Sermons on Job Volume 3 (eBook)

Volume Three: Chapters 31-42

ISBN 9781800402270
Binding

eBook (ePub & Kindle)

format

ebook

vol

3

scripture

Job

ePub ISBN

978-1-80040-324-6

Kindle ISBN

978-1-80040-325-3

Banner Pub Date

2022

EBOOK ONLY – For the printed set, see Sermons on Job.

Also available, Sermons on Job, Volume 1 (eBook only) and Sermons on Job, Volume 2 (eBook only)

Endorsement

‘Dr Rob Roy McGregor’s translations of Calvin’s sermons have been received with great enthusiasm and gratitude.’ — DEREK THOMAS

Book Description

THE name of John Calvin (1509-64) is justly renowned in a number of contexts. The Reformation’s greatest systematic theologian, he was also a Christian strategist and transformer of society, as his enormous correspondence and his influence in Geneva bear witness. A prolific scholar, well-versed in the Latin of the academics, he also worked hard at communicating to ordinary men and women in his native French language.

Above all, Calvin was a pastor. Indeed, it has been said of him that he became a theologian in order to be a better pastor. Nowhere is that more clearly seen than in his sermons.

In 1549, the Campagnie des Étrangers, refugees who thought highly of his ministry, employed a professional scribe, Denis Raguenier, to record and translate Calvin’s sermons.

Thanks to the foresight of these sixteenth-century Christians we can still read the 159 sermons Calvin preached on the Book of Job on week-days in 1554-5. They abound in faithful and lively exposition, and remain one of the finest examples of evangelical preaching – faithful to the biblical text and thoughtfully applied to the individual and society.

In 1993 the Banner of Truth Trust reprinted a facsimile edition of Arthur Golding’s 1574 translation of Calvin’s sermons on Job. At that time the publisher expressed the hope that ‘Perhaps one day the massive work of retranslating Calvin from the original French into modern English will be done.’ That day has now well and truly come! Several new translations of Calvin’s sermons have recently been published (on Ephesians, Galatians, 2 Samuel 1-13, Acts 1-7, Gen. 1-20, The Beatitudes, Luke 1-2, etc.), and a new translation of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (1541 ed.) has also recently been added to this impressive list of volumes. Now, thanks to Dr Rob Roy McGregor, all of Calvin’s 159 sermons on Job have been translated into modern, colourful, and vigorous English.

This third volume covers Calvin’s expositions of Job chapters 31-42.

About the Translator

Dr Rob Roy McGregor is a graduate of Erskine College and Columbia Theological Seminary, and was ordained to the Christian ministry in 1958 by Second Presbytery of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. Dr McGregor taught English, French, German, and Latin at Boys High School and Hanna High School in Anderson before earning the MA degree in French from the University of South Carolina and the PhD in Romance Languages from the University of Georgia. He is Professor Emeritus of French and Latin at Clemson University, with publications on Jehan Froissart, Albert Camus, Voltaire, Charles Baudelaire, and Jean Genet.

 

Table of Contents Expand ↓

111. The nature of the three stages of sin’s development; the papists’ contrary view of accountability; the believers’ nonchalance toward judgment; the need for self-examin­ation and self-condemnation to escape final judgment.
112. Those who walk uprightly will be rewarded.
113. A common creator and master: the guiding principle of human relations from kings and princes to masters and slaves.
114. God insists upon compassion for the fatherless, widows, and the poor, and upon uprightness in dealing with them.
115. The two things by which man is most easily deceived and which rob God of his glory: wealth and personal merits.
116. God insists upon the love of one’s neighbours, one’s enemies, strangers, and especially of one’s ­brothers in the faith, with particular emphasis upon compassionately meeting the needs of the poor within one’s means.
117. Those of high status and power must be humble and peaceable in the face of accusations.
118. If God’s people suffer without knowing why, it is to awaken them to their sins and humble them, to bring them to their duty toward their neighbours, and to deliver them from judgment in the last day.
119. We must not judge hastily why God visits adversities on others because we cannot know why he judges as he does, and we must take offence when God is offended.
120. Young men, when given by God’s spirit understanding and wisdom and the necessary skills, may proclaim the word to great and small, young and old, and supersede their elders.
121. Elihu is an example of an aspiring young man who shows deference to/ his elders and, without being intimidated by their status and flattering them, will boldly speak God’s truth in his turn.
122. The preacher has his responsibility to the word, and the hearers theirs.
123. In all humility, we must be satisfied with only what God declares to us in his word—no more and no less—and live accordingly, knowing that he tests our patience and obedience through affliction.
124. God uses afflictions to subdue men’s pride and confirm them in faithfulness and obedience to his word.
125. It is only the elect that God punishes in order to draw them from the grave and grant them eternal life through the justification provided by the Lord Jesus Christ.
126. Elihu shows the way God leads us to restoration through adversity.
127. The path from sin to restoration.
128. The Christian’s duty is to hear and accept God’s word humbly and without objection, distinguishing truth from error with the guidance of God’s spirit.
129. Despite sorrows and affliction in the seeming trine injustice of allowing sinners to prosper and the righteous to suffer, true believers must acknowledge with conviction that God is righteous no matter what happens.
130. God conjoins his power and goodness in dealing harshly with us sinners to demonstrate his graciousness and compassion toward us.
131. God, who is no respecter of persons, will bring down the proud and defer to the humble and sustain them by his grace until the end.
132. The iniquities of no man, great or small, are hidden from God’s just judgment.
135. Listening and speaking are compatible and insepar­able activities of wise men of understanding for the ­authoritative proclamation of God’s word, the only source of true knowledge.
133. To avoid the fate of unbelievers, Christians must examine themselves and condemn their sins as they live the image of God, submitting patiently to his will, careful not to trouble and afflict the poor and helpless.
134. Since God’s counsels are beyond our grasp, we must yield to his word by not trying to impose our will upon him and replacing his ordinances with our own, as did the pope when restricting the cup to the priests.
136. We neither add to nor take away from God’s sovereignty when we do good or evil, but he, when offended, being God and not man, deals with us mercifully.
137. There are reasons men do not pray and reasons prayers are not answered.
138. Despite the enormity of our sins and the ­severity of our current afflictions, God sustains us, guiding our thoughts and deeds in anticipation of his merciful forgiveness in the last day.
139. Believers must defend the honour of God’s name, for he will defend it and punish all sins either in this life or in the next.
140. God uses adversities to further our salvation.
141. God chastises the elect to keep them humble so they will not perish.
142. There is none like unto God, whose teachings and works must alone be magnified above all else.
143. God uses the everyday events in the natural order to display his majesty.
144. Through the thunder and lightning of his law and word, God teaches us powerfully to acknowledge our spiritual limitations and yield to his will in proportion as we are given the knowledge and power in the holy spirit.
145. God employs weather to punish us for our sins as well as to display his goodness and mercy in caring for us in spite of them.
146. Elihu instructs us through Job to learn from our ignorance about nature not to challenge God’s wise judgment and deeds.
147. God instructs us through Job that it is better to remain silent when discussing God’s word than to speak out of ignorance and confuse our imaginings with his counsel.
148. God’s grandeur and power seen in creation reveal our ignorance and our incapacity to understand his counsels, encourage us to accept his wonders and our adversities as expedient and humbling, and to be restrained in our judgment of his works, as we rejoice in his creation, as do the very stars and angels of heaven.
149. Be humbled by the majestic and inscrutable works of God, about which you know nothing, and wait patiently for him to crush those who prevail in this life over the Godly, for whom all good things were made.
150. To prompt our humility, God uses the incomprehensible wonders and powers of nature to remind us of the depths of our sins and the vastness of his inexpressible glory.
151. To prompt our humility further, God reminds us that his incomprehensible power, wisdom, and goodness initiated the innumerable, unfathomable mysteries of human and animal generation.
152. God uses animals to teach us about his kindness in providing for our earthly existence and about his grace in subjecting us to himself and kingdom life.
153. If we find fault with God or grumble against him, and are unable to learn to hold ourselves in contempt because of our arrogance, all the animals of God’s creation will be his advocates and will teach us humility.
154. Like Job, all men want to defend their faults, but they would do better not to defend them against God and to accept his judgment and their afflictions as efforts on his part to humble and cleanse them.
155. God uses animals of great size to demonstrate his goodness, wisdom, and power, and to humble the proud.
156. Huge, powerful brute beasts, frightful as they are, serve to remind us that it is more frightful to confront God and his majesty since we are powerless, possessing nothing of worth or merit in ourselves.
157. Job concedes that he spoke in ignorance of God’s private counsel and, now repentant, asks only to know his revealed will better to obey it.
158. Judgment begins with the household of God, there being condemnation that leads to final destruction and condemnation that leads to salvation, while the condemnation that leads to salvation is accomplished only through sacrifice.
159. Job, as a priest, is a figure anticipating the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, the true mediator, deliverer, and aspiration of God’s chosen people.

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