AUSTRALIAN BIBLE CHURCH – September 28, 2008 

A CONTINUATION OF THE ORIGINAL THRUST AND BASE OF THE
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF AUSTRALIA, ON CHANGELESS BIBLICAL LINES

WHO  MAY LAY HIS HAND ON US BOTH … (Job 9:33)

Job the Teacher with Tears ...

The Complaint and Rumination of Job is an Avenue to Access

It was not Job’s fault. That was the primary point. There was a day on which the children made by God came to present themselves before Him. These were spirits, or at least, Satan was. Where have you come from ? the Lord asked. Going to and fro on the earth, was the answer. “Have you considered My servant Job ?” the Lord asked: “that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and shuns evil!”

Since the Lord knows all, it is apparent that this was the prelude to a test which for all time would

v       show the power of evil, the greater power of God,

v       the flux in the heart of man which ONLY GOD can turn into rock-like character, and

v       focus the issues man must face, like it or not.

This world is not a Social Security State. Whether or not a political body seeks to show to all men at this present time, that care is better than prayer, there remains the God of creation, of birth and death, of life and understanding, who deals with man, and with whom man must deal Prayer can heal where money cannot, and access to God provides joy and peace, whereas security provides mere husks. What however if God Himself designs a test ? Then neither wealth nor security can help. The test ? it MUST be passed.

THE TEST

 

It was not that God did not know: He had already given to Job First Class Honours, and stated His cherishing of the man. The point was not Job’s failings but his triumphs. Compassionate, concerned, thoughtful, sagacious, Job was a model. HENCE he could – or should – be able to answer the canny, sophisticated, superficial, devious challenge of Satan, cynical as ever, trying to make it appear that ALL men seek their own profit or good, and manage or manipulate accordingly. Job, Satan stated, serves you because You have made him rich and eminent.  Remove his possessions and even YOU, God, he will curse to your face.

The test was simple. Would he ? Step one was done: Job accepted the loss of his riches with equability an equanimity. The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord, he cried. Another day was appointed, and Satan once more had access to God. The question and answer at the outset was as before. Still Job holds fast to his integrity, despite the incitation to deprive him. God made the point. Ah but! said Satan, in the typical sort of sneering way that he has, take his health – a man will serve you if You give him health – and see then, he will curse You to your face. Permission was given for the test, except that Satan was denied the power to kill Job.

Horrible sickness came, itching and indignity, harrowing and suffering. Job was reduced. Anyone seeing him might well think he had sinned, been found out, and was being given shame by the Almighty in order to be beaten and disciplined, and humbled before his fellow man. Job’s own friends, when they saw the state to which this august man was reduced, were silent for seven days!

THE TROUBLE INTENSIFIED, FINE CRACKS APPEAR IN THE FUSELAGE

As the day by day weight and squirming of disease, indignity and cumulative loss worked upon Job, and his friends began to assume he was an old, secret sinner who had managed to incur divine chastening and exposure, Job’s anguish was like scalding medicine. For the life of him, he could find no ground for such scouring and scourging as here appeared to have occurred. He refused point blank to confess to any sin of which he was unaware, citing instead what in fact were his altruistic concerns, his intensely sympathetic actions, his support of the weak, help to the miserable and pity for the orphan (Job 29).

“How many are my iniquities and sins ?” he asks. “Make me to know my transgression and my sin. Why do You hide Your face ?” (Job 13).

On the way to these considerations, as seen now in Job 9, there is a dramatic development. We shall next follow this.  God is both stronger than He, and invisible. The choice friendship Job had had with the Almighty no longer showed its face in his heart (Job 29:1-3), because “He has loosed my bowstring and afflicted me.” Moreover, “At my right hand the rabble arises; they push away my feet.” In fact, “I am their taunting song!” (Job 30). Seemingly left to the tempestuous winds by God, he was even mocked by mere youths.

The singular idea had struck Job before this, as we shall see in Job 9. “How can I answer
Him ?” he asks (9:14).

 

“If it is a matter of strength, He is strong,” and “if of justice, who will appoint my day in court ? Though I were righteous, my own mouth would condemn me. Though I were blameless, it would prove me perverse.”

In other words, such is in integrity of God, that there is an unwritten certainty of error if he assumes himself without fault, though he can find nothing to back his tragedies, or give warrant for his woes. “I despise my life,” he cries. “Now my days are swifter than a runner. They flee away, they see no good… I am afraid of all my sufferings.”

As he pursues his theme of startled upset and wanderings in woefulness, he exclaims this:

“If I wash myself with snow water, and cleanse my hands with soap, yet You will plunge me into the pit, and my own clothes will abhor me.”

BEING Job, continuing just to be himself, this has become an incubus, a sort of unwritten condemnation chit. This is where faith comes in, not just faith in a vacuum, but faith on just grounds (not oneself), sanctioned by God. It is thus of great interest to find these words from Job:

“He is not like a man, as I am, that I may answer Him, and that we should go to court together. Nor is there any mediator between us, who may lay his hand on us both.”

This resembles his words in 16:21:

“Oh that one might plead for a man with  God, as a man pleads for his neighbour.”

What he looks for is what the Christian has already found. He wants someone firstly sympathetic to his plight, secondly, one able to argue his case, thirdly, a person whom he can actually FIND to do such a thing for him, ably to secure a hearing and effectively to clear up the whole case: a MEDIATOR. Now in I Timothy 2:6, alas in its thrust ignored by the pushers of Romanism, we learn that there is “ONE GOD and ONE MEDIATOR between God and men, the Man Jesus Christ.” There is no Mass to mediate, nor any Mary. There is ONE, and THIS one is sinless, eternal and the equal of God, being His exact likeness, His Eternal Word (John 1, Hebrews 1), who became man and died as foretold in Daniel 9, evidently in AD 30. That, that is just what Job wanted, a Mediator who could act with understanding and reconciliation.

What is more, just as Job desired, there is no gap, nor any lack. HE is there and available, and furthermore, Paul continues, it is He “who gave Himself a ransom on behalf of all, to be testified in due time.” Even better, THIS ONLY MEDIATOR is not only available and equal with God (Philippians 2), but charging nothing, even pays for the cost of the sin which separates from God for those who find Him, and trust Him. For us, that time is now, and it has been so for some 2000 years. While He does not ransom all (Matthew 20:28, Romans 8:32), He IS offered on behalf of all, so that those who receive Him have a willing partner, who knew them from the first (Romans 8:29ff.). There is no point however small (Philippians 4:4-6), that cannot be brought to Him, whose peace guards and whose joy stirs the heart, while “casting ALL your care upon Him, for He cares for you,” you humble yourself before Him, “that He may exalt you in due time” (I Peter 5:6).

Job was writing perhaps 1500 B.C.. It seems that he pre-dates even Moses by a little, and yet he comes to the solution, the conclusion, the heart of the matter, a little later as we shall see.

Before however we visit this, in Job 19, let us reflect a moment. Job did not, as some may think, claim to have absolutely no sin. He seems at first assuredly far more aware of his righteous deeds and loving actions than of his sin; but he was asking that IF there were sins and iniquities dogging his straying feet, could he at least be TOLD what they were!

However, since the Lord was testing him, so that his integrity might appear, it was necessary that he should face this test without special help, which would nullify the point of the result! It was necessary that he should internally REFLECT, and consider whether many good things constitute a blameless life, or whether EVERY man needs not only a counsellor (as in Isaiah 9:6, I Corinthians 1:30), but the Redeemer. In other words, man as such, is astray from God (Romans 1-2, Psalm 51, Ephesians 4:17-19); and however much he does, he is as a person, far from having standing with God by his own excellence, being inadequate and far below the mark of that perfection of spirit and life which Jesus the Christ Himself showed (Romans 6:23).

He had both to realise this, or something very like it, and come to God on HIS divine terms, as someone who both needs and receives the Redeemer. God has not left us like stones pounded on the beach by the raging surf, or left to dry for a while, in order to be stricken by etching winds in the sand. He is not an empty Maker or an unkind Creator; but He DOES require us to seek Him and to find His way, which He has at infinite cost both made and provided (Galatians 6:14). Christ called it surrender, and realisation that in ourselves, we DO NOT HAVE what it takes to build a spiritual tower, let alone one which reaches right up to God (Luke 14:27ff.).

THE REDEEMER JUST MAY BE THERE ?
A THOUSAND TIMES NO!
HE IS ASSUREDLY BOTH THERE AND NEEDING TO BE BOTH TRUSTED,
ENTRUSTED WITH ONE’S LIFE,  AND RESTED ON IN FAITH

 

In Job 19, so famous, being sung Christmas after Christmas in Handel’s Messiah, we see the solution which in his agony and anguish, was given to Job. Even at his most stirred ramblings, he did not vary from the fact that in essence God is certainly wholly JUST and ultimate JUDGE. At times, he wondered HOW to reconcile his condition and position with this, but the underlying fact, he did not deny in principle (Job 10:14, 13:18).

Indeed, as to those who say, ‘Who is the Almighty that we should serve Him” (Job 21:15), or “Depart from us, for we do not desire the knowledge of Your ways” (21:14), their ideas are far from his own (21:16). “Can anyone teach God knowledge!” he scathingly asks. This he declares, “… the wicked are reserved for the day of doom. They shall be brought out on the day of wrath.”

Indeed, he famously shows in Job 28 that as to that invisible but crucial wisdom which should govern our ways, it is GOD WHO HAS IT (28:23). “Behold,” he cries, even in the midst of his suffering, “the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding” (26:28).

Thus even from those vast distances of time, Job teaches modern man what Christ is and has done, and he knew that this divine redemption would come, through the inspiration of God and the exposure of His will and plan.

Let us see these, his words.

 

“I know that My Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth, and after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!”

In view of this revelation and certainty, he cries out –

“Oh that my words were written! Oh, that they were inscribed in a book! That they were engraved on a rock with an iron pen and lead, forever!”

His wish was granted as you see in this work of Handel’s, for centuries bringing to millions of people in a graphic and beautiful form, this very thing; and not there only.

Let this act of redemption then not be missing in our hearts, this resolution to abide in, believe on, hide our lives within the divine Redeemer

“who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous of good works.”

Indeed,

“when the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour” (Titus 3:4-5).

It is this gift which must be received by faith (cf. Acts 4:11-12).

Indeed, this work of Jesus Christ proceeded to marvellous consequences, “that having been justified by His grace, we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” We are saved WITHOUT the works of the law, says Paul in Romans 3:23ff., adding this, that the whole thing is “by grace through faith” (Ephesians 2:1-8), so that those called - and all who come are called (Romans 8:30), should have life imperishable dependent on NOTHING and NO ONE but God, whose word is His promise (John 10:9,27-28).

Why then lament ? Is not God the friend of those who abide in the ransoming Christ, repent of their sins, realise that sinners they are and Saviour He is, and take Him so by faith ? Just as God provided Job with a test of his integrity, to show that we who are His DO love Him, doing so NOT for what we get in goods or name or fame, but because His is faithfulness and greatness and goodness and mercy, and because in His great grace, it is He who is God. It is this which shouts to our inner ear in a language that cannot be discarded, Repent and believe (Luke 13:1-3), receive the Saviour and rejoice. If now you are tested by various trials, rejoice in God your Saviour and be sure of your connection (Romans 5:11). Rest in Him, and He will lead you forth, making of your life, a field fit for harvest in His own time!

Let no circumstance, sickness or secret sorrow, feeling of weakness or woe tempt you. God is our resource, let us live it. Sin is our enemy, let us leave it. Hope is well grounded, let us use it. Temptation is our enemy, the devil its ultimate dynamic, sin its teacher: let us dispel it like lice and fleas and mosquitoes, which are far better than that. Though our lot may seem for a time unprofitable, let us trust God to make of us and it what He will, and leaving all trust in ourselves (Proverbs 3:3-5), TRUST in Him, entrust our lives to Him, and find that good thing which He has for us. He is reached ONLY by faith, and saves ONLY by grace (Ephesians 2:1-10); but in love (John 3:16-19). Let none therefore abort the pregnant love with its grace and place in heaven, and His power on earth (Colossians 1:19ff., Matthew 28:19-20)! Let us rejoice though trial come, and find His favour by faith (Habakkuk 3:17-18,  I Peter 4:12-14).