I was a father to the needy, and I took up the case of the stranger. Sermons
I. RIGHTEOUSNESS CLOTHES A MAN AS WITH A GARMENT. 1. It covers. If a man has but a good character, we can pardon much else in him. He may be weak, foolish, unfortunate. He may have failed in the world, and have come down to poverty. Yet he is not in rags. A royal robe covers him, and, in the eyes of those who can appreciate true worth, this is the one thing seen about him. 2. It protects. The garment is to keep off the chill winds and damping mists and scorching sun. Righteousness is more than a stout garment. It is a piece of armour - a breastplate, protecting the heart (Ephesians 6:14). When once a man is assured of the integrity of his cause he can look the whole world in the face; he can dare to go through fire and water; he is strong and safe where one with an evil conscience may well tremble and cower. 3. It adorns. This righteousness is not only decent and comforting, like a thick, warm, homespun garment; it is more beautiful than a king's clothing of purple and silk and gold embroidery. There is no beauty so fair as that of goodness. 4. It cannot be hidden. It is not a secret confined to the heart. It must be there first, it must spring from the heart. But it is not hidden within. Character is visible, like a garment worn in the street. II. THE RIGHTEOUSNESS WHICH THUS CLOTHES MUST BE REAL. It is only the perversity of an erroneous theology that could ever make it necessary to utter so obvious a sentence as this. There is a way of referring to the imputed righteousness of Christ as though this dispensed with the necessity of our being ourselves righteous. Surely such a doctrine would be immoral. In what respects could this so-called robe of righteousness be distinguished from the hypocrite's cloak? If Christ's righteousness were only to hide our unrighteousness without curing it, not only would a great deception be practised, but no real good would be done. The result would be an unmitigated evil. For what is our curse and our ruin? Is it not our sin? If so, nothing can benefit us that does not destroy that sin. Therefore an attempt to cover it up and leave it unaltered will do us no good, but will injure us by drugging our conscience and giving us a false assurance. In Eastern cities an open drain runs down the middle of the street, and is not so offensive as one might think, because it is always being oxidized and purified by the fresh air. We cover over our drains, but make ventilating holes in our streets, through which gases of concentrated foulness, unmixed with pure air, are continually rising among the passers-by. Have we gained much? III. ONLY CHRIST CAN CLOTHE US WITH RIGHTEOUSNESS. Self-righteousness is a delusion. We cannot make ourselves righteous, nor can any law put us right with God. St. Paul demonstrated this in the opening chapters of his Epistle to the Romans. But he also showed that God had given us righteousness in Christ (Romans 3:21, 22). Now, this comes first of all in forgiveness. We are then put in a right relation with God, before we have overcome all the sin that dwells within us. Christ is the promise of our future righteousness. In this way his righteousness means much to us. God cannot be taken in by any fiction. He can only regard us just as we are. But he can treat us for Christ's sake better than we deserve. So through Christ we are placed in right relations with God, and those right relations are the channels through which real righteousness comes into us. - W.F.A.
I was a father to the poor. The text is part of Job's noble vindication of himself from a charge of hypocrisy and impiety. So far was Job from considering the poor as made for him, so far from neglecting and oppressing them, that his wealth and its attendant influence prompted him to become their advocate, to befriend the friendless, and to attempt the relief of every species of human distress.I. THE PATERNAL CHARACTER, AS IT RESPECTS THE POOR. It includes — 1. A real and an affectionate concern for the poor. So far was Job from considering the poor as made for his aggrandisement, to do him homage, to wait his nod, that he saw and respected himself in them; made their cause his own, entered into their afflictions, and had a heart to feel for all their wants and sorrows. 2. Well-digested schemes, and well-directed endeavours, to promote, under God, their temporal and eternal good. There can be no true charity, among the affluent, without liberality. This fallen world opens a widely extended field for the exercise of every compassionate and benevolent principle in the heart. The paternal character has a relation to the bodies of the poor, as that of a father to the bodies of his immediate offspring. More important are the souls of the poor. II. RECOMMEND AND URGE THE PATERNAL CHARACTER, AS IT RESPECTS THE POOR. An argument might be brought from the very constitution of human nature. A principle of self-love is common to us all. The paternal character is more Divine, more Godlike, than anything else within the reach and ability of man. It makes that very use of talents and advantages which God designed. The character enters into the main and substantial part of Christianity. Solid comfort and felicity will ever result from it. (N. Hill.) (Archbishop Hay Drummond.) 2. The exercise of our compassion and kindness to our brethren is one of the best expressions of our piety to God. What shall we render to the Lord for all His mercies? God is Himself exalted above the reach of our most perfect services; our goodness doth not extend to Him. Our brethren are placed within the reach of our beneficence, and our charity to them is piety to our Maker. No fervours of religious affection will atone for the want of charity. Your alms must ascend with your prayers as a memorial before God. 3. By the exercise of compassion and kindness to our fellow creatures, we promote our own happiness. Benevolence is a source of pleasure. Compare the benevolent with the selfish in every situation of life. Place them in affluence, and observe how they differ. Place them in adversity, and see how they differ. Let disease come to the man who has shown no compassion to his brethren. How ill is he prepared for the evil day. Let sickness increase, let death approach; where now is the joy of the selfish? (W. Moodie, D. D.) Here is a matchless picture of a great and beautiful human life in that grand, calm, and stately patriarchal time, which presents a refreshing contrast to these eager, rapid, rushing days, in which God has east our lot. Each age has its own form of dignity and nobleness, and its own field of Divine service. This grand old sheikh, who was the Christus consolator of his people, was not even a member of the elect line. Job saw into the heart of the great social question of all ages when he declared himself a father to the poor. It is just the father's wisdom, firmness, and tenderness which poverty and ignorance need. It is just this which law cannot proffer to them. This explains the reason why in all ages the true help of the poor comes from the life-warm hand of the Christian Church. It is a large subject, and one full of interest, the fatherly ministry of the Church to the poor and helpless. We dwell on one feature only. The foremost duty of a father is the nurture and culture of the children. Let us see how, when the father wholly or partially fails, the Church steps forward with its Divinely helpful hand in his room. Plato, in his conception of the ideal republic, makes the children the charge of the State from the first. He makes their culture its most sacred duty, seeing that on their wisdom, industry, and moral habits so much of the health and wealth of the community in successive generations inevitably depends. It is practically impossible on any scheme of government to get a full representation of the highest wisdom of the community in the governing powers; and the training of all the children of the community in one type elaborated by human wisdom, however, admirable, contradicts and does its best to frustrate the benignant purpose of God in the varied natural endow. meats of mankind. He has not made men in one type. Think of a Christian household of a lofty Christian type, where the children are trained to a noble manhood and womanhood by parents whom they both reverence and love; where the hand of authority is firm but never capricious; where God's statutes and judgments are maintained in absolute supremacy; but where the children are never suffered to question for a moment that the motive of their maintenance is love. And whence the children are sent forth at length into the theatre of life with this deepest conviction in their hearts — that the only life worth the living is a life of service and ministry to mankind. Multiply such a home by all the homes of the community, and what a millennium of peace, and joy, and wealth would they bring in. But look at it on the other side. Think of thousands of homes, in which the children from the very first grow up in an atmosphere which taints at the spring their physical, mental, and moral life; in which they never hear the name of God or of Christ but in blasphemy. Multiply such homes by all the homes of the community, and then measure the dire and deadly ruin in which they would plunge themselves and the State at last. How does Christianity solve this question of the education of the children of a generation, with due regard to freedom of individual development on the one hand, and the need of bringing to bear on it the highest wisdom on the other? The Gospel establishes on the firmest and most lasting foundations the institution of the home. It deepens parental responsibility; it enlarges parental functions; it enhances the estimate of the momentous issues which are hanging on the due and Christian fulfilment of parental duty. The home is the ultimate unit of society. God sets the parent the pattern; God helps the parent in the task; God holds forth to the parent the prize. God attends the progress of humanity with an institution in which His truth is enshrined, in which His Spirit dwells, and which is the living and ever-present organ of His counsel and influence — the Christian Church. And here comes into the field the Sunday School. It would be wrong to say that the parental institution, the home, had failed; but a great mass of human parents are utterly unequal to the task that is laid upon them. The Church steps in with her helping hand, and sends forth from her bosom a great army of earnest, loving, and self-devoted teachers, to be as fathers to the children whose souls are fatherless, and to surround the shivering, homeless outcasts with the warm atmosphere of Christian love. This word, "I was a father to the poor," is the key to the teacher's position and work. Not to supersede the parent, but in every way to stimulate and help him, are teachers sent forth by the Church and by the world. Three things he must keep constantly in sight.1. Instruction. To impart knowledge is his first and most important work. The Christian teacher mostly confines himself to the highest knowledge. 2. The teacher is to be a shepherd, a pastor to the children. Sunday school teaching is pastoral work. 3. The teacher should follow the children to their homes, and do what he can to sweeten and purify the atmosphere of their lives. I honour the Sabbath School because —(1) It has opened a very noble field for that passion of ministry which is the Divine endowment of the Christian Church.(2) It maintains so nobly the Christian tradition of self-denying service, draws forth so richly and trains so effectively the self-denying, self-devoted spirit.(3) The teacher and teaching have formed a nexus, a link of connection of incalculable strength and importance, between jealous and often hostile classes of society.(4) The Sunday School is the nursery of the Christian Church. To train the child for Christ and for His service is the great object of the teacher. (J. Baldwin Brown, B. A.) People JobPlaces UzTopics Case, Cause, Didn't, Investigated, Needy, Poor, Search, Searched, Searching, Strange, StrangerOutline 1. Job bemoans his former prosperityDictionary of Bible Themes Job 29:16 5361 justice, human Library Comfort for the DespondingAt once to the subject. A complaint; its cause and cure; and then close up with an exhortation to stir up your pure minds, if you are in such a position. I. First, there is a COMPLAINT. How many a Christian looks on the past with pleasure, on the future with dread, and on the present with sorrow! There are many who look back upon the days that they have passed in the fear of the Lord as being the sweetest and the best they have ever had, but as to the present, it is clad in a sable garb of gloom … Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 1: 1855 Job's Regret and Our Own The Case of Spiritual Decay and Languor in Religion The Case of the Christian under the Hiding of God's Face. The Blessedness of Giving Oh that I were as in Months Past! Job 29:02:00 Field Hymns. How a Desolate Man Ought to Commit Himself into the Hands of God The Fifth Commandment The Properties of Sanctifying Grace May one Lose the Blessing? No Sorrow Like Messiah's Sorrow Job Links Job 29:16 NIVJob 29:16 NLT Job 29:16 ESV Job 29:16 NASB Job 29:16 KJV Job 29:16 Bible Apps Job 29:16 Parallel Job 29:16 Biblia Paralela Job 29:16 Chinese Bible Job 29:16 French Bible Job 29:16 German Bible Job 29:16 Commentaries Bible Hub |
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