One of the hardest things in this world is, for the tolerant to have to tolerate intolerance, for the liberal to have to endure illiberality, for the charitable to have to put up with bigotry. We can conceive of an intolerant person being vexed by the intolerance of others; but it is because their intolerance is not of the same kind as his own. To the abettors of particular theological tenets, and the adherents of particular religious systems, such terms as intolerance, illiberality, and uncharitableness, convey no meaning. With them there are no such things. According to their notions, you cannot be too intolerant, so long as you are orthodox; nor too illiberal, so long as you are correct; nor too uncharitable, so long as you are on the right side; which singularly enough, usually happens to be the strong side. Intolerance, in their eyes, is nothing but consistency. It is hard to have to tolerate intolerance. This is what the patriarch had to do, throughout and in addition to the sore calamities permitted by the Almighty to fall upon him. It was a case in which anyone might well have cried, “Save me from my friends.” The book is filled with the recriminations of the friends on one side, and the remonstrances of Job on the other. But the cause pleaded by the patriarch was the cause of humanity at large, against Jewish and every other form of intolerance If you see a man bearing good fruits in his life, knowing somewhat of himself and more of God,--though he may not agree in all points with you, speak as you speak, or use the forms you use,--do not suspect him, think the worse of him, or disparage him; but say, rather, to the confusion of all who would do so, “Why should I persecute him, seeing the root of the matter is found in him?” (Alfred Bowen Evans.)
Seeing the root of the matter is found in me.--
The root of the matter
I. What the patriarch intended by the root that was in him. A root may be employed for any principle from which effects proceed. Sometimes the metaphor is employed for a good principle, as in the parable of the sower, where they who withered because they “had not root,” lacked the good principle from which spiritual life proceeds. We may find several points of analogy between the principle of faith in the soul, and the root of any plant or tree which vegetates upon our earth.
1. The root is the menus of stability. So is faith. As the root balances every plant, from the gigantic oak and the towering cedar, to the hyssop that grows upon the wall, so faith balances and sustains the soul and character of the Christian.
2. The root--and faith--are the channels of nourishment. As the fibrous harts of the root of any plant absorb the moisture which the earth supplies, so faith receives the Spirit which the Saviour imparts. Thus the idea of vitality is intimately connected with faith in the rooting of the Divine Word.
3. Faith is the source of spiritual production. Botanists tell us that the root performs the part of a tender parent, by preserving the embryo plant in its bosom; and thus all the stems, and leaves, and petals, and fruit, are found in the root. Here the analogy is very complete; because as the root is the source of production to the plant, so faith is the source of every other grace in the soul.
II. How the patriarch manifested that this boot was in him.
1. By the confession which he uttered. Faith has ever been the parent of a good confession. Job could say, “I know that my Redeemer liveth.”
2. By the satisfaction he avows. Faith in the Son of God satisfied his mind under all the desolations.
3. By the disposition he displayed. What was his patience but the result of faith?
III. What the patriarch expected. Forbearance and sympathy from his fellow believers. Many of us greatly err in entertaining uncharitable thoughts, and in using unguarded words, in reference to them who have “the root of the matter in them.” (J. Blackburn.)
Faith a root
Faith is the root of that tree whose flower and fruit is righteousness. Not much fruit is produced without roots. Generally the roots are hid, but they are always there. Sometimes they are unsightly, but they are very necessary. He is a foolish gardener who neglects them, or allows beast or insect to destroy them. So intimate is the relationship existing between belief and righteousness. This utilitarian age may find fault with the careful culture of a faith in the unseen, but these roots, so ugly in many eyes, have produced some luscious fruit. While the world cries out so lustily for the fruits of pure lives and noble deeds, why should it despise the roots from which the finest virtues spring? Christian works are no more than animate faith and love, as the flowers are animate spring buds. (J. L. Jackson.)
The root of the matter
What is the meaning of “the root of the matter”? Everything would seem to depend upon the root; if we go wrong there, we go wrong everywhere. Now what do we mean by the “root”? Sometimes we talk of a radical cure. It simply means a root cure; not a cure of symptoms, not an alleviation of pain for the moment, but going right down to the root. If the root is right, the tree is worth saving; if the root is right the man is saved. The root is the man. Not your coat, but your character is you. Oh, if we could look at one another in the root, there would be ten thousand times better men in the world than we seem to think there are. But we cannot get men to look at root ideas, root purposes. Now, the root is you; what you are in the root, that you really are before God. The root is the verb out of which all the other words come. Here is the verb; how am I to treat this long verb? Wring its tail off; that is the first act in true grammar. Take off its tail, throw it away, there is the root left; that is the thing you have got to deal with. Beware of artificial qualifications, beware of human certificates, if above it all is not the signature of God. So the root is the man. Do we always judge so? What do they say about the man? His “oddities.” Well? His “eccentricities.” Well? His “infirmities.” That is a little deeper, but not much. What of it? His “peculiarities”--what of them? You have said nothing yet; that is not criticism. What is the man’s purpose in life? Talk of that. “Oh, so good!” Then that is the man, and why should you and I talk about his whimsicalities and his oddities? Here is a man about whom they say, “You would mark, I am sure, his want of polish; you would see that there was a great deal of gaucherie about his whole air and manner.” Yes, I saw that. “You observed that he was not metropolitan in his bearing, that there was a good deal of the agricultural districts about him.” Yes, there was a good deal of the agricultural districts about him. Well, what more? Are you going to put me off with that judgment? Oh, tell me what he is in his soul, in his root, in his first idea, in his grandest aspiration. That is the man; that is how God judges us. And here is a man about whom they say, “He made a great many slips, you know.” Yes, he did. What shall we do with him? Will you say? Why do you not tell me about his truthfulness? We are to be judged by our truthfulness, which is permanent, constant, all-pervasive, and not by our accidental alightings upon some great truth, and naming it. Many a man has told the truth occasionally who is not filled with the spirit of truth. And many men are misunderstood about this matter because we look for the wrong points of judgment. Many a man is misunderstood through shyness; he does not do himself justice. And many a man would be better in private life, would do himself more justice, but for timidity, for fear. He wants to be so good, and so proper in all his outward behaviour and relations, that he stumbles in the very act of trying excessively to walk uprightly. Do not misjudge him; tie is a good soul. And many a man is misunderstood by poverty. He has good judgment, he has a capacious mind, but he has no money, and he thinks that poverty should slink off into the corner. My aim is to show you that we must get to the root of a man before we can know what the man is. Look not upon his outward appearance, but look, as God looks, on his heart. “The root” means more than it seems to mean at first. It is not the fruit, but it must bear fruit, or it must be cut up and burned. You cannot have this wonderful, invisible, inscrutable root in you without having some proof of its existence; you must grow something good. Now, what is your fruit? Here, again, is the danger of wrong social judgment. There is your whole world’s judgment upon one another. We are trees of the Lord’s right-hand planting, and I believe in fruit trees of all kinds. I do not believe in a Christianity so absolutely hidden that it never makes itself seen or felt or known in any of the outgoing and action of life. What is the root in a man? Christ, Christ received personally, officially, atoningly, in all the grandeur and pathos of His priestly character; not Christ the Example whom I can keep on a shelf, but Christ the living God that I must hide in my heart if I would have Him at all. Here is the hope of heterodoxy. It is in the root. You know you are curious in your view of things, don’t you? Well, but what do you think of Christ? “Oh, I love Him. Lord, Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love Thee.” But do you really and truly love Him? “Yes.” Then you are orthodox. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The root of the matter
I take up the expressive figure of our text to address myself to those who evidently have the grace of God embedded in their hearts, though they put forth tittle blossom and bear little fruit; that they may be consoled, if so be there is clear evidence that at least the root of the matter is found in them.
I. Our first aim then will be to speak of those things which are essential to true godliness in contrast, or, I might better say, in comparison with other things which are to be regarded as shoots rather than as root and groundwork. The tree can do without some of its branches, though the loss of them might be an injury; but it cannot live at all without its roots: the roots are essential. And thus there are things essential in the Christian religion. There are essential doctrines, essential experiences, and there is essential practice.
1. With regard to essential doctrines. It is very desirable for us to be established in the faith. But we are ever ready to confess that there are many doctrines which, though exceedingly precious, are not so essential but that a person may be in a state of grace and yet not receive them. A man with weak eyesight and imperfect vision may be able to enter into the kingdom of heaven; indeed, it is better to enter there having but one eye, than, having two eyes and being orthodox in doctrine, to be cast into hell fire. But there are some distinct truths of revelation that are essential. The doctrine of the Trinity we must ever look upon as being one of the roots of the matter. A Gospel without belief in the living and true God--Trinity in Unity, and Unity in Trinity--is a rope of sand. As well hope to make a pyramid stand upon its apex as to make a substantial Gospel when the real and personal Deity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost is left as a meet or disputed point. Likewise essential is the doctrine of the vicarious sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. Any bell that does not ring sound on that point had better be melted down directly. So, again, the doctrine of justification by faith is one of the roots of the matter.
2. Turning to another department of my subject; there are certain root matters in reference to experience. It is a very happy thing to have a deep experience of one’s own depravity. It may seem strange, but so it is, a man will scarcely ever have high views of the preciousness of the Saviour who has not also had deep views of the evil of his own heart. High houses, you know, need deep foundations. Yet die you must, before you can be made partaker of resurrection. This much, however, I will venture to say, you may be really a child of God, and yet the plague of your own heart may be but very little understood. You must know something of it, for no man ever did or ever will come to Christ unless he has first learned to loathe himself, and to see that in him, that is in his flesh, there dwelleth no good thing. It is a happy thing, too, to have an experience which keeps close to Christ Jesus; to know what the word “communion” means, without needing to take down another man’s biography. But though all this be well, remember it is not essential. It is not a sign that you are not converted because you cannot understand what it is to sit under His shadow with great delight. You may have been converted, and yet hardly have come so far as that. Now what is the root of the matter experimentally? Well, I think the real root of it is what Job has been talking about in the verses preceding the text--“I know,” saith he, “that my Redeemer liveth.” There must be in connection with this the repentance of sin, but this repentance may be far from perfect, and thy faith in Christ may he far from strong; if Christ Jesus be thine only comfort, thy help, thy hope, thy trust, then understand, this is the root of the matter.
3. Did I not say that there was a root of the matter practically? Yes, and I would to God that we all practically had the branches and the fruits. These will come in their season, and they must come, if we are Christ’s disciples; but nobody expects to see fruit on a tree a week after it has been planted. It is very desirable that all Christians should be full of zeal. The real root of the matter practically is this--“One thing I know; whereas I was blind now I see; the things I once loved I now hate; the things I once hated I love; now it is no more the world, but God; no more the flesh, but Christ; no more pleasure, but obedience; no more what I will, but what Jesus wills.” There are those who do certain duties with a conscientious motive, in order to make themselves Christians--such as observing the Sabbath, holding daily worship of God in their families, and attending the public services of the Lord’s house with regularity. But they do not distinguish between these external acts--which may be but the ornaments that clothe a graceless life, and those fruits of good living that grow out of a holy constitution, which is the root of genuine obedience. Some habits and practices of godly men may be easily counterfeited. You may generally ascertain whether you have got the root of the matter by its characteristic properties. You know a root is a fixing thing. Plants without roots may be thrown over the wall; they may be passed from hand to hand; but a root is a fixed thing. Well, now, if you have got the root of the matter you are fixed to God, fixed to Christ, fixed to things Divine. If you are tempted, you are not soon carried away. Oh, how many professors there are that have no roots! Get them into godly company, and they are such saints; but get them with other company, and what if I say that they are devils! You have no roots unless you can say, “O God! my heart is fixed, my heart is fixed; by stern resolve and by firm covenant Thine I am; bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar.” Again, a root is not only a fixing thing, but a quickening thing. What is it that first sets the sap a-flowing in the spring? Why, it is the root. Ah! and you must have a vital principle; you must have a living principle. Some Christians are like those toys they import from France, which have sand in them; the sand runs down, and some little invention turns and works them as long as the sand is running, but when the sand is all out it stops. A root, too, is a receiving thing. The botanists tell us a great many things about the ends of the roots, which can penetrate into the soil hunting after the particular food upon which the tree is fed. Ah! and if you have got the root of the matter in you, you will send those roots into the pages of Scripture, sometimes into a hymn book, often into the sermon, and into God’s Providence, seeking that something upon which your soul can feed. Hence it follows that the root becomes a supplying thing, because it is a receiving thing. We must have a religion that lives upon God, and that supplies us with strength to live for God.
II. Wherever there is the root of the matter there is very much ground for comfort. Sounds there in my ears the sigh, the groan, the sad complaint--“I do not grow as I could wish; I am not so holy as I want to be; I cannot praise and bless the Lord as I could desire; I am afraid I am not a fruitful bough whose branches run over the wall”? Yes, but is the root of the matter in you? If so, cheer up, you have cause for gratitude. Remember that in some things you are equal to the greatest and most full-grown Christian. You are as much bought with blood, O little saints, as are the holy brotherhood. You are as much an adopted child of God as any other Christian. You are as truly justified, for your justification is not a thing of degrees. Though “less than nothing I can boast, and vanity confess,” yet, if the root of the matter be in me, I will rejoice in the Lord, and glory in the God of my salvation.
III. Wherever the root of the matter is, there we should take care that we watch it with tenderness and with love. If you meet with young professors who have the root of the matter in them, do not begin condemning them for lack of knowledge. People must begin to say “Twice two are four,” before they can ever come to be very learned in mathematics. Now I ask you, by way of solemn searching investigation, Have you the root of the matter in you?(C. H. Spurgeon.)
The substance of true religion
You will always understand a passage of Scripture better if you carefully attend to its connection. Job in the verse before us is answering Bildad the Shuhite. Now, this Bildad on two occasions had described Job as a hypocrite, and accounted for his dire distress by the fact that, though hypocrites may flourish for a time, they will ultimately be destroyed. In the two bitter speeches which he made he described the hypocrite under the figure of a tree which is torn up by the roots, or dies down even to the root. The inference he meant to draw was this: you, Job, are utterly dried up, for all your prosperity is gone, and therefore you must be a hypocrite. No, says Job, I am no hypocrite. I will prove it by your own words, for the root of the matter is still in me, and therefore I am no hypocrite. Though I admit that I have lost branch, and leaf, and fruit, and flower, yet I have not lost the root of the matter, for I hold the essential faith as firmly as ever; and therefore, by your own argument, I am no hypocrite, and “Ye should say, Why persecute we him, seeing the root of the matter is found in me?” There is a something in true religion which is its essential root.
I. Our first thought will be that this root of the matter may be clearly defined. We are not left in the dark as to what the essential point of true religion is: it can be laid down with absolute certainty. This is the root of the matter, to believe in the incarnate God, to accept His headship, to claim His kinship, and to rely upon His redemption. Still look at the text further, and you perceive that the root of the matter is to believe that this Kinsman, this Redeemer, lives. We could never find comfort or salvation in one who had ceased to be.
II. This fundamental matter is most instructively described by the words which I have so constantly repeated “the root of the matter.” What does this mean?
1. First, does it not mean that which is essential? “The root of the matter.” To a tree a root is absolutely essential; it is a mere pole or piece of timber if there be no root. It can be a tree of a certain sort without branches, and at certain seasons without leaves, but not without a root. So, if a man hath faith in the Redeemer, though he may be destitute of a thousand other most needful things, yet the essential point is settled: he that believeth in Christ Jesus hath everlasting life.
2. The root, again, is not only that which is vital to the tree, it is from the root that the life force proceeds by which the trunk and the branches are nourished and sustained. There is hope of a tree if it be cut down that it shall sprout again, at the scent of water it shall bud; so long as there is a root there is more or less of vitality and power to grow, and so faith in Christ is the vital point of religion; he that believeth liveth.
3. Again, it is called the “root of the matter” because it comprehends all the rest; for everything is in the root. The holiness of heaven is packed away in the faith of a penitent sinner. Look at the crocus bulb; it is a poor, mean, unpromising sort of thing, and yet wrapped up within that brown package there lies a golden cup, which in the early spring will be filled with sunshine: you cannot see that wondrous chalice within the bulb; but He who put it there knows where He has concealed His treasure. The showers and the sun shall unwrap the enfoldings, and forth shall come that dainty cup to be set upon God’s great table of nature, as an intimation that the feast of summer is soon to come. The highest saintship on earth is hidden within the simplicity of a sinner’s faith.
III. This root of the matter may be personally discerned as being in a man’s own possession. Job says to his teasing friends, “Ye should say, Why persecute we him, seeing the root of the matter is found in me?” Notice the curious change of pronouns. “Ye should say, Why persecute we him seeing the root of the matter is found in him?” that is how the words would naturally run. But Job is so earnest to clear himself from Bildad’s insinuation that he is a hypocrite, that he will not speak of himself in the third person, but plainly declares, “The root of the matter is found in me.” Job seems to say, “The vital part of the matter may or may not be in you, but it is in me, I know. You may not believe me, but I know it is so, and I tell you to your faces that no argument of yours can rob me of this confidence; for as I know that my Redeemer liveth, I know that the root of the matter is found in me.” Many Christian people are afraid to speak in that fashion. They say, “I humbly hope it is so, and trust it is so.” That sounds prettily; but is it right? Is that the way in which men speak about their houses and lands? Do you possess a little freehold? Did I hear you answer, “I humbly hope that my house and garden are my own”? What, then, are your title deeds so questionable that you do not know?
1. Note well that sometimes this root needs to be searched for. Job says, “the root of the matter is found in me,” as if he had looked for it, and made a discovery of what else had been hidden. Roots generally lie underground and out of sight, and so may our faith in the Redeemer. I can understand a Christian doubting whether he is saved or not, but I cannot understand his being happy while he continues to doubt about it, nor happy at all till he is sure of it.
2. And note again, the root of the matter in Job was an inward thing. “The root of the matter is found in me.” He did not say, “I wear the outward garb of a religious man”; no, but “the root of the matter is found in me.” If you, my hearers, are in the possession of the essence of true Christianity, it does not lie in your outward profession. True godliness is not separable from the godly man; it is woven into him just as a thread enters into the essence and substance of the fabric.
3. When grace is found in us, and we do really believe in our Redeemer, we ought to avow it; for Job says, “The root of the mutter is found in me. I know that my Redeemer liveth.” Are there not some among you who have never said as much as that?
4. The fact of our having the root of the matter in us will be a great comfort to us. “Alas,” saith Job, “my servant will not come when I call him, my wife is strange to me, my kinsfolk fail me, but I know that my Redeemer liveth. Bildad and Zophar, and others of them, all condemn me, but my conscience acquits me, for I know that the root of the matter is in me.” Critics may find fault with our experience, and they may call our earnest utterances rant, but this will not affect the truth of our conversion, or the acceptableness of our testimony for Jesus. If the little bird within our bosom sings sweetly it is of small consequence if all the owls in the world hoot at us. There is more real comfort in the possession of simple faith than in the fond persuasion that you are in a high state of grace.
5. This fact also will be your defence against opposers. Thus may you answer them in Job’s fashion, “You ought not to condemn me; for, though I am not what I ought to be, or what I want to be, or what I shall be, yet still the root of the matter is found in me. Be kind to me, therefore.” If our friends are sincere in their attachment to the Redeemer, let us treat them as our brethren in Christ.
IV. This root of the matter is to be tenderly respected by all who see it. “Ye should say, Why persecute we him, seeing the root of the matter is found in me?”
1. What a rebuke this is to the persecutions which have been carried on by nominal Christians against each other, sect against sect! How can those who trust in the same Saviour rend and devour each other? If I believe, and rest my soul on the one salvation which God has provided in Christ Jesus, have charity towards me, for this rock will bear both thee and me. This should end all religious persecutions.
2. But next it ought to be the end of all ungenerous denunciations. If I know that a man is really believing in Jesus Christ, I may not treat him as an enemy.
3. Further than this, the question is, “Why persecute we him?” We can do that by a cold mistrust. Do not let us stand off in holy isolation from any who have the root of the matter in them. Wherefore should we persecute such? (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Roots give fixity
A root is a fixing thing. Plants without roots may be thrown over the wall; they may be passed from hand to hand; but a root is a fixing thing. How firmly the oaks are rooted in the ground. You may think of those old oaks in the park; ever so far off you have seen the roots coming out of the ground, and then they go in again, and you have said, “Why I what do these thick fibres belong to?” Surely they belong to one of those old oaks ever so far away. They had sent that root there to get a good holdfast, so that when the March wind comes through the forest and other trees are torn up--fir trees, perhaps trees that have outgrown their strength at the top, while they have too little hold at bottom--the old oaks bow to the tempest, curtsey to the storm, and anon they lift up their branches again in calm dignity; they cannot be blown down. Now if you have got the root of the matter you are fixed, you are fixed to God, fixed to Christ, fixed to things Divine. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
