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John Calvin: Why We Need to Look to the Past

I have been working through the freshly translated, three-volume English edition of John Calvin’s sermons on Job published by Banner of Truth. It is 2200 pages long, comprised of 159 sermons. Calvin took up preaching through Job for his daily sermons on February 26, 1554. While there is no date recorded as to when he finished, it is assumed he finished in a year because it was recorded that he began preaching through Deuteronomy for his daily sermons on March 20, 1555. It is a mind-boggling feat, to say the least.

I am on Sermon 35, and I have to say I find these sermons to be his most lucid and pastorally thoughtful expositions of Scripture. My wife was astounded when I shared some of his insights because she could not believe that I was reading Calvin. She had always regarded him as a theological heavyweight who was very hard to read. That is not to say my wife is theologically inept—far from it! I think most people only know Calvin as the polemicist. Calvin the expositor is a bit different. He wants to feed his sheep and wants to penetrate their hearts with gospel-saturated truth.

Sermon 31, titled, “Following Wisdom Past and Present Prevents the Faithful from Becoming Parched Deserts,” on Job 8:7–13 has a brilliant section (pp. 372–75) that I wanted to share. Below is his exposition on 8:8–9, which says, “For ask the previous generation, and pay attention to what their ancestors discovered, since we were born only yesterday and know nothing. Our days on earth are but a shadow.” Enjoy the short feast!

 

~ It is true that as long as men abandon themselves to vanity, they cannot focus their minds on such a study unless God forces them to. That is also why David declares that when afflicted, he is reminded of bygone days and ponders them (Psa. 143:5). And that must be our practice, meditating on God’s works and not only on those we have seen in our times but also on what is recounted for us. God intended for us to have stories from history and in that way preserve the memory of things. Men take pleasure in reading, but it is a fruitless pastime because they do not apply to their instruction the stories of all the times past, stories which provide a true school for knowing how to govern our lives. In them we contemplate God’s judgments; in them we see how he helped those who fled to him for help and even how he confirmed his grace, and in them we see that although they were all unbelievers, he set aside men for some knowledge of his truth even though the fullness of time was not yet. In a word, the works of God are a deep sea and bottomless reservoir of wisdom if only we had clear eyes and unclouded vision, which we do not. So, if we wish to be well established in good doctrine, let us learn to look farther ahead than our own noses, as we say, and let us look back to what happened before we were born.

And we must especially be motivated to do that when we understand that God intended for us to have a mirror, so to speak, to show us how he has from all time preserved and sustained his church from the creation of the world after strengthening the good men to fight against all assaults and, in the end, to show us how he punished their sins; how, when they hardened their hearts, he punished them twice over; and how, when he admonished them by the prophets and they still remained obstinate, they were obliged to experience a greater and more extensive rigour. So, when we understand all that and realise that God providentially works to present to us for our instruction what might have been lost, must we not, I ask you, apply ourselves all the more earnestly to learn from it? So let us remember what is said here, namely, that we must inquire of those who lived before us, not of them personally, for we do not have access to those who have passed on nor are we permitted to go ask them. God did not set them up as prophets for us because they served in their time. Peter, Paul, and the other apostles and prophets speak to us today, but it is through their writings, which are immortal. As for them personally, God has withdrawn them from our company, but we must inquire of the time they lived. We must also follow the testimonies they have given us of the works of God and be instructed by them and strengthened in the fear of him.

Now the reason that should stir us to do that is added when Bildad says, For we belong to yesterday, and we are ignorant because our lives are only a shadow?’ It is true this passage can be explained in two ways. Some think that Bildad intended to say, ‘Oh, I know you will not appreciate what I can bring to you. You will say that I am not so old that people should listen to me as to a wise man. Now suppose that what I say has no value because I am too young to know, but you will find that the ancients will tell you the same thing.’ Now I leave that with you for what it is worth, but when everything has been considered carefully, the clear meaning of the passage is that Bildad intended to motivate Job to inquire of past times because if we consider only what is before us, we will come up short. It is true that what God shows us from day to day is sufficient for our instruction. That by itself, what we learn in a year or two or even in a day, will serve well enough to make us inexcusable. God makes known to us so many things that we have no excuse, that we cannot say, ‘I did not think about it. God did not make me aware of that?’ We have enough instruction before us, but because we are lazy and need to have God chew the pieces for us and we have great difficulty swallowing them even after he chews them, as it were, that is why he gives us knowledge of past times. For example, if we disregard everything that happened before we were born and say, ‘Oh, I am wise enough when I consider the things we encounter in our lives. Did God intend the testimony he gave us of such remote times to be useful?’ When Scripture tells us that from the creation of the world God governed men, chastised them for their sins, had pity on them even as his goodness always overcame the evil of those who had offended him, and especially when Scripture tells us that he protected his people and helped them in their afflictions and that God reveals from age to age the things which are so useful to us, do we want all to be disregarded and trampled underfoot? Are we not basely ungrateful when we reject something that is immensely useful for us?

So let us note that this is the point to which the speaker, Bildad, hoped to bring Job. Do we, for that reason, want to be motivated to inquire of things which are useful for our salvation? Let us think a little about our day and age. What does that have to do with us? We belong to yesterday. Men, when all is said and done, are like snails, which vanish immediately. It is true people live fifty or sixty years, but we must return to what is said in the Song of Moses in Psalm 90, that a thousand years in the sight of the Lord are but as a day, and yet the life of man is like a dream which is already past (Psa. 90:4). When we realise the brevity of our lives, when all of time passes like a shadow, it is certain we will be all the more diligent to inquire of things past. Why? Because we are ignorant if we focus on that brief period. But God intended for the things which happened before we were born to be present with us through stories and through what left for us through them. That, then, is how God showed himself to be kind to us when he gathered together all ages and caused a man who lives in this world for fifty years to be able to hold five thousand before himself, arrange them and put them in order and realise how much time passed before the flood. Well, how did things happen? How did God work following the flood? When did God intend to establish a church? How did he govern it? How did the faithful conduct themselves when they were persecuted for testifying to the truth? And then when there were sins, how did God redress them? And then, how did the church remain in its condition after being restored?

We can, I repeat, see all those things as if they were in front of us, and yet more than five thousand years have passed. That is true, but, as I have said, it is the result of God’s grace, which cannot be praised enough. In fact, that ought to prod us to look not only a step or two ahead but much beyond, knowing that God places us in a theatre, so to speak, and wants us to examine not just a hundred or so years but an expanse of time going back to the creation of the world. We now see what Bildad had in mind and how we are to apply that concept to our lives. In other words, inasmuch as we are only of yesterday, our lives are but a shadow. That is, we have not lived in this world a long time and what we see in it can satisfy us, but it is good to look farther ahead, for God gives us the means for examining and learning from past times. So, in brief, we are admonished to consider carefully everything God shows us from his past works and to consider them not as having nothing to say to us but as being recorded for our instruction. So, in response, let us apply to our knowledge all the stories and chronicles of former times so that we will place our trust completely in God and call upon him in our times of need and fear and honour him as he asks. That is what we have to remember about that passage. ~

 

I highly recommend purchasing his sermon series on Job. Each sermon is about 12 pages long, so you can just read one a day or every few days. You will be greatly blessed by his soul-enriching words.

 

~ Romans 11:36

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