April 20

Behold, I am vile. - Job 40:4.

LET us with regard to this self-accusation observe three things. In the first place, the quality acknowledged,-“vileness.” “Behold, I am vile.” “Vile,” says Johnson in his dictionary, is “base, mean, worthless, despicable, impure.” There is nothing in the world to which this will apply so much as to sin, and to sin Job referred when he said, “Behold, I am vile.” He does not call himself vile because he was a man reduced, poor, and needy: no man of sense ever would do so. Character intrinsically does not depend upon adventitious circumstances. As Young says,-

“Pigmies are pigmies still, though perch’d on Alps,

And pyramids are pyramids in vales.”

If property were vileness, as by their discourse some people seem to think, how vile must the apostles have been who said, “Even to this very hour we hunger and thirst, are naked, are destitute, and have no certain dwelling-place”! And how vile must have been the Lord of all, who said, “The Son of man hath not where to lay his head”! Neither did Job call himself vile because he was now despised, and full of sores and boils from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. Why, he was never dearer to God than when he was among the ashes scraping himself with the potsherd. Paul calls our present body “this vile body.” “Who shall change this vile body?” says he: it is in the margin, “this body of our humiliation.” And, indeed, it is humble enough! How low are some of its appetites, how mortifying some of its infirmities, how trying some of its diseases,- requiring all the force of friendship to induce us to discharge towards a fellow-creature the duties of humanity! But no wounds, or braises, or putrefying sores, are to be compared to sin; nothing is so vile in the universe as this. How Vile must that be which leads a God of love to threaten to punish with everlasting destruction from his presence and his power, and which would not allow of his pardoning without the sacrifice of his own Son!

Secondly, Who made this confession? Surely it was some very gross transgressor, or some newly-awakened penitent. No; it was Job, a saint of no ordinary magnitude. “Ye have heard of the patience of Job.” God himself, the Judge of all, mentions him along with righteous Noah and Daniel. He himself tells us that he was a perfect man,-one that feared God and eschewed evil; that there was none like him in the earth.

What then do we learn from hence, but that the most eminent saints are the most remote from vain thoughts of themselves? We know that the nearer a man approaches to perfection in any thing, the more sensible he becomes of his remaining deficiencies, and the more hungry and thirsty he is for improvement. It is Job who cries, “Behold, I am vile.” Not that there is no difference between a saint and a sinner. Job does not mean to intimate that he loved sin, or that he lived in it. His friends accused him of this, which he denied, saying, in his address to God, “Thou knowest that I am not wicked;” “behold, my witness is in heaven, and my record is on high.” But he knew that sin, though it did not reign in him, yet lived in him, yet opposed him, yet vexed him, yet defiled him, so that he could not do the thing that he would; and, if he was preserved from gross evils, he felt within him an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God, and knew by his own experience that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”

Thirdly, When was the acknowledgment uttered,-“Behold, I am vile”? It was immediately after God’s interview with him; after God’s thus addressing him:-“Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man, for I will demand of thee; and answer thou me.” It was after God had further displayed himself in the perfection of several of his works,-it was then that Job answered and said, “Behold, I am vile;” and what does this teach us but that the more we have to do with God the more we shall feel and see our unworthiness? Yes; if any thing can make us feel our littleness, it must be a view of Jehovah’s wisdom; if any thing can make us sensible of our weakness, it must be the view of his Almighty Sovereignty; if any thing can make us feel our depravity, it must be the view of his spotless purity,-the infinite purity of Him “who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and in whose sight the very heavens are not clean.”

How was it with Isaiah? Had it not the same issue with him? “Woe is me,” said he; “for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.” So Peter, upon the display of his power and goodness in the miraculous draught of fishes, exclaimed, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” This arose not from aversion to his presence, for he trusted his happiness in him; but from a sense of his unworthiness contrasted with the exhibition of his glory. So says the sweet singer in our British Israel:-

“The more thy glory strikes mine eyes,

The humbler I shall lie;

Thus, while I sink, my joys shall rise

Immeasurably high.”