkindles in his soul a strange yearning for its return, which makes him try, as it were, by recalling old times to God, to excite a touch of pity in the Divine heart. "Thine hands have made me; and yet thou destroyest me!" "Thou hast made me as clay; and yet thou reducest me to dust again!" There are few arguments that touch the heart of God so powerfully as the remembrance of former mercies. "Put me in remembrance," says God (Isaiah 43:26). "Forget not all his benefits," says David (Psalms 103:2; cf. Psalms 42:6; Psalms 77:10; Psalms 143:5).
II. GOD'S PRESENT CRUEL TREATMENT.
1. The Divine plot. "And these things hast thou hid in thine heart: I know that this is with thee" (verse 13). Job conceived that his terrible afflictions were the outcome of a dark and deep design which God had formed concerning him before he was born; that, in fact, God had summoned him into existence precisely in order to persecute him in the way about to be described. That God worketh all things on earth according to the counsel of his will, that every event in history, as well as every incident in individual experience, has its place in an eternally existing and universe-embracing plan, is a truth of natural religion no less than of Divine revelation (Acts 15:18; Ephesians 1:11). But that God created any soul expressly for the purpose of rendering it miserable, either in time or eternity, is s simple perversion of truth, inconsistent alike with man's fundamental notions of the Deity and Scripture's explicit teachings as to the import of predestination. God never plots against either saint or sinner; but he never fails to plan for both—in which there should be comfort for the one (Romans 8:28), and a caution for the other (Proverbs 15:3, Proverbs 15:11; Psalms 33:15).
2. The fourfold net. Job unfolds the nature of that plot which he conceives God to have devised against him.
Learn:
1. That if God uses rigour towards man, he doth it not of any cruelty, since man is God's handiwork.
2. That man, being God's handiwork, should never cease to praise his Maker.
3. That man's lowly origin should both keep him humble and remind him of his latter end.
4. That God's power and grace should be recognized in man's preservation as much as in man's formation.
5. That" all things are naked and manifest to the eyes of him with whom we have to do."
6. That God, if swift to note, is still swifter to forgive, iniquity.
7. That the royal road to Heaven's favour and forgiveness is through humility and self-abasement.
8. That the end of all Divine discipline on earth is to humble man in preparation for eternal exaltation.