Job 18:14

His confidence shall be rooted out of his tabernacle, and it shall bring him to the king of terrors.

The confidence of the wicked

The world understands by the word “wicked” one who offends against the law of conscience,--one who breaks the second table of the law, the only table which it thinks important. Scripture means by it one who violates his relationship to God,--who transgresses the first table of the law. The term “wicked” has much more reference to the state of their hearts towards God than their state before man. Bildad shows the effects of wickedness.

I. On the wicked man himself (Job 18:7). The great point in these verses is the certainty with which he brings misery upon himself. His very sins are made his chastisement.

II. On his family (Job 18:6). “The light shall be darkened in his tabernacle.” In some Eastern countries a lamp is suspended from the ceiling of each room, and kept burning all the night, so that the house is full of light. And so, in the dwellings of the godly, there is light--the light of God’s presence. But in the dwellings of the ungodly there is no such light, and no blessing. And with the absence of this there is also, very often, the absence of family union and love. Very different is the Christian’s confidence. It rests upon a faithful and unchanging Saviour. Its roots strike deep into the everlasting hills. (George Wagner.)

It shall bring him to the king of terrors.

Death is terrible

Under a threefold consideration.

1. If we consider the antecedents, the forerunners or harbingers of death, which are pains, sicknesses, and diseases.

2. If we consider the nature of death. What is death? Death is a disunion; all disunions are troublesome, and some are terrible. Those are most terrible which rend that from us which is nearest to us. Death is also a privation, and a total privation. Death is such a privation, as from which there can be no return to nature.

3. In regard of the consequents. Rottenness and corruption consume the dead, and darkness covers them in the grave. We may ranks a threefold gradation of the terribleness of death.

(1) To a godly man, when his spiritual state is unsettled.

(2) When his worldly estate is well settled, when he hath deeply engaged in the creature, and his earthly mountain apparently stands strong.

(3) Death is most terrible to those who, though they have the knowledge of God, and outwardly profess the Gospel of Christ, yet walk contrary to it. It should be our study, as it is our wisdom, to make this “king of terrors” a kind of “king of comfort” to us. Many believers have attained to this.

A believer moves on these principles.

1. That death cannot break the bond of the covenant between God and us.

2. Death may break the union between the soul and the body, but it cannot break the union between the soul and Christ. This outlives death.

3. The apostle asserts that the sting of death is out.

4. Scripture calls death a sleep or rest.

5. Death puts a period to our earthly sorrows, and we have no reason to be sorry for that.

6. It is called a “going to God,” in whom we shall have an eternal enjoyment.

7. It is a dying to live, as well as a dying from life. (Joseph Caryl.).