Charles Spurgeon Commentary Job 27

Moreover Job continued his parable, and said, As God liveth, who hath taken away my judgment; and the Almighty, who hath vexed my soul; all the while my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils, my lips shall not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit (Job 27:1–4).

He felt that it would be wicked for him to confess to what he had never done; it would be deceit for him to acknowledge crimes which he had never committed. Therefore, he most solemnly affirms, by the living God, that he never will permit the falsehood to pass his lips. He had not transgressed against God in the way his friends insinuated, and he would not admit that he had.

We are bound to keep to the truth. No man is permitted, with mock humility, to make himself out to be what he is not.

Job was right, so far, in standing up for the integrity of his character, for he was a man of such uprightness that even the devil could not find fault with him.

He was such a holy man that God could say to Satan, "Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?"

And all that the devil could do was to insinuate that he had a selfish motive for his goodness: "Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face."

Job was upright, yet we are never so right but that there is a mixture of wrong with our right.

A man may very easily become self-righteous when he is defending his own character. There may be a lack of admissions of faults unperceived; there may be a blindness to faults that ought to have been perceived; and something of that imperfection, doubtless, was in the patriarch.

There he went too far, for he had not yet seen God as he afterwards saw him. Before man, there was nothing with which he needed to reproach himself; but how he changed his tone when God drew near to him! Then he said, "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." If we knew more of God, we should think less of ourselves. If those who consider themselves perfect had any idea of what perfection is, their comeliness would be turned in them to corruption.

That is a very solemn, searching question. If a man tries to play fast and loose with God, if he is a hypocrite, and if he should gain by his hypocrisy all that he tries to gain, namely, repute among men, what is his hope when God taketh away his soul?

Then, his hope is turned to horror, for he has to stand before him who cannot be deceived, but who reads him through and through, and casts him away because he has dared to insult his Maker by attempting to deceive omniscience.

Oh, may you and I never play the hypocrite's part! There cannot be a more foolish thing; and there cannot be a more wicked thing.

That is one of the tests of the hypocrite: "Will God hear his cry when trouble cometh upon him?" Will the hypocrite cry to God at all? Will he not give up even his profession of religion when he loses his prosperity? And if he does cry, will God hear the double-tongued man?