Job 33:23-24

If there be any messenger with him, an interpreter.

How to visit the sick

It is not man’s torment or ruin that God desires, but his reformation and amendment. To this end He speaks to men in dreams. When that will not do, by afflictions. To make those afflictions more intelligible and effectual, He sends a messenger, either an angel, by office, not by nature; or an interpreter--of the mind and will of God. Doctrine--That the seasonable instruction of sick and languishing persons is a work, as of great advantage, so of great skill and difficulty.

I. It is of great advantage. Some are apt to think that sick bed applications are in a manner useless and ineffectual. Observe--

1. That the instruction of sick persons is God’s institution.

2. God’s mercy is proposed by Himself, and may be offered by ministers, even to languishing persons.

3. Sick bed repentance is not wholly impossible, though it be hard. Sickness is one means that God useth to work repentance.

II. It is of great difficulty.

1. It is a work which God hath put into the hands of His chief officers, His ministers, who ought to be the most accomplished persons.

2. It is not every minister who is fit for this work. How ministers or Christian friends may and ought to apply themselves to sick persons for their good, and the discharge of their own consciences.

(1) Endeavour must be used to understand the state of the sick person.

(2) The great business is to bring the sick man to a true sight of his state and condition.

(3) Ministers and others must take heed lest, while they avoid one extreme, they run upon another; which is a common error in practice.

(4) The same methods are not to be used to all sick persons. Regard must be had to difference of tempers; of education and conversation; and of guilt.

(5) It is a very bad guide to follow the counsels or desires of sick persons, or their carnal friends.

(6) The same course (for substance) is to be taken for the conversion of sick and healthful persons.

(7) The greatest care mast be to keep sick persons from those errors whereby such persons commonly miscarry. Such as insensibleness of their danger; willingness to be deluded; carelessness and listlessness; resting in generals; the concealment of some hidden way of wickedness.

(8) Taking heed of healing the souls of sick persons slightly. This we are very apt to, from the sick man’s greedy desire of comfort; from the expectation and desire of carnal friends; from our own careless hearts, that love not to put ourselves to any trouble or reproach, which we shall meet with, if we be faithful to the ease.

Uses--

1. To ministers. Learn the great difficulty of ministerial work. What angelical abilities doth it require! Acuteness, to discern the sick man’s temper; knowledge, to understand the nature of all spiritual diseases; wisdom, to make suitable applications. A minister had need know all things, understand all persons, discern the subtleties of men’s hearts, and not be ignorant of the wiles of the devil.

2. To people. Is it of such difficulty? Oh, labour you to do your work in health, while time and strength last, before the evil days come. (Matthew Poole, A. M.)

The Gospel preached by Elihu

Though the words of the text are taken out of the oldest book in the Bible, they contain the elements and breathe the spirit of the Gospel. Scarcely less uniform is the experience of God’s people in every age. Consider the words as a Divinely inspired description of the way of salvation intended for the instruction of a true believer then under the deepest afflictions, but equally designed for the edification of those who in these last times are feeling the burden of their sins. We discover six states of the sinner.

1. A state of impending ruin. “His soul draweth near to the grave.”

2. A state of grace. “If there be a messenger with him,” etc.

3. A state of justification. “I have found a ransom.”

4. A state of sanctification. “He shall return to the days of his youth.”

5. A state of peace with God. “He will be favourable unto him.”

6. A state of glory. “He shall see His face with joy.”

The text closes with a brief recurrence to the gracious cause of all this progressive advancement from repentance to glory. (C. A. Hulbert, M. A.)

Footsteps of mercy

I. When God has, in the way of providence, prepared any human heart for a work of grace, one of the first means of blessing the chosen man is to send Him a messenger. I suppose the passage before us may be primarily referred to Christian ministers, who become, through God the Holy Ghost, interpreters to men’s souls. But I prefer to believe, with many expositors, that the full meaning of these words will never be found in ministers of mortal race; we must rather refer it to the Great Messenger of the covenant, the Great Interpreter between God and man, whose presence to the sin-sick soul is a sure prophecy of mercy. Another description that belongs to Him, as I believe, is an interpreter. Jesus Christ is indeed a blessed interpreter. An interpreter must understand two languages. Our Lord Jesus understands the language of God. He knows how to speak with God as the fellow of God, co-equal and co-eternal with Him. He can make out the sighs and cries and tears of a poor sinner, and He can take up the meaning, and interpret them all to God. Moreover, Jesus understands our language, for He is a man like ourselves, touched with a feeling of our infirmities, and smarting under our sicknesses. This messenger, then, this interpreter, is He not “One among a thousand”? O peerless Jesus! who among the sons of the mighty can be compared with Thee?

II. Now, secondly, wherever this Divine messenger comes, according to the text, He reveals God’s uprightness.

III. The third stage is this--“Then He is gracious unto him.” God deals with convinced sinners in a way of grace. Every word here is weighty. “Then He is gracious unto him.” Mark the time--then! God is gracious to a man when, Christ having come to him as a messenger and an interpreter, he is led to discern his own sin and God’s uprightness. The way as well as the time demands your notice. It is through the messenger that God is gracious. Then--that is when the messenger comes. When Jesus interposes then God is gracious.

IV. Let us proceed to the next stage--God delivers the sinner. “He saith, Deliver him from going down into the pit.”

V. The last thing is that God explains to the sinner whom He delivers the reason of his deliverance. “Deliver him from going down into the pit; I have found a ransom.” “I have found a ransom”--a covering. You notice these words, “I have found a ransom.” You do not find it for yourselves. You could not ever have discovered it, much less have brought it into the world. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

I have found a ransom.--

The finding of the ransom

These words were from the lips of Elihu, the companion and counsellor of Job. The men of that day had but dim visions of Him that was to come; they had to look through, the type to the antitype; through the symbol to the thing signified. “I have found a ransom.” This indicates in the man who spake it--

I. A knowledge of man’s state. A ransom signifies the price of redemption from captivity. Before we apply for a ransom we must feel that we are involved. Sensibility to our suffering condition is the very foundation work of an appeal to Jesus. Man by nature is in bondage; he is taken captive by Satan at his will.

II. The means of man’s deliverance. “I have found a ransom.” The prisoner finds a ransom--where? In the offers of the worldly-wise? In the counsellings and suggestions of self? Nay; no man ever breathed this assurance until his eyes were fixed on the atoning sacrifice of Jesus. To what else could he turn?

III. The acquisition of this knowledge. That is, a knowledge of your own heart in a state of nature, and a knowledge of the ransom that is provided for you in the dispensations of grace. Both the one and the other proceed immediately from the Spirit of God. He convinces of sin, and He alone. “I have found a ransom” implies that the ransom was sought for; and this seeking is a course of humble, diligent, and persevering prayer. (T. J. Judkin, A. M.)

The ransom found

I. Man’s perilous state. He was “going down to the pit.”

1. Man in his fallen and debased condition. Crown fallen from his head; fallen from holiness, dignity, dominion, happiness, etc.; into guilt, depravity, and misery.

2. It denotes man’s passage to the grave. Sin introduced disease and death.

3. It represents our exposedness to the pit of destruction. The tendency of the sinner was towards perdition. His sin had doomed him to it. And sin also was ripening him for it. His steps were downwards towards the gates of perdition, the regions of endless woe. What a dreadful state!

II. Displayed His gracious regards towards him. Now God’s interposition on his behalf must have been altogether gracious.

1. Deity was entirely independent of man. He could easily have blotted out the human race, and have formed creatures every way more worthy of His regards.

2. Man had nothing to interest Jehovah in his welfare. No moral excellency; no reasonable apologies for his crime; no possibility of giving a return.

3. Jehovah had every reason to punish. Justice was injured, holiness insulted, goodness abused, etc., yet mercy prevailed.

III. To the means of deliverance provided. “I have found a ransom.”

1. The source of our deliverance. “I” have found, etc. Man did not find, nor yet angels, but God found a ransom. Oh yes! God alone possessed stores of wisdom sufficient for the great and mighty undertaking.

2. The instrument of our deliverance was a ransom. That ransom was His own Son. “He gave His Son,” “Spared not His own Son,” etc. The price of our ransom was “the precious blood of Christ.”

3. The mode of our ransom. This was done by assuming our nature; obeying the law; dying for sin; overcoming the powers of hell; rising from the grace, etc. (Isaiah 53:4; Romans 4:15; Colossians 1:20).

Learn--

1. What ruin and misery sin has produced.

2. What Divine mercy has provided.

3. What the Saviour’s merits hath procured.

4. The necessity of feeling ourselves personally interested in the blessings of redeeming grace. “He that hath the Son, hath life.”

5. The grateful return we Should render for the loving kindness and redeeming mercy of God. (J. Burns, D. D.)

Deliverance from the pit

Let it never be forgotten that, in all that God does, He acts from good reasons. You observe that the text, speaking of the sick man, represents God as saying, “Deliver him from going down to the pit: I have found a ransom.” If I understand the passage as relating solely to a sick man, and take the words just on the natural common level where some place them, I would still say that the Lord here gives a reason why He suspends the operations of pain and disease, and raises up the sufferer: “I have found a ransom.” There is always a reason for every act of grace which God performs for man. So let each one of us think, “If I have been raised from sickness, if my life, which was almost gone, has been spared, I may not know why God has done it, but certainly He has done it in infinite wisdom and compassion.” There is such a thing as sickness of the soul, which is, in God’s esteem, far worse than disease of the body; and there is such a thing as recovery from soul-sickness.

I. Now, coming to our text, I shall ask you, first, to look with me upon a man in great peril. This is his peril: he is “going down to the pit.” That phrase describes his whole life, going down, down.

1. Notice, first, that this is a daily and common danger. If we are unconverted, if we are unrenewed by Divine grace, every one of us is in danger of going down into the pit of woe.

2. Further, there are some who, of set purpose, are going down to the pit. In this chapter Elihu said of some that God sends sickness to them that He may withdraw them from their purpose.

3. There are some, also, who are going down to the pit through their pride.

4. There are others who feel some present apprehension of coming judgment.

5. If you add to all this the fact that the man, as Elihu describes him, was suffering from a fatal sickness, so that he dreaded the actual nearness of death, you have indeed an unhappy case before you.

II. Now let us notice, in the second place, a new principle in action: “Then He is gracious unto him.” What does that mean?

1. Well, “grace” means, first, free favour.

2. But grace has another meaning in Holy Scripture; it means saving interference, a certain Divine operation by which God works upon the wills and affections of men, so as to change and renew them.

III. This brings me to my third point, which is concerning how this grace operates. It operates by a word of power. This man was going down to the pit, but God said, “Deliver him.” To whom is this command spoken?

1. It appears to be addressed to the messengers of Divine justice.

2. More than that, the man was not only bound by justice, but he was fettered by his sin. His sins held him captive, and they were dragging him down to the pit. There was drunkenness, for instance, which held him as in a vice, so that he could not stir hand or foot to set himself free.

3. I see this same man, in after life, attacked by his old sins.

IV. I finish by noticing that, in this case, God supplies us with His reason for delivering a soul, and it is an argument of love: “Deliver him from going down to the pit: I have found a ransom.” Observe that the text says, “I have found a ransom.”

1. This ransom is an invention of Divine wisdom. I do not think it would ever have occurred to any mind but the mind of God Himself to save sinners by the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ. Notice, next, that God has not only invented a way of deliverance, but He has found a ransom

2. So that it is a gift of Divine love: “Deliver him from going down to the pit.” It does not say, “because there is a ransom,” or “I will accept one if he finds it and brings it”; but the Lord Himself says, “I have found a ransom.” It is the man who sinned, but it is God who found the ransom.

3. And is there not something very wonderful in the assurance of this truth? This is God’s “Eureka! I have found a ransom. I did not look for a ransom among the angels, for I knew they were too weak to furnish it. I looked not for it among the sons of men, for I knew it was not to be found there, they were too fallen and guilty. The sea said, ‘It is not in me.’ All creation cried, ‘It is not in me.’” (C. H. Spurgeon.)