Bible Commentaries

Job 22:21

I. Consider of what sort our knowledge of God must be. It is a knowledge, not of comprehension, but of acquaintanceship. There are three stages to be observed in a man's knowledge of God. (1) Certain true notions respecting the Divine Being and His character must be presupposed before we can approach Him with that personal approach which is the basis of acquaintanceship. (2) The man must not suffer sin to hold him back from moral intercourse with God, else his knowledge will be only a knowledge about God, not a knowing of God. To worship, to love, to obey, is the road to real acquaintanceship with Him. (3) Such a moral acquaintanceship with God ekes out even the imperfection of our intellectual notions regarding Him. Out into the darkness which bounds on every side our small illumined spot of knowledge, faith and love can venture hand in hand without alarm, sure that He whom they know will be no other in the dark where we cannot watch Him than He has been in the things we see.

II. Consider, by two or three instances, how God's growing revelation of Himself to men has been followed by a corresponding increase of peace in their souls. (1) The fundamental truth, which it took nearly a thousand years to teach to the chosen nation of the old world, is the unity of God. Prepared in a corner of Syria through a millennium, this doctrine of the unity of God brought a beginning of peace to the world's heart. (2) What may be called God's absolute integrity, embracing, first, His truth or faithfulness; next, His justice; and third, His unchangeableness—this is the grand moral discovery of the Old Testament. On this, as on a rock, men's souls can repose themselves. (3) Until God was pleased to make through Christ a further disclosure of Himself we could never be at peace. Through all pre-Christian religions, as in the religion of every man still who has not acquainted himself with the Gospel of Christ, there ran, and there runs, some unquiet effort to solve the problem of atonement. The idea which rules them all is that man has to work on God through some means or other so as to change repulsion or aversion into favour. This notion brings no peace. Expiation is God's own act, dictated by His sole charity, wrought by His sole passion. Knowing Him in His Son, rest shall be imposed on the disquietudes of a wounded conscience. (4) As the discovery of the Second Divine Person, the Expiator and Reconciler, has allayed in those who acquaint themselves with Him the unrest and alarm of a conscience goaded by guilt to pacify, if it can, Divine displeasure, so we are led still nearer to perfect peace by a more recent revelation: that of the Third Person. God the Third Person broods like a dove of peace over the tumultuous chaos of a passionate heart, glimmers like a star of hope in our blackest night. With Him let us acquaint ourselves. Then shall we have more peace, increase of peace, even unto the full repose which follows conquest.

J. Oswald Dykes, Sermons, p. 191.

I. Is there such a thing among men as peace, a deep and true peace, without any acquaintance with God? (1) Suppose the case of one possessing high intelligence allied with all the ordinary virtues of human life, but who lacks entirely any personal faith in God as a Person. If you ask if his nature is at peace, he answers, Yes; I have no fear, no trouble, except that which comes by ignorance or inattention to law. Life is not long; I shall soon be in the dust, and that will be the end of me. I am at peace. The peace of such a man may be calmness, indifference; but cannot be the same thing as comes into a soul and flows through it and down into its far depths as the result of acquaintance with God. (2) Imperfect and partial knowledge of God is practically more disturbing and alarming than complete scepticism. Once allow His existence, and it is impossible ever to put that existence anywhere but in the primary place. Those who are imperfectly acquainted with God look at some of His attributes separately, but never at the centre and essence of the character where all the attributes meet.

II. The words of the text, "Acquaint thyself with God," literally mean, "Dwell with God," dwell with Him as in the same tent or home. To come to God in Christ is to come home.

III. "Thereby good shall come unto thee," good of every kind, and especially of the best kind. No man is good who avoids the society of God. Every man is good who seeks it and enjoys it. This is the supreme criterion of goodness, and the pledge that all goodness, in abundance and variety, will come. The "good" that comes is nothing less than all the benefits and blessings of the Gospel.

A. Raleigh, The Way to the City, p. 229:

References: Job 22:21.—H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2063; J. Natt, Posthumous Sermons, p. 184; Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 129; Old Testament Outlines, p. 97; C. Girdlestone, A Course of Sermons for the Year, vol. ii., p. 69. Job 22:26.—G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount, p. 277. Job 22:29.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiii., No. 731. Job 22—S. Cox, Expositor, 1st series, vol. viii., p. 81; Ibid., Commentary on Job, p. 294. Job 22-28—A, W. Momerie, Defects of Modern Christianity, p. 128. Job 23:1-6.—W. Jay, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 157.