Turn again this morning to the book of Job and the passage we read, Job chapter 9. Bildad, the Shuhite, had answered Job once more, criticizing, saying the trouble that had come upon Job must have been something either that he had done or perhaps his children had done, but he could not be innocent and he find fault. And in chapter 9, Job answers. We read there, Then Job answered and said, I know it is so of a truth, but how should man be just with God? If he will contend with Him, he cannot answer Him one of a thousand. He is wise in heart and mighty in strength, who have hardened himself against him and have prospered. I know it is so of a truth, but how should man be just with God? How should man be just with God? This question lies at the heart of this book. It is what so much of Job's suffering brings him to. He grapples with his state before a holy and eternal God. He feels the hand of God gone out against him. He knows he has no strength, he's cast down, he's broken, he's weak. And he cries out, how should man be just with God? How can he be? Firstly, behind this question, Job has no foolish doubts about the existence of God. This is simply a fact to him. He knows there's a God. He knows God's dealings with him. God has made his presence felt unto Job. There's no doubt that God is dealing with him. There's no doubt that God has created him, that his life is sustained by God. And Job feels that God can take his life at any moment. He's in God's hands. He can't fight with God. He can't contend with God. How should man be just with God? If he will contend with him, he cannot answer him one of a thousand. Job has no strength. to fight God or resist God. It's clear that he's in God's hands, it's clear that he's in God's creation, and he is God's creation. But he cries out, how shall I be just with him? How can I stand before this holy and righteous God, before this great God? This great creator, how can I stand? I'm nothing before him. He knows, as we read elsewhere in the scriptures, that it is accounted unto men once to die, and after this, the judgment. We shall all die one day, our lives are finite, they're brief. He feels the brevity of his life, he feels the days fleeting, flying past him. He knows that one day soon he shall stand before his maker and he knows that when he stands before God that there is a judgment. So he cries out, how should man be just with God? With such a God, how can I stand in that judgment? You see behind the question, behind Job's cry here, lies the seeming impossibility of it. How can I possibly stand before a righteous God? How can I be just? How can he count me righteous? How can he save me? Surely the wrath of God has come down upon me and I cannot escape it. Job cast down, broken under the hand of God, feeling his absolute weakness, his frailty. his smallness, his insignificance in the vastness of the universe, before an eternal, infinite, holy God, he feels so broken, so small, so lost. This God that spreadeth out the heavens and treadeth upon the waves of the sea, which maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades in the chambers of the South, which doeth great things past finding out, yea, and wonders without number. Lo, he goeth by me, and I see him not. He passeth on also, but I perceive him not. He taketh away, who can hinder him? Who will say unto him, What doest thou? He feels so small, so lost before this God. How can one, so small, so worthless, so wretched, so sinful by nature, be just with God? How can he? How can we? How can you? He says, lo, he goeth by me, and I see him not. He passeth on also, but I perceive him not. How can I be just with a God? that I cannot even see. How can I find him? How can I stand before him and plead my case? How can I stand before a God I cannot even see? He passes by, he's there, but I don't know where. This is a great hindrance to many. Man by nature says, well, where is God? Where is He? He's left us. He's departed. If He created this world, He's left us. He's gone. Where is He? And yes, in Romans, Paul states, as he opens the Gospel plainly, The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold or resist the truth in unrighteousness. Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. We know He's there, though He's invisible. We know He's there. Because that when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkened. professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like the corruptible man, and to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves, who changed the truth of God into a lie. and worship and serve the creature more than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen. Because we cannot see him with the physical eye, We have all changed the truth of God, changed his declaration of truth in the scriptures, in the gospel, in the creation, in our conscience. We've taken that truth and said it's not true, he's not there. I'm not accountable to him. This is my life and I will live it for me and when it's gone, I will be no more. There's no God to answer to. And professing ourselves to be wise, we know, science says, I cannot see him. Professing ourselves to be wise, we have become as fools. And God has given us up to our foolishness. And we serve the creature. We serve man and his wisdom and his knowledge and his science and his cleverness and his technology. We serve man and the created things of man, the things he makes. More than the creator. You may say, well, I don't bow down to idols, don't you? We live in a day and an age where there are more idols and more worshippers of idols than there ever were. Oh the things that man's cleverness have allowed him to develop and make and how men bow down to those idols. How we bow down to riches and to fame and to acclaim and to the applause of men. how we have turned from God. And we say we cannot see him, therefore he cannot see us. Like a child that covers her eyes and says, I can't see, therefore they cannot see me. And yet he's there. We cannot see the wind. And yet when the wind blows as it blew last night, we hear it, we know it, we feel it. We cannot see the air, and yet should God take away the air, we struggle to breathe, we soon know. Yet the wind is there, the air is there, and the God that sends them is there. But where is it? Job cries out in chapter 23, oh that I knew where I might find him. He passes me by and I see him not. Passeth on also but I perceive him not. Oh that I knew where I might find him. How do I find him? How do we find him? How might you find this God that you cannot see? What leads to Him? Who leads to Him? Which religion? Which church? Which of the thousands of messages that there are in this world leads to God? Which is the truth? If we turn to religion, which one Islam says this, Buddhism says that, Judaism says this, Christianity says that. Who speaks the truth and how shall we know? In Christianity, which denomination Which sect, which group, which preacher preaches the truth? They're all so divided. Is it the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church? Is it the Presbyterian, the Brethren, the Methodist? Is it the Independent Churches, the Free Churches, the Charismatic Churches? The Grace Church is who preaches the truth and how shall we know there's such confusion and such division? How do we find him? We cannot. By our own wisdom we cannot, we could go and study, we could study every religion, we could study every book, we could study every message in Christianity, we could hear, we could study, we could read the scriptures inside out and still be lost and still not know Him. He must find us. He must come to us. He must make himself known to us. How shall man be just with God? He must come and make himself known before I can begin to know the answer. Paul writes in Romans 10, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. But how can I call when I don't know who he is? How then shall I call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall I believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall I hear without a preacher? And how shall I preach except they be sent as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things. God must come. with his word and preach it unto us and it must be the truth we will never know God listening to a lie it must be the truth he sends by his faithful preacher it must be the truth it must be the gospel it must be Christ it must tell us the truth of man what we are what state we are in before a holy God, how wicked we are, how fallen we are, how desperate our state is. This message must tell us the truth about God, how holy he is, how righteous he is, his sovereignty, his power that he creates. that He sustains the world, that He brings in this world for His glory, that all that He does, He does for good. It must say the truth of Him. This preacher must declare what we are, how bad the situation is. It must bring us where it brought Job. Job asks this question when God has dealt with him. God brings him low. God convicts. God took away his strength. God took away, as it were, his wisdom. He's left empty with nothing at the hands of God, at the mercy of God. Yes, God must bring us there to teach us that we are blind by nature and we cannot see, that we are deaf by nature and we cannot hear, that we have no wisdom but that which would lead us astray. There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof is destruction. that we have no wisdom, that we have no strength, that we cannot save ourselves, we cannot work ourselves up to heaven, we cannot build ourselves a tower of Babel to climb up under heaven, we cannot clothe ourselves in righteousness, we cannot wash ourselves clean, like a leopard can't wash away its spots, we can't cleanse ourselves. We're dead, we're lost. We're utterly at God's mercy. Job knew this. He was broken. Hence his cry. How shall man be just with God? You see, should God send his gospel our way, should we begin to hear his truth, then it will begin by declaring our sin and our state before him. And what can we do about it? Job says in chapter 14, who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one. We're sinners by nature. Born of Adam, Descendants of Adam in the garden, when God commanded Adam in the garden that he could eat of any tree in the garden, but not of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, what did Adam do? Following Eve, he took of the tree and he ate, he disobeyed, he turned from God, he turned to his own wisdom, his own way. Just like you have, just like I have, we've gone our own way. And we've said because God isn't there, I can't see him, then he won't see me. But soon God came in the garden where Adam tried to hide and said, where art thou? And if God comes in the gospel unto you or I one day, he will come in that message and say, where art thou? And will he find us trying to make ourselves cloves out of fig leaves, trying to cleanse ourselves, trying to cover up our sin, trying to hide from God? Or will we find ourselves exposed before him, guilty, without an answer? Oh that God would show us what we are, that we might come to see our sins. God gave the law to Moses to show man his sin. Man took that law as he took the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and tried to keep it as a way of making his own righteousness, as a way of sewing fig leaves together. He took the law and said, all that the Lord have commanded, that will we do. And awaken to the truth. brought to religion. That's what we do by nature. We hear of the truth of God in the scriptures. We read of the law. We read of the exhortations throughout the scriptures, even in the New Testament. We come to discover what a righteous man should be, what a Christian should be, and we try to be like it. We strive to do what is right. We strive to turn from our sin. We strive to keep the law, but we can't. It condemns us utterly. And its penalty rings out from heaven on high. The soul that sinneth it must die. We discover that there's a debt that we've built up that we owe unto God. We've broken that law day after day, month after month, year after year. We've built up a debt and we cannot pay it. So awakened we seek to turn from our sins. We seek to keep the law. We seek to follow God. But there's nothing we can do about what we've done. We find the multitude of our sins condemn us even if we turn from them. What of the past sins we've built up? There's nothing we can do about them. They pull us down into the depths of the sea. They drown us. Indeed, as we discover more, we find we can't do anything of our presence. If we keep the law, we're boosted in our pride. And God hates the proud. He hates the proud. How wicked we are in our self-righteousness. that we build up as we try to serve God in our own strength. We can't do anything about our present sins, our future sins. We're utterly condemned and utterly lost. But even if we could cleanse the outside, as the Pharisees thought they did, As Saul, Paul thought he did before he came to meet Christ on the Damascus road. He thought he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees. Of the tribe of Benjamin. Touching the law blameless. He thought he was keeping it. He thought he kept the outside clean. Even if we could do that. When the Spirit of God awakens us, he shows us what we are within. We find that our trouble is much deeper. That even if we could walk a right, even if we could cleanse the outside of the cup, what about that which is within us? What about the sin within? We may deal with our sins, the iniquities we commit, but what about the sin within? What about the heart? What about that which is within us? This is what Job knew. This is what lied behind his question. His friend said, you've done this wrong and that wrong. But he knew that even if he was innocent of all their charges, he knew that within himself he was a sinner. He knew his own heart. He knew his own weakness. And he could not cleanse it. He could not answer for it. How should man be just with God? It's impossible. Jeremiah tells us of the heart, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Every thought of our hearts, every imagination is evil. Genesis 6, 5 we read that God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Even in religion, it's all self-righteousness. It's all trying to bring praise and glory unto ourselves, unto man. It's all taking away from the glory of God. When you examine the vast majority of what is preached that claims to be Christian, what does it do? It sets man to work in his way under heaven. It tells man that he only needs to make a decision to receive Jesus into his heart. Therefore we're the ones that save ourselves because we decide to take him and make him our saviour. So we have something to glory in, something to boast in. I believed when others didn't. I lived right whenever others were wicked. God should be pleased with me. Lord, Lord, look at what I've done. I've served you. I've been this in the church. I've been that in the church. I've gone this way. I've gone that way. I've not fallen into this wickedness. Lord, receive me for my righteousness. And God hates it. The pride of man. that flows forth from his heart. There's nothing in us but sin and self-glory. Our works can't save us. Isaiah says, we are all as an unclean thing. And all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. And we all do fade as a leaf. And our iniquities like the wind have taken us away. Our righteousness is that which we think are good, are filthy rags before God. They're full of pride. They slay us, they condemn us. What of our will, our decision? In Romans we read, as it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth. There is none that seeketh after God. You may make a decision, but it's not after this God. You may receive a Jesus into your heart, but it's a Jesus of your own making, a little idol that does your bidding. It's not this sovereign God. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. Of God that showeth mercy. How should man be just with God? Not by his will, not by his works, not by his running, not by his wisdom, not by his strength, not by his religion, not by where he's born, not by his upbringing, not by the fact that he lived here or was in this church or had these parents, not by anything that he does or is, but of God that showeth mercy. John 1 we read, But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name, which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God. God must come unto us in his gospel in his son Jesus Christ and look upon us in mercy because what Job learned And what you and I will learn if God leads us this way is that we are lost and we are undone. How should man be just with God? We cannot answer Him. We're guilty before Him. We're lost. When Isaiah came before God and saw His glory, he cried out, Woe is me, for I am undone. Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. If God gives us to see his Son by faith in the Gospel, we will know how vile we are. I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips. How should man be just with God? It cannot be by man. It cannot be by my own strength, my own works, my own will. It cannot be through others. It cannot be because I'm in a church or others pray for me. It cannot be because there's a priest on earth that does this or that. We're vile, we're lost. It must be through God. But what of my sins? How can God show me mercy when I'm guilty? How can God show me grace? How can he show me love? How can he declare me to be just before him, righteous before him, when I'm not just and I'm not righteous? When I'm full of sin and my past sins are a huge debt that I cannot pay and I cannot begin to pay. How can God declare me just? There's only one way. There's only one way and that is through another. And that is if another comes and stands in my place and says the penalty of the law that is due unto me, he will pay. The death that I deserve to die because of my sin and my iniquity and my guilt He will die on my behalf. He will die that death. I can only be declared just if somebody takes my sins and pays the price for them and washes them away. I can only be declared just before God if one takes my sin, my evil heart. and pays the price for its wickedness and takes it away in judgment and makes me to be righteousness. I can only be saved, I can only be declared just with God if one comes and stands as a substitute before God in my place. And that is what God has provided in the gospel. He sent his only begotten son into this world to save his people from their sins by offering up himself in their place at Golgotha. He came and He stood in the sinner's place as His substitute and took the judgment that was due unto the sinner, unto Job, unto Paul, unto you believer. He came and He took that judgment. He died that death. He bore that guilt. He bore the curse of the law. He bore the sins of His people. He was made sin that they in Him should be made the righteousness of God. He stood in their place as a substitute. There was a great exchange. He took what they are and He made them to be what He is. God gave His Son. as an offering, a sacrifice for sin. Such was his love for his own. Such was his love for Job. Such was his love for sinners chosen in Christ. Sinners like you and I. He gave his own son because he loved them. He loved them and gave himself for them. There's only one way that man can be just with God. Through death. Through death of a substitute. The soul that sinneth it must die. So God took the sinner. He took Job. He took Paul. He united them. They were united. They were one with Christ. And at the cross, they were crucified with him. God judged Job in Christ upon the cross. God judged Saul, Paul in Christ upon the cross. Did he judge you in Christ upon the cross? Did you die in Christ? Was your sin taken away? Was your evil heart crucified at the cross? Was your wicked flesh taken away like the scapegoat into the wilderness, burnt, destroyed, taken away? Was it judged forever? And did you rise in Christ with Job, with Paul, with everyone whom Christ loved and died for? Did you rise with Him victorious, righteous? There's only one way that we should be just with God. Our sin must be judged. The soul that sinneth it must die. And it must be judged in another because we cannot pay the price. We're not perfect. God needed to take a perfect lamb as a sacrifice. One without spot or blemish. He needed to take his son who never sinned. who never fought a sinful thought. who never turned from God, who always lived in faith, resting upon God his Father, trusting his Lord, trusting his God, looking unto God in all he did. He lived from the day he was born as a man, from the day he was made man upon this earth, he lived by faith. The just shall live by his faith, Christ's faith. He lived by faith. And that faith took him to the cross, where he took the sins of his people and took them away. Yes, God can't turn a blind eye to sin. He can't simply forget your sin. It must be judged. God is just. This is the problem. This is the dilemma that Job has. He knows God's just. He knows God can't just turn a blind eye to his sin. It must be judged. Then how can he be saved? Only if it's judged in another. In his Redeemer. In his Saviour. So God judged sin justly, righteously. He took another. He took the perfect lamb of God. He took his own son and he took him to the cross, the place of execution. Christ as the high priest took himself as the sacrifice and nailed himself to the cross. He took himself to the altar And God took the sword of execution and slew his own son and shed his own blood and washed the sins of his people away. And he took their sin in the flesh and he took that flesh away in the scapegoat and he burnt it up. And he took his people in Christ. and rose them on the third day victorious from sin, victorious from judgment, victorious from hell, victorious from all their enemies. They rose in Christ alive and righteous in Him that He was made sin that they should be made the righteousness of God in Him. Yes, God sent unto Job a Redeemer. Christ set him free and Job eventually was given faith to see that Redeemer and know what he did for him. He set me free. He made me just. He made me righteous. He washed me from all my sins. He loved me and though he brought me through this trial which brought me to the end of myself, though He brought me down low, though I was broken and lost, though I wished to die to be spared the suffering, in the end God brought me through and He brought me to a greater end than my beginning. He brought me to His Son. He brought me into eternal union with Him. He gave me everlasting life. He gave me the righteousness of God. He brought me into glory, into paradise. He set me free. I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. whom I shall see for myself, for mine eyes shall behold, and not another, though my reins be consumed within me. I'm going to see him because he loved me and gave himself for me. God gave Job faith to see, has he given you faith to see? How shall we be saved? How shall man be just with God? through another, through Christ. How shall we know it? Through faith. God must give us faith to see Him, to see the Saviour, who lived by faith, and walked by faith, and died by faith, and trusted God that when He went into the abyss of judgment, when he suffered hell in the three hours of darkness upon the cross he knew he trusted he believed that God would bring all his people through that judgment in Christ and bring them into eternal glory and his faith was rewarded and he believed And Job believed and Job knew that Christ was his Saviour because Job heard the Gospel, the Gospel of Christ, the power of God unto salvation. He heard that Gospel and in that Gospel the righteousness of God was revealed unto him. Revealed from faith to faith, from the faith of Christ to his faith that God gave him to believe in Christ, as it is written. the just shall live by faith. Has God brought you here? Have you asked the question that Job asked? How should man be just with God? How shall I be just? How can I be saved? How can I stand before a holy God? as he brought you to his Son, to the cross, to the Saviour, and pointed you out at the Redeemer, and said, one way, in Christ and Christ alone, as he said unto you, I gave my Son for you. Have you come to see Him? Have you come to know that He's your Redeemer? That you will live with Him? That you will stand with Him? That you will rise with Him? That you are one with Him? has he come freely unto you by grace, sovereign grace in the gospel, and said, I loved you freely when you hated me. While you were yet a sinner, I gave my son for you. While you were lost in the darkness, I came in the light of the gospel to deliver you. When you were in the darkness, in blindness, I preached the gospel unto you. I shone the light unto you. I shone it into your heart. I gave you faith. I quickened you to life. I gave you faith to see as He come unto you and shone that light into your heart, to see Christ, your Savior, your righteousness, your justification, the one by whom you are just with God. Has he done this freely by grace for you? You can't do it yourself. You can't do it by your own works, your own decision. You won't get to God by the law, it will slay you. It must be God must come unto you in his gospel in Christ and make his salvation known unto you. For Paul says, I through the law am dead to the law that I might live unto God. I, through the law, am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live. Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God. who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not frustrate the grace of God, for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain. Yes, the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. How should man be just with God? Freely, by grace, through the offering of God's Son, Jesus Christ, as a substitute, a sacrifice for his people, by grace, freely in Christ, by grace, through faith that believes on him, through the faith of Christ, by which he offered himself. the faith of Christ that he gives unto his own to see him and to trust in him. O God, give us that faith. O God, give us grace to be drawn unto Christ, to be delivered from our own wisdom, our own works, our own will, our blindness, our deafness, our deadness, and to see and to know our Redeemer who loved us and gave himself for us. How should man be just with God, in Christ, in Christ alone? Amen.