THE FIRST PART: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
The Books of Poetry
Message One—The Book of Job
Scripture Reading: Job 1:1, 8; 2:3, 9; 27:5; 31:6; 19:9-10; 42:1-6
I. Job is a book of the debates of godly men concerning the purpose of the sufferings of the saints, that is, the purpose of God’s dealing with His people—13:6; 2:13; 19:9-10; 42:5-6: (Holy Bible Recovery Version, Job 1:1, footnote 1)
A. The book is poetic in form, with the exception of chs. 1 and 2 and the last eleven verses of ch. 42; Job is the first of the five books of poetry in the Scriptures, the other four being Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs. (Holy Bible Recovery Version, Job 1:1, footnote 1)
B. The contents of the book of Job are the expressions of the sentiments of godly men, which are in relation to the judgments of God’s government; the debates between Job and his three friends were mainly concerning judgment; they reasoned that Job must have been wrong in some regard or aspect and that the things which happened to him were a judgment from God; they may also have thought that Job’s children were wrong and died because of God’s judgment. (Life-Study of Job, msg. 1)
C. It is evident that Job and his friends did not see the positive aspect of God’s economy in dealing with His holy people; that is, God wants to strip, not to judge, His holy ones that He might gain them so that they might gain Him more; Job’s sufferings were not God’s judgment but God’s stripping—19:9-10. (Life-Study of Job, msg. 1)
D. It is through His stripping that God dispenses Himself to those who love Him and seek after Him; Job lost all that he had, but ultimately he gained God Himself; God stripped his all in order that He could be his all for his full transformation and conformation to the glorious image of God in His Son—Rom. 8:29. (Life-Study of Job, msg. 1)
E. The book of Job, written early in the progression of the divine revelation (see note 131, par. 2, in ch. 2), does not contain a clear revelation of God’s purpose in dealing with His people; this revelation was given not to Job but to Paul; as unveiled in Paul’s Epistles, God’s purpose in dealing with us is to strip us of all things and to consume us so that we may gain God more and more—Phil. 3:8; 2 Cor. 4:16, cf. note 21 in Gen. 42 and note 261 in Psa. 73. (Holy Bible Recovery Version, Job 1:1, footnote 1)
II. God’s intention with Job—that a good man become a God-man—Job 1:1, 8; 2:3, 9; 27:5; 31:6; 42:5-6: (2005 FTTA-S, msg. 15)
A. Job was a good man, expressing himself in his perfection, uprightness, and integrity—27:5; 31:6; 32:1: (2005 FTTA-S, msg. 15)
1. Being perfect is related to the inner man; being upright is related to the outer man; integrity is the totality of being perfect and upright—1:1; 2:3, 9; 27:5; 31:6. (2005 FTTA-S, msg. 15)
2. Job feared God positively and turned away from evil negatively—1:1. (2005 FTTA-S, msg. 15)
3. What Job had attained in his perfection, uprightness, and integrity was altogether vanity; it neither fulfilled God’s purpose nor satisfied His desire, and thus He was lovingly concerned for Job—vv. 6-8; 2:1-3. (2005 FTTA-S, msg. 15)
4. Only God knew that Job had a need—he did not have God within him; therefore, God wanted Job to gain Him in order to express Him for the fulfillment of His purpose—42:5-6. (2005 FTTA-S, msg. 15)
B. God’s intention was that Job would become a God-man, expressing God in His attributes—22:24-25; 38:1-3: (2005 FTTA-S, msg. 15)
1. God ushered Job into another realm, the realm of God, that Job might gain God instead of his attainments in his perfection, righteousness, and integrity—42:5-6. (2005 FTTA-S, msg. 15)
2. God’s intention with Job was to consume him and to strip him of his attainments, his achievements, in the highest standard of ethics in perfection and uprightness—31:6. (2005 FTTA-S, msg. 15)
3. God’s intention was to tear down the natural Job in his perfection and uprightness that He might build up a renewed Job in God’s nature and attributes—1:6-8; 2:3-6. (2005 FTTA-S, msg. 15)
4. God’s intention was to make Job a man of God, filled with Christ, the embodiment of God, to be the fullness of God for the expression of God in Christ—1 Tim. 6:11; 2 Tim. 3:17. (2005 FTTA-S, msg. 15)
5. God’s stripping and consuming were exercised over Job to tear him down that God might have a base and a way to rebuild him with God Himself so that he might become a God-man, the same as God in His life and nature but not in His Godhead, in order to express God—Eph. 3:16-21. A. (2005 FTTA-S, msg. 15)
III. God’s intention was not to have a Job in the line of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil but a Job in the line of the tree of life—Gen. 2:9, 17; Job 1:1; 2:3; 42:1-6: (2005 FTTA-S, msg. 14)
A. The logic of Job and his friends was according to the line of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—2:11—32:1. (2005 FTTA-S, msg. 14)
B. Job, like his friends, was halted in the knowledge of right and wrong, not knowing God’s economy—4:7-8. (2005 FTTA-S, msg. 14)
C. Job and his friends were in the realm of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; God was trying to rescue them from that realm and put them into the realm of the tree of life—1:1; 2:3; 19:10. (2005 FTTA-S, msg. 14)
D. God’s purpose in dealing with Job was to turn him from the way of good and evil to the way of life so that he might gain God to the fullest extent—42:1-6. (2005 FTTA-S, msg. 14)
IV. At the end of the book of Job, God came in to reveal Himself to Job, indicating that He Himself was what Job should pursue, gain, and express—38:1-3; 40:1-14; 42:5-6: (Recovery Version, Job 38:1, footnote 1)
A. In God’s appearing to Job, His intention was to show Job that he was nothing and that God is unlimited, unsearchable, and untraceable. (Recovery Version, Job 38:1, footnote 1)
B. God’s appearing also implied that He wanted to help Job to know that he was in the wrong realm, the realm of building up himself as a man in the old creation in his perfection, uprightness, and integrity. (Recovery Version, Job 38:1, footnote 1)
C. Job 42:5 and 6 indicate that Job gained God in his personal experience (in addition to knowing God in his vain knowledge by tradition) and that he abhorred himself: (Life-Study of Job, msg. 30)
1. Seeing God equals gaining God (Matt. 5:8); to gain God is to receive God in His element, in His life, and in His nature; eventually, this not only makes us one with God—it even makes us a part of God. (Life-Study of Job, msg. 30)
2. Job said not only that He saw God but also that he abhorred himself; according to our experience, the more we see God and love God, the more we abhor ourselves; the more we know God, the more we deny ourselves. (Life-Study of Job, msg. 30)
V. The forty-two chapters in Job leave us with a crucial question of two parts: what was the purpose of God in His creation of man, and what is the purpose of God in His dealing with His chosen people; the entire Bible is needed to answer this question; in particular, the New Testament is a long answer to the question in Job—Mal. 4:5-6; Matt. 1:18-25; Acts 13:33; 1 Cor. 15:45b; 1 Pet. 1:3; Eph. 1:23; Rev. 21:10: (Recovery Version, Job 42:17, footnote 1)
A. The eternal economy of God according to His good pleasure is to dispense Himself in His Divine Trinity—in the Father, in the Son, and in the Spirit—through His incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, with the outpouring of the Spirit, into His chosen and redeemed people, to make all of them the same as He is in life and in nature but not in the Godhead, to make them His duplication that they may express Him—Rom. 8:28-29 and notes. (Recovery Version, Job 42:17, footnote 1)
B. The issue of such a divine dispensing is the church as the Body of Christ, as the new man, and as the organism of the Triune God; this organism will consummate in the New Jerusalem as the enlarged, the increased, incarnation of God consummated in full, that is, the fullness of the Triune God (Eph. 3:19) for Him to express Himself corporately in His divinity mingled with humanity for eternity. (Recovery Version, Job 42:17, footnote 1)
C. This is the divine revelation in the New Testament as the answer to the sufferings of Job and to the great question concerning God’s purpose in His creation of man and in His dealing with His chosen people. (Recovery Version, Job 42:17, footnote 1)