“And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends”
-Job 42:10
The Lord turned the captivity of Job.” So, then, our longest sorrows have a
close, and there is a bottom to the profoundest depths of our misery. Our
winters shall not frown for ever; summer shall soon smile. The tide shall not
eternally ebb out; the floods retrace their march. The night shall not hang
its darkness for ever over our souls; the sun shall yet arise with healing
beneath his wings,-”The Lord turned again the captivity of Job.” Our sorrows
shall have an end when God has gotten his end in them. The ends in the case
of Job were these, that Satan might be defeated, foiled with his own weapons,
blasted in his hopes when he had everything his own way. God, at Satan’s
challenge, had stretched forth his hand and touched Job in his bone and in
his flesh, and yet the tempter could not prevail against him, but received
his rebuff in those conquering words, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in
him.” When Satan is defeated, then shall the battle cease. The Lord aimed
also at the trial of Job’s faith. Many weights were hung upon this palm tree,
but it still grew uprightly. The fire had been fierce enough, the gold was
undiminished, and only the dross was consumed. Another purpose the Lord had
was his own glory. And God was glorified abundantly. Job had glorified God on
his dunghill; now let him magnify his Lord again upon his royal seat in the
gate. God had gotten unto himself eternal renown through that grace by which
he supported his poor afflicted servant under the heaviest troubles which
ever fell to the lot of man. God had another end, and that also was served.
Job had been sanctified by his afflictions. His spirit had been mellowed.
That small degree of tartness towards others, which may have been in Job’s
temper had been at last removed, and any self-justification which once had
lurked within, was fairly driven out. Now God’s gracious designs are
answered, he removed the rod from his servant’s back, and takes the melted
silver from the midst of the glowing coals. God doth not afflict willingly,
nor grieve the children of men for nought, and he shows this by the fact that
he never afflicts them longer than there is a need for it, and never suffers
them to be one moment longer in the furnace than is absolutely requisite to
serve the purposes of his wisdom and of his love. “The Lord turned again the
captivity of Job.” Beloved brother in Christ, thou hast had a long captivity
in affliction. God hath sold thee into the hand of thine adversaries, and
thou hast wept by the waters of Babylon, hanging thy harp upon the willows.
Despair not! He that turned the captivity of Job can turn thine as the
streams in the south. He shall make again thy vineyard to blossom, and thy
field to yield her fruit. Thou shalt again come forth with those that make
merry, and once more shall the song of gladness be on thy lip. Let not
Despair rivet his cruel fetters about thy soul. Hope yet, for there is hope.
Trust thou still, for there is ground of confidence. He shall bring thee up
again rejoicing from the land of thy captivity, and thou shalt say of him,
“He hath turned my mourning into dancing.”
The circumstance which attended Job’s restoration is that to which I invite
your particular attention. “The Lord turned again the captivity of Job, when
he prayed for his friends.” Intercessory prayer was the omen of his returning
greatness. It was the bow in the cloud, the dove bearing the olive branch,
the voice of the turtle announcing the coming summer. When his soul began to
expand itself in holy and loving prayer for his erring brethren, then the
heart of God showed itself to him by returning to him his prosperity without,
and cheering his soul within. Brethren, it is not fetching a laborious
compass, when from such a text as this I address you upon the subject of
prayer for others. Let us learn today to imitate the example of Job, and pray
for our friends, and peradventure if we have been in trouble, our captivity
shall be turned.
Four things I would speak of this morning, and yet but one thing; I would
speak upon intercessory prayer thus-first, by way of commending the exercise;
secondly, by way of encouraging you to enlist in it; thirdly, by way of
suggestion, as to the persons for whom you should especially pray; and
fourthly, by way of exhortation to all believers to undertake and persevere
in the exercise of intercession for others.
I. First, then, BY WAY OF COMMENDING THE EXERCISE, let me remind you that
intercessory prayer has been practiced by all the best of God’s saints. We
may not find instances of it appended to every saint’s name, but beyond a
doubt, there has never been a man eminent for piety personally, who has not
always been pre-eminent in his anxious desires for the good of others, and in
his prayers for that end. Take Abraham, the father of the faithful. How
earnestly did he plead for his son Ishmael! “O that Ishmael might live before
thee!” With what importunity did he approach the Lord on the plains of Mamre,
when he wrestled with him again and again for Sodom; how frequently did he
reduce the number, as though, to use the expression of the Puritan, “He were
bidding and beating down the price at the market.” “Peradventure there be
fifty; peradventure there lack five of the fifty; peradventure there be
twenty found there; peradventure there be ten righteous found there: wilt
thou not spare the city for the sake of ten?” Well did he wrestle, and if we
may sometimes be tempted to wish he had not paused when he did, yet we must
commend him for continuing so long to plead for that doomed and depraved
city. Remember Moses, the most royal of men, whether crowned or uncrowned;
how often did he intercede! How frequently do you meet with such a record as
this-”Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before God!” Remember that cry of
his on the top of the mount, when it was to his own personal disadvantage to
intercede, and yet when God had said, “Let me alone, I will make of thee a
great nation,” yet how he continued, how he thrust himself in the way of the
axe of justice, and cried, “Spare them, Lord, and if not,” (and here he
reached the very climax of agonizing earnestness) “blot my name out of the
Book of Life.” Never was there a mightier prophet than Moses, and never one
more intensely earnest in intercessory prayer. Or pass on, if you will, to
the days of Samuel. Remember his words, “God forbid that I should sin against
the Lord, in ceasing to pray for you.” Or bethink you of Solomon, and of his
earnest intercession at the opening of the temple, when, with outstretched
hands he prayed for the assembled people; or if you want another royal
example, turn to Hezekiah with Sennacherib’s letter spread out before the
Lord, when he prayed not only for himself, but for God’s people of Israel in
those times of straits. Think ye, too, of Elias, who for Israel’s sake would
bring down the rain that the land perish not; as for himself, miracles gave
him his bread and his water, it was for others that he prayed, and said to
his servant, “Go again seven times.” Forget not Jeremy, whose tears were
prayers-prayers coming too intensely from his heart to find expression in any
utterance of the lip. He wept himself away, his life was one long shower,
each drop a prayer, and the whole deluge a flood of intercession. And if you
would have an example taken from the times of Christ and his apostles,
remember how Peter prays on the top of the house, and Stephen amidst the
falling stones. Or think you, if you will, of Paul, of whom even more than of
others it could be said, that he never ceased to remember the saints in his
prayers, “making mention of you daily in my prayers,” stopping in the very
midst of the epistle and saying, “For which cause I bow my knee unto the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” As for the cloud of holy witnesses in
our own time, I will hazard the assertion that there is not a single child of
God who does not plead with God for his children, for his family, for the
church at large, and for the poor ungodly perishing world. I deny his
saintship if he does not pray for others.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”