Job 9:35

REFLECTIONS

PERHAPS no part of the Old Testament writings is more calculated, under the blessed SPIRIT's teaching, to impress upon the soul a deep sense of sin, and to lay the soul lower in the dust in the view of it, than Job's humbling language of his spirit in this chapter. Reader! let us pause and consider. Surely, however light and unthinking minds may pass over the consideration, yet it is a solemn question, How should man be just with God? Never was there a soul, really and truly brought nigh by the blood of JESUS, who thought lightly of this question. Abraham, the friend of GOD, felt his soul strongly exercised when he cried out, under a deep sense of GOD'S holiness, and his uncleanness; Behold, now (said he) I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes. And all the saints of GOD, in all ages, have thought the same. My soul! I charge it upon thee; is it not indeed a very solemn thing? Even now in ordinances aid means of grace, surely thou durst not draw nigh with lightness and indifference: and though thou art looking forward, as here in ordinances, so then in death, to come before GOD in JESUS' blood and righteousness, that this, and this alone is thine only plea; yet when thou callest to mind, that in that solemn, awful hour, in the final event of which thine everlasting all depends, thou art to come before GOD as thy Judge, to receive a full absolution for the whole of life, is not thine whole nature struck with solemnity and awe, though thine eye is all the while upon JESUS?

And if such be the very awful process to every true believer in CHRIST; if David's flesh trembled, as he tells us it did, when contemplating GOD in judgment, though he was directing the eye of faith to JESUS as his blessed Surety; what horror will seize the soul of that man who comes before that tremendous judgment-seat void of an interest in CHRIST, and without the Mediator to plead his cause, or the Mediator's righteousness to justify his person. Oh! Reader! think, I beseech you while reading Job's confession, that snow-water cannot impart cleanness to the sinner, and nothing but the fountain of JESUS' blood can take away guilt; think of the blessedness of those who are looking to JESUS, and have a CHRIST, a Mediator to plead for them in his blood and righteousness, while law and conscience both accuse. Oh! precious, precious JESUS? how increasingly precious is thy salvation every moment. Oh! give us to see that we have redemption in thy blood, and are justified from all things, from which none of the sons of Adam could ever be justified by the law of Moses.