Should It Be So?

A Sermon Preached By John E. Hazelton When His Only Son Died, August 1st, 1909

“Should it be according to thy mind?”—Job 34:33

The Book of Leviticus contains a series of very blessed illustrations of the Gospel of our God, of the Person and of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. When we are enabled prayerfully to read it with a spiritual eye, by the side of the gospel as recorded in the New Testament, and in the light of the Epistle to the Hebrews, we are favoured to become somewhat instructed in the things that make for our eternal peace. It is Jehovah Himself who is speaking in nearly every verse in this book. I would draw your attention first, ere we pass on, to the very heart of the subject, to the place where the contents of the Book of Leviticus were spoken.

The whole verse reads, “Should it be according to thy mind? He will recompense it, whether thou refuse, or whether thou choose; and not I: therefore speak what thou knowest;” but we will seek to confine our attention to the first clause. They are the words of Elihu to Job, “Should it be according to thy mind?”

When we read the book of Job, the pathetic central figure pretty well absorbs our attention. Our hearts thrill as we gaze upon him. The book opens and we see that man of God sitting in the midst of the calm and cloudless day of prosperity; a rich man, an influential man, a God-fearing man, a man evidently singularly happy in his domestic relations. And at eventide that same day a desolate dwelling! A rich man made poor! A father, absolutely childless! A God-fearing man on whom the enemy seems to have wrought pretty well all his will. Then, succeeding that first chapter, we have alternations in the experience of Job of darkness and light,—darkness that might be felt; light that came from God out of heaven. We see the fearful conflict between the unbelief of his heart and the faith of God’s elect of which he, by grace, was made a partaker. We see Job brought at last to acknowledge that God had a perfect right to do with him and his as it pleased Him. The fierce winds of adversity blow, and Job is like a tree shaken by those winds; a complete tornado of trial presses upon him, but like all sanctified trial, that very hurricane causes him to wrap his roots closer around the Rock of eternal ages, and from the heart of that dear man springs one of the most wonderful utterances in the whole of the Word of God, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.” So we have in Job a wonderful object-lesson of the blessed truth that “the just shall live by faith.” How are we kept amidst life’s trials? By the mighty power of God. Through what instrumentality? Through the instrumentality of faith. “Kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.” Then our faith is the instrument by which we are kept. Yes, but above and beyond all that is the Keeper of our faith, the Lord Jesus Christ, who prayeth for all His people in life’s bitterest sorrows that their faith fail not.

Here is one of the questions that was asked by one of Job’s friends, not by one of the three, but by the youngest of all, Elihu. The questions of the Book of Job are not the least instructive part of this wonderful portion of God’s Word. Questions asked by God, questions asked by Satan, questions asked by Job, and questions asked by his four friends. Out of the old world, and from the centuries behind us, come those questions. How each question pierces to-day to the very heart of things, and how many replies voice the yearnings and experiences of God’s dear people as they face sorrow, change, pain and death!

Here is one question put by the Lord, “Wilt thou condemn Me that thou mayest be righteous?” (Job 40:8), and Job could not answer that.

Here is Satan’s question, “Doth Job fear God for nought?” (Job 1:9), and Satan received his answer. Here is Job’s question, “How shall a man be just with God?” Each question is asked and answered by words full of peace and rest.

But to come to our text; it is a question asked by Elihu, the youngest of those five men. Elihu is a proper name, signifying “God is Jehovah.” In him we see a man of God inspired by the Holy Spirit as a divinely commissioned messenger between God and Job. God sent Elihu with divine messages to His servant Job, and I take it, whilst not regarding Elihu exactly as a type of the Lord Jesus Christ, he certainly shadows forth the Lord Jesus in many things that he says to Job.

What had Job been asserting? Certain things which Elihu was commissioned to meet. He was sent in love and mercy to reason with poor Job. Job had been complaining that God did not answer his prayers. Have you ever complained like that? I have again and again. Elihu took that up (read it when you get leisure); he reminded Job that God speaks in many ways, answers His people in many ways, and appears to them in ways that they do not expect. Job undoubtedly charges God with injustice, with inflicting wrong upon him; and see how beautifully Elihu vindicates the power, wisdom, love, and grace of God. Job complains that God’s providences are unsearchable. When I say Job, we read our names there, do we not? He complains that God’s providences are unsearchable, he chafes under them; so Elihu replies and answers Job. Then God speaks at last. He speaks to Job out of a whirlwind. What is the end of it all? Job says, “I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee” (Job 42:5).

Let us now look at this question, “Should it be according to thy mind?” First of all a FACT is implied; secondly, THE TRUE REPLY to this question is a negative one; thirdly, there is THE RESPONSE which we are enabled to make to it when God raises up faith in act and exercise in our hearts.

First of all there is the fact implied, “Should it be according to thy mind?” The fact is that things are not according to our mind. What things? Pretty well all things in relation to God’s providence. Now I would put it in this way. No child of God here has all he wishes; no sister here has exactly what she wishes. Many of us, most of us, all of us have a great deal in our lives and in our lots that are crooks; they are very crooked things. “Should it be according to thy mind?” Can you make straight what God has made crooked, and what He, in His lovingkindness and tender mercy has brought into your life, and brought into mine? Here are the things; we deprecate them; we put them away as it were with our hands; we object to them; we strive against them. Between you and these things there is continual collision, and where there is collision there is heat and wasting and pain. Should these things be according to your mind? Job wanted everything according to his mind, and so do you and I. That bitter pang, that tearing up of your hopes by the roots; that unsuspected heritage of penury, are these things according to your mind? The anguished sick bed upon which you see those near and dear to you, or that you may occupy yourself; that crushing bereavement, that particular thing in your business or elsewhere, are these things according to your mind? Should they be? That is what God says here by the the Holy Ghost, “Should they be according to your mind?” See how this question comes right home to us on this the first Lord’s Day in August, 1909. More than three thousand years ago this question was asked, and the heart is the same as ever with regard to the things by which God’s people are surrounded. “Should they be according to our mind?” I should like them to be, and so would you, but God the Holy Ghost says here, “Should they be?”

What is the result of these things that are not according to our mind? We toil; oh how we toil! The disciples, before the Lord spake the word of peace, were “toiling in rowing,” rowing against the wind and waves; “toiling in rowing,” and so we toil against these things. We fret and fume. God casts these things down and we attempt to rebuild them. If I may speak for others, I am continually, in my folly and unbelief, attempting to rebuild what God has cast down. That building is not according to God’s mind, and therefore He has brought it down. I know it was in accordance with your mind, and you were fitting it together according to your own goodwill and pleasure. Vain regrets we indulge in for that which is lost. Almost!—quite, is it?—almost there is a sense of injury in our hearts that things are not according to our mind, that they do not take the shape that we want them to take; that they refuse to answer to the moulding which our hands would bring about in relation to the affairs of our lives. We are just baffled, and when we feel baffled we get awfully rebellious, just like Job who said (I leave it to your consciences whether you have indulged the secret thought; Job had it out in words), “Thou art become cruel to me.” That is what he said to God! What a merciful God we have! He did not deal with Job accordingly. “Thou art become cruel to me” because these things are not according to my mind.

Let us turn for a moment in the direction in which God inspired Elihu to direct Job’s attention. Job’s faith, although it died down never died out. To Peter our Lord said, “I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not.” It did fail, but the word in the original is “die not out.” “I have prayed for thee that thy faith die not out.” So Job’s faith died not out. What are these things that are not according to our mind? They are according to the mind of our covenant-keeping God; they are according to the mind of Him who never inflicted one wrong on any of His dear children; they are according to the mind of Him who seeth the end from the beginning; they are according to the mind of Him who is the Executor of His Father’s will, and whose heart is set not only upon the salvation, but the guidance of each of His dear people. They are according to the mind of Him who sitteth upon the throne. He causes all things that are not according to our mind to work together for the good of all of us that love God and are the called according to His purpose. They are according to the mind of Him of whom it was affirmed when on earth, “He doeth all things beautifully well” (Mark 7:37). They are according to the mind of Him whose nature and whose name is Love. Oh what a word this is for our faith! “What I do,” said the Lord elsewhere, “what I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter.” Should it then be according to thy mind in this little span of life of ours—seventy or eighty or ninety years, but for most of us less than seventy? Eternity is coming, and in this little bit of eternity (for we are in eternity now; time is part of eternity) should it be according to our mind when we are loved with a love that streams from a past eternity, with a love that reaches to an eternity yet to come. “He maketh the clouds His chariot,” and every cloudy chariot moves upon the axle of everlasting love.

What is a cloud? How do you feel when you enter a cloud? It is a mist, it is a dimness, it is a fog. You do not know which way to go in a fog. The road with which you are most familiar becomes one in which you quickly lose your way. In a fog things appear far beyond their ordinary dimensions. You take a pathway which you believe to be the road, and soon you are enveloped in a mystery. What are all these clouds? The chariot of a covenant-keeping God. “He maketh the clouds His chariot.” Where is God’s throne?—His throne of grace, power, and mercy. In the middle of all those clouds. “Clouds and darkness are round about His throne,” but God is moving on His undisturbed affairs. What are the two charioteers that draw the chariot of our covenant- keeping God in Christ? “Mercy and truth shall go before His face.” Our divine Saviour, the Lamb who died for us on Calvary, the “Lamb in the midst of the throne,” is moving on among His people in His cloudy chariots. Mercy—oh the mercy of our God in Christ! mercy and truth, mercy and faithfulness, faithfulness to His God, the faithfulness of the covenant, faithfulness to you and to me—mercy and truth draw on these cloudy chariots of our God and surround His throne. Here, then, is the fact implied, that things are not according to our mind.

Once more in relation to the cloudiness of the dispensations of our God. Where does the Lord say He will appear? “I will appear in the cloud upon the mercy-seat.” You see everything here connected with the cloudy dispensations of our God and His appearing to His people is associated in type with the covenant. The mercy-seat covered the ark of the covenant, representing the “covenant ordered in all things and sure,” and in this covenant are these things which are not according to our mind. “I will appear in the cloud upon the mercy-seat,”—in the density, in the gloom. The Lord Jehovah in the midst of the cloud. “But, Lord, every door is shut; every hope is cut off; things will never be the same to me again as they were!” There follows a mist and a weeping rain, and life is never the same again; you know that in your troubles, don’t you? Life is never the same again. “Lord, I come to Thee for help, for blessing, for mercy, for a revelation afresh to my poor soul of Thy covenant love to me in Christ Jesus my Lord. Where can I turn with the shut doors?” “I am cut down like a tree,” says Job. “I will appear”—there is no contingency here—”I will appear in the cloud above the mercy- seat.” Oh, our blessing is, dear friends, that our God in Christ rules from the mercy-seat. Our God in Christ rules on the basis of His covenant love everything concerning you and me. These things that are not, and cannot be, and ought not to be, according to our minds, are all being ruled by Him who sitteth upon the throne, and when we reach the other side—and perhaps it won’t be long with some of us—when we reach the other side, shall we not be able to say, “Just and true are all Thy ways, Thou King of saints”?

Secondly, the proper reply to make to this question is one emphatically in the negative. “Should it be according to thy mind?” “No.” That is the reply of grace. “Yes.” That is the reply of sense and reason.

Why is that negative reply a right one? First of all, because our knowledge is so limited. We are permitted to see a good deal more than Job saw. Job was living just a day or an hour at a time, but here in the Book of Job God has lifted the veil, and we see the whole thing from the beginning to the end. We see God’s purposes, the workings of God’s love, the tender patience of God. It is all mapped out before us here, but Job had not this book. We, through this revelation, see a great deal more than Job saw until the end, and we see in Job an object lesson to devils, angels, and men. Here we see that which illustrates the love, the faithfulness, and the patience of Job’s Redeemer. “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.” My Redeemer, not only in the sense of ransoming Job with His precious blood, but my Vindicator, my glorious Kinsman, my Friend! I know that He liveth. We see so little, dear friends, compared with what God sees, and because we see so little, so very little, things ought not to be, and cannot be, according to our mind. Dr. Livingstone wrote in his diary in Central Africa, “We see but small segments (cuttings, parts) of the mighty cycles (or circles) of Providence, and we imagine they are failures. If we could see the larger arc (the larger portion of the circle) we should often rejoice where now we weep.” That is true. God sees the whole; He guides the spokes of all that wondrous wheel of providence, but we, with our limited knowledge, are able only just to see the present moment, and not able to see two or three minutes ahead.

Once more in relation to this. Our knowledge being so limited, should we not seek for more grace that we may be restrained from premature judgment? Present things, present troubles, which are not according to our mind, are vitally united to future things. God works as a whole—past, present and future are one glorious chain. Then how can you judge of present things until the future things come? Should these present things be according to our mind? Are we to judge of the web before the pattern is fully formed? If we had our will we should say, “Lord, put in the fair colours in our lives now.” If the web of our lives were left to us we should seek to do this, and we should weave a web of sackcloth, with no use or beauty discernible. One thread! There’s no beauty there! One note of music, it is but one! One wheel! More wheels than one are needed. All the threads are needed for the pattern. With all the notes there is the harmony. All the wheels moving—’there are the great transactions of our God in providence. All parts will be adjusted presently, not according to thy mind now, but according to His mind.

“Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan His work in vain.
God is His own Interpreter,
And He will make it plain.”

Brother, sister, can we not say this, “We have known and believed the love that God hath to us”? What a mercy if we are brought to say that! “We have known and believed the love that God hath to us.” If that is true, “Should things be according to our mind?” “We have known and believed the love that God hath to us” (1 John 4:16) before all worlds in the “covenant ordered in all things and sure.” He has loved us with an everlasting love. Bless God if He has brought us to be grounded upon covenant truth; there is no gospel without. “We have known and believed the love that God hath to us” in the Person of His dear Son before all worlds. “We have known and believed the love that God hath to us” in sending His Eternal Son to take into union with Himself our nature, and in that nature to atone for our sins; to speak the words of the everlasting gospel to us; in that nature to enter into heaven, there to appear in the presence of God for us. “We have known and believed the love that God hath to us.” “Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief.” “We have known and believed the love that God hath to us “—we cannot, we dare not, we would not deny it—in sending His Holy Spirit into our hearts, quickening us from the death of trespasses and of sins; warming these hearts that by nature are cold and dead as the stones; revealing to the eyes of our faith the beauty and preciousness of His own dear Son; causing our hearts to be warmed from time to time with the Saviour’s name, and making that name as ointment that is poured forth. He has caused our hearts, notwithstanding all our wicked rebelliousness, to say,

“Jesus, the very thought of Thee
With sweetness fills my breast.”

How great, how wonderful is the love of the Spirit in coming into a heart like yours and like mine!

“We have known and believed the love that God hath to us,” whereby we cry Abba Father, whereby He has distinguished us from many around. And yet when Gcd steps into our lives, when He touches us in the tenderest place of all, we begin to doubt the love that God hath to us. Oh what a mass of contradiction we are! Oh for grace to cry:

“I do not ask my cross to understand,
My way to see,
Better in darkness just to feel
Thy hand. And follow Thee.”

Our judgment too is so imperfect. We not only do not see far, but we do not see correctly. Not only so, but when we do see we mistake the nature of what we see. What do you shrink from? Inconvenience, trouble, pain. What do you want? Life to be all harvest, and the pathway to be ever smooth. What is the way trodden by the footsteps of the flock? Across the sands we journey; among the rocks we move. Now and then there is a green and a flowery place, and then it is according to our mind. We do not want to move. Like the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration we cry, “Lord, let us make three tabernacles.” But that was not the Lord’s way or will. The cloud beckons on, the rough pathway has again to be trodden. “Arise ye and depart, for this is not your rest; it is polluted.”

Take two illustrations. Look at Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees. Do you think that Abraham would have chosen to leave the old homestead in Ur of the Chaldees, and the pasture lands that belonged to his family for ages. “Go forth,” said the Lord to Abraham, and the word was with power, and “he went forth not knowing whither he went.” What do we read Abraham bought in the shape of land? God said, “All the land is to belong to your descendants.” But Abraham bought some land! We only read that he bought one piece, and that was for a grave. A pilgrim and a stranger was he. “Should it be according to thy mind?” It was not according to Abraham’s mind by nature, but God gave him grace and he went forward leaning upon his Beloved.

Look at Joseph. Will you go as a slave to the Ishmaelites? will you be torn from your father? Jacob, will you part with Joseph? Never, never! Joseph would have shrunk from the slavery, the sorrow, and the shame that awaited him in Egypt, but he was sold to the Ishmaelites. Jacob had to give him up; Joseph was torn from the embrace of a beloved father. What was it all for? Temporally, at least, for the salvation of his father and brethren. See how our God works with a never-failing skill, and brings out of His mind those deep and glorious designs which are so manifest in dear Joseph’s life—peace, joy, salvation, glory. See the great and the wonderful issue of it all.

Lastly, there is the prayerful response which we are enabled to make as the Holy Spirit enables. O how dependent we are upon the Spirit, are we not, dear friends? O you should believe, you should do this, that and the other! How awfully empty all that talk is! We want the Holy Spirit to call into exercise the faith He gives, to fan the spark which He breathes into the soul. What is the will of God concerning us? W e are predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son. What does that mean? To be made like unto Christ. I am not like Him now, but the beginnings of the work are sure, and presently when we meet the Lord in the air we shall be made absolutely—body, soul, and spirit—like unto Him. One feature is this. Our Lord said, “Not My will, but Thine be done,” and so we are predestinated to be conformed to the image of our Lord. To be spiritually minded is life and peace, and so the Lord brings us through our bereavements, sorrows, and trials to wait upon God, and those who watt never wait in vain. We can testify to that. By the Holy Spirit He brings out of every carnal thought and sweetly humbles us. O that the Spirit of the living God may reveal unto us Jesus, our dying Saviour, our everliving Redeemer! Jesus in the omnipotence of His love, Jesus in the omniscience of His wisdom, Jesus the fountain of faith, hope, and love. I will go out unto Him, for He has said, “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee.” “Should it be according to thy mind?” No, Lord, no. Give me grace to give up searching Thy providence with my candle, and just let me—and I speak for you—just let me, like a tired child, rest on Thy heart of love, and looking up to Thee say,

“Blest is my lot whate’er befall,
What can disturb it? who appal?
While as my Strength, my Rock, my All,
Saviour, I cling to Thee.”

“I know the thoughts,” says He, according to whose mind are all our affairs—”I know the thoughts that I think towards you, saith the Lord: thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”