Job 16

Now, a reed is easily shaken with the wind. Temptations shake the godly, and though they are pardoned yet they know it not; Job in a temptation thought God his enemy (Job 16:9), yet then he was in a pardoned condition. Quest. But why does God sometimes conceal the evidence of pa…

And again it is said, that God by his son made the world (Hebrews 1:2). As for the Holy Ghost, the work of creation is also ascribed to him: and therefore Moses says, The spirit moved upon the waters (Genesis 1:2): and Job says, His spirit has garnished the heavens ([reconstruct…

7. The terrors of God (God is always in this sad play) do set themselves in battle array against me. Or, (Job 16:13): His archers compassed me about round. In the Hebrew: his great ones; or, his bowmen (because they are many, or because the great ones did fight afar off) have be…

Why does David complain that he was as a bottle in the smoke, and pray so often that God would quicken him, if under a dead disposition we were not to pray? 4. If often the saints beginning to pray do speak words of unbelief and from a principle of nature, and if words flowing f…

Isaac that was the son of the promise, we know how he was reproached and contemned by Ishmael: and it is observable, when the Apostle speaks of the reproach of Isaac, in Gal. 4:29 it is said, Ishmael persecuted Isaac; now that persecution was nothing but his mocking and reproach…

The words of vain men are small things, whoever fears such words so as to do evil, or to leave off good, are the weakest of men; these are like unto Soldiers who are cast down and overcome, not with some violent strong tempest, but with some small weak puff of winde, these are t…

Concerning the going away of Christ, I have spoken before: of the Comforter his coming and sending, I shall now treat, as being the thing aimed at. The word being of sundry significations, many translations have thought fit not to restrain it, but do retain the original word par…

3. There is this profit in it; it is a mighty solace and support in affliction, especially when we are censured, scorned, and despised of men, and know not where to go to find a friend with whom we may unbosom our sorrow; then to go aside, and open the matter to God, it is a mig…

My soul drops. It may relate (1.) to the plenty of his tears, as the word is used in Scripture (Job 16:20): My friends scorn me: but my eye pours out tears to God, or drops to God — the same word; so it notes his deep sorrow and sense of his condition. The like allusion is in Jo…

(Psalm 45:16): In stead of fathers shall be sons. (Job 16:4): Oh, if your soul were in my soul's stead. 4. It is when the son comes in the room and stead of the father, or one kills another, which is a sad exchanging of one person for another, and though the following king does…

1 Peter 5:6. Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God. When God afflicts his people, and cuts them short in their privileges, it is time then to sew sackcloth on their skin, and defile their horn (or honor) in the dust, Job 16:15. 4. What a horrid sin Pride is!

Babylon shall be weary of the evil that God will bring upon it (Jeremiah 51:64); and O that none of Zion's children were weary of adversity too! How sad a moan does Job make of his long-continued affliction (Job 16:6-7): 'Though I speak, my grief is not assuaged; and though I fo…

The tempering of the wheels and motions of a distempered conscience is so high, and supernatural a work, that Christ had to have the Spirit of the Lord on him above his fellows, and must be sent with a special commission to apply the sweet hands, the soft merciful fingers of the…

How sweet to take faith's back-bond, subscribed by God's own hand into the cold grave with you, as Christ did (verse 10): You will not leave my soul in grave. 4. Faith says, sense is a liar — fancy, sense, the flesh will say (Job 16:13): His archers compassed me round about, he…

3. Reason, Sense, no, Angels seeing Christ between two thieves dying, and going out of this world bleeding to death, naked, forsaken of friend and lover, they may wonder and say; O Lord, what do you do here: Yet the Faith of the Thief found him there, as a King, who had the keys…

4. If Christ's eye but look on a hard heart it will melt it. 5. I show here the Minimum quod sic, the smallest of prayer, in which the life and essence of prayer may breathe and live: now prayer being a pouring out of the soul to God, much of the affections of love, desire, long…

Abraham even then accounts himself an ungodly man, when in his heart and spirit there is no guile; so that Abraham stands not justified by the first act of his faith, his calling, but by his acting this faith; as long as we have flesh in us, there is an ungodly frame of heart in…

We have remarkable instances of it in those holy men that we have an account of in the book of Job: not only were Job's three friends, that seem to have been eminently holy men, guilty of it, in very unreasonably censuring the best man on earth, very positively determining that…