Message One
The Great Question in the Book of Job and the Great Answer
Scripture Reading: Job 1:1; 10:2b, 13; Eph. 3:9; Job 42:5-6
I. The forty-two chapters in Job leave us with a great question of two parts: What is the purpose of God in His creating of man, and what is the purpose of God in His dealing with His chosen people?—1:1; 10:2b, 12-13; cf. 11:12; 13:4:
A. Job said to God, "Make known to me why You contend with me" (10:2b); "You have hidden these things in Your heart; ? I know that this is with You" (v. 13).
B. This indicates that Job could not find the reason for God's treatment of him, but he believed that there had to be some reason hidden in God's heart; what was hidden in God's heart was the mystery of the ages—the eternal economy of God—Eph. 3:9.
II. The great answer to this great question is the mystery hidden in God throughout the ages, the eternal economy of God, which is God's eternal intention with His heart's desire to dispense Himself in His Divine Trinity as the Father in the Son by the Spirit into His chosen people to be their life and nature so that they may become an organism, the Body of Christ as the new man, for God's fullness, God's expression, which will consummate in the New Jerusalem—1 Tim. 1:3-4; Eph. 1:22-23; 3:9, 19; Gen. 1:26; Isa. 43:7; Rom. 8:29; 1 John 3:2:
A. Job and his friends thought that what he was suffering was a matter of God's judgment; however, Job's sufferings were not God's judgment but God's stripping and consuming that God might gain Job so that he might gain God more.
B. Although God was stripping Job, He surely was not angry with him; neither did God consider Job to be His adversary but His intimate friend—Job 19:11; cf. 10:13.
C. God knew that after Job had passed through a time of suffering, he would be rebuilt with the Divine Trinity so that he could become another person—a new man, a new creation (Gal. 6:15), to fulfill God's eternal economy for God's expression (2 Cor. 5:17); this is the great answer to the great question in the book of Job.
D. In our reading of the Bible, we need to focus our attention on God's eternal economy for the divine dispensing; unless we know God's economy, we will not understand the Bible; God's intention with Job was to make Job a man of God, who was constituted with God according to His divine economy:
1. The Bible of sixty-six books is for only one thing: for God in Christ by the Spirit to dispense Himself into us to be our life, our nature, and our everything so that we may live Christ and express Christ; this should be the principle that governs our life—John 10:10b; 1 Cor. 15:45b; Rom. 8:2, 10, 6, 11; Phil. 1:19-21a; 2 Cor. 3:6.
2. God's dealing with Job was to bring him out of the sphere of ethics and into the sphere of God-gaining so that he would be turned from seeking perfection in ethics to seeking and gaining God instead of anything else; man's standing before God is based on how much of God he has gained—Psa. 27:8; 105:4; Phil. 3:8; Matt. 25:3-4, 9; Prov. 23:23; Rev. 3:18; 2 Cor. 3:18; 4:17; 1 Pet. 2:7; Dan. 5:27; 9:23; 10:11, 19.
3. God's purpose in dealing with His holy people is that they would be emptied of everything and receive only God as their gain; He wants His people to gain Him, to partake of Him, to possess Him, and to enjoy Him more and more, rather than all other things, until their enjoyment reaches the fullest extent for them to become the New Jerusalem—Matt. 5:3; Psa. 43:4; 73:25-26; Phil. 3:8-9; Rev. 21:2.
4. This is the intrinsic significance of the entire New Testament as the great answer to the great question in the book of Job concerning God's purpose in His creation of man and in His dealing with His chosen people.
III. Job's basic problem was that he was short of God; in all of God's dealings with Job, God's intention was to reduce Job to nothing, yet to maintain his existence (2:6) so that He might have time to impart Himself into Job; God cares for only one thing—for being worked into us (Eph. 3:16-19):
A. Job was self-righteous (Job 6:30; 9:20; 27:5-6; 32:1), and he was contented with what he had become (13:3; 23:3-4; 31:6), yet he was unaware of his miserable situation before God (cf. Rev. 3:16-18).
B. Job's glory was his perfection and uprightness, and his crown was his integrity; God had stripped his glory from him and had taken away the crown from his head (Job 19:9); Job's hope had been to build up the "tree" of his integrity, but God would not allow such a tree to grow within Job; rather, God had plucked up this tree, this hope (v. 10), so that Job would be brought into the sphere of gaining God.
C. God wanted Job to know that he was in the wrong realm of building up himself as a man in the old creation in his perfection, uprightness, and integrity; Job glorified himself in these things, but God considered them as frustrations to be stripped away so that Job might receive God in His nature, life, element, and essence and thus be metabolically transformed to be a God-man, a man in the new creation who expresses God and dispenses Him into others—2 Cor. 3:18; 1 Pet. 4:10; Eph. 3:2.
D. God's intention with Job was to tear down the natural Job in his perfection and uprightness so that He might build up a renewed Job in God's nature and attributes; the discipline of the Holy Spirit tears down our natural being to constitute a renewed being—2 Cor. 4:16-18; Rom. 8:28-29.
E. The work of the Spirit within us is to constitute a new being for us, whereas the work of the Spirit without is to tear down every aspect of our natural being through our environment; we should cooperate with the operating Spirit and accept the environment that God has arranged for us—Phil. 4:12; Eph. 3:1; 4:1; 6:20; 1 Cor. 7:24.
F. The primary purpose of suffering in this universe, particularly as it relates to the children of God, is that through it the very nature of God may be wrought into the nature of man so that man may gain God to the fullest extent—2 Cor. 1:8-9; 4:16:
1. While the living God can perform many acts on man's behalf, the life and nature of the living God are not wrought into man; when the God of resurrection works, His life and nature are wrought into man—v. 16.
2. God is not working to make His might known in external acts but is working to impart and work Himself into man; God uses the environment in order to work His life and nature into us—Gal. 4:19; 2 Cor. 4:7-12; 1 Thes. 3:3; John 16:33.
3. In order to live in resurrection and be constituted with the God of resurrection, we must be conformed to the image of Christ as the firstborn Son of God through "all things"—Rom. 8:28-29; Heb. 12:10; cf. Jer. 48:11.
4. When we are in the midst of sufferings, we may complain to God, but our complaining may be the best prayer, the most pleasant prayer to God; while we are complaining, God is rejoicing because He is causing all things to work together for good that we may be conformed to the image of His firstborn Son—cf. Psa. 102, title.
IV. The move of the Triune God to deify man for the fulfillment of His economy to have His corporate expression is altogether in the mingled spirit, the divine Spirit mingled as one with our human spirit—1 Cor. 6:17; Rev. 1:10; 4:2; 17:3; 21:10; cf. Job 12:10; 32:8:
A. In our Christian life we should live by the Spirit and walk by the Spirit; we should do everything and be everything by the Spirit, with the Spirit, in the Spirit, and through the Spirit; thus, we need to take care of our spirit, doing everything by exercising our spirit in order to experience the divine Spirit living in us, making His home in us, and transforming us—Gal. 5:16, 25; Phil. 3:3; Rom. 8:4, 6; 2 Cor. 2:12-14; Mal. 2:15-16.
B. We should not take any action apart from the all-inclusive Spirit; we should not face any situation or meet any need apart from the Spirit; we must learn to touch the divine Spirit in our spirit; this is the intrinsic significance of the Christian life and the Christian work for the fulfillment of God's economy—Zech. 4:6; 2 Cor. 3:3, 6; Rom. 1:9; 7:6; Phil. 3:3.
C. To be a Christian and an overcomer is not merely difficult—it is impossible; only the processed and consummated Triune God living in us as the all-inclusive Spirit in our spirit can be a Christian and an overcomer—Luke 1:37-38a; 2 Cor. 4:13; Rom. 8:2.
D. As long as we do everything according to the Spirit, we can experience Christ's incarnation, human living, death, resurrection, and ascension with the outpouring of the Spirit; this will cause us to be the church of God, the Body of Christ, the new man, and the vine and the branches as the organism of the Triune God, which will consummate in the New Jerusalem—Phil. 1:19; Joel 2:28-32; Acts 2:16-21; Eph. 1:22-23; 2:15; 4:4, 23-24; John 15:1-11; Rev. 3:12; 19:7-9; 21:2, 10.
V. In God's appearing to him, Job saw God, gaining God in his personal experience and abhorring himself—Job 38:1-3; 42:1-6:
A. Today our God is the all-inclusive Spirit as the consummation of the processed and consummated Triune God; the God whom we look at today is the consummated Spirit, and we can look at Him in our spirit—2 Cor. 2:10; 2 Tim. 4:22:
1. We see God so that we may be constituted with God; seeing God transforms us, and seeing God equals gaining God—2 Cor. 3:16, 18; Matt. 5:8; Rev. 22:4.
2. The more we see God and love God, the more we deny ourselves and hate ourselves—Job 42:5-6; Isa. 6:5; Luke 14:26.
B. In order to see God, we must exercise our spirit—Eph. 1:17-18; 3:16-17; 1 Cor. 2:9-16; 2 Cor. 4:13; 1 Tim. 4:7; 2 Tim. 1:6-7:
1. The more we look at Him in our spirit, the more we receive all His ingredients into our being as our inner supply—2 Cor. 3:16-18.
2. In the midst of our afflictions, we must take heed to our spirit, taking the Lord as our dwelling place, our secret of sufficiency—2:13; 7:5-6; Mal. 2:15-16; Psa. 91:1; Phil. 4:11-13; Psa. 90:1-12; 31:20; Isa. 32:2.
C. In order to see God, we must deal with our heart—2 Cor. 3:16, 18; Matt. 5:8; 13:18-23:
1. We must be renewed in the spirit of our mind by being reconstituted with the holy word of God to be instructed, governed, ruled, and controlled by God's word—Eph. 4:23; Deut. 17:18-20; Phil. 2:2, 5.
2. We must be on fire with the Lord's love, having an emotion filled with Him as our zeal for His house—1:8; 2 Cor. 5:14; 2 Tim. 1:6-7; John 2:17; Mark 12:30.
3. We must have our will subdued by Christ and transformed with Christ through sufferings so that it is submitted to the headship of Christ (Phil. 2:13; cf. S. S. 4:1, 4; 7:4a, 5), and we must maintain a good and pure conscience by the priceless, cleansing, and purifying blood of Christ (Acts 24:16; 1 Tim. 3:9; Heb. 9:14; 10:22).
VI. God's purpose in dealing with those who love Him is that they may gain Him to the fullest extent, surpassing the loss of all that they have other than Him (Phil. 3:7-8), that He might be expressed through them for the fulfillment of His purpose in creating man (Gen. 1:26).