Sermons from Job - 3. The Sorrowful Man's Question - Job 3,23

Extract

Sermons from Job
C. H. Spurgeon 3. The Sorrowful Man’s Question

“Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in?” Job 3:23.

I am very thankful that so many of you are glad and happy. There is none too much joy in the world, and the more that any of us can create, the better. It should be a part of our happiness, and a main part of it, to try to make other people glad. “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,” is a commission which many of us ought to feel is entrusted to us. If your own cup of joy is full, let it run over to others who have a more trying experience. If you yourself are privileged to have the flashing eye, and the elastic step, and the bounding heart, be mindful to speak words of good cheer to such as are in bonds. Feel as if you were bound with them; and try to revive their drooping spirits. That is what I am going to aim at to-night, so you will excuse me if I bid “good-bye” for a while to you joyous ones, and just seek after those who have no such delight as you now possess; but who are, on the contrary, suffering from extreme depression of spirit. Sometimes, we must single out the wounded ones of the flock; that is what I am about to do; yet I feel sure that, while some few will be distinctly sought after, there will be something that may be of use to the many who are in a less sorrowful condition. The ninety-and-nine shall get their full portion although the shepherd goes specially after the lost one.

The question of our text was put by Job when he first opened his mouth in the extreme bitterness of his anguish: “Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in?” His case was so sad and so trying that life itself became irksome to him. I suppose that by “light” here he means the power to see the light, the life which lives in the light. “Why,” he asked in his agony, “is that continued to a man when God hath filled him with sorrow upon sorrow!” The verses preceding our text are to the same effect: “Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the …