Why then lament ? Is not God the friend of those who abide in the ransoming Christ, repent in reality of their sins, realise that sinners they are and Saviour He is, and take Him so by faith ?
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Chapter 8
JESUS AND JOB,
LIFE AND DEATH ,
SUFFERING AND SENTENCE, GORE AND GLORY
WHO MAY LAY HIS HAND ON US BOTH … (Job 9:33)
Job the Teacher with Tears ...
THE SITUATION
The Complaint and Rumination of Job is an Avenue to Access
It was not Job’s fault. That was the primary point. There was a day on which the children made by God came to present themselves before Him. These were spirits, or at least, Satan was. Where have you come from ? the Lord asked. Going to and fro on the earth, was the answer. “Have you considered My servant Job ?” the Lord asked: “that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and shuns evil!”
Since the Lord knows all, it is apparent that this was the prelude to a test which for all time would
v show the power of evil, the greater power of God,
v the flux in the heart of man which ONLY GOD can turn into rock-like character, and
v focus the issues man must face, like it or not.
This world is not a Social Security State. Whether or not a political body seeks to show to all men at this present time, that care is better than prayer, there remains the God of creation, of birth and death, of life and understanding, who deals with man, and with whom man must deal Prayer can heal where money cannot, and access to God provides joy and peace, whereas security provides mere husks. What however if God Himself designs a test ? Then neither wealth nor security can help. The test ? it MUST be passed.
THE TEST
It was not that God did not know: He had already given to Job First Class Honours, and stated His cherishing of the man. The point was not Job’s failings but his triumphs. Compassionate, concerned, thoughtful, sagacious, Job was a model. HENCE he could – or should – be able to answer the canny, sophisticated, superficial, devious challenge of Satan, cynical as ever, trying to make it appear that ALL men seek their own profit or good, and manage or manipulate accordingly. Job, Satan stated, serves you because You have made him rich and eminent. Remove his possessions and even YOU, God, he will curse to your face.
The test was simple. Would he ? Step one was done: Job accepted the loss of his riches with equability an equanimity. The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord, he cried. Another day was appointed, and Satan once more had access to God. The question and answer at the outset was as before. Still Job holds fast to his integrity, despite the incitation to deprive him. God made the point. Ah but! said Satan, in the typical sort of sneering way that he has, take his health – a man will serve you if You give him health – and see then, he will curse You to your face. Permission was given for the test, except that Satan was denied the power to kill Job.
Horrible sickness came, itching and indignity, harrowing and suffering. Job was reduced. Anyone seeing him might well think he had sinned, been found out, and was being given shame by the Almighty in order to be beaten and disciplined, and humbled before his fellow man. Job’s own friends, when they saw the state to which this august man was reduced, were silent for seven days!
THE TROUBLE INTENSIFIED, FINE CRACKS APPEAR IN THE FUSELAGE
As the day by day weight and squirming of disease, indignity and cumulative loss worked upon Job, and his friends began to assume he was an old, secret sinner who had managed to incur divine chastening and exposure, Job’s anguish was like scalding medicine. For the life of him, he could find no ground for such scouring and scourging as here appeared to have occurred. He refused point blank to confess to any sin of which he was unaware, citing instead what in fact were his altruistic concerns, his intensely sympathetic actions, his support of the weak, help to the miserable and pity for the orphan (Job 29).
“How many are my iniquities and sins ?” he asks. “Make me to know my transgression and my sin. Why do You hide Your face ?” (Job 13).
On the way to these considerations, as seen now in Job 9, there is a dramatic development. We shall next follow this. God is both stronger than He, and invisible. The choice friendship Job had had with the Almighty no longer showed its face in his heart (Job 29:1-3), because “He has loosed my bowstring and afflicted me.” Moreover, “At my right hand the rabble arises; they push away my feet.” In fact, “I am their taunting song!” (Job 30). Seemingly left to the tempestuous winds by God, he was even mocked by mere youths.
The singular idea had struck Job before
this, as we shall see in Job 9. “How can I answer
Him ?” he asks (9:14).
“If it is a matter of strength, He is strong,” and
“if of justice, who will appoint my day in court ?
Though I were righteous, my own mouth would condemn me.
Though I were blameless, it would prove me perverse.”
In other words, such is in integrity of God, that there is an unwritten certainty of error if he assumes himself without fault, though he can find nothing to back his tragedies, or give warrant for his woes. “I despise my life,” he cries. “Now my days are swifter than a runner. They flee away, they see no good… I am afraid of all my sufferings.”
As he pursues his theme of startled upset and wanderings in woefulness, he exclaims this:
“If I wash myself with snow water, and cleanse my hands with soap, yet You will plunge me into the pit, and my own clothes will abhor me.”
BEING Job, continuing just to be himself, this has become an incubus, a sort of unwritten condemnation chit. This is where faith comes in, not just faith in a vacuum, but faith on just grounds (not oneself), sanctioned by God. It is thus of great interest to find these words from Job:
“He is not like a man, as I am, that I may answer Him, and that we should go to court together. Nor is there any mediator between us, who may lay his hand on us both.”
This resembles his words in 16:21:
“Oh that one might plead for a man with God, as a man pleads for his neighbour.”
What he looks for is what the Christian has already found. He wants someone firstly sympathetic to his plight, secondly, one able to argue his case, thirdly, a person whom he can actually FIND to do such a thing for him, ably to secure a hearing and effectively to clear up the whole case: a MEDIATOR. Now in I Timothy 2:6, alas in its thrust ignored by the pushers of Romanism, we learn that there is “ONE GOD and ONE MEDIATOR between God and men, the Man Jesus Christ.” There is no Mass to mediate, nor any Mary. There is ONE, and THIS one is sinless, eternal and the equal of God, being His exact likeness, His Eternal Word (John 1, Hebrews 1), who became man and died as foretold in Daniel 9, evidently in AD 30. That, that is just what Job wanted, a Mediator who could act with understanding and reconciliation.
What is more, just as Job desired, there is no gap, nor any lack. HE is there and available, and furthermore, Paul continues, it is He “who gave Himself a ransom on behalf of all, to be testified in due time.” Even better, THIS ONLY MEDIATOR is not only available and equal with God (Philippians 2), but charging nothing, even pays for the cost of the sin which separates from God for those who find Him, and trust Him. For us, that time is now, and it has been so for some 2000 years. While He does not ransom all (Matthew 20:28, Romans 8:32), He IS offered on behalf of all, so that those who receive Him have a willing partner, who knew them from the first (Romans 8:29ff.). There is no point however small (Philippians 4:4-6), that cannot be brought to Him, whose peace guards and whose joy stirs the heart, while “casting ALL your care upon Him, for He cares for you,” you humble yourself before Him, “that He may exalt you in due time” (I Peter 5:6).
Job was writing perhaps 1500 B.C.. It seems that he pre-dates even Moses by a little, and yet he comes to the solution, the conclusion, the heart of the matter, a little later as we shall see.
Before however we visit this, in Job 19, let us reflect a moment. Job did not, as some may think, claim to have absolutely no sin. He seems at first assuredly far more aware of his righteous deeds and loving actions than of his sin; but he was asking that IF there were sins and iniquities dogging his straying feet, could he at least be TOLD what they were!
However, since the Lord was testing him, so that his integrity might appear, it was necessary that he should face this test without special help, which would nullify the point of the result! It was necessary that he should internally REFLECT, and consider whether many good things constitute a blameless life, or whether EVERY man needs not only a counsellor (as in Isaiah 9:6, I Corinthians 1:30), but the Redeemer. In other words, man as such, is astray from God (Romans 1-2, Psalm 51, Ephesians 4:17-19); and however much he does, he is as a person, far from having standing with God by his own excellence, being inadequate and far below the mark of that perfection of spirit and life which Jesus the Christ Himself showed (Romans 6:23).
He had both to realise this, or something very like it, and come to God on HIS divine terms, as someone who both needs and receives the Redeemer. God has not left us like stones pounded on the beach by the raging surf, or left to dry for a while, in order to be stricken by etching winds in the sand. He is not an empty Maker or an unkind Creator; but He DOES require us to seek Him and to find His way, which He has at infinite cost both made and provided (Galatians 6:14). Christ called it surrender, and realisation that in ourselves, we DO NOT HAVE what it takes to build a spiritual tower, let alone one which reaches right up to God (Luke 14:27ff.).
THE REDEEMER JUST MAY BE THERE ?
A THOUSAND TIMES NO!
HE IS ASSUREDLY BOTH THERE
AND NEEDING TO BE NOT ONLY TRUSTED,
BUT
ENTRUSTED WITH ONE’S LIFE, AND RESTED ON IN FAITH
In Job 19, so famous, being sung Christmas after Christmas in Handel’s Messiah, we see the solution which in his agony and anguish, was given to Job. Even at his most stirred ramblings, he did not vary from the fact that in essence God is certainly wholly JUST and ultimate JUDGE. At times, he wondered HOW to reconcile his condition and position with this, but the underlying fact, he did not deny in principle (Job 10:14, 13:18).
Indeed, as to those who say, ‘Who is the Almighty that we should serve Him” (Job 21:15), or “Depart from us, for we do not desire the knowledge of Your ways” (21:14), their ideas are far from his own (21:16). “Can anyone teach God knowledge!” he scathingly asks. This he declares, “… the wicked are reserved for the day of doom. They shall be brought out on the day of wrath.”
Indeed, he famously shows in Job 28 that as to that invisible but crucial wisdom which should govern our ways, it is GOD WHO HAS IT (28:23). “Behold,” he cries, even in the midst of his suffering, “the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding” (28:28).
Thus even from those vast distances of time, Job teaches modern man what Christ is and has done, and he knew that this divine redemption would come, through the inspiration of God and the exposure of His will and plan.
Let us see these, his words.
“I know that My Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth, and after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!”
In view of this revelation and certainty, he cries out –
“Oh that my words were written! Oh, that they were inscribed in a book! That they were engraved on a rock with an iron pen and lead, forever!”
His wish was granted as you see in this work of Handel’s, for centuries bringing to millions of people in a graphic and beautiful form, this very thing; and not there only.
Let this act of redemption then not be missing in our hearts, this resolution to abide in, believe on, hide our lives within the divine Redeemer
“who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous of good works.”
Indeed,
“when the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour” (Titus 3:4-5).
It is this gift which must be received by faith (cf. Acts 4:11-12).
Indeed, this work of Jesus Christ proceeded to marvellous consequences, “that having been justified by His grace, we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” We are saved WITHOUT the works of the law, says Paul in Romans 3:23ff., adding this, that the whole thing is “by grace through faith” (Ephesians 2:1-8), so that those called - and all who come are called (Romans 8:30), should have life imperishable dependent on NOTHING and NO ONE but God, whose word is His promise (John 10:9,27-28).
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Why then lament ? Is not God the friend of those who abide in the ransoming Christ, repent in reality of their sins, realise that sinners they are and Saviour He is, and take Him so by faith ? |
Just as God provided Job with a test of his integrity, to show that they who are His DO love Him, doing so NOT for what we get in goods or name or fame, but because His is faithfulness and greatness and goodness and mercy, and because in His great grace, it is He who is God, so and more abundantly had He provided for us, now that Christ has come and done what was necessary, and finished it (Hebrews 9-10).
It is this which shouts to our inner ear in a language that cannot be discarded,
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Repent and believe (Luke 13:1-3), receive the Saviour and rejoice.
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Rest in Him, and He
will lead you forth, making of your life, |
Let no circumstance, sickness or secret sorrow, feeling of weakness or woe tempt you. God is our resource, let us live it. Sin is our enemy, let us leave it. Hope is well grounded, let us use it. Temptation is our enemy, the devil its ultimate dynamic, sin its teacher: let us dispel it like lice and fleas and mosquitoes, which are far better than that.
Though our lot may seem for a time unprofitable, let us trust God to make of us and it what He will, and leaving all trust in ourselves (Proverbs 3:3-5), TRUST in Him, entrust our lives to Him, and find that good thing which He has for us. He is reached ONLY by faith, and saves ONLY by grace (Ephesians 2:1-10); but in love (John 3:16-19). Let none therefore abort the pregnant love with its grace and place in heaven, and His power on earth (Colossians 1:19ff., Matthew 28:19-20)! Let us rejoice though trial come, and find His favour by faith (Habakkuk 3:17-18, I Peter 4:12-14).
JOB II
JOB II
No Minute Message from Job
In the case of the patriarch Job, there is a test which is to display the truth. Job endured suffering in order to display that life was not for him, with all his talk of the Lord, really a matter of avoiding suffering and securing fulfilment. Here is the beauty of Job: religion is neither formality nor nominality but the pith and point, the beginning and the end, the crux and the criterion of life. Nor is it even at that, a mere matter of a necessary adjustment, provision or practice. It is TRUTH and nothing less that matters. It is the knowledge of God, of wisdom, and again, even then, not some species of specious platitude, or operational adequacy: it is a relationship so profound, an intimacy so felicitous in its inter-personal honesty and strength, that neither selfish advantage nor ease is the point: it is truth and performance, principle and practice, knowledge of God and the blessing of God in one coherent whole.
Such was the life of Job.
When the test came, there was to be a demonstration lesson. Not ONLY was all this true, but IF, even IF there were to be a further test, so that it had to be EITHER loss and pain and suffering and ignominy and disgrace and false accusation and loss of family and a wife who invited one to curse, even then, Job with the indelible imprint of the God in whom he delighted, bear with it and not break into cursing God. It is God he worshipped and when events past his understanding (but far from past ours, who look, since in Job 1 it is explained to us, though for the test, it was not so for him!), when these occur, then his trust and patience are to rise, however chastened, to meet this trial.
Would they ?
Would he show that for SOME in this world, there is a God-centred, a God-worshipping, a God-reliant attitude which is not merely not dependent on selfish advantage, pleasure or joy, but sui generis, in its own right, sufficient without extraneous additives, or desires or satisfactions, so that not EVEN the loss of that delightful sense of companionship and uplift would remove the reality of the WORSHIP. It was not that God would ACTUALLY cease in the least degree to be His compassionate, kindly, enlightening, enduing self; it was simply that all the appearances would come to the contrary, though Job's integrity would not be removed. It would be for him to bear it and bear with it and show that for him, it was not the RESULTS of religion but God Himself who was the criterion.
It was NOT that he served God for any kind of selfish gain, but because He was worthy of worship, a just reliance was in Him, and faith had there its ground and focus.
It was not basically self-centred at all. He was not an animal (and some animals, such as dogs, CAN show a faithfulness even to death!), but a man of God, not an incumbent of seeking for his own well-being as the criterion of his life, but an exponent of seeking for and living in the life of God, at His behest and for His glory, whatever the result. In his classic word,
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“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” |
The propositions were most clear as we see in Job 1. The delight in, the worship of God is founded on trust, not income; on love, not languor; on truth, not manipulation or contrivance for self-advantage. There IS such a thing as integrity, as respecting to the point of reverence and worship the One who prevails, because He is the Prince of life, and who appoints, because He is the sovereign of it. Man is not deluded in imagining that he has a moral duty, a righteous rectitude and a faithful responsibility, WHATEVER may be the personal income in all dimensions, and whatever might be the extraneous benefits readily associated.
Indeed, in believing that his Maker is also his Redeemer, and that His will is what supervenes in all considerations, he is as the case progresses, to be shown finding a reality which nothing can subdue and a glory which is for ever to be sought for all men, by avoiding which they are dissociated relics and mere pretentious puppets.
Nor is this isolated from the nature of this same Lord: for He is ever merciful and just, and yet not to be invaded with directions from His creation, (cf. Romans 9:16-22), though He is accessible where His heart has laid the answer to man’s need for mediation.
And this, it is in the Lord and Prince of life, Jesus Christ, the Redeemer who in Job’s day, that patriarch was inspired to foresee in His very power and presence on earth AS Redeemer. It was in Him, His actuality, His plan of salvation, His coming to be present to those resurrected in His name: it was in HIM that Job learned to trust, though he himself, in and by himself, should not stand righteous before God, for all his vast endeavours and gracious kindnesses.
But Job also saw this not with the eye of mere doctrinal mumblings, but with the eye of faith which doctrine encases, of reality of which it speaks the truth, as not only SO, but infinitely true, essential to life and its basis for man, the supervening reality for a just life: namely one redeemed and relished by the grace of God alone, for which no atonement can come except from the Redeemer Himself, however hard one might try, and with whatever gussets of grace one's personal garments might be expanded.
With this emphasis on grace, then, he simultaneously saw that he would be resurrected in body, and see with his own eyes from his flesh that same God, not by proxy or priesthood of man, but by very evident manifestation to himself individually, of that self-same God. Thus the very impotence of his sickness, the sense of death and horror, of what is not fine but an itching, moribund mess as he was reduced to be, during that part of his trial which was to show that GIVEN enormous bodily ill, he STILL would retain integrity.
This made plainer the need, but also the method. Because God is infinite, this does not mean that He is sloppy in thought, vague in conclusion or vapid in information. To the contrary, because He has made the very expressive power of man from His own infinite expressive power (Christ the criterion as the eternal Word of God as in John 8:58, 1:1 cf. The Bright Light ... Ch. 10), His word is the ONLY way to find the necessities of spiritual life. As to that, it is this which translates into the actualities of the physical itself, in the resurrection to that final act of redemption, that of the body (Romans 8:23). Covered already by grace in the gift of eternal life, it is only later to be implemented when Christ comes (cf. I Thessalonians 4, I Corinthians 15, John 6:50ff.).
It was nothing short of resurrection, and trusting in the God of creation, redemption and truth, that Job was inspired to see; and nothing less that he was shown that God has in store.
He MAY remove the body in decay and decrepitude, but He WILL restore it. HIS is integrity and AS REDEEMER, He is to be known, and in this, both from the sin which is the entrusted birth-wrong of every man born in our race from Adam, and from the death and diminution which is the consequence of sin, as broadly as the race. ONLY God Himself is free of it, and thus can and does redeem. To see this Redeemer on the earth, from his own resurrected body, this was the assurance and vision, the inspiration and revelation accorded to Job.
Now we have considered that Job endured suffering and the shadow of death as a test of integrity, and did so in essential integrity and truth, showing true longing for and waiting on the God of his creation. In so showing, he was like a display model, to exhibit these things, that they were so, and not just a religious dictum or desideratum. Such people exist, and so they live; and this it is that is the standard and the flag of truth, where the yachts of the race who belong to God, secure their life, fighting a good fight to the finish (as in II Timothy 4:7,18).
JESUS CHRIST, IN ALL THINGS, HAS THE PRE-EMINENCE
from JOB TO JESUS
Jesus showed the integrity of God, in human form enduring every kind of suffering.
He also showed that in love He would, could and did endure suffering in the shadow of death, in integrity and submission to His heavenly Father, from whose eternal counsel He came, and from whose eternal companionship, He was shipped to earth. On this great mission and commission, He was launched from a virgin, so that He being the Eternal Word, manifestation of God, came to earth as His only begotten Son, that is, the only One whom God translated Himself to be in the form of a man (I Timothy 3:16, John 3:16, 5:19-23, 8:58). Accordingly, He is described in John 1:18, as "in the bosom of the Father."
As the word of God, His is the expression, and He lies as the word does in a man, next to the mind and heart and spirit; and when there is purity of heart, as in God, then the Word is the total and definitive, the express depiction and showing of what one is: and with the Word of God, this is who He is! That is how Christ could say in a context of undivorceable unity with His Father, "I and My Father are one" (John 10:30 cf. John 5:19ff., 8:58), so that Jews took up stones, esteeming this nothing less than blasphemy, as making Himself equal with God.
Indeed, Jesus not only suffered willingly, not only passed through the shadow of death, which stretched out its wings as if to cover Him for ever, drowned in the hatred of those who WOULD NOT have the integrity to worship God, and would NOT submit themselves to Him, and would NOT suffer for Him, to carry out His will and instructions. He went far further, and He did so without quivering, as Job, without cracks in the tail-plane, without error in part or in whole; and being sinless, and eternal, the express image of God, equipped to cover all and willing to cover any who should call in faith upon His name as only Saviour and Lord of all, He died with the sin of those who would shed it upon Him.
He actually died. Muhammad, making a new ‘Jesus’, some 600 years later grew confused on this point, at one time asserting it happened, at another that it was made so to appear, as if he could not contain his imagination’s rovings (cf. Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch. 8, and see also *1, More Marvels ... Ch. 4, esp. *4).
However, the reality is His death (cf. SMR
Appendix C). Not in twilights of suffering
alone did He endure (cf. Hebrews 5:7), but in open exposure first on the Cross, to the
satiation of the hatred of the Jewish authorities, and in the light of common
day in the resurrection, to the consternation of those same authorities (cf.
Matthew 28, Acts 4), who could scarcely contain their inveterate persecution of
the apostles, whom they tried to cover up in imprisonment, beating and imperious command.
But the truth is discovered after all the covers are in place, since it is not
susceptible to manipulation, since God is for it *1.
╬ Nor, at the spiritual level, was this by any means all. He died not only to show under test, that love lasts beyond death and its travails, pure to the end, but also and emphatically to pay the consequences for those whose love and righteousness has by no means been perfect. Thus His suffering was not merely an exhibit of truth, but both payment for default and propitiation (Romans 3:25, 6:23, 5:1-12).
What Job showed in principle, of what God is and who He is and HOW He is to be served, Christ showed in principle but also in effectual practice: what is necessary that man might know God, as a man knows his friend, and being washed and cleansed and purged and with his debts of failure paid, to live for ever with Him.
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One pointed the
need, the other met it. |
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One showed the reality of the heart, the Other with this, the power to meet it. |
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One posed the problem and found the solution, the Other implemented it. |
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One found the One, the Redeemer to come to this very earth, on whom to rely; the other was He on whom one must rely, and He showed the basis of reliance in what He did (cf. Romans 3:23ff., II Corinthians 5:17ff., Titus 2-3). |
What was necessary was far more than suffering in integrity, and purity in idea and ideal. It was suffering in purging, the provision of a ransom, a payment, a cancellation of indebtedness in love.
The way for this was not only to be tested to the uttermost, but to be killed. Sin kills. Sacrifice always acknowledged that fact. The blood by its life made atonement (Leviticus 17:11), being poured out from the sacrificed animal to cover sin. By His stripes, we are healed, said Isaiah in Ch. 53. He was wounded for OUR transgressions, he is inspired to reveal.
By His knowledge says this same Chapter of the prophet Isaiah, He shall justify many; for He poured out His life to death, the cover to the uttermost, sparing nothing in covering the case, even with life undefiled, to bring to God, the just dying for the unjust, cleansing the slate, making right the accounts, removing the wrath of God by His own bearing of it (Romans 1-3, esp. 1:17ff., 3:23-25). What says Isaiah ? "He shall justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities."
Mercy sought; loved paid; Christ transmitted the payment in His own person. Faith receives it. Having paid, He rose breaking death entirely, His body scarred but transcendent. Faith relies on Him for its future, with joy. This is part of its assured content that brings content! Romans 10:9, I Corinthians 15). He brings peace where sin brought torment, present and prospective (Ephesians 2:16-22).
FROM JESUS TO THE JOY OF SALVATION
THE PERSONAL:
But who is healed ? Here is another test. If one does NOT accept this same Jesus, this same Redeemer, this gift of God to man, this entry to the haven of heaven, to the presence of God eternally, and if one insists on imagining that one’s own righteousness and life is sufficient to secure God and His life for ever (as in Romans 10:1-4), then one can keep that fallacious, that foolish, that futile self-exaltation.
One can then, indeed, die with it, and even for it. It is a profound presumption and an all but unutterable arrogance; and its end is death that has eternal shame (Daniel 12), a dying flame that quivers in the darkness of loathing and contempt (Matthew 22:13, Luke 3:17, Mark 9).
What Job illustrated, both in his affliction and in his deliverance through faith in the Redeemer, then to come to the earth, this it is that Jesus consummated and fulfilled, in showing WHO and HOW this is secured, by that same Redeemer.
Isaiah showed in great detail, as did David in the Psalms, and other prophets in various ways,
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WHO this
Redeemer would be (Isaiah 7, 9, 61), |
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that He would be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:1-3), |
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that He would be rejected by His own nation, Israel (Isaiah 49:7), |
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that He would be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver (Zechariah 11), |
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that He would be crucified (Psalm 22) and though the Judge of mankind, |
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that He would be subjected to contempt (Micah 5:1-3, Psalm 22), |
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that He would be resurrected on the third day after His crucifixion (Psalm 16, Hosea 6, Leviticus 23 cf. Ch. 6 above, *2), and |
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that the Gospel would include these facts, as men would be shown (Isaiah 42:6,49:6, 52:15, 61, 65:13-15). |
This, it would not by private revelation such as came to Job, but by public history and its record, by physical action and its attestation, so that even the Gentiles, those who are not Jews, could find God as Job did (Acts 2-5).
Thus does the written word of God, the Bible, stretch out the case, show the principles, investigate the issues, expose the fundamentals, enter history in its forecasts as in its precepts, determine events; and so fulfilled, as with passion by Christ (Matthew 26:52ff.), does it linger forever, not in a blither of dream, but in a blessing of power, as real as in the creation. In the desecration it is as sure in its footsteps, made in print, as in its bearing of the load, wrought in Christ, whose being and coming it presented in the same precision of detail and assurance of style, as was His own, when He came.
It would be by that same Redeemer, now shown in detail in many prophecies which He fulfilled in detail when He came to earth, that that very earth of which Job spoke as the place where he would see God and find the Redeemer (Job 19:21-29), would receive this imprint, impact and salvation. It was He for whom Israel waited as you see in Luke 2:25-38; and it was He who went to the Gentile world through the Gospel, by the Holy Spirit, until He should return (cf. Matthew 24:14). His word traced it like an exploding rocket of light; and His work performed it, like a giant mining operation, in which the very treasures of eternity were poured out (Ephesians 3:8, Colossians 1:27).
As He put it, the prophets SHOWED that first would come His suffering and THEN the glory (Luke 24:44-49), and so it was continually as you see for example in Psalm 2, 16, 22, 72.
The suffering and the escape alike, were shown through and to Job: the first to attest integrity in relationship to God, the second to show deliverance from the doom of sin when its flood-waters would not go away, and when the weakness of death and the woes of sin asserted themselves; and no man does not sin.
As to that, Job repented in humiliation of heart and appalled horror at his righteous seekings that led him to such inundations by the waves of outrage and presumption (Job 40:3-5 - 9:21-24), when the flux of incredulity battered at his ramparts and he tottered as he sought a mediator! How often do people fail to perceive the depth of God and imagine that woes are ruptures and challenges defaults; but found in the Lord, they have both meaning and answer in that same Lord, to whom they must, as with Job (19:21ff.), draw one closer towards Him, and never dim the love, but letting it flame the more ardently (cf. Acts 5:41 with 5:31).
Salvation is not a lustre of self-attainment but comes with lavish departure from the sins which bulge like fat, enervate like cancer, mislead like a false light! As for Job, so for all (Luke 13:1-3), for without repentance, there is no life, and without dissociation (from it, as a ruling principle, however unconscious in its presence), there is no association with the Lord. The grant of repentance to the Gentiles is the marvel which all but stunned the assembly (Acts 11:18).
What then ? though all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 6:23), repentance arises like a wind, and sin is no more the masthead; neither self-fulfilment nor self-will (whether ‘moral’ or not) is any more the guide and government. The ‘government shall be upon His shoulder’ as Isaiah 9 declares in one of his inspired prophecies concerning the Redeemer, who would come – as He did – as a child, to become the Prince of Life made manifest.
So it was to be and came to be: For human life does not lack its prince, and its precepts are not all; but rather the life of God through the Redeemer is as clear as are the principles for living. Nor has God has left man free with thought without action; but HE HAS ACTED. The Gospel is its witness as Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever, is its principal, performer and Prince (Acts 3:14-15). It shows both the purging of what kills, and the power for life of Him who irrupted from death to confer it eternally (Romans 7-8, Acts 5:32, 12).
Jesus the Christ endured not only the sufferings of integrity, but He suffered for integrity, that man might be relieved of his defects and deficiencies and restored alive from the death of separation from God, to His very presence in peace (Ephesians 2:14-22). He was not only delivered from death, but resurrected after it, and in His deliverance is the site for the deliverance of any and all who flee to Him for refuge, as God has provided (Hebrews 6:19, 2:1-3).
Till He comes, He has sent as He revealed, His Holy SPIRIT, to endue, empower, enrich, enlighten, guide, gird, comfort, strengthen and lead as we who are His, abiding in His love, seeking His will and trying in all things to please Him who is the Word of God; for as He declared, we are not left as if orphans! (John 14:16, Luke 24:49, Romans 8:9, Ephesians 3:16, 5:15-21, Acts 16).
THE PERFORMANCE:
Accordingly, just as Job showed to all that integrity of life and trust in the Lord, though severely tested, which is the alternative to living to, for and by oneself or one’s own choices for life, ‘good’ or bad: so and much more so, Jesus gave to all the way to HAVE that integrity, which Job found it impossible to maintain except in, by and through the Redeemer. It is not just performance, though test can show up hypocrisy; it is purging, remedy, ransom and redemption that is required. It is no man who can supply this (cf. Psalm 49:7,15), but God alone. He did not legislate from heaven to cover up, but came to earth to shut up the voice of sin in its condemnation, by bearing it (I Peter 2:22-25).
The flower must have its stock, and this the planting and that the root system must be in the soil: the trees of righteousness are first of all planted by God: they are not wild! (cf. Matthew 15:13, Isaiah 61:1-3, 62:2). Those who are so planted by God are called Messiah-ans, and as ‘Messiah’ is the Hebrew term for what is basis for ‘Christ’ in the Greek, they are Christ-ians or Christians.
As Job foresaw in his passion, that same Redeemer, not in the clouds of thought but on the clods of this very earth, so we who now live, have more, but not less than the sight of the Redeemer, the Christ, now received into heaven pending His coming (Acts 3:19-21) at the restitution of all things. We have an enduring testimony in fact and function. Now we have not only the site of His birth – Bethlehem, already fulfilled, but that of His death in Jerusalem, Calvary, the very latitude and longitude of it, its placement on this earth. We who are His have moreover His Spirit and His word like a light in a dark place (cf. I Peter 1:19), and as their eyes saw the Lord, so ours in the 21st century, and the last one likewise, see His word being fulfilled as if there were a military program, not for evil, but for good*2.
Moreover we have the attestation of His resurrection (Luke 1:1ff., 24, John 20), that of Him whom no nation nor power could control or keep, subdue or secure; for His death was as planned as His life, and its way and point shown centuries before He accomplished it (cf. Luke 9:31) has been fulfilled first in the physical fact (John 20, Luke 24), in the triumphant tidings that swept Jerusalem which had been His site and then the world, and in the significance of it in its place in the divine plan of salvation, followed the divine gift of creation, all as early foretold.
This, like the power over sickness, death and sin manifested by Christ before the resurrection, showed that far from being an eccentric creator of chaotic strife, God was the inventor of a liberty which could bring from the immense and intensive, mathematically expert designs which enable our thoughts and wills, a vitality of life, instead of a clatter and a clutter of evil that surges. Our misuse and abuse in mind, body and spirit of this gear, as a race, has brought the normal result of wrong-handled products: difficulty, disaster and ruin. Since the scope is eternity, the power is immense and the issues are vital, the results are proportionate: a sick world in a stricken situation which ever intensifies, as diabolically misused designs of course would always show.
These vital acts of God, in Christ, are now not forecast but history; and we who find Him, find the same God that Job did; but now we know Him direct: for this IS eternal life that “they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent”: one God, speaking and sending, and Him sent, relaying and manifesting Him who sent (John 3:16, I John 3:9-16, Isaiah 48:16).
THE FINALITY:
Thus “the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world” (I John 3:14). The sufferings are now all accomplished, which He had to bear (Isaiah 52-53); but the Sovereign Majesty is to come; for JUST AS no power or sickness, just as death itself could not contain Him (Acts 2:24-30-31) when He came to suffer, show and die, to speak and overcome and secure salvation for all who receive Him, SO on His return, tests concluded, ruling power will invest Him (Psalm 2, Isaiah 59, 11 II Thessalonians 1).
The predicted and now predicated Gospel having saturated this earth (Matthew 24:14), at that point there will be the Government on His Shoulder indeed, and He will rule upon this vagrant earth (Isaiah 11, Revelation 19-20), before it is removed altogether (Matthew 24:35, Revelation 20, Isaiah 51:6).
God is patient, but also Prince and Leader and Lord.
Let Job, then, for everyone, be your introduction to Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One sent to secure that for which Job sought, and which was granted to him by faith. It is by the same faith that we now receive Him, not as to come to suffer for sin and redeem us from it, but as HAVING already done it (John 1:12-14, Hebrews 9).Moreover, Him we receive not as mere flesh, though He came to this for His salvation to be secured for mankind (Titus 2-3), but as the One equal with God (Philippians 2), who does what the Father does in the same way (John 5:19ff.), and who beyond time had His everlasting goings (Micah 5:3), the first and the last (Isaiah 44:6, Revelation 2:8).
It is He who was there in the beginning as the word of God, the very eternal life of God (John 1:1, I John 1:1-4, John 8:58, before and beyond time) and what then ? This: “As many as received Him, to them He gave the power to become the children of God” (John 1:12), those who are “born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”
That is a chief feature of the Christian’s joy, that it is with God Himself that we deal (I Timothy 3:16), and who has dealt for us, thereby providing a joy which no man can take from him or her (John 16:11), who believing, trusts Him, and entrusting life itself to Him, gains it in eternity from Him.
It is DONE. All he or she has to do is receive HIM who IS the Redeemer, as His word shows and His power appoints; and therefore to receive all that He has done, in His substitution, ransom and resurrection, knowing this, that NOTHING will be able to separate us who so believe and receive Him, from the love of Christ, neither things past nor future, grand nor small, dynamic with devilries nor thrusting with power. HIS is ALL power, and in Him we live (Romans 8:29-39, Matthew 28:19-20).
It is this which shouts to our inner ear in a language that cannot be discarded. It shouts as it did before, and it cries yet again, but more softly … and yet more strongly.
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Repent in reality and believe (Luke 13:1-3),
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If now you are tested by various trials, |
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Rest in Him, and He will lead you forth, making of your life,
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Indeed, as this same Jesus declared,
“Most assuredly, I tell you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life” (John 5:24).
Eternity never stops! (Ephesians 1:11). When you know Jesus Christ as Lord, the Eternal Word of God, the only Saviour: you never want it to do so! In this, there is a satiation of bliss, though it is in a life of what is sometimes extraordinary challenge, where the power of God is provided not for pleasure or self-congratulation or self-fulfilment, but for service in His name, and apportionment in His place, as He wills who being Shepherd, knows His sheep.
NOTES
SMR Ch. 6, Great Execrations ...Ch. 7;
Barbs, Appendix 3, Biblical Blessings Ch. 15, Extended Endnote 2,
BIBLE TRANSLATIONS 33, Acme ... Ch. 11,
With Heart
... Ch.
3,
Spiritual Refreshings ... Ch.
5
The Magnificence
of the Messiah
Endnote 1,
AWME
8 (on resurrection and Lazarus, yes and both with
Jerusalem);
contrasting Greek bodily terms -
Let God be God Ch. 2
;
and
New Zealand,
The World Belongs to Me and I am His
as marked;
Life Story ... Appendix 2;
Dizzy Dashes, Heady Clashes and the Brilliant
Harmony of Inevitable Truth Ch. 6,
The Frantic Millenium ... Ch.
4;
Bewilderment, Bedazzlement, Bedevilment or the Beauty of Christ's
Holiness Ch. 1