Page 150 - Reading Job to Know God

In this verse Job is acting as his own Nathan. He points the bony finger of
truth at himself. He looks in the mirror and says, “I am the man”. He
learned the primary reason for his affliction; that he might see God. But
more than that, to see God as El Shaddai. To behold a loving God who is
more than enough. Not law or theology but a Father. He is seeing God
with the eye of faith, the inner eye of the spirit. Because of this, he is not
bewailing his suffering. He is now bewailing his sin. Look at verse 6

“Therefore I retract, and I repent in dust and ashes.”
Look at verse 2. Here is his new attitude.

“I know that You can do all things, and that no purpose of
Yours can be thwarted.”

Boy, that is a great verse to make the sovereignty of God real in your life.
I find myself half afraid to believe that with all my might. I find I am
trying to hold back, rather than pull out all the stops and believe it.
Let me suggest a simple outline of this last section, 42:7–17, the outcome
of the Lord’s dealings, taken from James 5:11 “You have seen the
outcome of the Lord’s dealings.” I believe there are two results of this
outcome illustrated in the life of Job. In other words, Job again is the
sample, the fossil, for all of us to dig up and behold the patterns of
God. He is God’s object lesson. The two results that are in 42:7-17
will follow, without exception, in every life that suffers in the will of
God.

The first blessed result of the outcome of the Lord’s dealings can be
summarized in these words “enlarged blessing” for the sufferer. Look at
verse 10, “The LORD restored the fortunes of Job when he prayed for
his friends, and the LORD increased all that Job had twofold.” Now I
believe that this physical return, this restoring of the fortunes, this
doubling of everything Job had, is just God’s visible object lesson to
illustrate the spiritual blessing.
It is wrong to think, I will be patient, I will bear calamity, I will fast, pray
and obey in order to reap material benefits. That is wrong; the Bible
does not teach that. The Church is full of shallow believers who are
practicing all kinds of religious pieties in order to get material blessing. I
am amazed they stumble so easily over what the Apostle Paul wrote 2,000
years ago dealing with the same philosophy in Colossians 2:20-23,

“If once through fellowship with Christ you died and were separated

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