Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?
Job 38:1,2
Take heed of rash, desperate, impatient, and unbelieving speeches and wishes; such you will be forced to recall again with sorrow. As David, when he was in fears, uttered a desperate speech, namely, that Samuel’s prophecy concerning him, and message to him from God, that he should be king, would prove false; and he says not only, that ‘one day he should perish by the hand of Saul,’ 1 Sam. 27:1;—the ground of which speech was, that he finding himself every day in some danger or other of his life, and so, though God had preserved him again and again, yet he thought that some of those many arrows which were shot against him so continually, and which still so narrowly missed him, might, at one time or other, hit and speed him, it were a wonder else;—but he says further, Ps. 116:11, ‘I said in my haste, that all men are liars,’ the prophet Samuel and all; that it was but a promise of a vain man. But he soon recalls himself, and adds, ‘I said this in my haste.‘ So likewise, Ps. 31:22, ‘I said in my haste, I am cut off.‘ They were rash speeches, as he confesses, spoken in haste. Even so doth many a poor soul break forth and say, after they have had strong hopes, at first conversion, that a kingdom is theirs, that heaven is theirs, and that it is reserved for them; and they kept for it also through the power of God: yet the devil being let loose to persecute them, as Saul did him, and God hiding his face, and the arrows of the Almighty flying thick about their ears, the sorrows of hell encompassing them, and well-nigh every moment cutting them off; they, although upheld again and again, yet are apt to say that, one day or other, they shall in all likelihood be cut off by God’s hand, swallowed up of Satan, and everlastingly destroyed. And when they are told of the hopes they had at their first conversion, and the promises that are made to them, they are apt to say that their graces by which they should now claim those promises are all a lie, false and counterfeit, and but in hypocrisy. This they say in their haste too often. So at another time, when David was in doubt about that other promise of an eternal kingdom, made to him in Ps. 77, he says, ‘God will never be merciful.‘ What a desperate weak speech was this, that what a man sees not at present, he should conclude would never be! But he acknowledged his error in it: ‘It was my infirmity,’ ver. 10, thus to speak. So the church, Lam. 3:17–19: ‘I said, My hope is perished from the Lord.‘ What a desperate speech was this! But she eats her words again with grief, ver. 21, ‘This I recall to mind, therefore have I hope.’ Job, though for a while, at the beginning of the storm, he was somewhat calm and quiet in his spirit, and it was his commendation; and therefore, in chap. 1:22, it is said that ‘in all this’—that is, so long and thitherto—’he had not charged God foolishly:’ but this held but to the first and second chapter, for when he began to be wet to the skin once, and the drops of God’s wrath began to soak into his soul, then he falls a-roaring, chap. 3, and ‘curseth the day of his birth;’ and, chap. 6:8, 9, wisheth God would cut him off; and, chap. 7:15, says, ‘his soul did choose strangling rather than life.‘ For which speeches God in the end steps out, as it were, from behind the hangings, overhearing him, taking him up for them: chap. 38:2, ‘Who is this,’ says he, ‘that talks thus?’ How now?
But, good souls, you that are in trouble; oh, take heed of such impatient wishes or speeches as these or the like, that all which you have had is but in hypocrisy; and, Oh that God would cut me off! that I were in hell, and knew the worst! Take heed, I say. When a man is sick and raves, whereas otherwise the physician and those that stand about him would in pity use him gently, they are forced to hold and bind him. Impatiens œgrotus crudelem medicum facit,—an impatient patient makes a physician more cruel than otherwise he would be. So would God deal more gently with thee but for such impatiences. And know that this is taking God’s name in vain in a high degree. You must know that the graces of God written in your hearts are a part of God’s name, as whereby his love is manifested to you. Now for you to call the truth of these in question, and say they are counterfeit, is as if you should say of the king’s hand and seal, when it comes down to you, that it were counterfeit, and deny it; which is crimen Iæsæ majestatis. So if a special friend, or your father, had given you some old precious pieces of gold or jewels, &c., as tokens of their love and remembrances of them, for you to say in a distempered fit of jealousy, all these are but counters and but alchemy, you should exceedingly wrong and abuse their love. Thus is it if you deny God’s handwriting in your own hearts, when he hath written therein by his Spirit, joy, fear, love, zeal, &c., and should say it is not like his hand. So if you deny the seal of the Spirit, after he hath sealed you up unto the day of redemption, and say that all the earnest-pennies of heaven are but counters, and alchemy, and nothing worth, in so doing you take his name, his love, his mercy, and all in vain; yea, you lie against the Holy Ghost, as the Apostle said in another case. Thus though God give you full leave to try and examine all his graces in you and dealings with you; yet not desperately, at the first blush and view, upon the least mistake or flaw, to say they are no graces, and that he will never be merciful. You abuse him when you do so; take heed of it.
Thomas Goodwin. A Child of Light Walking in Darkness.
