Job
F.A. Blair
PROLOGUE
THE books of Job and Ecclesiastes help to solve two great problems that the conditions of human life in all ages of the world have presented to the minds of thoughtful observers. Ecclesiastes traces man's strivings to attain happiness while he makes the greatest possible use of all God has given him in the world; Job is concerned with the mystery of suffering, especially the suffering of the righteous. If the questions raised be answered from human experience, without the revelation of redemption and without the presence of the Spirit of God dwelling with men as known in Christianity, yet God be owned; we find the difficulties and the struggles of a Solomon and of a Job leading to the same condition. God's ways are inscrutable, and His government is beyond human grasp; He is to be sought, feared and obeyed. When He reveals Him-self, man at once finds his true place.
Many questions arise for the thoughtful mind that looks for a deeper explanation of experience than can be answered from natural causes. Why is life here so full of labour that reaps so little reward? Why is there so much suffering even amongst the God-fearing? What is to guide man while journeying through the world? Man is conscious that there are powers outside this physical world over which he has no control, and these affect his life here; ashy is he left a victim to the powers of evil? Why does he fear the light of truth? He knows that God is greater than man, and he honours that he is responsible to Him, yet feels no inherent strength in himself to meet the responsibility. What is his relationship with such a God, whom, he feels, demands all homage and perfect submission of will from man? He knows that he cannot escape the governance of God, and he depends upon His favour. Where will he find rest for his harassed mind? Where is real happiness to be found?
The complete answer to these questions can only be found through divine instruction leading to the under-standing of man's true relationship with God. When God is truly known the heart is happy in dependence on Him, the many troubling questions disappear, and with them the anxieties that weary the soul. The heart that rests in God finds in present suffering a blessed means of learning the character of God, who is a God of all grace and of all comfort. While such knowledge is gained at man's expense, and by the shattering of his earthly hopes, another object is set before the soul in the time of trial, even God Himself. God meets the soul in its difficulties by what He is in Himself for man. When the heart is all broken with sorrow it is cast upon Him in utter dependence, and finds its rest and comfort in Him alone. God comes with grace, and by the revelation of Himself, in patient: goodness and in strengthening power, lifts the heart above and beyond all. The sorrow, and in spite of circumstances makes the soul happy in the gifts of His kindness. Man's happiness springs from sources entirely outside his circumstances; it is found in the understanding and enjoyment of man's true place before God, and in receiving everything from His hand as the expression of His perfect goodness. To be happy man must know him-self as he is, and be done with all questions as to himself, and he must know what God is in fullness of grace and in active goodness for man.
In the scriptures we find special grounds of blessing laid clown for those who are brought into a particular place by extraordinary means, such as we see in Israel. They were a redeemed people, miraculously delivered out of slavery in Egypt, and brought into the freedom and prosperity of Canaan. The blessing of the children of Israel depended upon their obedience to the law which God gave them, and which they had sworn to keep. God bore with their failures with infinite patience, and provided in the priesthood a means of restoration; but the ground of their blessing rested on their faithfulness to the covenant into which they had voluntarily entered at Sinai. The law and the ordinances given by the hand of Moses and maintained by the priesthood were a special ground of blessing upon which the enjoyment of the goodness of God was made to rest. In this way the faithfulness of man was tried when he had been placed in a most favoured position.
Christianity brings to all who believe, the knowledge of eternal redemption through faith in the Redeemer and in the blessed work that He did when He gave His life for sinners on the cross of Calvary. Because the work of Christ in redemption has been finished to the complete satisfaction and glory of God, the believer is not only forgiven all his trespasses and sins, but he has been delivered from his old state of bondage to sin, and been brought into an entirely new state free from sin. The bondage ended with death, and the death of Christ, who died to the life of this world, ended for faith the existence of the life of the flesh, the life that connects us with this world. The old life of sin is gone by the judgment of God, for Christ who was without sin offered Himself in our stead and died under its condemnation. But Christ rose again from among the dead, and the believer now lives in Him unto God. The believer awaits the redemption or complete deliverance of his body in the day of glory, and the resurrection morning will prove the full power of the work of Christ even for the body of the believer. The knowledge of redemption brings man into a new and special relationship with God; he is alive unto God in Christ; he is not his own, but is bought with a price.
Beside these special relationships which in Christianity rest on faith, and for Israel when under the law upon obedience to a covenant, there are certain fundamental truths upon which rests all relationship of man with God. These fundamental truths are clearly brought out in the book of Job. But we need to go back to the beginning of the history of man to see what brought him into his present troubled condition.
THE PRINCIPLE OF SIN ENTERS THE WORLD
The book of Genesis tells the story of the fall of man. He quickly fell from his state of innocency, a state in which the question of right and wrong never entered into his mind. Man is no longer innocent, and he now has a conscience, an intrinsic consciousness of right and wrong. He left the Garden of Eden with the ability to examine his own behaviour and the necessity to do so because he no longer followed only that which was good. Now he needs an object outside and above himself by which to live, and a standard of right in a testimony of truth.
The only way for an innocent man to acquire a conscience was by doing wrong. Right and wrong were never weighed in the mind of an innocent man. Only when the consciousness of wrong was in the mind as guilt would a man need to distinguish between right and wrong in his thoughts and actions, for by sinning he brought himself under judgment. A command of obedience would not of itself introduce a sense of wrong into the mind; nor would it, as a mere command, test a will until the will to follow another course was active. Where there was no lust there was no will to disobey the command; there was no desire to change from the enjoyment of the things at hand. An innocent man, not knowing any imposition on his will would remain in his state of innocency; but if his will found opposition to a desire awakened in him, he would be danger of asserting his will to satisfy the desire, and then he would no longer remain innocent. This is what happened in the Garden of Eden when man was left free to make a choice; he acted independently and fell from his first estate.
Sin same in by subtlety, and Adam and Eve were deceived by the treachery of sin. They were led to believe that there would be no immediate ill-effects from their act, and that they would, by an act of self-will, realize greater enjoyment of the gifts of God, than by simply and unquestioningly depending on the goodness of God. They did not know that the attraction of sin vanishes with its perpetration, and that the fruit of sin is not satisfaction but remorse. They learned this by experience after they fell.
Our first parents used their will to satisfy an awakened desire, which found its motive in self-pleasing and not in the good pleasure of the will of God. Their act was also direct disobedience to the expressed will of God. Man sought to be independent, and to attain God-likeness, knowing good and evil, by the independent use of his own will. He gained his knowledge by robbery. He wilfully became independent, or gained a supposed independence, by openly taking to himself that which was the sole right of another: to whom he was subject, or ought to have been. He stole the forbidden fruit, and took to himself the right to pilot his own way through the intricate waters of good and evil, refusing to be subject to the word of God, and not having the inherent power to resist evil when it came with seduction. Man allowed self-pleasing instead of the word of God to govern his motives, he became a slave to self, and morally speaking, he even lost independence of will before he got it. With- out God man could not know what was good, and his own desires aroused by the demands of nature, let loose as lust, were not a sure guide for life, but the way of death. Nothing could end such a course but death, and death was the sentence passed on man for disobedience; it closes his history of wilfulness. The sentence of death was not annulled, nor was the path of life opened up by curbing these desires. The way to the tree of life in the garden was barred to fallen man by a flaming sword. Life now is the gift of God in a new creation.
Once man had sinned, not only did his guilt brand him a wilful sinner, but, lust being awakened in him as covetousness which governed his will, the principle of sin was introduced into his nature. It was now part of his nature to grasp all that was in his reach, not because | he recognized the hand of God in giving all, nor acknowledged His goodness by remaining subject to Him, but self-gratification now being his ruling motive he strove to gain everything, even life, without reference to God.
Man tried to forget the very existence of God, though he was still conscious of a power greater than his own. His restless cravings after God, without whom he cannot live, and the conscience he gained in departing from God, left him with some apprehension of partial truths. These partial truths, not being mixed with faith in the true knowledge of God, became his superstitions. Man lusted to his fall, and it became part of his nature to follow his desires; whatever cultivation these might undergo they remain lusts of the flesh. The principle of - sin was within him even if outward temptation did not call it out, or if external restraint prevented it wilfully acting to produce its fruits. Children partake of the nature of their parents, and a selfish, sinful world, held in check by various restraints, has developed from disobedient and outcast parents.
God did not allow the power of evil to challenge His absolute power, nor did He leave Himself without witness. In grace He wrought in the hearts of some and sustained them through faith in Himself. Faith counted on God, who revealed Himself by His word which He gave suited to the wants of men. In response to their acknowledgement of Him and to the confession they made of their sinful state, He blessed them with prosperity and peaceful life. The world soon became divided between those who called upon God, recognizing His absolute claims and authority over man, and those who walked by their own wills, following the dictates of their desires. Besides owning God's right over man and over the world, the faithful acknowledged the just sentence of death under which man lay, and in their approach to God they brought a sacrifice. They offered up a life as a substitute for the life which they confessed man had forfeited through sin, and they burnt the offering on the altar unto God. The victim was not only a sacrifice to expiate the just sentence of death, but the worshipper offered it wholly to God, keeping no part of it for him-self and in this way the offerer recognized the holy and absolute claims of the righteousness and majesty of God. The details concerning sin, the various aspects of trespasses and transgressions, came out later on when God gave a people a law and a system of ordinances which took account of sin in detail. Sacrifices were offered up to atone for the sins of the people and the blood of a victim flowed to purge away the guilt of sin before God.
But there was a deeper consideration to be taken into account than meeting the need of a sinner. The glory and majesty of God had been compromised by the entrance of sin into the world, and this had to be recognized when man sought to approach God. A substitutionary sacrifice was offered for committed sin, a victim was sacrificed instead of the sinner, and the sin was administratively forgiven. But even when no sin had been committed, a worshipper who sought to approach God had to consider his state and God's moral nature. This was recognized in the whole burnt-offering in which all was offered up to God upon the brazen altar. This offering acknowledged the state of man as sinful, and gave glory to God in the place where sin was judged. The one who brought a burnt-offering in effect said, "There is nothing in me God can accept, but I bring all to all that His nature claims, and in a way which glorifies Him in all that He is, I bring it in the person of this sacrifice." Coming in this manner, owning man's departure from God, and that there is positive enmity between his soul and God so that nothing but death will meet the case, the worshipper is accepted in the devotedness of the one offered up in the sacrifice. The burnt-offering looked beyond the mere need of the guilt of man, it acknowledged his state before God, and it met the claims of God in the place of sin. The one who offered the sacrifice admitted that he could not, in a nature defiled by sin, stand before God. Death must intervene, and the holiness, righteousness, .majesty, honour, truth and love of God must be glorified by the perfect devotedness of the victim wholly offered up to God.
The types of old foreshadowed the perfect offering up of Christ, who was perfect in devotedness and obedient unto death that God might be glorified in the place of sin. Christ was the tree antitype of these sacrifices; and being without sin He Was made sin and suffered under its condemnation. He voluntarily offered Himself, yet it was perfect obedience to the will of the Father. In the cross of Christ righteousness was absolutely met in perfect holiness and separation from sin, but infinite love provided the sacrifice.
"WHERE ART THOU?"
The story of Job's suffering, the recital of his trials, and the way in which God revealed Himself to Job at the end, open up the question of man's state in nature, quite apart from any question of guilt in offences com-mitted against God or his neighbour. The question raised is, "Where art thou?" not, "What hast thou done?" Man by nature has turned from God, he does not want God to interfere in. his ways; he is at enmity with God because he has offended Him, and his sin, self-will and self-justification shut out God.
We see the conflict going on in the soul of a man. The experiences through which he passes and the result are unfolded in the history of the suffering of a man, and we get far more than a mere moral lesson in patience. God calls the attention of Satan to Job, and behind- the first experiences there is a controversy between God and Satan, and Job is the battle-ground. The questions raised are answered in the soul of a man, and the trials through which he passes not only reveal the character of the man, but they help to form his character. What Job experienced and what he eventually learned with God as his instructor, became part of Job. Not by changing his old nature, but by building into the man a new work, though the whole truth and extent of this work, which is wrought by the Spirit of God, was not revealed until Christ had glorified God in His work down here; and God had glorified Him at His own right hand on high. God formed job after His own mind by the ways of His marvellous discipline which He in grace carried to completion by the revelation of Himself to the soul of Job. In that revelation Job saw himself in the light, and in self-judgment reached greater moral heights than he had ever known. Afterwards God blessed him with great temporal prosperity as the visible sign of the day that God was with him. In all this we have riot the revelation of God as -a. redeeming-God, but the whole course of the history discloses what God is in government. He never takes His eyes off the righteous, and in enjoying grace we must not forget the government of God.
In the first trials, caused by the attacks of Satan, Job was completely justified before the adversary, who could find no entrance where faith rested truly in God. But the work of God in Job's soul was not yet finished.
The principles of the instruction found here are true for all times, though now in a day of grace, and because the Holy Spirit has been sent down for power in the believer, the experiences of a Christian are modified. Christ has overcome the adversary, and is sitting down at the right hand of power on high. The Holy Spirit has been sent down as the witness to the exaltation of Christ and testifies to the power of His resurrection and glory. There is a Man in the glory, sitting at the right hand of God. The principles of the relationship of the soul with God, and the natural relations in which God first set man, remain the same as ever, but the believer is set free, through death with Christ, from the power of sin which gained control over his will at the fall. The Holy Spirit by whom the believer has been sealed for the day of manifestation in glory is now the power of his new life. He has life in Christ, and in such power by the Holy Ghost, that he is able to look upon death as gain; though his hope is to be clothed upon with his house from heaven, as it is expressed in 2 Corinthians 5:2. Already buried with Christ in baptism, he is raised with Him for faith, and in actual death he leaves death behind, to be entirely with Christ. Using the language of faith as to daily circumstances he says with confidence, "Though our out-ward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day." The eye of the inner man is on the unseen, and he sees with the true sight of faith. Job saw with the eyes of faith, but until God broke the spell that held his soul from knowing perfect liberty with Himself, his vision was dimmed by self-occupation.
The heart is naturally infidel; it makes no room for God. This is man's natural inheritance as the result of his first wilful act. God must be everything to the souls of those whom He has in. grace chosen to bless, and He has to strike through the natural darkness which closed around man when he was driven from the Garden of Eden. He has to empty the heart of all that has come in between it and God and which now obsesses the mind. When the true light shines into the heart, it shows up all that has been covered in darkness.
We are what our object is; that which fills the mind forms the character. But God is not occupied merely with our character. He deals with the conscience, for it is in the conscience that He is recognized. He does His own work in the soul, showing through the conscience, all that is inconsistent with the truth He reveals. He empties the heart, that through the sense of His grace, and by the knowledge of Himself, He may fill it and form us after Himself. Even when He has begun His work in our soul by the Spirit and a new nature is born of Him, He has to break through all the natural opposition of the human heart. He has to shatter all its self-respect and self-righteousness, to set the soul free from its bondage to self. Not until He has broken down the natural opposition of the will by exposing its resistance to Him and its self-assertion, does He reveal Himself to the soul, and in the light of what He is in His nature, the soul sees itself, and there man learns to judge himself, in the presence of God. Then it is man sees himself in the vile-ness and nothingness of a fallen nature with which even God can do nothing, it cannot be improved.
Though the work of the Spirit of God is a most blessed work in a man, and the man in whom He works knows it, because the Spirit turns his thoughts to the love of God, yet He does not occupy the soul with the work He is doing. If a Christian through unfaithfulness in his walk loses communion with God, the Holy Spirit in grace makes him take account of his state to discover where the evil lies which interrupted his communion. It is by this means he learns to discern between good and evil, he learns it by judging himself.
If the work of the Holy Spirit in the soul were made the absorbing interest of the soul, it would defeat the very object of the experience and conflict through which the soul is made to pass. God draws the heart to Him-self, and what He does to us and in us breaks us away from all that holds the heart naturally in its grasp. We turn from that which we come to hate. The more blessed the work within, the more dangerous self-occupation becomes. Mystics in all ages have stumbled through being absorbed with themselves. Looking for the satisfaction of something awakened within themselves, and at the same time trying to suppress all natural feeling, even of hope and of fear, they found no power to rise higher than their own thoughts; they lost God in the maze of their own cravings. Because the work of God in the believer is so blessed, and the desires and interests awakened in him become other than this world can satisfy, he is apt to grow occupied with the work, and forget Him who has revealed Himself in a mighty work of love, and unfolded His counsels of grace in the Person of Christ Jesus, the Son of His love.
THE STATE OF MAN
Viewing the book of Job as a whole we see the great subject opened up is the state of man. Can a man present himself before God and be accepted? Can he rest in his own righteousness? Is it possible for him to do so even when no specific sin can be laid to his charge and God favours him and declares him "perfect and upright"? If, in the wisdom of the government of God, what is in the nature of man is allowed to expose itself, will not man find more and more reason to judge himself! Though a man may not fall into open sin, has he a nature in which God can take delight? Even if he behaves perfectly in trial, is this a proof that there is nothing to judge in his state before God? As he realizes the presence of God will he not find, in the light of His presence, more and more cause to judge his state in nature?
It is wonderful to see these weighty moral questions being opened out in the soul of a man, and to have the answers unfolded on principles which stand for all time and outside all dispensations. Job did not have the revelation of the New Testament, when the Good Shepherd came to give His life for the sheep; but his faith clung to God who he was sure would never let him perish. (See John 10:27, 29) God sustained his faith through all his trial, but the full answer to the enigma of his sufferings, which he felt were not connected with any transgression of his, had to wait until the Good Shepherd of the flock of God came to take the place of the Redeemer, whom Job sought in faith. Not until His redemptive work was done could any soul know the full judgment of God against sin, and enter with divine certainty into the blessings of the saved, as the result of that blessed One offering up Himself as a sacrifice for sin.
God had dealt kindly with Job; he had blessed him with many temporal blessings (Job 1:1-3). Amongst men Job was counted a righteous man, perfect and upright, fearing God and eschewing evil, and declared by God, "without his like in all the earth." But God not only Wanted Job to be perfect in his ways, He wanted him to be completely happy with Himself, and in a way that nothing could interfere with and disturb. To be free to enjoy divine favour as it comes from the heart of God, the soul must know God in His nature and be at home in such knowledge. This knowledge necessarily and immediately discloses what man is in his moral state in nature, for man naturally desires to have nothing to do with God. A man is brought to the knowledge of himself when God in grace reveals Himself to the soul, and then he sees the true value of his own self-estimation, which has to be brought out by some means and exposed to the light. His happiness does not rest on secure ground until he is set free from a self which shuts out God. There can be no communion with God in a self-occupied soul, for self as an object excludes God. A man is not free, from self until he has learned to judge himself in the light of the presence of God. Unless the soul is kept wholly dependent upon God, and knows its dependence, and is glad of it, and seeks to rest nowhere else, every-thing given by God is gathered about self for the exaltation of self. This is strongly in evidence in chapter 29 where the honour rendered to a great and exalted Man is seen, not as wrong, but where it made everything of the man.
Job did not know what was in him. Man does not know what he is by nature, and what hinders his real enjoyment of blessing with God, until he is stripped bare of human adornments, and sees his own nakedness in the presence of God. The blessings of God, His mercies and favours are enjoyed for themselves, and God is scarcely acknowledged, even by the best of men, until He breaks through the self-centredness of nature. God has to expose to man his presumption in taking every blessing for granted and as his just due, instead of giving thanks to God for His condescending heart right with God always gives thanks for His gifts before it speaks of its joy in receiving them.
For man to know the true state of his heart, and to find how proud and infidel it is, God must allow it to be thoroughly searched, so that nothing remains bidden which might at some time rise up to deceive the soul. Peter had to pass through deep waters to have a self-confident heart exposed in all its weakness. He needed the lesson to teach him to place no confidence in the flesh, so that nothing should intrude to hinder his enjoyment of the truth as he was to know it in Christ. Only when there is nothing left of self to claim the portion due to God, can the heart fully enjoy the gifts of God with God. Then only will the soul be free before God, and looking up to Him be at liberty to take full pleasure in that which He gives.
CHAPTER 1 & 2 INTRODUCTION - SATAN VERSUS FAITH
In the first two chapters we see behind the scenes which are being enacted upon the stage of this world. As we read of the trials of the upright man whom God in His government saw fit to pass through affliction, many questions arise. The first question raised concerns the existence and reality of faith in man. Can Satan overcome faith sustained by the knowledge of God? The activity and steadfastness of faith is incomprehensible to the arch-enemy. Satan reasons that goodness or righteousness in the creature is impossible without reward, and that Job's piety was due to the favours he received from God. If tile present advantage, which ministered to selfishness, were taken away, would Job fear God and submit to His hand?
Man had fallen under the power of the enemy through the seduction of reward. Not a reward such as God gives, nor in the way He gives; He brings the one whom He rewards into His own joy and shares His pleasure in giving; His gifts are enjoyed with Him; He does not give away. Satan's rewards, though perhaps liberal, exhaust the soul; he leaves man alone to reap the fruits of his sowing. Man put himself into the hands of Satan by one act of self-gratification. His thoughts turned inward and became centred on himself by the promise that by the use of his own discretion and pleasing himself, he would enjoy greater advantages than God had given man in the first place. Satan proposed to man a richer way of life by self-indulgence and a supposed independence which man could have only in will. Man can never really be independent, though his will desires to be so; the moment he sinned he became a servant to his lust. Satan gained control over man through his lust, and he awakened desire by the promise of reward. The reward proved man's undoing, but it seemed to prove that the creature could only act by such a motive. If God with-drew His outward support, so Satan reasoned, man would fall away and blaspheme Him, whom he would blame for depriving him of his happiness.
The only way to find an answer to such a question was by trial, with Satan on the one side afflicting man, and God on the other sustaining faith by the true know-ledge of Himself. By allowing Job to be stripped of every God-given blessing so that nothing remained to influence his heart, the faith of Job was put to the proof. Faith has God for its sole object; He is known only to faith. God would have to cease to exist before faith, which lives by Him, could be destroyed. Faith relies upon God when every human hope is gone. Though the soul may never have known what it is to have stood in the presence of God, so that it should know its true state in the light, yet the true character of the nature of God is known to the feeblest faith, and the adversary seeks to darken the true light by hiding God from the conscience. God always preserves faith, for faith rests in Him and He cannot deny Himself. The whole story shows that whatever trials afflict Job, however dark the clouds may be which overshadow his soul when the impatience and rebellion of his unbroken will is being exposed in him, yet the sense of relationship with God is retained in his heart. He feels that God is dealing with him, though he rebels against His ways.
Job remained steadfast in the face of his calamities and did not charge God foolishly, or attribute folly to God (Job 1: 22). "In all this Job did not sin with his lips'" (Job 2:10). It was not Satan's object to prove Job unrighteous, but he imputed wrong motives to Job. He did not know the unchangeable nature of the work which God does in a soul that knows Him through faith. After sweeping away all Job's wealth and bereaving him of his children, Satan was permitted to touch the person of Job and afflict him with a painful disease, and there God stopped the attacks of the enemy. All these bitter assaults failed against the man whose faith rested in God. Every means the adversary could use to move Job were exhausted, and they only served to prove that faith in God overcomes the enemy in his severest attacks. After this we hear no more of Satan, the accuser.
When impoverished and bereft of his children Job does not complain. Under the further affliction of a loathsome disease, and pressed by his wife to give up hope, he remains patient. He bewails his lot, but refuses to curse God and so be taken away in His judgment. He rebukes his wife and asks, "What shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?" (Job 2:10).
How hard it is to watch another whom we love suffer! It brings out what is in our own heart. The sufferer can often be more patient. Job's wife quickly succumbs to her affections. She would rather bear the sorrow of bereavement than see the one whom she loved continue to suffer. She saw with human eyes, and could not see to the end of the trial.
Had the trial ended then, Job would have had strong reason for self-complacency. Righteous in prosperity, patient in adversity, but, did he know his own heart? Did he realize how far his heart rested in satisfaction with his own righteousness, thinking it sufficient before God be-cause it was accepted before men? God takes Job along another road to bring out what is in his heart, so that nothing should come between him and the perfect enjoyment of the blessings with which God desired to load him.
All Satan's attacks only help to ground the faith of Job more firmly in God, though he cannot see to where all is leading. He is kept by God who never disappoints faith. The piety of Job grows under the afflictions of the adversary and becomes more apparent as the calamities multiply. But times of crises do not discover the character of the nature which has been corrupted by the pride of self-will. Affliction does not necessarily reach the evil principle of sin in the nature of man. It requires more searching measures to expose the principle of evil within. Man, in a way, feels that he has merited rebuke; often he will afflict himself when his conscience accuses him, and endure much-suffering more or less calmly. But great trials soften the ground and open the way for God to search the very inwards of those whom He loves.
The root of the trouble is reached in the soul, not so much by chastening, but by searching out and discovering what has power over the will. Man is not aware of that which has power over him until it is exposed in him. Job's trials go on long after Satan has finished doing all that he could to break him down, save taking away his life, which God did not allow Satan to do. When God Himself takes up the discipline of Job, Satan disappears from the scene. God alone can discover what is in the nature of man, and He alone knows the value of exposing it to the light and what the result will be. He teaches the soul to see as He sees, and hate what He hates. If man of himself knew his own weakness he would do all in his power to hide it. We can see Adam's efforts to hide him-self and his nakedness from other eyes. When the trial of Job is continued and every human support fails him, God remains to confirm his faith.
CHAPTER 3 THE FIRST EFFECTS OF SUFFERING
Job begins to bewail his miserable condition, and comes to the same conclusion that Solomon reaches when he considers the oppressions in the life of man "under the sun". "Therefore I praised the dead who were already dead, m1ore than the living who are still alive. Yet, better than both is he who has never existed, who has not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 4:2-3). These are the thoughts of man about his own condition "under the sun". He can only commend a state in which he has lost his suffering. Job wished that he had not been born; a natural but vain thought for a living man suffering the oppressions of this life. He could not, while occupied with himself in his affliction, apprehend the reason for his existence, nor in the least grasp any moral reason for such suffering. He as yet had no understanding for the necessity of breaking down the self-confidence and self-sufficiency of nature which makes no room for God. He goes even further in his natural judgment of his own state than praising the dead, he wishes for death. But he is only thinking of a release from pain and the sorrows of this life, and from the fears of anticipation (Job 3:25).
For the Christian there is deliverance from an evil nature in death, and he can say, now that he has Christ risen as his life, that he has part in Christ's death, he reckons himself dead with Christ to his old life. Death is now real gain for faith. God condemned sin in the flesh in Christ on the cross. Christ had no sin in Him-self, but He went to the cross for us, and there not only died for our sins, but He died unto sin once. He lives now unto God, and the believer lives in Him unto God. He is in this risen life With Christ. He who has fed on the holy bread, like David when he fled from Saul (1 Sam. xxi. 9), can use the sword of Goliath, the sword of death, to real advantage. Through the triumph of Christ who met the adversary on his own ground, and by dying overcame him who had, because of sin, the power of death over man, death is the most powerful weapon a believer can wield in his conflict with sin in the flesh. If he has learned its use for faith, it opens the way of freedom from the working of an evil nature and from the attacks of the adversary. The old nature, or old man, as the Word says, does not cease to be there; if it ceased to exist there would be no necessity to hold it in the place of death, it would be dead and ended. A Christian has a risen Christ as his life, so the battle is no longer indecisive; in the power of a life beyond the reach of death, the death of Christ is applied to the old thing and it cannot work. Until the believer stands in the liberty of Christ by the Spirit, he experiences something of Job's struggles, but where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty. Death is always a past thing for those who have been baptized unto the death of Christ. Job wished for death. When the Christian gets hold of the truth that the death of Christ on the cross is the condemnation and death of the old thing, then he is freed from its bondage.
Job at this stage was measuring life, and what was gain, by the present relief from suffering. This was a most *natural outlook; but he needed to have his thoughts tried in the light of the presence of God. There only could he see their worth and find man's true place. Affliction, suffering and the extremes of trial, are only the instruments used to break the will and expose the true character of the nature of man. Nature does not want God and makes no room for Him. It is greatly disturbed when God interferes in its activities. It is not in nature to master itself; it has not the power to do so. Faith lives near God and lives above its circumstances, though it feels them. Faith in activity, by the superiority of its object, has the power to withdraw nature from the power of evil. We find instances of this in the life of 'David when he was fleeing from Saul. David lived with God, and the grace which he showed to Saul when he had him in his power moved Saul to tears (1 Sam. xxiv). It was not merely that David graciously spared his pursuer that is so commendable, but that he respected God's anointed, and never took a step to advance himself, and waited for God to remove the man who stood between him and the throne.
Faith always respects that which God respects. Saul was struck by David's gracious consideration, which faith taught David was the right behaviour in the circumstances, and Saul was for the moment overcome by it and led away from his evil purpose. Faith rises to the occasion and carries the heart through great difficulties, but after the crisis is past the heart feels exhausted from the strain that it has undergone. Looking back it becomes terrified at the thought of all that it has had to face.
Job had borne his losses with patience; but to continue to suffer in his spirit with nothing outward to sustain him after the first energy of faith had been spent, wore down his patience and left him open to the terrors which consume the heart
CHAPTERS 17 – 27 MAN SEEN, GOD UNSEEN
These chapters are set out in the form of dialogues be-tween Job and the three friends who come to see him in his suffering. They feel deeply for their friend, and have real sympathy with him in his reverses and physical sick-ness; but they also have their own thoughts about the cause of these calamities. They pity him as they see the struggle going on in his soul, and they hope to help him find the truth. Each friend is perfectly sure that he has the solution of the trouble.
The human heart often can bear suffering alone and in quietness, away from the sight of others, but when others look on our misery with pitying eye, the pride of the heart is aroused. We do not like the sympathy that merely makes us and our feelings the object of sympathy. Those who would sympathize with us must not only feel for us about the suffering as those who know what it is to be east down, but they must have the same feelings about the cause of it, if they wish to help and comfort in trial. Unless they have tasted the depths of sorrow for themselves their condescension only aggravates; their sympathy does not reach the depths where love's deep pity enters in sympathy with the sufferer. They do not need to be suffering in a like affliction, for that would distract their sympathy, and sympathy is not simply a copy of the feelings of another. We appreciate best the sympathy of him who has drunk the cup of sorrow deeper than we have, and who now is out and beyond the reach of temptation, yet feels with us about the true object and cause of the suffering. True love takes the heart right into the circumstances and sufferings of the beloved, while at the same time it is undistracted and free from a personal cause of suffering. The cause of the suffering in the true sympathizer is found, not simply in another's suffering, but in that he suffers.
Some men profess not to fear death; but all are ashamed of death. Its weakness and utter humiliation of all pride, make nothing of man. Suffering and death are the consequences of sin, and this is a cause of shame. Man chose to walk by his own will, and the dim light of his own nature in which there remained some memory of the goodness of God and an. intuition, through his con-science, that God hated evil. Man sought greater enjoyment of God's gifts in self-will and independence; he has only reaped shame, misery, suffering and death.
It was the sympathy of Job's friends and their efforts to probe his conscience to discover the crime with which they connected his suffering that irritated Job and aggravated his complaint. But under the hand of God it served to bring out what was at the bottom of his heart. A little more pressure than his patience could endure, made him express his own estimation of himself, and where pride and self-justification have a place in the heart God is not supreme.
In health and prosperity the deceitfulness of the heart may be suppressed, but the natural tendency to rest in the estimation made of oneself, and to accredit intrinsic worthiness to self, have to be broken up. Under the continued attrition of the unveiled condemnatory arguments of his friends Job's patience was worn down, and his heart was made to expose its secret working. Self was discovered to be the centre of all his thoughts and interests. God lost His place and self was substituted in the heart of man by his fall. Man is not aware of this until he learns it in its nakedness in himself. Self-interest intrudes between man's soul and God, and there is no real and lasting enjoyment of God or the things that He gives to man in mercy and in kindness, until thoughts of self are annihilated in self-judgment, and God is made everything to the soul. Job, a saint of God, did not realise this; he had to be shown it in himself and there learn the vileness and treachery of the heart which led him to consider himself more righteous than God. When brought to see God in His excellent majesty, lie could only think of himself with abhorrence. He had not only dared to compare his ways with the ways of God, but he had failed to exalt God, and had actually excluded Him by wrapping himself in the good works of a frail, sinful nature. Sin in his nature hindered him, and sin was that self-will which ruled in his heart and seemed to have swamped his faith. What Job needed was God Himself, and he felt that he did; but how was He to be reached?
Job's friends attacked him on the grounds of his righteousness. God had declared Job righteous, and had up-held him against the merciless assaults of Satan, and these friends fail to substantiate their unfounded charges. The more they pressed him the more righteous lie saw himself, and this was simply a natural consequence arising from their charges. The root of the trouble lay in Job knowing that he was righteous- before men, and accrediting himself with this righteousness as making him fit for the presence of God. He did not see that man in a state of sin could not be held for righteous before God, and this might to have been for him a cause of self-judgment. He had some understanding that man needed a Mediator be-tween himself and God, but he did not turn away from a supposed human righteousness to rest in the righteous-ness of God where no enemy attacks could reach him to dislodge him, and no accusations of friends could dis-cover pride. Job, though righteous in his ways before men, was self-righteous, and only God could deal with a heart in such a state. Worthy man though he was, he had never been in the presence of God to see himself in the true light.
The stand that the three friends took was that present circumstances adequately manifest the government of God, and that punishment always fits the crime in the government of God in the present state of the world. They maintained that the government of God on earth to-day fully displays His righteousness, and the righteousness of man should correspond with it. These thoughts show that they had not a true conception of what sin was before God, nor what man's state is before God, and they did not know what were the requirements of His righteousness. Nothing they say reveals that they understood what it was to stand before God.
The attitude of each of the friends is clearly defined; they each approach the question regarding the state of man from his own particular angle.
THE FIRST DIALOGUE
Eliphaz, who seems to be the eldest, spoke first and longest. He represents those who appeal to personal experience and adhere to tenets that nobody questions. He opens the discussion, taking his cue from Job's own expressions of fear. He says that while Job had instructed and strengthened many in the past, he had rested in his piety and in the perfection of his ways, and not feared God enough (iv. 6, 7, 17-21). He assumes that Job is aware of some secret sin not yet openly confessed. He takes for granted, as do the other two friends, that divine government is seen in this world, and that there is an exact and uniform relation between sin and its punishment. The remedy, in their view, is in repentance and confession of sins, and in putting away the sins, and in heart turning to God. Restoration and peace, they all say, will follow with increased prosperity. Though this was the result which Job experienced in the end, he did not attain it by their methods. While they say many true commonplace things, their words do not reach the root of the matter with Job.
In chapter 6 Job answers Eliphaz and expresses an in-creased desire for death. The words and thoughts of Eliphaz only oppress him, and in no way relieve his mind nor show him a way of release. He feels that he should receive pity from a friend, a true fellow-feeling and not cold criticism. "He who withholds kindness from a friend forsakes the fear of the Almighty." (Verse 14 ESV). His friends falsify the name of friend. “How forceful are upright words! But what does reproof from you reprove? Do you think that you can reprove words, when the speech of a despairing man is wind?” (Verse 25, 26 ESV). Job is more concerned about God's watchfulness. God holds the key, and when will He disclose His reasons for pursuing man to the end of his endurance?
Bildad now enters the arena. He stands for authority and antiquity, and spoke from tradition, citing the wise sayings of the ancients. Listening and growing more convinced in his mind that Job is guilty of some great fault he argues; "can papyrus grow where there is no marsh? Can reeds flourish where there is no water?” (Job 8:11 ESV). No doubt this was a wise remark of the ancients (verse 8). But wise sayings of the ancients, though they may contain the truth, are not the word of God revealing in truth. Many right things may be said by keen discerners who study the history of man, but who understands the ways of God that he may speak for Him? He is revealed to faith and His ways are understood from His nature. These three friends make no pretence of knowing a God of mercy who is gracious and merciful as well as just.
Job's answer in chapters 9 and 10 acknowledges the justice of God, but be wants to know how a man can be just with God. The answer had to wait many centuries before it was revealed in completeness. "It is God that justifies" (Romans 8:33), and He laid the righteous ground of the sinner's justification in the blood of His Own Son. Until the soul knows the justification of God through faith, it experiences something of the exercises and struggles through which the soul of Job passed. He had a true conception of the character of God through faith, but had not stood in His presence and found perfect acceptance according to the value of the work of God that reveals Him in His nature on behalf of His creature man.
"If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me" (Job 9:20). His conscience at work condemns such a stand; no one can contend with God. He says this, not because he had a crime to confess, but because he felt that man in his nature was not perfectly pure. If only he could find a "Daysman"[1] to appoint a day in which he could plead his cause; he was sure God would hear him. He knew that God would respond to his faith; he did not know that God justifies the ungodly, but not in his state of sin. God cleanses the sinner from his sin by the blood of the atoning sacrifice, but the only cleansing there is from an evil nature is death, and salvation is by the power of life in resurrection. Without knowing what was in his nature Job sought for a complete justification. It came, we know, when Job saw himself in the presence of God, and humbled to the dust, he justified God. In the condemnation of sin in the flesh, the man who believed God was set free from the bondage of a fallen nature. This was true in principle for Job though the full light of the redemptive work of Christ was not yet seen. Through the revelation of God to his soul, he was able to judge his own state in a rebellious nature, and by doing so he was made morally superior to that nature.
Zophar (chapter 11), who represents law and religiousness; and in whom the narrow-minded bigots of the day found their voice, is more violent in his attacks. He wishes that God would open His Mouth against Job (verse 5). It is a fearful thing to call God into the question when the state of the soul is raised. If God is so unsearchable, who can bear His perfect presence? If God should mark iniquity, who would stand? When a man is wrestling with the principle of sin in his nature, how could lie think of standing in the presence of a holy and righteous God? Zophar makes the blessing of God rest upon the perfect solution of the question of sin by His government. Though there may be a principle of truth in this, Zophar's way of solving the matter, by God acting in judgment against Job, and not extending grace to one who could not answer Him, was wholly at fault, and his words do not bring Job's soul into the presence of God. He only rouses Job, who against his own better judgment, makes greater efforts to justify himself.
Job appeals more boldly to experience; robbers prosper, he says, but the final-results are in the hands of God (chapter 12). He can say better things of God and has deeper thoughts of Him than his friends. He looks more to God's favour, and can trust Him though he be slain by Him (Job 13:15). God knows the number of his steps in this life that is so short, and his sins are all marked, for God is a faithful as well as a merciful God. Job knew that God marked iniquity, but what puzzled him was that He should show it up in him before the eyes of his friends. This hurt his pride and made him compare his own sense of justice and mercy with these astonishing ways of the government of God. Job turns to the only course left open to him; he supplicates God to give him a fair trial, but looks for death as a possible solution as he does not look for a renewal of life here (Job 14:13). In his hopelessness, he looks to God.
THE SECOND DIALOGUE
In the second dialogue (chapters 15 - 21) the friends make further efforts to elaborate their theory of retributive justice, thinking Job must have committed a sin of unique character. They cannot imagine chastening or suffering without definite guilt.
Eliphaz, taking advantage of Job's reverses, arrays against him the evidence of experience as man is able to gather it, and the judgment of the ancients. He lays on the scale against Job, the weight of experience of the aged. What he says may not be untrue, it may be true, but it does not reach the conscience, and there is no power in his speeches to make Job examine himself. Job feels he is in the presence of those who are no greater than himself; they cannot lift him beyond themselves nor above himself.
The value of experience is in teaching us that we do not get the knowledge of truth by mere experience; we act according to the knowledge we have. God cannot be found by experience. We only know God by the revelation that He makes of Himself, and the testimony that He gives as to what He is in nature is received by faith, and our experiences flow from this knowledge If Eliphaz were right, we should believe only that which experience teaches, and this is mere self-sufficiency and is morally degrading. Even if man could reach the knowledge of God by experience, who would exert themself to know Him. If experience could bring the true knowledge of God there would be no necessity for the revelation of the truth. Christ would not have needed to come to reveal Him, and the Holy Spirit would not have needed to be given to faith that believers may know that which is beyond creature knowledge or human experience. The knowledge of God passes the limits to which the mind of man can attain. What man needs for his deliverance from his fallen state is the communication of divine truth, and this links him with God.
What Satan says may sometimes seem to be the truth, but he only uses the truth as it is in the natural mind of man; it is not the truth as it is in the mind of God. In the mind of man the truth is gathered around self, and grows into superstition, or at its best, into mysticism. By its persistence, truth once known remains with man, but it becomes distorted by his imagination if ungoverned by the knowledge of God in the conscience. When the soul is brought by the truth into the presence of God the conscience is reached, for God is known through the conscience by the truth. Eliphaz says that truth may be reached by experience, but the conscience is not always touched by experience, and only that which goes through the conscience is any value to the soul of man. Job later on found the truth in the revelation of God, and then all that he had ever dimly known to be true was seen in the true light of God's presence. Experience teaches that we can never know God, nor find freedom from self by self-experience. We are only worn down by experiences, and this is the value of experience; we are brought to the end of ourselves and to feel that we need more than experience can give. Job found this to be so in the end.
Eliphaz is sure that Job deserves his affliction.
Bildad (chapter 28) says what the portion of the wicked is, but he cannot say why calamities fall on a righteous man. If the wicked be chased from the world, why was it that when Christ came men drove Him out of the world?
Zophar (chapter 20), the legalist, with his rigidity of mind, can only see the punishment measured by Job's former enjoyment of his wickedness, and sees his gains exactly off-set by his losses. He adds that God will bring even greater trials upon the wicked. Thus by fear he seeks to break the spirit of Job.
Job answers his friends in their own strain. He does not deny the hand of God in his affliction, he acknowledges it, but there is no comfort in knowing that the hand of love afflicts righteously. It may bring confidence but not comfort. Job feels that at bottom his heart is right, it has not turned away from God, and he appeals directly to heaven (Job 16: 19). He longs for a mediator (ver. 21). Man feels that he needs a redeemer and a mediator.
Strangely; it may seem, under the false accusations of his friends, his heart grows firmer, and the knowledge of God which faith brings to the heart deepens. Job's assurance becomes more settled and better grounded, and as the controversy progresses he is clearer in his mind that he will yet, in his body, see God, and see him with his own eyes (xis. 25). His faith is searching the future for light and truth which the revelation of Christianity sup-plies.
The guilty often enjoy prosperity, therefore the answer to the riddle of present suffering cannot be read from the circumstances of the moment; but the day of reckoning is coming for the wicked (Job 21:30). Job reminds his friends that they are not exempt from transgression (Job 21:34). But his reply is given with the intent to affront, and to silence the cruel, cold reasoning of minds as self-occupied as his own.
THE THIRD DIALOGUE
The third discussion (Job 22 - 31) adds no more to the theories of the friends. Eliphaz becomes more pointed and definite in his accusations (verses 5-9). He says that only the innocent can see the wicked cut down and rejoice in their destruction, and he instructs Job to follow the path of the righteous. In this he is wholly astray as to the cause of Job's suffering. Job was not an unrighteous man; and the wicked, at the moment, are not reaping their clue reward.
Bildad has nothing to add to his former remarks, but presses upon Job the terror of God. He is totally unable to show how an unclean son of man can be justified before God. He cannot answer Job's question.
Zophar, who has the least to say but has the most biting tongue, has nothing more to advance. He had spent him-self with his last sword thrust (xx. 25-29).
As his complaint grows heavier to bear, Job meets their arguments with yet more vehemence, and with stronger conviction that if he could find God he would get the answer he needed.
Knowing his innocence Job was fearless before his friends their charges were false, and only drove him to desperation in trying to justify himself in the eyes of men. He had not learned that “God who justifies. Who is to condemn?” (Romans 8:33b-34aJob is able to judge the state of his friends and all they say. He is able to say what they say in a much better and clearer way. He can speak of God more rightly than they, but in doing so before he knew what was in his own heart, he was betrayed by the deceitfulness of a sinful nature, into justifying himself at God's expense. He had not learned to take such a place before God so that he could enjoy fully and without human alloy, the fruit of His loving-kindness as the free gift of the goodness of God. When rightly esteeming himself nothing, and when accepted of God, he could enter into full enjoyment of His favour, but while seeking to justify himself he was laying everything on a false foundation. A state of everlasting blessing cannot be built upon a foundation which has for its stability a supposed -human righteousness made out by fallen man; it can only rest on the ground of the revealed righteous-ness of God. The righteousness of God is perfectly revealed in Christ, and in Him it is revealed at man's expense. Christ made Himself nothing that God might be glorified in righteousness. The righteousness of God, His perfect consistency with His own blessed nature, was maintained in the death of Christ, and now is shown in setting Christ, as man, at His own right hand in glory.
Christ, in His work of redemption, has glorified God, and man, in Christ, has entered in righteousness, into the glory of God. The righteousness of God is displayed in receiving into His glory all who have the faith of Christ, all who believe in the work He did in glorifying God about sin. The value of that work is reckoned to the believer, and reckoned for righteousness.
CHAPTERS 28 -31 MAN SEES HIMSELF
Job proves the falsity of the charges laid against him and silences his friends. They failed to set him right about his self-justification, their arguments could not dislodge him from the ground he had taken. Neither Job nor his friends saw that it was not what he was before men that brought him under the discipline of God, but it was what God wanted to make him and could not in his pre-sent-state, that brought him under the eye and hand of God. All good is in God, it is not from man, and Job was seeking it in man. God wanted him to see himself with His eyes, and by judging what lie was in nature, rise morally superior to the evil of his nature.
Job takes himself out of the hands of his friends by sheer force of spirit, and underlying that force was the understanding which faith gives through the grace of God. The friends could do nothing for him, and their reasoning could never show Job his innermost self, nor enlighten him as to his state in nature. If he had bowed to their view of life and their attitude to truth, it would have fostered a false humility. Man ought to be humble, he has evidences enough around him of his own failure, but the heart is not naturally humble. Only the known presence of God can reveal the true nature of the workings of the heart of man. Man has learned to look within, and when what is within is brought to the surface so that lie may see himself in the light of God's presence, it is there he sees the absurdity and iniquity of his pride and self-will. A man is not humble in merely thinking poor thoughts of himself, but in being done with a less than worthless self, and being occupied with God and His grace which He has shown to those who never deserved anything but judgment.
The charges of the friends were completely refuted. Job rightly judges all they say, but in doing so, and un-fortunately knowing that he did it well, he clothed him-self from head to foot in a robe of righteousness. He wants God, .and turns to find Him, but cannot, and he dare not leave himself naked before the world. He feels that he must be clothed in his respectability in the eyes of men, and he does not yet know that it is better to leave his reputation in the hands of God. If he cannot satisfy his friends about his righteousness, and if he has not stood in the presence of God, he is at least righteous in his own eyes, and man cares more for that than anything else. Man can endure a great deal of suffering as long as he is righteous in his own estimation. Job grows more self-satisfied; but he is not right, neither is his health restored, nor is he enjoying the favour of God. He has yet to learn what he is in the sight of God. How is he to find it out? He wants God to justify him, but how is it to be done? If he could find Him he is sure he would get an answer. Did anyone by searching ever find God? Or does God have to reveal Himself in grace, because He is morally outside all man's activities?
Job is gradually broken down by all this conflict, his patience runs out and his spirit grows weary. He comes to the end of his human resources and readier to be spoken to directly by God. While struggling with a baffled wilful nature, God cannot bless him. If God had blessed him then he would have said that man by struggling could obtain an, answer to the deep-rooted questions of his distance from God, and discover the way, by strife, into his favour. The warfare is allowed to go on until. Job finds that he needs not only a Saviour but a Deliverer. God Him-self cuts the cords of this slavery to self, when He alone is known as the Deliverer and Blesser of man. (Compare with Romans 7)
Job knew he needed a Redeemer, a truth every man of faith has recognized from Adam down. His faith pierced the mystery of man's utter inability to atone for his own guilt. He did not know that there is no redemption for a fallen nature; it has to be judged in its entirety before God. Now that God has condemned sin in the flesh at the cross of Christ, where it was not atoned for, but condemned; the Christian has a perfect answer to the struggle he experiences with that nature. "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh" (Romans 8:3). Nothing suffices but a new creation in Christ.
Faith taught Job that the Redeemer would come to save individual souls. In spite of his rebellious thoughts he could say, like Peter two thousand years later, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." (John 21:17) There was love for God at the bottom of his heart, but only God could find it there, town under a lot of self, and bring it out to own Him as his only resource. Human help can do nothing for the soul in the process of learning its own nothingness. "Truly no man can ransom another, or give to God the price of his life" (Psalm 49:7); "none can keep alive his own soul" (Psalm 22:29).
Chapter 19 portrays Job at his best according to human standards. We might say that here he had reached his third heaven. That he should be honoured amongst his fellow-men, and be held in esteem high above others was not in itself wrong. The poor blessed his generosity, and the helpless rejoiced in his benevolence. It was right that one so blessed of God should dispense His favours and be held in great respect. The difficulty rose through Job knowing it and clothing himself in the good opinion of others which he had rightly earned. "I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; my judgment was a robe and a diadem" (verse 14). Job knew his place amongst men and he coveted their goodwill, it gave him a rich sense of pleasure. Rut it was mere human righteousness and worldly honour. Not that honour was wrong, but it made everything of Job and gave no place to God. The bountiful benefits of God were simply made the means to exalt man.
The apostle Paul, raised to greater heights of spiritual eminence when carried up into the third heaven and heard things impossible to utter to men, was in no danger while there. But when once again walking down here amongst men, he was in every danger of spiritual pride, and needed a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to buffet him and keep him reminded that he was, in him-Self, al poor weak vessel, and would utterly fail unless kept by the power of God. The vessel of itself could not support the treasure so blessed and glorious which God had put in it. Paul had to be kept constantly conscious that the strength for the work was all of God and not of man.
In this monologue (chapters 28-31) carried on by Job, without alluding to his friends, he goes over the ground of the previous chapters. He shows an excellent know-ledge of natural history, and touches on many subjects in the broad field of nature. In chapter 28 there is a wonderful description of mining operations. But where is wisdom to be found? Speaking of wisdom he says, "Destruction and death say, We have heard the fame thereof with our ears" (verse 22), and in this statement he anticipates the way God has taken in wisdom to reveal the truth of the present state of things, even of man. All is subject to death and decay, and wisdom has to say that there is no other way for fallen man, death is his portion. Wisdom, as the Word of God, tells what the state of the world is, what God is, and what His purpose in blessing is for creation and for man. (See Prov. viii.) Wisdom shows the way of truth, and it is found amongst men in the fear of the LORD. When Christ came He was the wisdom of God, and not only did He reveal the counsels of God, He did more; He revealed God Himself; He was the Word made flesh. He in the wisdom of God went down into death; He passed that way to make the truth known, and to make possible the accomplishment of God's purposes for man who was dead in his trespasses and sins. It was the only way by which man could be brought into the blessings of God, for man was the head of a fallen creation and had to be redeemed from his fallen state. Because wisdom was occupied with God's blessed purpose in the sons of men, He who was the Wisdom of God passed through death, that in Him might be known the truth and the grace of God. Not until Christ came and glorified God in the blessed work of redemption could the perfection of wisdom's way be fully known. Job does not go so far as this; he speaks of the creative wisdom of God, and man finds it, not by experience in the world, but in the fear of the LORD.
Job protests his integrity, and discloses the vows that be had made in his heart to walk apart from the gross evils and crimes of Unbridled nature. Yet man is his centre, and all he says only exalts him in his own eyes. Over and over again he pleaded his own righteousness and fell into the snare, through the pride of an unjudged heart, of comparing his own righteousness with the ways of God, and giving more credit to himself than to God. He did not feel the impossibility of such a comparison and therefore did not judge his own state of heart. Not having been set down in the presence of God he could' not see himself in the true light. This is a state in which many Christians are found to-day.
He says more clearly than his friends what the portion of the hypocrite will be, for his faith gives him a better understanding of God and of His abhorrence of evil. But he cannot understand the cause of his own affliction. He is not aware of any iniquity to confess, and he holds firmly to his own integrity. In doing so he makes daring statements, going so far as to make himself out more righteous than God (see xxvii. 2-6). The deeper Job plunges into the danger of bringing himself into conflict with God by drawing a comparison between his own righteousness and the ways of God, the nearer God draws. Job desires to meet Him. God will show Himself to him; but Job did not know the effect of the sight of God would have upon himself.
In chapters 10:7, 8; 14:14-17; 23:11-13; 27:2-6 Job declares himself more righteous than God, and this calls out the rebuke of Eau.
CHAPTERS 32-38 THE INTERPRETER
Elihu, a young, male who had remained silent while listening to his elders, now takes up the questions opened out in their arguments, and he prepares the way for LORD to speak directly to Job.
It would have been a terrible experience for Job to have met the LORD immediately at the end of such self-justifying pleading in which he had been indulging. Who is man that lie should take up his own defence with God?
Elihu does not unfold the way of redemption, and bring the soul of Job into the liberty of deliverance from the power of sin in an evil nature. It was not yet the time to cut the cords of Job's bondage. The interpreter defines the details of God's chastening judgments. God speaks to men in various ways. He may reach the inner man through dreams, in visions of the night. He often takes this way amongst the poor whose drab lives shut out the soul from the deeper levels of reflection; many are incapable of making the application of reality to their soul-state save superficially. God may speak to a man upon a bed of sickness where pain removes much of the pretence of life. He may send an interpreter, one amongst a thousand, to speak of His ways and warn a soul in grace. God takes these ways to reach the soul of man to deliver him from going down into the pit. "Behold, God does all these things, twice, three times, with a man, to bring back his soul from the pit, that he may be lighted with the light of life." (Job 33:29-30).
God cannot be unjust; then how could this affliction of Job be unjust? Is God to explain Himself? Or should not man, in the light of such wisdom, such greatness, and such righteousness, judge himself as unfit for His presence? Reproving Job of self-righteousness and of not justifying God at his own expense, Elihu turns the eyes of Job heavenward and prepares him to meet God in His terrible majesty.
All this is not the grace of the gospel concerning the goodwill of God as revealed in Christ, but it is the breaking down of the pride of man before the revelation of the ways of God and opening the heart to understand His wisdom and greatness in His own creation, the work of His hands. If man will exalt himself he must displace God to do so, and until he learns his nothingness and gives God His place, he cannot be free and enjoy full and lasting blessing which only the known presence of God can give.
CHAPTERS 38 – 42:6 GOD REVEALED, MAN SILENCED
Elihu has prepared Job for the discovery of himself in the presence of God. The LORD now speaks directly to Job. In chapter 38 the LORD reveals His wisdom in the works of nature. When the majesty of the wisdom of God is unfolded before him, Job is constrained to say, "I aim vile." Bitter words had been forced from him under the pressure of graceless speeches which only drew from him cutting replies. The depths of his heart have been reached and found expression in his answers to the declamatory discourses of his friends, but now he is silenced by the proof of his own foolishness in the light of the wisdom of God. He had spoken without knowledge, for what did he really know? What right had he to question the wisdom of God? Self had been his standard, because lie had never known what it was to stand before God; he had never seen God.
God wanted more than this expression of humility from Job. He was still thinking of himself, as vile, it is true, but it was still self. If a man is to know the rich blessing of God and enjoy with Him that which He delights to give, it is not enough that he be merely silenced. To enter into the grace which bestows the gifts and to be at home with God, he must be free of thoughts of self, and be done with even low thoughts of self; he must be done with self, for the smallest bit of self leaves no room for God.
Man by robbery gained the knowledge of good and evil; God has in grace turned that knowledge to good account. Now that man makes the distinction between good and evil, God will have those to whom he reveals Himself, judge themselves in the light of His revealed wisdom and power. He reaches man through his conscience. He makes those whom He disciplines abhor evil as He abhors it, and in the light of infinite holiness, righteousness and goodness, judge the evil found in their nature. It is in themselves they are brought to see its vileness. Only when the seat of pride is reached and judged in themselves will they rise morally above it.
In chapters 40-41 God reveals Himself in the greatness of His power. It is the excellency of His power in creation that is seen here, and that is sufficient to shrink Job to his true proportions. The light of the revelation of God in wisdom and in power broke through all Job's self-esteem. Before such a God lie truly sees his wretchedness in nature and realizes his nothingness. He says: "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes." (Job 42:5, 6) To understand but a part of the majesty of the ways of God reduces man to his true dimensions, and when God is seen in the glory of His power, man learns the vileness of a nature which has been corrupted by pride, and would exalt itself above God. Job learned to abhor all that he was by nature, pleasing and amiable though he might appear in the eyes of men. Everything of fallen man, not merely his evil ways, but even that which is counted as goodness in the sight of men, is as nothing in the light of the divine revelation. All his righteousness is simply man away from God trying to make the best of his state, though he is dependent upon the mercy of God for the quietness of his circumstances and the opportunity to practise his moralities.
The soul that has learned itself in the presence of God and is done with self, has found the way of liberty from the bondage of self. The Christian learns this liberty in Christ. All that he is by nature God has condemned in the cross of Christ, and he learns to condemn it there, too. He finds, while struggling with his old nature that though born of God there is still a law working in his members, a principle of evil, which holds him in bondage. The only relief from such a state of bondage is by death, and as Christ died under the condemnation of sin, he reckons himself dead unto sin in the death of Christ. Christ risen from among the dead is his life, the believer is risen with Him. If he had not Christ risen, for his life, he would still be accounted a man alive in his old life of sin, struggling with sin in the flesh, or giving way to it.
All human righteousness is but a garment of filthy rags. The righteousness of God is the only robe that will avail for eternal salvation. All man's efforts to establish his own righteousness simply prove him the farther from God. Man naturally knows nothing of his own nature and its present state before God. .Lust in the flesh does not trouble him, until it is active and produces sin. Then his conscience begins to operate, because he knows that God is the Judge. Even the law, when it came, forbade lest—covetousness. The commandment might as well have said, cease to be a man, for it is, since the fall, the very nature of man to covet.
In Christianity, Christ crucified is the power of God, and the wisdom of God. The discipline of Job prepared him to receive, in principle, the same instruction. God revealed Himself to Job in creative wisdom and power, which made nothing of man, and that was sufficient for the day, to do the work of God in the soul of Job. Who but God could know that by bringing a man to nothing, he would be set free from the law at work in a sinful nature? Life is the gift of God in grace. While God was trying man as in the days of Job, the full extent of His abhorrence of sin was not yet revealed. He showed great patience with man. Not until Christ came and suffered the condemnation of sin, though without sin in Himself or He could not have done so, was the truth wholly revealed. The way of deliverance by death to the flesh, in principle, runs through the Old Testament, but there it is hidden in types and figures and not clearly revealed, and God bore with the lust that is in the nature of man. The Christian has an advantage unknown in old times; he is not merely a man instructed of God, he is himself of God in Christ Jesus. His life is of God, his very being, and his position as a Christian is of God. For faith, he is, by the death of Christ, dead to the life of the old nature, and he is alive unto God in a risen Christ.
In complete self-renunciation, and in absolute self-abnegation, Christ as man humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. He submitted to this humiliation in the wisdom of God, that God might be glorified in all that He is. God has been glorified in a Man, the Man Christ Jesus. A Man by the just judgment of God and by His power, is exalted to the right hand of the Majesty on high. Blessed truth for men! The cross made absolutely nothing of man, but the One who emptied Himself and stooped to such a death, has been made Lord of the vast creation, to the glory of God the Father.
CHAPTER 42:7-17 THE MAN RENEWED BY GRACE
There remained nothing covered in the heart of Job. He had seen God, and discovered himself in His presence. Humbled before God and hating all that made so much of man to the exclusion of God, he is accepted by God. Job had found the answer to the cause of his sufferings in the revelation of God in wisdom and in grace. It was not his crimes which brought him under such discipline; Job had not known that there was something which stood in the way of full blessing with God. God had to help him in his inability to discover by his own wisdom and in-sight, the evil of a nature fallen from dependence on God, and which made itself the centre of every thought and blessing. God had to show him in himself how far man naturally was from all thoughts of Him. He had to show it to Job in a way that would bring him into conflict with God, and where by the knowledge of God in the richness of His wisdom and in the might of His power, Job, in him-self would be completely set aside, but God be found as the Blesser in spite of all. Only in this way would he be released from self-occupation. Utterly defeated in him-self, He was led captive by the One who had broken through his self-defence, and routed the forces which nature had gathered about itself. All had to give way to the revelation of the glory of God. The natural creation is the mere instrument of His will. Man has a will of his own and it has to be broken, before he is free to enter freely and joyfully into the favour of God.
It is not said that God approved all the words of Job, though he had spoken more rightly than his friends. There were many things that he had said which lie him-self now condemned. But God accepted Job. His friends had taken wholly wrong ground and not represented God at all aright. It never occurred to their minds that devout faith in God could exist independently of outward circumstances. This was the ground Satan had taken and upon which he had been vanquished. The friends were humbled by God's rebuke and before the grace which had restored their friend, and Job is able to intercede for them. God delights in the prayers and petitions of those who have, through His grace, found the way to His holy ear; and who in humility and subjection of spirit, having learned to place no confidence in the flesh, give all honour and praise to God.
Now multiplied blessing flows in uninterrupted stream about the beloved saint of God. He no longer looks upon the gifts of God as man's due, but as the gracious out-pouring of the heart of God; God delights to shed His blessings where there is a true acknowledgment of Him-self, and no danger of the heart of man gathering all around itself, God has His rightful place in the praises of His people.
In this picture of the way of God with a soul, we learn the place that Satan has in the present state of the world. Having spoiled creation through lust and pride, Satan now stands as the accuser of those who have fallen into his grasp through listening to his lie, and have conic under the power of their lusts, and so become subject to the judgment of God. Pride, self-will and independence characterize the behaviour of man. But God, who has purposed to bless those in whom His grace has found a lodging-place, uses the adversary, and the trials that follow in the train of sin, to defeat the effects of sin. Evil destroys itself, and we can see this exemplified in the fullest way in the death of Christ. At the cross of Christ the adversary, for the moment, seemed to triumph completely, but Christ, through death, overcame the power of death, and broke the might of the adversary on his own ground in his supreme act of wickedness against the Truth.
It was God who drew the attention of Satan to Job and allowed his faith to be tried. But He knew the end from the beginning, and would not let the faith of Job suffer defeat. Job was kept by the power of God through faith. What was merely of man perished in the trial. The enemy does not know -the truth- its power or its effect in a soul, and he could not see that all the strength of evil was powerless against faith; it cannot destroy faith in God for that is truth. At times Satan seems to have the victory over the truth, but it is only an outward and momentary triumph. Though the whole world lies in the wicked one, "this is the victory that over-cometh the world, even our faith" (1 John v. 4).
The trials of Job unfold the marvellous ways of God in government when He is dealing with a soul. The experiences through which Job passed, and the questions raised, do not reveal the everlasting righteousness of God, and proclaim the reign of grace through righteousness unto eternal life. Christ, who was that life, had not yet come to reveal the way, the truth, and the life. In these ways of God with Job we see the hand of God over-turning a self-complacent heart to find what is underneath; and man in prosperity little suspects what is there. Even when there is faith in the heart, all is thrown into con-fusion when God begins to uncover the rebellion of man's ungovernable nature. God can do nothing with it but condemn it, and this He has done in the death of Christ.
Christianity brings a deeper and fuller understanding of sin than is found in the Old Testament, because the righteousness and holiness of God have been measured against it in judgment at the cross of Christ. Job's experiences were real enough, and the exercises of his soul were those which take place in the soul of a man when he begins to measure himself in the light of God's ways. The more light he has the more clearly he can realize what sin is; but until he sees the folly of his ways caused through ignorance of himself, and the foolishness of listening to the estimation that he makes of himself, lie does not turn with abhorrence from self. When a Christian walks close to God and is in communion with Him, self-judgment is a simple thing, for there is strength found in communion to deal with self.
The story of Job's sufferings is the history of the experiences of an individual soul; but when we review the history of the Jews we see the same principles at work, only on a much larger scale. There we can trace the same development on a national plane. The law that was given to Israel is not mentioned in the book of Job; if the law had been in existence it is reasonable to think that some allusion would' have been made to it. Possibly Job lived at the time of Abraham. The law became, in Israel's day, the measuring rod by which to measure the behaviour of man, and to test his obedience to God when favoured by a special relationship with Him. The last commandment forbids the very nature of man to act, it says, "Thou shalt not covet", and this forbids his nature, in its present state, to work.
The experiences related have been severe and unsparing, revealing on God's part His total rejection of man's valuation of himself, an estimation man has made of him-self out of the presence of God. It is the story of a godly man who gave voice to the pride discovered in his heart when he was wrongly accused, but he was one whom God loved and renewed by grace. With great consideration for Job, God takes him up for the purpose of blessing him and making him truly happy. He made use of the faculty man now has of distinguishing between good and evil, by exposing the evil at work in himself where it had deceived him. Man cannot be fully blessed awl truly happy while ignorant of his state; the faintest light of truth enlightening the conscience would trouble him and spoil the unfounded pleasure. The world makes itself tolerably happy in a limited measure; even so it is only possible by the mercy of God; it needs so little to cloud the world's pleasures. There is more sorrow than joy in the life of man, and the causes of his sorrow are more real than the feeble springs of his earthly happiness.
While the soul has only the dim light of nature, pre-served in mercy from the full consequences of sin, it is never completely happy, and is always in danger of a fall which brings in its train the bitter fruit of sin. God begins his work in a soul by sowing the seed of faith, and then will not leave the soul alone, but graciously and faithfully continues His work until the basis of true happiness is laid for the enjoyment of His goodness. A permanent foundation of happiness can only be laid in the knowledge of God, and in knowing Him as the One who blesses in grace. There can be no true joy where the soul is a stranger to God. He brings a soul to Him-self.
The process through which a' soul passes in learning what man is by nature, is always painful. The more aware a man becomes of the goodness of God, the more painful are the days of his discipline in which he learns that man merits nothing of the goodness of God. The deeper the lesson so much the more is grace realized, and when the soul is released from the bondage to self, it is free to enter into the goodness of God, and with a full heart to give Him thanks. Not only so, it is free to joy in God.
A perfect, completed work of redemption, and a perfect reconciliation with God through that work, is now the ground of peace with God, and to be at home with God, knowing His love revealed in its fullness in Christ, is the cause for everlasting joy in Him.
In King Saul we see a self-centred heart bowed with grief because he could not have his own way, and it opened the way for the influence of evil spirits and the play of violent passions. Blessed is the man whom God disciplines until all that is in the heart is uncovered in His presence, and whose wandering imagination is subdued by the light of truth. Job learned his lesson in the hard school of experience; it is most blessed to learn in grace by the Word; God is known through the Word of His grace, and grace softens the heart.
Man was made for the pleasure of God, but he brought himself through self-will under the power of sin and death. God has set Himself the task, as it were, of delivering the children of faith from the power of sin to enter into the joy of His heart, like the prodigal son of the parable. He takes delight in bringing His children into the favour of His grace, and making them perfectly happy with Himself.
The manner in which God preserves the soul through the most trying experiences, so that the confidence faith has found in Him is not destroyed, and the wisdom shown in His discipline, and the unfolding of His ways in tender care, are amongst the wonders of His ways. The principles upon which He works are true for all times, and each soul learns His ways for itself Life and experiences gain a new meaning when God is known and all is accepted from His hands. The sufferings of this little while find their solution in the glory that shall follow, and the believer can already see that glory in the face of Jesus Christ. The power of God must sustain the vessel that contains such a revelation, and the revelation links the soul with Him whom it reveals.
In Christianity God gives a present deliverance from the power of sin, the work and Satan through death with Christ, and the liberty in which the believer stands is realized in the power of the Holy Ghost, by whom he is sealed for the day of glory With Christ. "For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death" (Romans. 8:2.). Christ is the object before the soul and not self, and there is the knowledge of divine favour.
There are powers outside this world and they influence the affairs of men. In such a history as Job's we see them for. What they are, as they move under the hand of God and as controlled by His power. There are powers of darkness, and though they have God-given energy, their Will, do evil is from themselves because they have re-belled against God. Their evil will is only controlled by a power that is outside themselves. All power belongs to God; divine, human and satanic power are all under His hand; none can move without Him. God uses all for the glory of His great Name, and for the blessing of those in whom His grace is revealed.
Those whom He has called in grace were sometime alienated and enemies, but now they are reconciled to Himself by Christ "in the body of his flesh through death", so that He may present them "unblameable and unreproveable in his sight" (Colossians 1:22). Being reconciled, they joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. The love of God is shed abroad in their hearts, and the God of all comfort keeps their souls. Not even a groaning creation, nor all the trials experienced while in it, can separate those whom God justifies' and for whom Christ died, from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:39).
[1] Archaic word to mean mediator, arbiter, referee or labourer.
