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.
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