Job 40:14

The conviction that now had seized Job had to be driven into him yet more deeply. So God challenged him again. He had been guilty of setting aside the judgment of God, and condemning Him to maintain his own righteousness. This was really a very great sin, and in verses 9-14 God condemns him in a most searching way. The language is ironic. Let him not argue with God. Let him turn his attention instead to the proud and powerful among men, and bring them low. Then it might be admitted that he could save himself.

It is divine irony, but needed in order to humble Job still more. He who was so proud and had so stubbornly defended his righteousness in self-justification and God-accusation, how could he do what Jehovah asked him to do?

If he is qualified for this, Jehovah in effect invites him to take his seat on the throne of divine judgment. Let him put on his robes of splendour and dignity. Let him dress himself in grandeur and majesty. Let the outpourings of his wrath flow out on everyone who is proud, and bring him low. What awful, holy irony! And yet how divinely just. If Job can sit in judgment on God, he surely is qualified to manage all His affairs better than He does! He can crush the proud rebellion of every evildoer, and bring men into the dust before him. Has he done so with his own proud and rebellious heart? Has he humbled even his friends? How much less the whole world.

There was Job — a poor, miserable man with all his flesh rotting and the worms feeding on him before he had even died — in the greatest possible bodily misery. "Adorn yourself with majesty and dignity; clothe yourself with glory and splendor." "Pour out the overflowings of your anger, and look on everyone who is proud and abase him." Why do you not put down all the bad people in the world? But he was entirely dependent on God.

If so, then Jehovah Himself will be the first to praise him, and to admit that he is able to rescue himself. But had his own right hand even stopped the raiders who drove away his possessions? Or turned aside the storm that swept away his children? Sadly, it had taken a piece of broken pottery to scrape himself with. His clothing was sackcloth, not glory and majesty. His seat was the ashes of a ruined life, not the throne of glory.

What a proud thing the flesh is, and no better in the saint than in the sinner! Would Job also put God's moral dealings on trial and set them aside? Worse, would he condemn Him to have himself justified? Grace produces exactly the reverse in every soul born of God. It gives a readiness to take His part against self, and to sit in judgment on one's own ways. It bows to the word, no matter how harshly that word blows on every way or word, thought and feeling. That is repentance.

Could Job's right hand save him? No more than he could humble everyone who is proud. Job had to learn that only the living God is the Saviour. He saves, not those who deserve it, but those who are humbled to the dust and recognise they deserve nothing but judgment. God saves by grace, through the great value of the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus at Calvary. Of course, Job knew nothing of that great sacrifice at that time. But he could still know that he was a sinner, dependent only on the grace of God.