GOD’S WAYS WITH JOB
Wm. Moseley
James 5: end of verse 11; Job 40: 1–8; 42: 1–13
I want to say a word about God’s ways with Job. It is a very interesting subject because it is one of the outstanding things in the Bible, I think, that God devotes forty-two chapters to speaking about His ways with one man. There must have been something very important in God’s ways with Job. He was no ordinary man; he was a remarkable man. God could say of him that there was none like him, outstanding in righteousness, outstanding in his piety, so much so that God could say to Satan, “Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth?”, Job 1: 8. Then Satan came back with a challenge and said, “Doth Job fear God for nought?”. He inferred that Job was serving God because it was profitable, because God was blessing him, and he says, in effect, ‘Take away the blessing and he will curse Thee’. Then Jehovah said to Satan, “All that he hath is in thy hand”; He allowed Satan to do what he would, with certain limitations. Satan immediately went to work to take away what God had given to Job. He smote his cattle, his sheep, his camels, he smote his sons; Job was bereft of all he had. A man who had been rich, a man God had blessed in a remarkable way, was reduced to poverty, yet he did not ascribe anything unseemly to God (Job 1: 22).
Then Satan said, “Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life”, Job 2: 4. He suggested that if Jehovah touched his body Job would curse Him. So God allowed Satan to touch Job in his body. He smote him with a great scourge. Job was covered with boils; yet he did not curse God. His wife told him to curse God and die, but he rebuked her—“Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. We have also received good from God, and should we not receive evil?”. Then it says that “In all this Job did not sin with his lips”. So Satan was defeated, and God could draw attention to Job, because He knew there was something more with him than what was external. What was external might not have stood the test, but there was something else. That is so with the saints; God’s work was there in Job.
So He could challenge Satan, and God was vindicated in His challenge that whatever Satan brought upon Job he could not get him to curse God. His links with God were stronger than what was merely material. It was proved he was not merely serving God because of the blessing God gave him. All those things were taken from him and he still did not curse God. That might have been the end of the matter; but God had in mind that He was going to get glory out of this; that was what He was working for. He had no interest in Satan, or in what Satan thought of His servant. Satan can only go so far; he can only do what God allows him to do, and what God allows him to do in divine wisdom is for God’s glory. This is a wonderful thing! That is what we see in this book.
Then three others come on the scene. I remember a brother calling them a ‘mutual irritation society’, because if there was anyone who would bring out anything that was in Job naturally, these men would. They did not understand God’s ways with Job, neither did they have any appreciation of Job, though they took the ground of being his friends. The things they said to Job provoked him bitterly. They brought out something in Job that had not come out before.
Job went to work to justify himself; he sought to show that he was just and even if it meant condemning God in His ways, which he did not understand, he was prepared to justify himself. So what these men brought out in Job was something which had not come out before; they brought out what he was as a natural man. They did not bring out the work of God; they brought out the flesh. And when it had all come out, when they had to give him up as a bad job, when Job appeared in so poor a light, when these men had done their worst and could do no more, then God brings another man on the scene who was different—a type of the Lord Jesus.
Elihu was a young man, but he went to work to get at the work of God in Job. He appeals to him, and brings out something from him. His service was so remarkable that when he brought it to a certain point. Jehovah came in in a whirlwind.
Jehovah brought Job to a point where he had to acknowledge that he had been talking about things of which he did not know anything; then he says, “I will lay my hand upon my mouth”. In effect, he said, I will just be quiet now because I do not know what I am talking about. But God says, No, that will not do; I am not satisfied with that. He says, “Gird up now thy loins like a man—I will demand of thee, and inform thou me”. Job had not been manly—many of us are like Job and are not manly with God. Now God says, “Gird up now thy loins like a man”. Face up to things, Job. What have you been saying about Me? Will it stand the test? Job had finally to come to it that not only had he been saying what he had not understood; not only had he been speaking about things that he did not know, but, above all, he had not really known God. He said, “I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee”. I do not think any man comes to a proper appreciation of the work of God in him, or of the flesh in him, until he knows God. Job had no idea of the depths of depravity that were connected with the flesh. Outwardly righteous, outwardly pious, yet deep inside there was the flesh. It had to come out. God allowed these three men to operate to bring out the flesh; and what capacity some men have to provoke and bring out the worst in men; but God can use these men, and use them to His end. He not only used Satan, but He used these three men; and it brought out the character of Job’s flesh, that he would even speak against God if it were a question of justifying himself. Because that was a sore point with Job—he prided himself in his righteousness; and outward righteousness there had been; there was no question as to that, no one could deny it; yet there was something lacking. But when all the flesh came out, when the worst came out in Job, then he said, “I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes”.
You may say, That righteous man, that man who has done so much that the fields could not complain against him, the furrows could not complain, his beasts could not complain, his neighbours could not complain; why is that same man now repenting in dust and ashes? Dust would connect itself with what man is, formed of the dust. It is very humbling to think of that, the first man was out of the earth, made of dust. Well, Job was recognising that he belonged to the first creation, that he was made of dust, and that would be very humbling.
And where you have ashes you have had fire. It would suggest that God had been working in His judgment, in His government; the fire had been there. It would speak of the death of Christ, the way the fire was there. Well, Job repents in dust and ashes. He recognises what he was natively, but he recognises that the fire had been there. Everything had been consumed; he cannot hold up his head, he has no reputation, he has nothing left in which he can boast. It has all been taken away by the fire.
So all that Job can speak about is, “But now mine eye seeth thee”. God came into his view and into his knowledge in a way He never had before, so much so that God could now say to these three men who had so provoked Job, “Ye have not spoken rightly of me, like my servant Job”. He spoke of dealing with them according to their folly and told them to take seven bullocks and seven rams as a burnt-offering, typically, to avail themselves of the death of Christ. The burnt-offering would speak of Christ as the ground of their acceptance, the bullocks speaking of the moral greatness of Christ as the burnt-offering. The rams would not be so large but would have their own distinctiveness, suggesting the progenitive idea, Christ as giving moral character to the whole flock. This would be the ground of their acceptance and would be effective, along with the prayer of Job.
Job would be in the gain of the burnt-offering now, for God says, “Him will I accept”. These men were told to bring these offerings and to “Go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt-offering; and my servant Job shall pray for you, for him will I accept; lest I deal with you after your folly, for ye have not spoken of me rightly, like my servant Job”.
Then it says they went and did according as Jehovah had said, and Jehovah accepted Job. There was something very wonderful that then came to light. It says, “And Jehovah turned the captivity of Job, when he had prayed for his friends”. It is a wonderful thing to have your captivity turned. It was not when Job spoke rightly of God, but when he prayed for his friends. This was the supreme test; it would really show whether Job had got down to the work of God in his soul, whether he had done with the flesh, and done with expecting anything from it, because it was these men who had so provoked him, so tested him, and so spoken of him. Now, can he pray for them? Can he operate in an intercessory way? If God is accepting Job now it is because he is standing typically in the gain of the work of Christ; he is standing in the gain of what he is according to God’s work. God is accepting him because he is now on that ground; he is not now on the ground of the flesh. He has vacated that; he is now standing on other ground and God has accepted him. Now the test is, is he great enough to be able to pray for his friends? He was. How interesting it would have been to hear him speaking to God for these men, beseeching God as he prayed for his friends.
Well, I have known what it is to have captivity turned. It is a wonderful thing! It means you have been in bondage and you are now in liberty. How wonderful it is!—the turning of the captivity. It is not only that you are freed, but you are brought into liberty, turned! God allows us to go into captivity in order that we might appreciate the liberty. Paul says, “Stand fast therefore, and be not held again in a yoke of bondage”, Galatians 5: 1. Well, Job came into liberty; he had never had liberty like it before. He had liberty with his brethren, and he had liberty with God, and the blessing of God came in. It says, “Jehovah blessed the latter end of Job”. He had twice as much as he had before—a wonderful thing that! Some of us are coming to what we might say was our latter end. Well, God blessed the latter end of Job. You might say, He blessed him as a young man. Well, he did bless him as a young man, but the blessing that came in in his old age was much greater as it was on a spiritual basis. His daughters were fairer, he had more cattle; and it all speaks of what is spiritual, of the way God would give us an appreciation of Himself and His things that we have not had before. That is a great blessing. So God blessed the latter end of Job.
James tells us, “Ye have heard of the endurance of Job”. Well, I would not have thought of that, but God says it. So Job had enough patience to go through this matter with God; he did not give up; and we want to have patience to go through. I am sure God is working with each one of us; He has an end in view, and it is a wonderful end; and what He has in view for us is that we should arrive at a judgment of the flesh, even the ‘best’, good as it might appear. We have to arrive at a judgment of it so that we say, “I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes”, as in the appreciation of what Christ is, and of the work of God, which is really Christ in the hearts of the saints. That is what God is bringing us to in a practical way. We all know this in the way of light; we can all quote from Romans, which tells us about the doctrine, but then have we arrived at it in an experimental way? That is what Job did; so you get the patience of Job and the end of the Lord. What a wonderful end it was! And James speaks of the Lord as being “full of tender compassion and pitiful”. You say, How do you work that out? Well, there it was; it did not appear on the surface; but how God felt for Job; His compassion was there in what Job was going through; His pity was there; but then God did not give up because He knew the end He was working to, and He knew what it was going to be for Job.
So as we pass through these things it is a good thing to remember that the Lord is of tender compassion and pitiful. God is never hard, never hard on His people. That was a terrible doctrine about God ambushing His people. That is not what I find here; there is tender compassion and pity and we all have to admit that it has been so. And if there is patience with us to get the gain of it, what a wonderful thing the end of the Lord is. It was good for Job, and God was glorified.
Well, let us all go through with God, let us not resist, let us put ourselves in the hands of God so that we may be brought to a knowledge of Himself. “Now mine eye seeth thee”; oh what a wonderful thing really to see God, really to know God! May the Lord bless the word, for His name’s sake.
Address at Vancouver
2 August 1975