Job 14:4

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one." Job 14:4

The answer is correct, and incorrect. Everything depends upon the limits within which it is treated. As regards man, it is impossible for him to change causes or to upset the laws of the universe. With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible. This is the very thing that God is constantly doing: he is bringing strength out of weakness, purity out of impurity, life out of death; this is the eternal miracle of the divine administration. It is of infinite importance, however, that man should realise his own helplessness in this matter, otherwise he will never look in the right direction for guidance and succour. It is something to know that men have discovered beyond all question that to bring a clean thing out of an unclean is impossible. The text is more than an inquiry; it is also a verdict. Great importance attaches to these incidental intimations of the results of human inquiry and experience. If any man had brought a clean thing out of an unclean it would be known, and the example would have been held up as pointing to a law, at least to an occasional possibility, and therefore perhaps to a reality which could be established upon the broadest bases. But the very inquiry has in it a tone of helplessness. When, therefore, man is done, God must take up the case, and, let us repeat again and again, it is his glory to do what man cannot do, and to show us that that which is sown in corruption is raised in incorruption, and that which we sow cannot live until it has died. The Bible is continually upsetting the so-called laws of nature and laws of sequence. It would seem to be the delight of the spirit of the Bible to make the last first, and the first last, and to confuse all the thinking of the craftiest minds. The Church of Christ is a clean thing brought out of an unclean. Every renewed heart is a clean thing brought out of an unclean. Every generous and noble deed is likewise a clean thing brought out of an unclean. But the first motive was never in the unclean: as water cannot rise above its own level, neither can depravity: anything, therefore, that is now pure, wise, noble, true, and useful must be credited to the almighty grace of God. That innumerable hard questions gather around this view of life is evident enough; still we have to deal with the practical end and issue of things, and there we find that even the man himself who does the good deeds is unwilling to ascribe them to the action of his own depraved motive and thought, but willingly accepts the solution that this is the Lord's doing and marvellous in his eyes. Here the great gospel of salvation may be preached in all its unction and fulness and power. God makes the tree good, and thus makes the fruit good. He purifies the fountain, and thus he cleanses the stream. God does not begin to work from the outside, cleansing the hands; but from the internal life, purifying the heart; then all the rest becomes morally sequential, and illustrative of the miracle that has been wrought within.