Job 12:2
No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you.
JOHN GILL (1697-1771): These words of Job are to be taken ironically, exposing their vanity and self-conceit: “ye are the people;” the only, and all the people in the world of importance and consequence for good sense and wisdom; the only wise and knowing folk, the men of reason and understanding; all the rest are but fools and asses or, ye are the only people of God, His covenant people, His servants; that are made acquainted with the secrets of wisdom, as none else are.
ALEXANDER MacLAREN (1826-1910): It is astonishing what unteachable, untamable creatures men are.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES (1899-1981): Man’s ultimate problem is his pride.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): Do you know a class of people that pull the most tremendously long faces, that always look so serious, that talk the English language with a kind of unctuous twang, that give a savory pronunciation to every word they utter? Beware of them!
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): In a vain religion there is much of show, and affecting to seem religious in the eyes of others. In a vain religion there is much censuring, reviling, and detracting of others…It is common for those who are most sinful themselves, and least sensible of it, to be most forward and free in judging and censuring others: the Pharisees, who were most haughty in justifying themselves, were most scornful in condemning others.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: What is this spirit that condemns? It is a self-righteous spirit. Self is always at the back of it, and it is always a manifestation of self-righteousness, a feeling of superiority, and a feeling that we are all right while others are not. That then leads to censoriousness, and a spirit that is always ready to express itself in a derogatory manner. And then, accompanying that, there is the tendency to despise others, to regard them with contempt. I am not only describing the Pharisees, I am describing all who have the spirit of the Pharisee.
C. H. SPURGEON: You know some men, perhaps, who are very stringent believers of a certain form of doctrine and very great admirers of a certain shape of Church rule and government. You will observe them utterly despising, and abhorring, and hating all who differ from their predilections. Albeit the difference is but as a jot or a tittle, they will stand up and fight for every rubric, defend every old rusty nail in the Church door and think every syllable of their peculiar creed should be accepted without challenge. “As it was in the beginning, so must it be now, and so must it ever be even unto the end.”
JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564); Moroseness is the character of the old, but they become especially unteachable, because they measure wisdom by the number of years.
AUGUSTUS TOPLADY (1713-1778): King Henry made the length of his own arm a standard measure throughout England―since called a yard. Do not bigots act much the same part in matters of religion?
C. H. SPURGEON: Now it is an observation which your experience will probably warrant, as certainly mine does, that mostly these people stand up so fiercely for the form, because, lacking the power, that is all they have to boast of. They have no faith, though they have a creed. They have no life within and they supply its place with outward ceremony. What wonder therefore that they fiercely defend that?
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: The Pharisees were expert at that. They went to the temple regularly; they were always punctilious in these matters of the details and minutiae of the law. But the whole time they were judging and condemning their fellows with contempt.
C. H. SPURGEON: One of the most frequent symptoms is formality in his religious worship…They will have it that there must always be observed, not simply reverent behavior in the House of God, but something more than mere reverence, there must be an abject slavish, tyrannical fear upon the hearts of all who are gathered. They will have it that every jot and tittle of our worship must always be conducted with a certain traditional decorum. Now these people, as frequently as not, know nothing whatever of the power of godliness and only contend for these little shells because they have not the kernel. They fight for the surface albeit they have never discovered “the deep that couches beneath.” They know not the precious ores that lie in the rich mines of the Gospel, and therefore the surface, covered though it is with weeds and thistles, is quite enough for them.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: Formal Christianity is often the greatest enemy of the pure faith.
J. C. RYLE (1816-1900): If you love your own soul, beware of formality. Nothing is so dangerous to a man’s own soul. Familiarity with the form of religion, has a fearfully deadening effect on the conscience. It brings by degrees a thick crust of insensibility over the whole inner man. None seem to become so desperately hard as those who are continually repeating holy words and handling holy things, while their hearts, while their hearts are running after sin and the world…They are gradually hardening their hearts, and searing the skin of their consciences.
JOHN CALVIN: They become especially unteachable.
A. W. PINK (1886-1952): Each of us must be much on his guard lest he mistake pride and self-will for conscientious scruples. There is a vast difference between firmness and an unteachable spirit, as there is between meekness and fickleness.
MATTHEW HENRY: When we hear people ready to speak of the faults of others, or to censure them as holding scandalous errors, or to lessen the wisdom and piety of those about them, that they themselves may seem the wiser and better, this is a sign that they have but a vain religion. The man who has a detracting tongue cannot have a truly humble gracious heart. He who delights to injure his neighbour in vain pretends to love God; therefore a reviling tongue will prove a man a hypocrite. Censuring is a pleasing sin, extremely complaint with nature, and therefore evinces a man’s being in a natural state.
GEORGE SWINNOCK (1627-1673): He is not half a saint who is but a negative saint―The tree that is barren and without good fruit is for the fire, as well as the tree that brings forth evil fruit.
THOMAS GOODWIN (1600-1679): “The fruit of the Spirit―mark that allusion―is love, peace, joy, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance,” Galatians 5:22.
C. H. SPURGEON: The man who knows how precious the life of godliness is, the man who understands its vitality, its deep-seated, deeply-rooted heart power—he also loves the form, but not as he loves the Spirit…He is apt, perhaps, to think less of forms than he should do, for he will mingle first with one body of sincere Christians, and then with another, and he will say, “If I can enjoy my Master’s presence it is but little matter to me where I am found. If I can but find the name of Christ extolled and His simple Gospel preached, this is all I desire.”
J. C. RYLE: If you love life, beware of formality.
