MEDITATION OF THE BOOK OF JOB

                                            The Book of Job

I believe that the burden of the Lord’s mind in the present time is that the church will return to her first love. In connection with this I have found myself being incessantly being urged to go back and read The Book of Job in the bible. I am of the view that the Lord has one or two things to teach His Church there.

                                         The Book.

It is an Old Testament book of the bible.

I am not unaware of some of us who do not relate well with the O.T part of the book. “If,”, the argument goes, ”I have all the full revelation of God’s mind in the New Testament, why bother about the old, boring O.T?” Others, on the other hand take the pain to browse through the O.T only just as long as they can have some promises to wrestle out of it , even if out of context.

As I read the book of Job, I was amazed at the extent of the riches of its sweeping reaches to all ages. It is compendium of the wisdom books and it reverberates down to the dispensation of the Spirit, to our own age.

The events in the book of Job predate the call of Abraham; they were before the Law (of Moses). Its author cannot be ascertained, but the writing was certainly from the Holy Spirit. Only Him could give the panoramic events and views in heaven and earth simultaneously. The stories go back to the age when the name of God known to man then was El-shaddai, the Almighty. This name occurs most frequently in the book.

The book opens with gleeful prose, soars high above the earth in magniloquent poetry and safely navigates the heavens and arrives back to the earth, again in prose. The setting of the story is the land of Uz and then, in those days, wealth was measured in livestock. Before the end of the first chapter we have been introduced to the protagonist Job, his family and their life-style, but more importantly, his relationship with the Almighty. Soon, the heavenly scene comes in view and we see the Almighty drawing a line on the ground and daring Satan to cross it! The line is on the ground and the dragon goes “after the remnant of her seed.” From there the book soars in an elevated grandeur of language-beauty until the last chapter when, bless God, the whole scene returns to the earth and prose.

                                The Hidden Mystery of God.

One more comment before we start our meditation. To me the book has the strain of the ‘mystery that has been hid from ages and generations.’ Mystery, in the bible, is a secret truth of God that must be accessed. Both angels and men tried hard to decipher this mystery of the Lord coded in types, symbols, parables, experiences of some people (the prophetic types) and dark utterances. The angels stand in awe of this hidden wisdom-truth of the in-accessible light; the unholy angels, dazed by the light, generated their own darkness-lights. Now, this wisdom-truth can only be access by revelation given by the Almighty. The darkness-lights so generated are today still extant in some religions, especially the organised ones with written scriptures.

In all ages and generations, the secret truth of the Almighty embodied in Christ Jesus, stands in bold relief on all human experiences, histories and background: the sin issue, the search for meaning in life, the battle for life, the hope of righteousness, the debate on the possibility of attaining holiness and divine nature besides this continual hankering of man after immortality and the yearning for incorruptibility with its attendant joy of relationship with God. There is a rich tapestry of all these in the book we will be meditating on.

I pray that the Lord will give us a fresh opening to this book and from it savour what He will have us know at this time. Lord, I pray that we may see and touch your heart.

                                            The AUTHORIAL TESTIMONY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

                                                      

                There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job;  and that man was perfect                    and upright, and one that feared God, and eschew evil.

  Job is a derivative Hebrew word meaning hating or adversary; it means he that is persecuted (New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance). The man came into be persecution and became an object of hatred not for any other reason other than he was perfect and upright. These two characters which make a deafening silent statement drew him irresistibly into the vortex of torrid hatred and battle for life. There is, in every man, a continual battle for the life of God in him. That silent but deafening statement was God’s, “I am satisfied and encouraged by this, this is the man that has won the major battles of life.”

“…and that man was perfect and upright…”  Perfect and upright. The Hebrew words are Tamim and Yashar. Tamim means complete, morally innocent. It also means to come to the end, to complete. Adam was innocent and so were some angels before they fell. But this individual was adjudged as morally innocent by the eyes of Shaddai which had proved him. It is possible that I might look at the same person with my jaundiced eyes and not see what the Lord saw to proclaim him morally innocent. In the eyes of the Almighty, Job had completed the end of the road; he had reached the zenith of Divine expectations; he had attained the end purpose of the Lord. Morally innocent and he was like a child with a blank mind incapable of thinking evil.

Tamim. It is an attained state vigorously wrought into a being by an upbringing stimulated by the love of God; by the renewing of the spirit of the mind. He does not strive nor struggle to be; it is a state of being. Perfect. It is being led all through life by the integrity of God that endows with the judgement of God and thus possessing the ability to eschew evil. Now evil can only be known and judged by such that has been exercised therewith; it is the quality of one that has attained a stature that can give accurate judgement. Perfect. It means to have acquired the mind of Christ as  Paul aptly puts it, “But we have the mind of Christ.” The individual has come of age to know and love what the Lord loves; he has come of age to identify and hate what the Lord hates.

“…that man was perfect and upright…” yashar is the word for upright – upright as opposed to being crooked. Walking is in view here for the  word derived from the basic meaning of a road being plain, lacking inclination or declination; the road is not jagged but smooth. In the clear meaning in the eyes of the true Judge of the whole earth, it means to come to be regarded as walking to expectation, Divine expectation. Yashar, upright. It means righteousness. It is a living-way that is borne out of holy fear thus ensuring smooth walking.

“…and that man was perfect and upright… ” Such character excites heaven and sets hell into disquiet anger. Both realms cannot ignore him; either is forced to regard him with curious interest or stupefaction, but neither can disregard him; he is to hell, a force majeure. Tamim  and yashar, perfect and upright. The man is lost in heaven, is of the sons of God for he has lost the ability to walk according to the dictate of this world; he has ceased to walk according to light of this world! In the eyes of the Almighty, he is seen as being right

“…and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God...” The knowledge one has produces an effect. “….that feared God…” that means Job had an intimate relationship knowledge of God; it was a knowledge that resulted from experiences and this produced a dramatic effect of the fear of God. The knowledge of the Almighty, for those who know brings the fear of God. We know God by faith; we see and acknowledge the Almightiness of God by faith. Our fear is not a blind fear of going to hell or being punished for one offence or the other should we dare to infringe divine order; it is a faith-fear, a type of fear you have towards Him because of your faith; it is the fear that faith has illuminated in us. This is called the faith-fear of son.

The faith-fear son!  A slave fears' he does things according to rules so that he may enjoy the goodwill of his master, but not so the son who obeys the Father out of love; he is not particular about what he will get out of his obedience! Think about this: most of us observe rules and observe religious activities so that God will answer our prayers and do good things for us. But the faith-fear of son says with or without the observable goodies of God, He is my Father, anyway. The faith-fear of son was to be the cause of the stories of Job. But hat will be jumping a chronological order if we should launch out into that now.

Faith-fear. This is another word for love-birthed fear or as the Amplified version puts it, “[reverently] feared. “…feared God and eschewed evil.” Eschew as opposed to chew. What does one chew?  What is palatable, what is sweet, what the taste buds appreciate. Eschew is therefore to abhor, to dislike as unpalatable. The Amplified version uses double-barrelled words: ‘abstained from and shunned evil.’ Anything that is bitter will as soon be spat out as soon as tasted. That is eschewed. Things evil from the point of view of the Lord is spat out of the mouth; it is hated mightily. The faith-knowledge ensures this life of son, this uprightness, this walking to the admiration of the Almighty; the tamim and the yashar that make an individual eschew evil come from the heavenly vocation; this love-birthed fear. The faith-fear of this man secured the eschewing of evil; the faith-knowledge had brought him to the plain  – with no inclination or declination –  ground where he began to lose the capacity to sin, where his taste for the evil has come to being eschewed. “…and eschew evil…” A man of God who is also my brother in Christ, Pastor Seyi Osanyibi has come to tell us that God is a terribly poor student at learning how to sin. “Teach God,” said the humorous preacher, “the A, B, C of how to sin and try to assess by giving him a test on it. He will fail woefully!” Concluding, he said,” God is a dull student in how to sin. He is simply incapable of committing sin.”

“….and eschew evil…” that is the man that has moved up with God and has come to the estate of one that has lost the capacity to commit sin – in the holy conformity to the image of the son of God’s love.

                             ...perfect, upright and fearing God…

As we begin to round up our present meditation, let us recap.

The man Job, out of reverential fear – faith-fear or faith-knowledge - has come to the estate of God’s inability to sin; this is not a wild claim. The man has a revelation of what God did with respect to redemption, mankind’s redemption and he responds with gratitude of servitude and reverence and love and fellowship. He hates what God hates and loves what God loves. This, we submit is borne out of the personal revelation we tagged the hidden mystery of God. This is the estate of a son in the making.

“…the man perfect and upright…” This is a man adjudged by heaven and also by the Spirit of Truth as perfect, complete and become full – talk of the fullness of God in Christ; heaven says of him that he is righteous. In the same hidden counsel of God was Abraham also declared righteous. Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness.  “…and the man was perfect and upright…” This is the account of him who has learned to lay hold by faith on the righteous judgement of heaven, who has learned that He is also faithful who hath promised. This  man is confident of the testimony of heaven concerning himself. He says of himself, I have no righteousness of my own which is according to the law, according to the human standards and human knowledge; but the righteousness which I have is the righteousness of God which is in the faith-revealed son of God.

The faith-revealed son of God. It was not by mere tradition that Job was found raising altars, sacrificing and giving burnt offerings according to the number of his children; his was an act that was faith-based on the blood that was shed from the foundation of the world. This man bore a testimony to the eternal truth to the blood that was shed in all eternity. It is about the hidden mystery that was to become fully known in later age, but a shadow was already active. That was why the Spirit of truth wrote of him, “…perfect and upright…” In the sacrifices and the burnt offerings was the continual testimony and re-enactment of that eternal accomplishment, an eternal perfection or completeness that was concluded in the mind of the Almighty in all eternity. There is no past or future in the eternal; it is just now; yesterday does not exist in eternity nor tomorrow. Eternity is always now.

Job offered burnt offerings… using animals. What Job did was representative of the potency of the blood of the ‘lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world.’ We fall short of words to express the eternal. That blood of the animal-victims shed in lieu of the blood of the coming son of God brought righteousness and kindled the hope of redemption and the inheritance of God. The knowledge of the salvation in the blood of the victims, though in figure, was an anchor to the soul of the ancients who had this revelation.

“…the man was perfect and upright…” not on the basis of his own righteousness, but on the account of the eternal blood that was shed before the foundation of the world, on the account of this simple act of appropriation, prompted by faith-revealed truth. “…the man was perfect and upright…” and knew this: ‘Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man on whom the Lord imputes not iniquity and in whose spirit there is no guile.’ In the eyes of God the man was regarded as perfect and upright and righteous. Then who would impute sin when God did not! It was the response of this man’s faith that made him set his face like a flint towards God.

This is what we ask, Lord, the heart that pants like the hart after the water brook to you. We seek you because we love you, because we truly love you. Our faces are set like flint towards you, as flint to Jerusalem when the Lord Jesus had to go to the cross. We say we love you more than life itself for you are the life and in you all things, all of life cohere. In you is life. Yes Lord, men may seek you for what you have to give, they may seek your good hand, but we have chosen to seek your face and nothing more for here indeed is life; we cannot do without your face; we are lost without your face. Oh, our Father that you may testify of us too and that like the people of old we may also obtain good result by the faith and revelation of yourself and the present intents of your heart; we do therefore pray that your pleasure may prosper in our hands. We recognise that this is a covenant stance and that we may be pressed out of measure tomorrow in so much that we may despair of life, but we say we will stand because of our love for you and because of your love to us. Your love gave all that you had and we seek also to give by way of our response to your love all that is us, all that we have. You that fill all in all, we declare that we are full of you and you are full of us. Thank you, our Lord.