The Book Of Job: Meditation

                                    Episode 4 on Job

                                                        The Feast And The Priest

Reading: Job 1:

5 And it was so, when the days of  their feasting were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all: for Job said, May be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God In their hearts. Thus did Job continually.  

“…When the days of their feasting were gone…”

·         The Hebrew word translated feast or feasting occurs first in Gen. 19: 3. It ia about Abraham entertaining some angels. The word, feast -  mishteh, in Hebrew -  in this passage is used in a noun form: …and he made them a feast.  The same word, mishteh, is used in Esther 1: 3-4…he made a feast unto his princes and his servants; the power of Persia and Media, the nobles and the princes of the provinces…when he showed the riches of his glorious kingdom and the honour of his excellent majesty…   It reads that king Ahasuerus gives a feast unto all his princess and servants. The next verse reads of the king showing the riches of his glorious kingdom and the honour of his excellent majesty for many days… Awesome, isn’t it?  There is another word translated feast in the bible, but we shall mainly be concerned with the nuances and implications of this as it applies to us and our lives in Christ. In the 25^th chapter of Isaiah, the 6th verse the prophet speaks of a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees… The word feast here is the same word in the verse of our meditation and that of Esther. This feast is a banquet given by some important person to others, as Job gives free rein to his sons to feast, the king giving a feast for days to his princes, servants and to the people of his kingdom, and as the Lord giving a feast of fat marrow….

And we ask, What wealth! The givers of this type of feasts are people known to be rich, powerful, mighty, victorious and excellent. The  children of Job feasted for 52 weeks or 360 days in a year, year in year out. Then again, what a period of peace and tranquillity! They were enjoying the peace of heaven as God the Almighty watched keenly over them. A Yoruba man will say in his own graphic expression, These children are eating life; while a pidgin-rapping chap  will say, These children de chop life o. And this is very apt as, indeed, living in affluence is eating life. Has anybody paused to ask why the whole of Africa nations are about empty out into America once tagged by a great Professor of Economics, Galbraith, as the Affluence Society? It is because banquets go on in the US 366 days in a year. It is great to participate in a great man’s feast.

“…When the days of their feasting were gone…” The sons and daughters of Job were blessed and it was not out of place for them to feast, to eat or chop life. But the feast would be best enjoyed in close proximity to the heart of their priestly father. If they could read the mind of their father they would definitely hap upon a heart that was unbound by the fascinations of the hand of God and the good things dropping from there; his eyes were off the gifts of God. Those eyes, the eyes of the matured, were continually focused on the shining face of his Father. Holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and the High priest of our profession, Christ Jesus… If they considered, they would have seen the mark towards which their father pressed – the prize of the high calling God in of Christ Jesus. This consideration and attainment come out of love-response to the Father.  They, however needed not consider for, as children, they did not know much about the life spoken about which was the preoccupation of their father.  At present, therefore, they could only dwell lingeringly on the power, the might, the victories, the miracles, the riches and the excellence of their Father. These are what constitute the feast for us, the feasting or the eating or chopping of this life.

“…when the days of their feasting were gone…”  Yet children must grow and develop to sons through experiences – cerebrally tasking, psychologically exacting and strength-sapping challenges that will draw heavily on their resources. Which is why the street kids are always smarter and tougher than kids from affluence homes; which is why those kids from the streets are quicker to be able to handle responsibilities. Some street kids have been known to be taking care of their younger siblings from an early age.

Several years ago, the Holy Spirit swept over the earth. There were repentance and acts of restitution. Holiness rose to spiralling heights like a tsunami and students of secondary and tertiary institutions got slain in the spirit. It was a feast of the high excellence. Following hard on the heels of this was the infilling of the Holy Spirit when many spoke in new tongues. Years later came the charismatic move with signs and wonders following.

“…When the days of their feasting were gone…” We summarised above the feasts men have enjoyed from time to time in the Lord for some decades. In the first waves, only few were privileged to come into the banquet. Few, yes, but not the types of people any man will envy. They left, in droves, the older churches where they had been members.  These endured as seeing the invisible. There was nothing on earth but spiritual promises, all intangible or palpable to the touch -  new crystallising revelations of forgiven sins, new way of living, identifying with Christ and His Father, and a hope of eternal salvation and reigning with God or of going to heaven – that kept them going. No wonder they were few. In the history of mankind, it has been found out that only very few can hold on to God’s promises that more often than not are not physical and material; only few can endure as seeing Him who is invisible. Those in this banquet were the scum of life, the unlearned, the poor; those today’s Christians will call pie-in-heaven believers.

The second feast was also quickly entered into and enjoyed by these we humbly call the first fruit company.  We use that word advisedly. Soon they were blowing away in tongues, even then only few received this news experience. In those days, no man joined himself to them: but the people magnified them. They were a force to reckon with on earth. Though not many, wherever they were found, righteousness supervened and they were recognised all over, though derisively called funny names. Their societal non-so-good positions and placements did not bother them much. They esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt. They enjoyed singing two songs with respect to their conditions on earth. The first had to do with the rejections they suffered among their relations and peers. To this they reply in, If my relations disavow me/ as long as I have Jesus/ I go on bearing it. To their lack of position on earth, they sang back: Take ye the whole world and give me Jesus/ I am satisfy, I am satisfy.

The heaven opened and joy filled the earth. These were a strange company of people who had nothing on earth as pursuit or as an incentive to serve God. There was only one Christian fellowship in each institution of secondary and higher learning. Oh what felicitations and love and union among the brethren! It was like the precious ointment upon the head that ran down upon the beard, even the beard of Aaron’s beard that went down the skirts of his garments. We remember the story of a sister, B, who left a town X for a town Z to write an exam. Now B had never been in town Z before. When she arrived and clambered out from the commuter bus, she spotted another sister coming from the opposite end, dressed like her. Sister B walked up to the sister she saw and explained her plights. The sister opened her purse, handed the key of her one room apartment to B as she explained to her how to get to the place. She could not return with B because she was hurrying to office that morning. Sister B, insisted the new found sister, should check the cupboard to find some food to eat until her returning after work. Oh we are just telling the edifying stories of the feast of yesteryears when the Spirit walked with men on earth, when the believers were not divided along denominational lines, when no discrimination of whatever hues or shades ever existed. The third waves quickly followed.

“…when the days of their feasting were gone…” This is the feast of the miraculous, healing, deliverance, prosperity and confessing to possess ministries. The life-styles of the earlier believers were subjected to new bifocals and holiness was redefined and the over-righteousness of these early believers was ridiculed. This new feast occurred at such times that the socio-politico-economy of the country was experiencing terrible hiccups. Men sought God for help, for healing, for success, for preservation, for divine interventions, for protection from evil and calamities…. Salvation was secondary. The churches were flooded; the days of great revival had come. One or two decades later the age of the mega churches had arrived.

“…when the days of their feasting were gone…” No doubt the Father is very rich and powerful, and mighty and excellent. The children of the Father deserve to feast, to show how great is the Father; they deserve to show that the Father is rich, very rich; they deserve to let the world know that cities of His righteousness can be built on the earth; they deserve to show that the wealth of the heathen must become the wealth of the children… We genuinely thank God for these .  The church now has voice among the rulers of the nations. It now ministers to the mighty and the powerful in the society with its leaders dinning and winning with the super- greats and celebrities. In some instances, the rulers, the judges, the functionaries of nations are at the beck and call church. It is even boasted that rulers cannot take decisions without us!

“…When the days of their feasting were gone…”  In the present feasting, so many things have not only crept in but cropped up. The church is inclusive and this is how it should be; she is full of the good, the not-so-good, the saints and the sinners. Today, the church is a place of ostentatious displays of natural endowments: mass of flesh; backsides and breasts of women, mouth-filling words, big grammar; it is a place of deployment of startling witticisms and captivating oratorical artistry: fulsome engagement of puns and rhymes. There is also a place for bragging of faith.

But the days are upon us now when the Lord will entrust into the hands of the willing believers and the ministers the line and the plummet. By these building instruments, taught Pastor Olabode Busiyi, will the believers be able to build according to the pattern of the Capstone and will also be able to cross-check any message by only the plan of the Foundation. For everyone shall know me from the greatest to the least, sayeth the Lord. The accuracy and the uprightness of the messages that appeal to the base instincts will be easily detected by the handy plummet and, so will also be the self-preserving and the give-me-this-and- that prayers that have charactirised our religion and devotion and meditations for such a long period of time. Salvation is almost here. The feasting on to God will now commence and the feasting unto self will stop. We are in the feast of Tabernacles, which is harvest and rejoicing to the Lord. Yes the feast of righteousness will supervene again.

Lord we pray for this hour when your children will really feast unto you. Their purpose of gathering will be You; their pursuit, You. We shall never be anxious again to build the kingdoms of this world nor shall we be found helping to prop them up; but we shall be mindful of only the kingdom of God. This will be our vision, our message to the world. And the kingdom of God will be reflected in us. Lord the days are upon us when the ministrations of the Apostle and the High Priest of our profession from the Throne of Mercy will completely exterminate the pursuit of worldly grandeur and achievements from our souls. We will have only what you want us to have and we shall be satisfied with You alone, You alone. The purest heart pleasing to You comes off from fire. Therefore, we say, Have Your end by Your Own  way. As we feast in the Resurrected church, help us oh, our High Priest to stay on course. Thank You, Lord.

(Heb. 3: 1; Phil. 3:4; Heb. 11: 27; Acts 5:27; Psm. 133:1,2;Zech. 4:10.)

Meditation On The Book Of Job: Episode 3

                                                          Job: Episode 3.

                                         Of  Sacrifices And Burnt Offerings.                           

Reading: Job 1:5

5 And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all, for Job said, it may be that my sons have cursed  God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually.

“…Job…and offer burnt offerings…” This was a way of life revealed to man after the fall. The fall? We shall get to that in a moment. Burnt offering revealed what would be in the future, the strain of the hidden mystery of God. But here it was in a shadow form; it was a revealed secret not fully understood yet by the people under its administration. The full meaning would become clear as crystal later in a faraway age. Job would continue what he had received by revelation from God as well as what he had gained by fellowship with those men and women of his age who knew God in part as Job also knew in part. The part they both knew made a unit whole that meant salvation to them. In all age, man will forever be learning – I almost said about – God. No single being, man or angels, outside of the Lord Jesus has the full mastery of the knowledge of God. It is a little here and a little there and the wise who fellowships with a little here and a little there will also receive revelation from the Lord himself and then is his joy complete. Knowing one single aspect of God is good but not good enough as when we have full and rounded knowledge of him. We come to this by fellowshiping with one another. In fact, we are counselled not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another… The man Job received, as it were, some extant knowledge of the living God from a distant past as taught by and confirmed to us by them that heard Him. Before Paul were Peter, James, John and all the other apostles. None knew much about the Eternal plan of God to save the whole world until the coming of Paul. Therefore from the 13^th Chapter of the book of Acts, there was a revolutionised thought on the mind of God. Peter was later to comment about the redemptive efficacy of Paul’s writings. Paul himself spoke of his meeting with the elders in Jerusalem to reveal to them what he was sent to preach. Both the new apostle and the old learned much from one another about God’s present thinking, or present truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin. There is safety in fellowship; there is the ever increase of and in the knowledge of God.

“Job… and offer burnt offerings…” This man knew the life of God as revealed in the righteousness of His son. He did not know it fully, but he at least knew just like the ancients that a saviour would come and save man. He did not know as we now do but he knew enough for his age to please the Lord and to walk worthy of him unto all pleasing. The burnt offerings meant so much to him as a livestock-rich man. For him, the shedding of the blood of his animal-wealth was significant in so much as it represented his own life taken away. He knew that the salvation and free fellowship of those children stood in the blood. He regularly sacrificed for the children to keep them in God’s view for only in this was hope and salvation, though the children might not know.

                                         The Treason of Man and the Reason for Altars.

“In the beginning was the word, and the word was God and the word was with God.”

“In the beginning, God, created the heaven and the earth….”

“Who is the image of the invisible God, the first born of every creature: For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and in him all things consist.”

Love is the Father’s heart; love seeks a hold upon which to fasten; love finds this in ‘the son of His love’ in whom all fullness dwells. God creates the universe not for angels but for man and has one singular desire, to dwell with and in man. Everything in the universe, including the Milky-way galaxy of man’s earth God puts in space with regards to the earth. He arranges the universe with awesome delicateness that helps to keep the earth in balanced orbiting and spinning. Having done this, God puts man on the planet earth, in a garden.  All of creation gravitates to the earth and all of the earth gravitates to man and man, in turn, makes a dwelling for God’s Son of love.

Love’s plan for man includes communion; it includes fellowship; it includes interaction with the Eternal. He plans that man will come into his nature of incorruptibility and immortality. He creates the man innocent but not perfect; he creates him neither mortal nor immortal. Man is to come into Eternal nature heuristically; it is a thing he must come into by experience; he must come into immortality by making a journey that requires the absolute reliance and dependence on God. Well, the Man, another Man called the second Adam or the Last Adam is to come in the future to bring immortality to light, to show that it is attainable – this thing called immortality. But, we will be distancing ourselves from our present meditation if we veer off to that Man. We will not wait to explore Him now.

Love plans interaction with man having His own nature. You interact with the type of your own life. Animals have their type of life called bio; so do trees, plants and all microbes. God has his own type of life called Eternal life; man is to be upgraded to this life for then will the Eternal be able to fellowship with him. It is for man to develop and develop and develop… until he comes into Eternal life, the very life of God. This is what the Eternal holds out for man.

In the garden of man called Eden are two famous trees among many others planted there to guide man towards the Eternal: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the second, the tree of Life. These are representation of light-radiating personages that feed life; they have fruits that give life. Now there is life and there is life! Have you noticed how a child increases and grows in intelligence as well as in stature when it is fed with food, fruit and vegetables; the same way will the fruits of these trees cause man to come to appropriating the different lives in them, in the trees of these fruits.

Christ demonstrated the meaning of these trees for us. He had sound judgement that was as accurate as that of His Father, yet he would not take this advantage to do things in His own wisdom or judgement. He would rather seek to do it the exact way the Father would do it. He was able to say, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. Further down, He said, the son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do: for what thing s soever He doeth, these also doeth the son likewise. The absolute submission and dependence of the Son to and on the Father in all things is called the TREE OF LIFE. Paul was to write later to the Philippians, Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus: who being in form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God. In other words, Christ did not try to take up His God-ship advantage to please self, but gave way to the Father’s mind in all things. The tree of Life is man’s absolute submission to God in all things; it is making deference to the Father’s judgement and wisdom in all things; it is being taught of God, of the Spirit. This is called faith of the Son, an absolute conviction that whatever God does is right; it is trust in and relying on the wisdom of God in anything He does. Then what is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? It is of man taking up his own life to run it by his own dimly perceived light-darkness; it speaks of man being wise in his own conceit; it is of man’s soul dispensing with divine wisdom and, choosing to be independent of God, goes his own way to become like God; it speaks of man creating and charting his own path to divinity. He has hardly done eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil when conscience rises out of him and condemns him. Since then conscience has always been bearing witness,…..accusing or excusing him.

Like God! Yes, like God. Man has run several civilisations, done all sort of things to overcome or attenuate the disastrous and hostile surroundings in which he has found himself. Since he is not whole like God, he easily finds enemies for himself or create one: the case of his several wars are in view here as well as the case of his discriminating, hating, enslaving and killing, not for any reason other than the suspicion he holds against the colour of the skin of fellow human beings. He is the only creature of God that kills and destroys his own kind or species. Like God! He has invented self-destructive weapons to eradicate himself from the surface of the world. He tested one of them to a holocaustic effect in his war which he called ‘a war to end all wars’ fought and ended a year shy of seventy this year. Now, he is full of fear and is distraught in managing his affairs. All these were offshoots of being like God – and independent of Him. Perhaps, it will not be too much of a digression if we further expatiate upon this thought for the sake of clarity.

Love expends so much care in the making of man, his object of delight though He makes him not of precious stones as bodily constituents or as coverings; nor does He make him as one set on a mountain or as one who walks up and down in the midst of fire. Love makes man of His own self, Spirit; Love makes him of an intangible fibre called the soul and the tangible dust of the earth. That is the wisdom of God at work; the making of this weak thing of soul and body as his house or dwelling place. Man is the crown of Love’s creation in heaven, on earth; visible and invisible; thrones or dominion and principalities… The purpose being that in all things, the son of His love will have the preeminence. Man is of the spirit, having a soul and living in a body. The spirit relates to God, the soul to reason and the body to the physical world.

On a day the Lord brings His other creatures to man and says, “Give names to these creatures for me” and man in a jiffy, begins to give names. He does this by being in tune with the spirit, by relating to God in his spirit, the dwelling of God. By the wisdom of the spirit of God, the soul of the man receives help and insights. Whatever names given are exactly what God has also arrived at. Talk of spontaneity of thoughts. Along the line comes an ancient murderer that engages the reasoning stance of the soul of man. The argument is about eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Reason chooses to obey without any input from the spirit or from the Lord. Man takes the path of independence from Love.

By this singular act, man kills love. Love is killed when distrusted, when his life-giving guidance is discountenanced; love is deeply hurt when pushed, out of suspicion, away from the place of communion and fellowship. Can walk together except they agree? This is the death of man! Death is the severance of relationship from God; death is distrust of God; death is man saying he can do without God; death is the absence of faith, it is a doubting of divine intent and purpose. Death is man defiantly telling himself that he can do well and be on the way to eternal life by himself, independently of God. Quite right, he has done well, has he not? We will not press this further.

At severance from God Who is spirit, man died. What remained was just the shell energised by death itself. Of course, death is not the physical falling down and cessation of breath; it is a setting in of decay; it is a cutting off from the source of life for only in “him all things hold together or cohere.” Death is believing (or siding with) the lie of God’s enemy; it is calling God a liar. This is disobedience and it carries a great penalty. This, for man, is treason for he aligns himself with another against God to dethrone God from His place.

God must leave since the earth has been hived out of orbit by the very man to whom it is entrusted; he chooses to give it to another. This has been the story of man ever since.

Love must keep off the affairs of the earth. God’s rights stopped immediately.

God planned to indwell man bodily, but man had called for his independence. God had to leave and allow man to go his way for He is just. But the Lord has always worked from the finished to the starting; from the end, working his way to the beginning. This much Pa Austin T. Sparks has taught us.

Sequel to this treason, nature was subjected to vanity, aimlessness and purposelessness – but in hope. Many African proverbs capture this vicious circle of existence. “Ile aye,” says a Yoruba proverb, “aye asan.” Literally, “This house of life – it is a vanity,” of no value. No doubt, it is so for us if our value is that of this life, aye asan.

Man, whoever is he or whatever he has achieved or whatever is his stature always find an emptiness, a vacuity in himself, a yearning seeking to be filled. He may not acknowledge it, though; it is always there. Clever man, he has successfully filled that inward yearning with activities: economic advancement, scientific researches, inventions and technological miracles, art, culture and all the rest which are the hallmarks of his civilisation(s).

God is righteous. God is just. His justice demands he stay away from man or that man be destroyed or be taken out of his sight; justice demands that he smash up all of creation and, perhaps, start again, but he has finished his work from the beginning and this hitch is not going to stop him; he has decided to love man and man he must love. He kills an animal and covers the nakedness that is man’s. This is symbolic. This is the first sacrifice ever made and this is of God. In some divine economy, the innocent becomes the guilty; the guilty becomes the innocent. It means that the guilty has been made innocent, justified by the shedding of the blood of the animal called the victim. Theologians are to call this, in future, the principle of double exchange.

“…and offered burnt offering…” God taught man by symbols and types about Jesus Christ’s shedding His blood for the purpose of double exchange: the life of the one without sin for the life of the sinner. The men that cherished the righteousness of God learned early to offer sacrifices to Him. Why sacrifice? These sacrifices re-established the righteous rights of God on earth wherever they were carried out. God is no respecter of persons: But in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness, is accepted of him. This righteousness here is according to God, not according to man; it is the righteousness defined from the point of view of God. It is about acknowledging that our personal righteousness in not enough to satisfy the standards of God’s righteousness; it is about confession of our sins and passing them on the victim who will die in our stead. Abraham reared altars often to sacrifice on. Noah was the first to be mentioned in connection with an altar and burnt offering. The offering established the fact that God is the right and true Lord of the earth; it also proclaims that man agrees to that, at least the man that does the offering. The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. The victim of the burnt offering was wholly burnt on the fire of the altar. This speaks of thorough judgement of removing the sinner me out of God’s sight through this exchange of two lives. Now, I, the guilty and the unrighteous have been transformed to the innocent victim; I have assumed another life, delightful to God. The innocent victim has been transformed to me and become me who is to be destroyed; I have been destroyed in the victim. By this the guilty me does not exist anymore, only a new creature with a new beginning. I speak of my spirit.

“…Job… offered burnt offerings...” This was a type of Christ.

In the Mosaic Law, the sacrifices became more specialised. There was the burnt offering, the meat/ grain offering, the fellowship/ peace offering, the sin offering and guilt offering. In sin and guilt offering, as I lay my hands on the victim, I acknowledge my sins or trespasses against God or man; in burnt offering, there is interchange of lives: the innocent victim and the guilty man that needed to be taken out of the sight of God; in fellowship offering, I have come to God for a voluntary act of worship. In fact, qorban, the Hebrew word for offering actually means that which brings to God or to the altar (Vine Comp. Exp. Dic.). A frequent statement in Leveticus is connected with these offerings and is first noticed in Genesis 8: the Lord smelled a sweet savour, talking about Noah’s sacrifice which he offered on the altar he built after emerging from the ark and with all that were with him. In Leveticus, the sweet phrasal refrain is, of a sweet savour unto the Lord.

                                               The Hidden Mystery

These offerings and the altars were a type of Christ.

The perfect burnt offering or victim is Jesus Christ; the perfect because He was without sin, though tempted in all ways – tested and tried to the last degree yet without sin. For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself  without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

Now by faith, he that takes hold of the perfect sacrifice is said to be born from above or born again. He is born into the Spirit of God.

 I believe in the end of the sinful me in the vicarious destruction of Christ Jesus; I believe my being raised back to life in His resurrection from death. Therefore I am born from above.

I do not recognise nor remember however faintly the old sinful me now thoroughly destroyed and taken out of the sight of God; there is only brand new me never again to be taunted by dead conscience. I am of another world where righteousness, peace and joy reign supreme; I am out of the zone of death. 

The sweet savour to God is not the gas coming off the sacrifice.

Jesus Christ is the sweet savour to God; his love-response to the Father is the savour of sweet smell. I am by implication a sweet savour to God; I am one together with Christ Jesus as God’s altar.  And the smoke of the incense  which came with the prayers of the saints is Jesus Christ. Jesus is everything in the temple of God: the victim, the furniture, the altars, the incense and the High Priest.

“… Job…offered burnt offerings…” There is also today a continuing offering called the living sacrifice to which all the saints, for the purpose of be being saved, are enjoined to offer. This is said to be the saints’ reasonable service. Be being saved. That sounds awkward, but it speaks of a continuing process as our salvation is not a once for all affair; we, we shall repeat the phrase once more, be being saved. The sacrifice of our High Priest is wholly and perfect, but there is the living sacrifice for us to make. A living sacrifice can be cumbersome and frustrating; he can bolt away, nay, run away when the heat proves too overwhelming. This contrasts greatly with a dead sacrifice which is done and over with.

Here we come o, Lord, in response to your vicarious offering on the Cross of Calvary to be completely given over to you, without reserve; we present ourselves as living sacrifice. We know it is not easy to be a living sacrifice for it means being offered and living again and yet again be killed. The killing is painfully not once and for all. It is a continuous, endless process. Yet we receive the strength of your Spirit, your grace to surrender ourselves. We pray, Lord that you should go ahead and deal with us and obtain your own end through your own way, whatever that means. Let this presenting of self as a living sacrifice be thorough and go far to achieve divine target in our lives. Cause us to be drawn to your altar of sacrifice and be the altar that we may access higher fellowship and communion with you. The presentation of our bodies is our job to do; the grace to do comes from you. We receive this grace and stay on the altar till you have obtained your perfect interest in us. We acknowledge that it is only you that can assess the height, the depth, the length and the breadth of our union with you, or how far we have come in you. Now, all we say is that in nothing shall we be ashamed (of you)  but that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in our body, whether it be by life or by death. The one goal of this living sacrifice is that as we receive divine dealings in our lives, in our bodies, there will be a diminishing of us as there is the ever increasing magnification of Christ in us. As part of this living sacrifice, we pray that we may know Him, that is our Lord Jesus Christ; that we may know the power of His resurrection (for it is this power, in dealing with us,  that will bring Christ in us ); we pray to know the fellowship of His suffering and be made conformable unto his death. Thank you, our Lord.

( Heb.10: 25; Heb.2: 3,4; 1 Jn1:7; Jn.1:1;

 Gen.1:1;  Ps.8:3-9; Col.1:15-16;

 Gen.2:1-8, 17, 19-20; Gen.3:21,22; Rom.2:15;

Jn.5:17,19; Phil.2:5-6; Prov.26:5,12; Rom.12:16;

 Hez.28:14-15; Amos3:3; Col.1:17; Rom.8:19-21; Lev.1;2;3;4 ;5;

 Rom.12:1; Pil.3:10)

Meditation On The Book Of Job,re-edited

Job: Episode 2

                                                                THE FATHER’S HEART

Our text: Job 1:

2 And there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters.

3 his substance also was seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses, and a very great household; so that this man was the greatest of all the men of the east.

4 And his sons went and feasted in their houses, everyone his day; and sent and called for their three sisters to eat and to drink with them.

5 And it was so,  when the days of their feasting were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all: for Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually.

The Divine designation of fatherhood deals with love.

Man will never know love unless he knows fatherhood.

Man may never know love unless as he has learned to love a son or daughter upon whom to lavish love. Man is a creature of love. His Father is love. Man must take after his Creator.

But nature was suddenly precipitated into a cataclysm by man and it went awry. Man himself was not left out of the tragedy that played out; the love in him turned awry and sour. The creation was therefore subjected to futility, vanity to be later released again to fruitfulness at the manifestation of the sons of God. Filial love failed; obedience to the wisdom of the just jumped out of the window. And the angel, standing before Zacharias in the temple as the latter ministered to the Lord, spoke of one that would come in the power of Elias: “to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just one…”

If you want to get at a man, to destroy him or to kill him, then hurt his son or daughter. The devastating effects will be far reaching if such child is one upon whom much labour and love have been bestowed; such child that is described as the son of his love. In our modern African society where children are so much cherished, if a man lacks one, he prays or he converts to the faith of Christ. He will do anything to get a child. He will labour hard to experience fatherhood and to know how it feels to love a child. When he has the desire of his heart, he is said to have laboured hard for this child and, among the Yoruba of whom I know best in Africa, such child obtained at such great cost is called the eye of his father; he is the son of the father’s love, the very heartbeat of the man.

Let us note in passing that every exhibited wickedness in the world is aimed at the heart of Love; that accident that causes the death of one person or many is an arrow targeted at the heart of Love; that holocaustic intervention is aimed to hit the heart of God real hard; the recent religious insurgent uprisings and killings in several parts of the world has a bull eye to hit, the tender heart of the Father. Those African internecine wars - or of any parts of the world - and the sadistic indulgences of the leaders against men are straight stabs and jabs of arrows at the heart of God.    Once upon a time, long time ago in a town where I worked as a school teacher I witnessed a tragedy first hand. An old widower who was about seventy five years old suffered the sudden lost of his only son and child who was my student. The teenager son suddenly cried out of sleep on a night and low and behold, blood was gushing out of his mouth. He died instantly. This was a mystery death dealt to the old man by an by an enemy. The whole town congregated on him, weeping and crying. As for the man, he was gone crying. It was the worse death experience an enemy could wish another! For a seventy-five years old man to have teenager only-son means that he laboured for that child. The child was the son of his love, his very heart and eye. Too shock to utter a word, he was full of the histrionics. Oh friend, tragedy of that proportion can make another being out of you and give you another instant character. In the normal time of peace, you will think it impossible that you are capable of such behaviour. The old man would step out of the house in measured paces of the theatrics, stands still for a while, then return to the lifeless body in almost exaggerated steps; kneeling down besides it, he would tenderly touch it all over and all the while looking ceiling-ward. In the presence of such drama, we would begin to cry afresh. It was a horrible day, a day that should perish out of memory; it was the final stab of the barbed arrow of the wicked in the heart of a father. It is hard to witness the final end of the story, of how the forlorn old man, first, started to weave in and out of realities and, finally drifted to death and was no more to be seen again.

That old man knew love; that old man had in him the quintessence of what is called love. Experience taught him love; life taught him love. And the old devil knew the most effective way, the most painful slow-lynching pain to administer to this father.

Oh, that we take thought on the lively ever burning ember of love of the Father’s heart! Absalom, David’s son would readily kill his father if he met him within immediate reach when he was looking for him. Yet the son-dethroned father pleaded for the life of his son; he appealed to his General Joab to spare the life of his son. But when David heard that his son was killed, he cried, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would God I died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!” It was a moment of mourning, the mourning of the king for his son; this was the moment of victory, but a victory that turned to defeat as the soldiers, embarrassed by the king weeping for his son, started to slink away. This is the heart of a father.

God is the perfect Father; His Fatherly heart is called Love. In eternity, Love wants an object upon which to fasten self. Love chooses not to fasten self on the angels, or the Cherubim, the Seraphims and all those that constitute the royal court of heaven. Yet he must find the part of Him upon which to lavish Himself. He brought forth a weak thing called man and called him son; Adam, the son of God.

“And there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters.” Apart from this, Job had a large household. He was blessed in his children and he experienced how it felt to love children, how the Eternal must have felt to have a son and to have sons. Most fathers feel this essential thrill of having a fellow upon whom to bestow much love; it is God’s nature too. Strangely enough, these children did not have the same interpersonal relationship with either their father or the Almighty with whom their father was in so much intimate relationship. “And his sons went and feasted …” This is all we care about! A miracle working God that is there to meet my needs and to remove every discomfort; if He does not do exactly that, he has failed as the true Father, or - when I need to be charitable and I may exonerate Him from blame and conclude that I fail to receive my need or have my discomfort taken away because His faith-demand on me to get things done is not strong enough or is too weak. Now I am a son and this Father is there for me to give me wealth, to feed me, to give me good and beautiful wife/ husband and goodly natured children; He is there for me to make me excel in all life pursuits and to give me a hedge above many others, including my enemies and neighbours. He is there to make me have the beautiful things of life, the newly invented things that diminish the stress of life. God the Father is also there to make me famous. Since He is my father, all of life is for my taking. “And his sons went and feasted…” They feasted because they misunderstood the purpose of being their father’s children; they could not see far that the feasting they revelled in was a poor substitute to the real feast, the true feast. They failed to know that the true feast was to come to the stature of their father, to come to the place they could be maturely engaged in creative relationship with their father who had been longing for the day he would see his own type of life full of his own essence with whom he could be actively involved with, but these children loved the other life, the lower life of minding the flesh and getting high. Job’s children missed the essence of their being, their raison d’etre  - the purpose of their being, just as the vast majority of mankind does not ask this question. In Africa, the question about the reason for being does not arise as everyone thinks that he is born just to eat, sleep, wake, work; repeat: eat, sleep, wake, work and, to keep the repetition less monotonous, train in some skill and, after a while, die. I think this comes from being preoccupied with poverty of substance and mind. At least, in other races, people have things that profitably preoccupied their minds, for example the humbling atmosphere of science and its mind-engaging technology products.

“And his sons went and feasted…” The sons missed it all; they did not seek what their father desired, but rather something else. In fact, their own life was a totally different type of life from the one their father knew. But the man, Job was a father and he kept praying for them. But he was sad; his heart bled as long as the lower-life feasts lasted at the end of which he “sent and sanctified them…”

The Father’s heart longs for friendship, for sons; but man’s heart is set on independence. Man does not want God. Man wants to achieve the aim of God while being god-independent. What an oxymoron! “A certain man,” began the Lord as he told the story of a man who had two sons, “had two sons.”  The younger who typifies the man in his ever rebellious desire to go away from the father said, “Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me.” His father obliged him. He moved to a foreign land to feast away his inheritance and ended the story in poverty. Then, he came to himself and reasoned that he needed to go back to his father not as a son but as a servant. This portrays the life of man in his activities to do away with God. Yet God keeps warning: You are not up to what you are attempting and you cannot do it without me. When the father saw the wretched son far off, his heart could not bear the sight; he ran across to his son for a warm embrace and reinstated him into his estate of sonship. This is the Father’s heart of love.

We cannot over emphasise this: the Father’s heart yearns for sons as opposed to children. Son speaks of a child that has grown up, that has acquired stature with full capacity to handle legally the Father’s businesses and property. The process of obtaining sons is through the Church of Christ. How pathetic is it today that we are far from this reality of the Father’s thoughtful heart. How weak. So were Job’s children.

They only came to enjoy the wealth of their father without the added responsibility of walking with the God to whom the man Job was worship. Like the people of Israel, they knew the acts of God but not his ways. They left that out and apportioned it to Moses. The children lapped up the wealth. None of them bothered about righteousness or the holy ways of the Father even though the heart ululated for a fellowship of sons, a communion and a relationship of Father-son. The Father was not mad with them for enjoying and feasting or having fun and jollification. It was a childish state of development and was understandable: children would always be children and that is why they are called children. However, children are supposed to grow up, to “come to maturity to a perfect man, to the full measure of the fullness of Christ.” Children are expected to grow to a point that the Father can say, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.” In the life of a child there should come a time when the Father, having been convinced of our growth will want to reveal secrets, his own secrets, and will be able to confidently say, “Come up hither.”  

The ways of God were made known to Moses; the acts of God to Israel. There is a difference. The one sought the glorious face of God, the others were satisfied with divine provisions of what to eat, what to wear, what to drink, where to live and many more preoccupations of this fleeting life. The other endured as if seeing the invisible, the others were concerned about what was in it for them to be part of God’s people. Once again, the voice of Him that once shook the earth will now shake both the earth and the heaven. He has ever been so steadily and tenderly calling, saying, “Seek my face.” Our response should be, “Lord, your face shall we seek.” Let us come therefore on to mount Zion, the city of the Living God, the heavenly Jerusalem…  

The Lord wants us to come up. O that we may understand the Lord is not interested in a grey-haired man behaving like a kid; it is abnormal to be hoary-haired – a  sign of wisdom and experiences and not display it. Being hoary-haired is a symbol of one that has become so mature as to make accurate judgement. The judge wearing grey-haired-like wig as he sits in his court is only vociferating it to the world that he is of age, that is very wise to make right judgement in this case and any others, for that matter.

 The Father is more than his wealth; he that has inherited the Father has more than the wealth belonging to the Father. May we begin to see Him beyond a magic wand that meets all our needs. A Yoruba song says, He that has Jesus, it is him who has all things. What a truth!

And his sons went and feasted… that is alright for children. And we have stayed besides the mountain for too long; time we took our way northward. We have remained here building the empires of this world, telling ourselves, You’ve got to impact your generation…What will the world remember you by? We have jumped on the bandwagon of building edifice to ourselves, to make names for ourselves on earth. Some people did it before, at Babel, even if today we give it a whitewashed name or term. Babel will always be what it is, Babel. One unique goal of man out of God is to become god and the weak church is at it with all joy, pointing out what she has acquired by faith.

When a child grows up and comes to maturity, there is nothing as thrilling to the father as to relate to his child-come-to-age son. There is nothing as beautiful as seeing a child growing into the likeness of his father for then the father begins to see how he looks like, the son being his reflecting mirror. The heart of the Father is relentlessly at work seeking the joy of harvest of sons and to watch with divine satisfaction how He actually looks like in us, in sons. Again, may I be allowed to quote another Yoruba saying: Baba ku, baba ku. Baba means, Father. Ku means either remains or dies. Freely translated, it means, father has died, father still remains. It is used of a son who is the chip of the old block when the father has died. In other words, though father has died, but there is one that is here in whom we see the reflection or the image of the father; therefore we are satisfied that father still remains.

Love has, since the foundation of the world initiated wisdom that cannot be replicated anywhere, any time and in any age. By the time is through with us, with mankind, the human technology of cloning will have paled to insignificance. Surely, the Lord will achieve the eternal purpose which He has concluded in His son, Christ Jesus. Perhaps, Cloned-Christ will be a wrong and inappropriate word, but man will have been constituted into all that Christ is; he will be all that the son of God is. This initiation is the strain of mystery hidden in Christ.

As with the Father so with the son in the eternal interlock of embrace in each other’s arms, their palpitating heart singing to each other in love. The son has come of age; he knows the heart of the Father on all issues. He has come to faith-rest; he is unflappable. He is as calm and confident as a lake. There is simultaneity of thought with the Father and both the structure and intuition of decision are both alike – without a shade of difference. The Father and the son move on the same frequency; they move in phase and arrive at a point not a jot out of phase.

Oh that we come to this level, Lord God Almighty. You are our Lord who desires this for us; you are our Lord who designed this for us. It has been in the Eternal mind when the Father set up the son as the one by whom He would judge the world. You have never failed; you can never fail. We say therefore Father that this purpose and intent of your heart will not fail but will find expression in us. We are not talking of struggles to keep away from sinning, but we are talking of being completely swallowed up in your will and glory that we see nothing other than coming to the full measure of the fullness of Christ. Son is incapable of sinning; he cannot sin for the seed of the Father is in him. Jesus said, Who among you can convince me of sin?  Lord we are not just mouthing this as a wish, a platitude to please you, but we are praying that we will be so transformed – metamorphosed – into your likeness your heart will be our heart; your mind will be our mind. The Lord Jesus said, My Father works hitherto, I work. In another place, He said, What I see my Father do, I do. Oh Father what a fellowship, what a oneness, what communion and what a transformation of the son into the image of the Father by whom the Lord speaks to us in these latter days. He is the brightness of his glory, the express image of the Father’s person. One has become the other and the other has become the one. Lord, we receive mercy and grace to be so transformed likewise. We receive the grace to learn to wait patiently for this, whatever may be the tide, to wait patiently as the husbandman wait for the early and latter rain.

 Job sent and sanctified them…  To sanctify is to set apart for use; it is to make available for the use of God. Man can be sanctified; animals can be sanctified; inanimate things can be sanctified. Job “sent and sanctified them…” This sanctifying came out of strong priesthood of the man Job. Only a priest could do that for he has come to the place of reconciling man to God. After the Lord Jesus has purged our sins as God’s High Priest with his own blood, he sat at the right hand of the majesty on high. Christ is the High priest presently ministering to the believers from the heavenly throne. He went through our own experience yet without sin and has come to the place where He could by His Blood cleanse us. It is written, We have not an high priest that cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities… and we are exhorted to come boldly to the throne of mercy from where the Eternal High Priest ministers. Priesthood is the lord’s wisdom in bringing many sons to glory. Thank you Father for your invincible Father’s heart even though it has been hit hard over and over by both man and the evil one.

( References: Gen 3: 22 - 24; Luke. 1:16; Luke 3: 38; Luke 15: 11 - 24, Eph. 4:12 - 13; Rev.4:1;Heb.11;24-27; Ps.27: 8; Heb.12: 22, Deut.1:6; Gen.11: 4; 1Jh.3:9; Heb.1: 1- 3)