Job 14:22

REFLECTIONS

READER! while we contemplate, from the perusal of this chapter, the low and depressed state of our fallen nature, born to trouble, and but of short continuance; and while such a view tends, under divine teaching, to induce all that suitable and becoming frame of mind belonging to sinful, perishing, dying creatures, let us turn the leaf of the chapter also to that interesting part of it, and read of that GOD-man, who, to redeem our nature from those ruined circumstances, condescended to be born of a woman, and to be also of a few days upon earth, and those days full of trouble. Indeed, all the sorrows of the human state sink to nothing, when compared to the sorrows of JESUS, wherewith he was afflicted when he stood as our Surety, and when the LORD afflicted him in the day of his anger. He took upon him our sins; was made a curse, counted a deceiver, a blasphemer, a devil, nay, the prince of devils, when in the same moment his holy soul knew no sin, and in his mouth there was no guile. From the first assumption of our nature, JESUS became subject to the same feelings. He humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross: and all the miseries incident to man's life the blessed JESUS bore. He drank deep of that cup, the cup of trembling: and endured a contradiction of sinners against himself, compared to which, all the unkindness of Job's friends is not to be mentioned. The reproaches of them that reproached me (saith JESUS, speaking of the blasphemies of men against GOD), are fallen upon me. And if the prophet Jeremiah, under the persecutions he sustained, cried out, Woe is me, my mother hath born me a man of contention to the whole earth, what might the LORD JESUS have said concerning the opposition which he met with from every quarter!

O thou blessed JESUS! May it be my consolation, in every little exercise which thou art pleased to call me to, in the contemplation of thine unequalled sorrows, to lose sight of my own. And may it form one of my most sanctified hours to be following thy steps to the garden, and to the cross. There may I be looking on JESUS, there see my LORD, and from that view gather instruction. And while I view thine agony and bloody sweat, hear thy dolorous cries, and behold thy love still remaining firm and unshaken to thy redeemed; oh! May thy HOLY SPIRIT lead forth my whole heart and soul in all the earnest affections of love and adoration.