Sermon 53, Job 14-4
The sermon covers a great question from Job: “Who can make an unclean thing clean? No one can” (v4).
This launches Calvin into a good sermon on original sin and man’s condition. Calvin really wants us to think about the brevity of our lives and the misery of our lives. To really think about these two things. And, further, to realize that both conditions arise from us not him, it’s our sinfulness that has resulted in our inevitable deaths and trouble-filled lives.
Yesterday I learned about a yoga technique that can help with edema and I am going to try it. In today’s sermon, and Calvin has said this a hundred times before, he states “Let us examine ourselves daily to learn in how many ways we have offended God and deserve death”. I am going to try and combine these two practices today.
Calvin is uncompromising on man’s sins, and man’s inability to save himself. It is all done by God, not via a “leg up” but solely through God. To him, and to me, anything other than that is to make God smaller.
Also, the origin of all our unhappiness is being separated from God. Forget any other self help. But our happiness can begin here. “God is making us participants in his own life, which is everlasting”.