Job 38-42 A STORMY DAY

Pastor Carolyn Sissom (7495 views)

A STORMY DAY

 

Job 38-42

 

Taught by:  Pastor Carolyn Sissom

 

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

   

38:1 “Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm.”

  

The Lord’s theme is Himself.

  

Throughout the trial of Job’s faith, he has cried out for the Lord to speak to him.  The Lord’s first discourse to Job (38: 1-40:5) shows that creation proclaims God’s Omnipotence.  The Lord spoke “out of the whirlwind,” a frequent setting for a theophany. 

  

38: 4-7:  describes original creation, and antedates the entrance of sin into a sinless universe.  God is Creator of the sea (8-11); and of time (38: 12-15).  He is Master of the deep, light, darkness, snow, hail, lightning, constellations, clouds and mist (38: 16-18).  God is the Creator and Protector of animals 38:39-39:30).

  

40: 1-5:  This begins God’s second discourse to Job and contrasts God’s power and man’s frailty.  Job was silenced as a contender and faultfinder with God, but not as a sinner; so the Divine controversy is renewed.  Job’s second reply to God solves the problem of his suffering.  (42:1-6):

  

AFFLICTION IS GOD PERMITTED TO REFINE MAN SO THAT HE MAY SEE GOD IN ALL HIS GREATNESS AND SPLENDOR, AND SEE HIMSELF IN HIS DESPICABLENESS AND SIN TO THE INTENT THAT MAN MAY REPENT OF HIS PRIDE IN “dust and ashes.” 

  

42: 1-6: Then Job replied to the Lord:  I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted.  You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.  You said, “Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.”  My ears have heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you.  Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”

  

God alone confronted and faced Job alone.  This is the principle of Gen. 32:24-32 and the meeting of Jacob with God, face to face.  Jacob became ISRAEL, THE PREVAILER AND OVRCOMER.  It is only in the Third dimension of the most Holy Place are we transformed and changed. (Matt. 17; 11 Cor. 3:18).

  

Rom 12: 1-2: “Therefore, I urge you brothers, in view of God’s mercy to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God---this is your spiritual act of worship.  Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is---his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

  

11 Cor. 3:18:  “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”

  

Neither the three friends (30-fold Outer Court) nor Elihu (60-fold, the Holy Place) met with God in this realm.  Elihu had the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and was walking with the Lord through the Holy Place.  He had gifts of the Holy Spirit, but still had a mixture of flesh and Spirit.  A man cannot understand or speak of truths relating to the Feast of Tabernacles (Most Holy Place) realm with a Feast of Pentecost (Holy Place) frame of mind.  You cannot put new wine in an old bottle (Lk. 5: 37-39). 

  

God’s WORD and VOICE did not speak to or address the others.  This revelation of Himself was for Job!

  

God’s speeches are certainly not what Job expected.  He had requested either a bill of indictment, with specific charges that he is prepared to answer, or else a verdict from his Judge, which he confidently expects to be a declaration of his innocence---neither is forthcoming.  God does not always give the answer we want!  We have to know how to ask the right questions, to get the right answers. 

  Neither do these two lengthy recitals make reply to the questions that have tormented Job and which his friends have failed to answer.  He answers Job’s questions with a deluge of counter-questions.  This is the same way the Lord responded to the questions of the Pharisees.   The very fact that God does not come forward (as the friends did) with a list of Job’s sins is in itself sufficient proof that this was not needed.  That God speaks at all is enough for Job!   

The Lord did not take Job at his word, “I abhor myself and loathe my words.”  After all that God reveals to Job, he can say no more about his past integrity.  He will not again ask for the restoration of past blessings, for now he sees that he did not know himself nor understand his need.

  

The Lord first of all knew that a wounded spirit none can raise up, but God himself.  “Come on Job, rouse yourself!”  No Word from the mouth of God is void of power, so we may well believe that the needed strength was conveyed unto Job, and he was set upon his feet, prepared to hear the voice of God, and made ready to hear Words of revelation.  It is not further teaching that Job needs, but a direct interview with God.

  

I can well identify with Job.  Before the Lord took me through a breaking in my early 40’s, I had great pride in my integrity.  It was surely a stench to people around me as well as to the Lord.  Where I grew up, reputations were often slandered to destroy people.  I lived so above reproach that my reputation became pride.  If we live to protect our reputation, then we give the world power over who we are.  If we live unto the Lord, then we become of “no reputation”.   As we overcome persecution and it no longer has power over us, then neither does slander, criticism, gossip or condemnation have any power over us.  Job had to face all of this down as he sat helpless on his dung heap.

  

There is a kindly playfulness in the Lord’s speeches which is quite relaxing---their aim is not to crush Job with an awareness of his minuteness in contrast with God’s infinite power, nor to mock him when he puts his tiny mind beside God’s Omniscience.  On the contrary, the mere fact that God converses with him gives him a dignity above the birds and beasts, assuring him that it is a splendid thing to be a man.

  

In the sharing of a common life within the same world, God and Job both find the vindication that neither received in the discourses of the friends.  Here is the answer to satan’s cynicism.  Here is the proof that Job has clung to God when stripped of all else.  Here the lack of a formal answer to the moral question is positively instructive.  Job is vindicated in a faith in God’s goodness that has survived a terrible deprivation, and which has actually grown in spite of traditional creeds.  This was a faith unsupported by life in the covenant community, or by cult institutions, or by revealed knowledge from prophets, or by tradition, and which contradicted previous human experience! 

  

Job’s faith is not exercised blindly.  He still finds God in the world.  This is very important and  is vital for understanding the Lord’s speeches.  These beautiful poems about goats and ostriches are not a tangent to the rest of the book.  It is a man in the world, as one among all these creatures, that Job stands before God.  He is not called to the escapism of flight of pure thought into the transducent Beyond.  He is not summoned to plunge into the depths of his own being to find the Ground of it all.  It is by looking at the common things with God that Job is able to exclaim in the end:  “Now I’m satisfied; I’ve seen you with my own eyes.”   This is more than enough to answer his questions, or rather; it liberates him to live with joy even when the questions are not answered. 

  Deut. 30: 11-14:  “Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you

 Or beyond your reach.  It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, “Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?”  Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, “Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?”  No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.”

  

There are 40 questions in chapter 38.  This is the number of trial, testing, proving, and humiliation!

  

The earth founded in space; the restless ocean shut in within the boundary of His will; the Dayspring clothing the earth as a garment; the recesses of the deep laid before His eyes; the knowledge of the mysterious gates of death; the resources in the treasuries of hail and snow; the control of the water-flood, wind, and rain; the breathing upon the waters for the formation of ice and frost; and the leading and guiding of the planets of heaven, as if they were but trifles in His hand.  None but the Sovereign Lord of heaven and the earth could thus summarize, with masterly ease, the forces at His command!

  

Then, let Job turn from the starry heavens, so vast and wonderful, and think even of the dumb creation.  Who provides for them?  God had placed in them their instincts and appetites.  If the Lord thus watcher over His dumb creation, surely He would not fail to heed the cry of his servant Job!

  

God also knows the time, season, hour, day, minute of birth and death!  Job had cried for deliverance from the travail he was in, but Jehovah alone knew the Hour when his warfare would be accomplished, the moment when his sorrows would be over, and he would emerge once more into the light of God!

  

(Teaching on Chapters 40:15 & 41 on Behemoth and Leviathan to be continued at a later study). 

  

In Job’s first reply 40: 3-5:  Job is humbled.  What answer could he give unto the God he had misjudged?  What could he say to such a revelation of His power, His infinite wisdom, and His sympathy with all the works of His hands?  Job feels contemptible mean as he remembers his language toward the Lord and how he charged Him with cruel persecution when He was but working out His purposes of love. All the Lord orders and directs for our life is the working out of his perfect love for us and toward us.  Job replies to Jehovah’s loving challenge that he can only put his hand upon his mouth, and confess himself silenced.  He will not speak any more as he has done.  Job is silenced, it is true; but the Lord must have from him a more frank confession of repentance, a deeper turning from himself and the past than this!

  So Jehovah presses the issue.  He knew that Job had not yet ceased from his clinging to his integrity!  Job feels small, but he must be brought to the dust.  Now he must be reminded that none of the power he had had over others had been his own, and learn in deeper measure his own helplessness.   In his second reply 42: 3-5, we see Job’s submission, confession of ignorance, his verdict on his past, and his self-loathing.  Job is finally vanquished!  Now he completely surrenders, and with worship of his whole being acknowledges anew the sovereign power of God, and with renewed faith gives Him His rightful, first place in his life.  The immutable Lord had waited until the furnace had fulfilled its purpose; nor had he interposed in answer unto Job’s cries of pain, because He knew that Job’s will would remain true to Him to the very end!  Job moved from hearing to the seeing realm!  There had been a gradual unfolding of Jehovah unto him.  Job knows himself and his measure at last.  He is becoming the little child that Elihu had described; one content to lie upon its Father’s heart, to know all that the father wishes it to know, and no more; content to be what the Father wishes it to be, and no less, while it rejoices with true gladness in the gifts and graces vouchsafed to others in the Father’s house.   

JOB’S VINDICATION AND RESTORATION:

  

42: 7-17:

  The whole book is a panorama of the fall and then the redemption of man.  It could be summed up in one verse – Rom. 8:20:   

“For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into  the glorious freedom of the children of God.”

  

THE WORDS “My servant” and “him will I accept” are full of proof of satan’s defeat!  Note also that Job had not demanded or even asked for restoration, which came only after the test was over and Job was vindicated!  We must emphasize that his repentance was for an attitude acquired during his suffering, not for sins that caused his suffering

  

“My servant Job” is mentioned four times (a number of creation and world-wide or universal).”

  

God then deals with Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar with wrath and mercy.  Their intention was right, but their words were wrong!  In their folly, they had spoken of Jehovah “the thing which is right.”  They are restored through the King-Priest ministry of Job’s prayer!

  

Heb. 4:14-5:2:  “Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the son of god, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.  For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are---yet was without sin.  Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.  Every high priest is selected from among men and is appointed to represent them in matters related to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.

  

We are to be Kings and Priests in the Kingdom of God to pray and intercede for our brothers and sisters in the Lord.  This is the realm of no condemnation, criticism, gossip or complaining  in the Holy of Holies.   

  

Job was the first man to see the truth of the resurrection and immortality – new flesh. (19: 23-29; 33: 23-30).  Chapter 42 points to the consummation of the program and purposes of God with man.  So we see a new body (for Job), a new family, new sons and daughters, possibly a new wife (?), new possessions, etc.  Well, new wife is written tongue-in-cheek.  However, it would seem that with seven new sons and three new daughters, at his age he would need a new wife. 

  It was a hard thing (11 Kg. 2), but Job received double, or the portion of the firstborn!  (Heb. 1:6) “And again, when God brings his firstborn into the world, he says, Let all God’s angels worship him.”   Jesus Christ is the firstborn among many brethren.     

(Heb. 12: 22-24; Rom. 8:29; Col. 1:18; Rev. 14: 1-5)

  

The key was “when he prayed for his friends” –the dunghill had become the mercy-seat (love-seat of the More Excellent Ministry of the Beggar Prince).

  

Jehovah turned the captivity (Psa. 126) of Job when he prayed for his friends…twice as much (double portion).”  Verse 11 reverses 1:21 and shows the residue of men coming into the firstfruits (Acts. 15:17) “That the remnant of men may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who bear my name.”

  

Verse 11 is awesome:  Tthey (his family) comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the Lord had brought upon him, and each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring.”

  

“Deut. 30:3:  “Then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where he scattered you.  Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the Lord your god will gather you and bring you back.”

  

This would be the ring of gold stamped with a lamb.  So Jehovah blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning.   Phil 1:6  “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

  

I find it interesting that Netanyahu mentions in his recent speech that he was given a golden ring with an inscription on it. 

 We all want a golden ring with a lamb stamped on it.

  

Taught by:  Carolyn Sissom, Pastor

 

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 Scripture quotes from K.J.V. – Bibliography and Text from Principles of Present Truth from Job by:  Kelly Varner