The search for God.
I. ITS SOURCE. Job is prompted to seek God by his terrible troubles. The false accusations make him the more anxious to find the just Judge, who can clear up the dreadful misunderstandings and vindicate his injured cause. Thus the innocent man in trouble needs God. Still more does the guilty man; for no one can deliver from sin but he against whom one has sinned. Although it is most evident that many who thus need God are not actively seeking for him, yet, even if held back by fear or distracted by worldliness, all men have somewhere in the depths of their hearts the instinct of hunger for God. We need God, and we can have no rest till we find him.
II. ITS HOPE. Job believes that, if only he can find God and come to his seat, justice will be done, and right will be apparent; for Job is only thinking of vindication. No doubt that result will follow. But others also enter into the great human hope for God. If he were only to vindicate the righteous, the great multitude of men could hope for little from him. But the great Judge who does this is the compassionate Father, who has pity on his children's needs apart from their deserts. Thus the hope turns to the mercy of God for deliverance and blessing. Still, it is not wise to separate these two forms of the hope. God can only bless by leading us to righteousness; and it is really for our good that he is just. We need God not only that he may judge the righteous cause, but also that he may make the sinner righteous.
III. ITS DIFFICULTY. Job expresses a deep, heartfelt desire with great anxiety. He has not yet found God. Others have been in the same condition—longing for God, yet finding him not. Where is the difficulty?
1. God is a Spirit. If we try to find God by earthly means we must fail. He is not hidden among the mountains or above the clouds. He is simply invisible by nature. We must look for him in spiritual ways.
2. We are sinful. Nothing so blinds us to God as sin. This first of all banishes us to a great distance from God, and then makes darkness about our way back.
3. Life is often perplexing and sorrowful. Job had lost the vision of God in his sorrow, rather than through sin. So had Christ on the cross when he cried, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Great grief seems to blot out the heavens and leave us in desolation.
IV. ITS REWARD. Job did find God at last (Job 42:5). God has promised that they who seek him earnestly shall find him (Proverbs 8:17), and Christ that if men seek they shall find (Matthew 7:7).
1. God reveals himself to faith. We believe in order that we may see, trust in order that we may know. This is true of all knowledge of persons.
2. God is seen in Christ. Philip expressed the soul's desire for God when he said, "Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us;" and then Christ declared where the revelation of God was to be seen: "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father" (John 14:8, John 14:9).
3. The full vision of God is dependent on purity of heart. Some know]edge of God can be had without this; but we cannot see him as he is till we are like him (Matthew 5:8).—W.F.A.
The unseen God.
Job enlarges on the idea of his search for God and the efforts that he has vainly made to find him. God is still invisible; searching has not found him.
I. THE PHYSICAL IMPOSSIBILITY OF SEEING GOD. There is more to be said for modern agnosticism than for eighteenth-century deism. Pure rationalism will not find God. Physical science cannot discover him. The animal is dissected, the metal is melted in the crucible, but the analysis reveals not Divinity. We sweep the heavens with the telescope, and can see no Deity enthroned above the stars. But we are very foolish if we expect to find God in any of these ways. He is neither seen by the bodily eye nor discovered by the scientific faculty. Science, indeed, points to causation, and reveals order and thought; but she does not say how these things came to be. Natural theology prepares the way for the revelation of God; or, if it may be said that it is a revelation of God, still this comes only in such a large and confusing idea that we cannot find in it what we need—the revelation of our Father in heaven.
II. THE MORAL DIFFICULTY OF SEEING GOD. Job's search was not in regions of science. He looked abroad on the great world, and he probed into the deep musings of his own heart, but not as a philosopher seeking for a scientific explanation of the universe. It was his deep distress that drove him to God. He missed God in life, in the providential control of human affairs. It is not always easy to see God in this strangely confused human world, where so many things go wrong, and where so little seems to be done to keep them right. In his perplexity and distress man cries out, "Where is God? If there is indeed a God, why does he not declare himself? why does he not put forth his hand and rectify the world that so greatly needs him?" Whatever may be the theoretical scepticism that gathers round problems of science and philosophy, the moral doubt that springs from the experience of injustice and misery is much more keenly felt.
III. THE SPIRITUAL CAPACITY TO SEE GOD. We cannot find him by means of our philosophy; we miss him in the dark struggles of man's world of action and suffering. But why? Because we are looking for him in wrong directions. The true vision of God is only to be seen by means of spiritual fellowship with him. Meanwhile, although this is hard to obtain, we may console ourselves with the know]edge that if he does indeed exist, his being does not become shadowy and unreal just because we do not see him. It is desirable that we should have a more intimate acquaintance with our Father, but even before we have attained to this, even while we are blundering and stumbling in the darkness, God is truly existing, and is ruling over all. Our ignorance does not limit God's being, our blindness does not cripple his activity. We cannot see him; we find it hard to trace his purposes among the tangled threads of life; all looks dark and aimless. Yet God is God, and therefore he will not desert his creatures.
"God's in his heaven,
All's right with the world."
(Browning.)
W.F.A.