HUMAN SUFFERING AND DIVINE PITY
‘Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.’
James 5:11
Human suffering and Divine pity; how may these be reconciled? This is the question to which Job’s story gives an answer.
I. An apparent contradiction.—The sufferings of the man seem to contradict the mercy of God. As we consider ‘the patience of Job,’ how hard to see ‘that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy.’ Two things make the difficulty very great.
( a) The extent of the suffering. Distresses come upon him from all quarters. As we remember that this awful transformation has been accomplished by the direct permission of the Most High, it seems the bitterest irony to write beneath that sad spectacle of human woe, ‘that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.’
( b) The character of the sufferer. ‘There is none like my servant Job in all the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil.’ Job’s friends imagined that because he was a great sufferer he must therefore be a great sinner, and this belief coloured all their speech. When a man’s prosperity is attended with hurtful result to him in his character and life, we can recognise its downfall as a necessary chastisement. But having God’s own testimony to this good man’s excellence we find it hard to say as we look upon him, ‘The Lord is very pitiful.’
II. The reconciliation.—‘Ye have seen the end of the Lord.’ We cannot see the end of the Lord in our distresses. This is our trial. In Job’s case the end is visible, and as we see it, we learn to acquiesce in the Divine action, and can understand and believe that the end of the Lord in all subsequent cases will reveal the Divine mercy. The expression is capable of two meanings. It may mean—
( a) The design of sufferings: the object towards which suffering is directed. One end of Job’s distresses was— the overthrow of evil. This man was God’s chosen champion, not a sinner found out in his sin, but the best and bravest of God’s warriors, called to go where the fight between good and evil was hottest, that he might baffle and defeat the evil one himself. The instruction and consolation of mankind. The good accomplished by him in the days of health and prosperity is little and limited beside that conferred upon the world by him through his sorrows. Sorrowing humanity throughout many generations has come to his side to hear his words, and to find in them light and comfort. His story is the mirror into which the desolate and distressed gaze, that they may trace their own features and find relief. The higher knowledge of God. The deep longing of the afflicted soul is to see God, to hear God’s voice. And God did appear to him, filling him with humility, with an overwhelming consciousness of his own impurity, but at the same time removing all his dark misapprehensions and filling his soul with light and peace. As we consider these objects realised by suffering we can declare, ‘The Lord is very pitiful.’
( b) ‘ The end of the Lord,’ simply in the sense of termination. There is a Divine limit to suffering. The end with Job was not simply deliverance from all his sorrows, but also abundant compensation. The Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than the beginning.
III. The human condition.—‘The patience of Job.’ In order that suffering and pity may be reconciled and the Divine end realised, there must be patience. We must bear without murmuring, without resentment and rebellion, the sufferings that come, and wait ‘the end of the Lord.’ It may not come soon. It may not come here. But it will come. We must, taught and inspired by this example, calmly, humbly, hopefully wait until it is seen.
Illustration
‘The book of Job has made a very profound and lasting impression upon mankind. Not due to its dramatic power, its high antiquity, its surpassing literary merit, but to the solution it furnishes of the darkest problem of human life; the light it throws upon the purposes and ways of God; its depth of human feeling. There is a Divine voice that speaks to us in it, and there is a great human heart beating beneath its pages. Men will never cease to hear of the patience of Job, so long as sorrow, and loss, and pain have to be borne; so long as death is here, and we have to stand beside open graves.’

PRAYER AND LIFE
‘The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.’
James 5:16
Prayer is at all times a subject of supreme importance—such importance that it is quite impossible to overstate its value. It is at once man’s highest duty and his greatest blessing. It follows almost naturally from our belief in a living God. Prayer is a duty laid upon all. By prayer we are to bring down blessings from heaven for ourselves, by prayer we are to secure health to the sick, strength to the weak, succour to the tempted, recovery to the fallen. How, then, dare we cease to pray when there is so much depending on our prayers? Yet it is plain that we often ask in vain. The answer is also plain. ‘Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss.’ We do not fulfil the conditions of effectual prayer, and so our prayers avail but little. What, then, may we do in order that the promises made to prayer may be fulfilled?
I would but mention three things which will help us towards more successful prayer.
I. We must give time to prayer.—How often are we told of hurried prayers, and shortened prayers, and sometimes of forgotten prayers! Prayer so often is crowded out of our life in the hurry and bustle of the day. Prayer is the very recognition of God in our life, and a prayerless life must needs be a Godless life. It is no excuse to say, ‘I am not fit to pray.’ Even to go through the form of prayer is better, surely, than nothing. It keeps alive, at any rate, a habit which, by the grace of God, may some day take fresh life again. Have, then, fixed times for prayer day by day, and keep to them.
II. We must take trouble over our prayers.—Prayer is not an easy thing. Of all mental exercises, it has been said, prayer is the most severe. It requires the exercise of all the faculties that we possess. Prayer will never reach up to the throne of God if it is offered without effort and pains and care. We have to wrestle strenuously with the temptations and distractions that await us and hamper us in our prayers. There must be a concentration of the will. A discipline of the mind has to be brought to this exercise of prayer, together with a determination that we will at all costs break through the obstacles which oppose the utterance of our prayers, that they may reach up to the Throne of Grace. How many a one has abandoned prayer in despair just for the lack of effort, just for the want of realising this great truth, that trouble and pains are needed if prayer is to be effectual! There is nothing in life that can be carried on without effort. The prayer of a righteous man, to avail much, must be fervent.
III. The life must correspond to the exercise of prayer.—Who is this righteous man in His most perfect form? Our Lord Himself; and if our prayer is to be united with His great intercession, it must be the prayer of a righteous man. Our life must prepare us for our prayers, just as much as our prayers will prepare us for our life. Worldliness, carelessness, selfishness, sin, shut out the sight of God and prevent our prayers reaching up to God, and so prevent the answer, and bring failure. To pray to God out of a sinful heart is only to beat against a fast-closed door which nothing but penitence will open.
—Rev. A. G. Deedes.
Illustration
‘Let us try to use the Rogation days for setting our life of prayer more in order, renewing the earnestness of it. Let us see that it has its own allotted time day by day set apart as a sacred engagement, that nothing must interfere with. Let us see that we do not leave our prayers to take their chance in our hurried life. Let us look to it also that we take pains with our prayers. Do not let us be content to bring a weary body and a fagged brain to the service of God in prayer. And let us see to it, above all, that our life is true and sincere and holy. So only may we hope that our prayers may be the prayers of a righteous man, and merit the promise that attaches to them that they shall avail much for ourselves and those for whom we pray. So only may we be certain in claiming the promise which the Lord has given us—“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” ’
(SECOND OUTLINE)
THE RIGHTEOUS MAN’S PRAYER
A ‘righteous man’ means a justified man. And here is the comfort: the humblest believer may go and plead the promise, and may go in the simple confidence that Christ has justified him; and though both he and his prayer be utterly vile, still its unworthiness does not destroy its worthiness or destroy its claim, for God hath written it, and He cannot deny it, ‘The effectual fervent prayer of a justified man availeth much.’
I. The power of prevailing with God in anything is the Christ that is in it.—‘Where two or three are gathered together in My name.’ ‘Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name.’ It is the ‘My name’ which is the determining point. For the real force of every prayer lies in its concluding words, therefore always make them the most emphatic words in your prayer; say them very slowly, very honouringly, very believingly, ‘Through Jesus Christ our Lord.’
II. But it must be ‘effectual fervent.’—There is some difficulty in arriving at an accurate definition of the meaning of these words, for in the original the words are but one, and the first and closest signification is, wrought in; the wrought-in prayer, ‘the prayer wrought in the soul of a justified man availeth much.’ Therefore the primary idea is that the prayer that ‘avails much’ is a prayer that is wrought into a man’s soul by the Holy Spirit.
III. This strong power God has put into our hands.—Can you require more? Take it downstairs with you after well using it in your own room; use it in the family—take it out with you when you go to your business—and do not separate from it when you enter upon your pleasures. Bring it back again to your room. Bring it up with you here. It is the real strength of everything in this world. Many people go on well for a time. But if you feel this, I am quite sure that the success, and the power, and the satisfaction of everything in the world depends upon the measure of the prayer that you put into it. As a man’s prayer is, so is the man.