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There are a couple of Psalms that I’d like to share with you. Psalm 47:4, “He chooses our inheritance for us, the glory of Jacob whom He loves.” And Psalm 16:5, “The Lord is the portion of my inheritance.” And then Psalm 16:6, “The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; indeed, my heritage is beautiful.” The reason I brought those verses up is because at the end that’s what Job saw, that the Lord had appointed all that he went through, and he was praising God at the end. So, the Lord is our inheritance, and everything He allows is perfect. So, let’s just commit our time to Him.
Our Father, thank You again for the Holy Spirit that lives in our heart. Lord, as we continue our meditations in this wonderful book, we just pray that your Holy Spirit would open the eyes of our heart that we might behold the Lord Jesus in a fresh and living way. We thank You, Lord, that that’s always Your desire. So, we commit ourselves to You now and pray for Your miracle; show us Jesus. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Welcome again to our meditation on the Lord in the book of Job. I hope you are all meditators. Meditation makes you wise, even if the Lord does not unlock His secrets, even you are studying certain things and it seems closed, the very act of mediation is edifying. So, meditate day and night on His word. Job, in this case, is the window through which we’re trying to see the Lord as El Shaddai, the God who is more than enough. Is the Lord enough, that’s the question of the book, when the hedge comes down, when all we have is Him? Is that enough? The answer, of course, He’s unqualifiedly enough, the Lord is enough.
This is the fifth lesson we have looking at the testimony of Job. Let me just give you the main things we’ve looked at; I’m not going to develop it. We looked at the background of the book, and that was the conversation that the Lord had with Satan in heavenly places, quite apart from Job knowing anything about it. Satan made a double challenge to the Lord. Job 1:9, “Satan answered the Lord, ‘Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not made a hedge about him and his house and all that he has on every side? You’ve blessed the work of his hands, his possessions have increased in the land but put forth Your hand now and touch all he has, and he’ll surely curse You to Your face.”
The insinuation that Satan made against Job was that Job only serves him for what he can get out of Him, the blessing, the hedge, and he said that if He didn’t give the hedge, he wouldn’t serve Him, and in fact he would curse Him because, “You are not good enough.” That’s the insinuation he made about the Lord, “You are not worthy in Yourself apart from all of Your benedictions and all of Your gifts; nobody would serve You or choose You or trust You and depend upon You and worship You; nobody would. And God took the challenge, and of course Job became the battlefield between the Lord and Satan. He knew nothing about what was going on.
The second thing we looked at was the size of the hedge around Job and the dismantling of that hedge. Then in our third lesson we looked at the debates of his three friends—Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar. They all tried to answer a question that they couldn’t answer because they didn’t know about the conversation in the heavenlies. They tried to answer the question, “Why is Job suffering?” They all gave the same answer but they each came at it from a different viewpoint. They are agreed that God is holy, and wicked people suffer, so Job is suffering for one reason only, and that is that he’s sinful. There is sin in his life. He may not confess it, He may not see it, and it might be secret but there’s sin in his life because God punishes sin, and Job is being punished, they thought, that he’s being dealt with. The wicked suffer and the very wicked suffer more, and Job was one of them, very wicked, and that’s why he’s suffering so much. They even came this far, Job 8:4, “If your sons sinned against Him, He delivered them into the power of their transgressions.” He had just lost ten children, and they said to him, “The reason they died is that they were sinners, too, and God punished them.” Imagine losing ten children or seven sons and three daughters, and then somebody accusing, “Well, they were wicked, and they deserved to die.” That’s what they told Job.
We saw all through the debate that Job strenuously resisted their accusations. They said, “You are a sinner,” and he said, “Maybe I’m a sinner and I was born a sinner, but this suffering is not because of anything I’ve done wrong.” Listen to Job 27:5&6, “Far be it from me that I should declare you right. Until I die, I will not put away my integrity from me. I hold fast my righteousness, and I will not let it go. My heart does not reproach me any of my days. You are wrong; all of this suffering is not because I’ve done something wrong.”
So, we looked at the background, and we looked at the dismantling of the hedge, and we looked at the debates and we left off last time looking at Elihu, the fourth friend of Job. Let me just summarize that and give a little review, and then we’ll move on to our new material.
Elihu was unlike his three friends. The basic difference is the source on which they depended on their opinion. In other words, Eliphaz came because he was the psychologist, and he was looking at it through those eyes. In other words, he was emotional and subjective, and he was observing the behavior of others. He based his reasoning on a dream that he had; it was all about emotions.
Bildad, on the other hand, was the theologian; he was the scholar. He based everything on the “talk of the ancestors”, “We don’t know, but listen to the experts. They know, and from the beginning they’ve been telling us. So, Job, you can’t deny all the experts. That’s what they wrote about. I have a big library of books, and they all say the same thing.”
And then Zophar, who is the most arrogant of all, and he just depended on his brain. He was the philosopher, the lover of wisdom, and he said, “You aren’t only sinful, Job, you are stupid because you don’t think; use your head and be logical. The wicked suffer and you’re suffering, therefore you are wicked.” He based everything on his own mind.
But Elihu, on the other hand, did not come trusting psychology or theology or philosophy. Elihu was refreshingly different; he based everything on a word from the Lord, on the Holy Spirit and what does God say, Job 32:8, “It is a spirit in man, the breath of the Almighty gives them understanding.” Job 33:3, “My words are from the uprightness of my heart. My lips speak knowledge sincerely; the Spirit of God made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me light.” This is a fresh approach to the problem.
Last time I asked and tried to answer the question, “What was Elihu’s great contribution to Job, and therefore, to the history of redemption?” Did Elihu give Job an answer for his suffering? “Let me tell you why you are suffering.” Did Elihu say that? The answer is no. Elihu never offered an answer, but he offered a direction. He turned his eyes from other things to the Lord. He took his eyes off the hedge. He took his eyes off the suffering that followed when the hedge was removed. He took his eye off the reason for his suffering. Job 35:10, “Elihu says, ‘No one says, “Where is God, my Maker, who gives songs in the night’” “Why don’t you start looking to the Lord? Look up, not with the eyes of the flesh, not with these eyes, but with the eyes of the heart.” Elihu just encouraged Job to look to the Lord. Since God was invisible, God is a Spirit, when he looks to the Lord, it has to be with the eyes of faith, because God is invisible, and so he looks to the Lord.
I suggested last time that, like all of the men and they all gave their speeches, I think Elihu gave a speech, but some people think that when Elihu stopped speaking, God started to speak. I think if you read it carefully you are going to find out that Elihu never stopped speaking, right to the end, right to chapter 42; it’s Elihu speaking, and while he is speaking, all of a sudden Job started listening, not to Elihu, but to God, and God spoke out of the whirlwind through His servant, Elihu. While Elihu was preaching, all of a sudden Job started hearing from the Lord. That’s a great principle of God, when a human instrument receives from the Spirit of God, then God will speak through him, and even though it’s human words, after a while people are going to hear from the Lord, and that’s what happened with Elihu.
I think that’s part of the miracle that took place at Pentecost. I realize that at Pentecost that it’s clear it was a miracle of tongues; they spoke with other tongues, but part of the miracle is in Acts 2:6, and when this sound occurred the crowd came together and were bewildered, each one of them was hearing them speak in his own language. That’s like I speak English and you speak Greek, and you start understanding me. I think the miracle of ears was also at Pentecost. It was a miracle of tongues and a miracle of ears; they started hearing from the Lord. Acts 2:37, “When they heard, they were pierced to the heart, and they said to Peter and the rest of the Apostles, ‘Brethren, what shall we do?’ They started hearing, not Peter, not the disciples, but from God.” That’s what happened when Elihu spoke; he gave Job a direction, and then God spoke out of the whirlwind. Job 37:2, during the sermon, Elihu was encouraging Job, “Don’t listen to me; listen to God because He talks out of a storm, “Listen closely to the thunder of His voice.” Job 37:4, “After it a voice roars; He turned ears with His majestic voice; He does not restrain the lightning when His voice is heard; God thunders with His voice wondrously doing great things we cannot comprehend.” As Elihu is speaking, he says, “Listen to God; He speaks in the storm; you are in a storm; listen, God thunders.”
Now, that’s not a new concept. I’m not going to develop this; on the sheet I just gave the verses but if you read Psalm 29, that’s the voice of the Lord Psalm. Psalm 29:3, “The voice of the Lord is upon the waters.” Psalm 29:4, “The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is majestic. Psalm 29:5, “The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars.” Psalm 29:7, “The voice of the Lord hews out flames of fire.” Psalm 29:8, “The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness.” Psalm 29:9, “The voice of the Lord twists the oaks and strips the forest bare” Seven times in only 11 verses we read again, “The voice of the Lord, the voice of the Lord, the voice of the Lord….”
God speaks in the storm, and Job was in a storm. “Tune your ears; he who has an ear to hear,” that’s what God speaks when you are going through it, and Elihu is begging Job, “Listen to God’s voice, and suddenly God spoke, and Job heard.” So, Elihu is the one that trusted the Lord for the message, and then set a direction, praise God for the Elihu’s in your life, and praise God for the Elihu’s in my life who come with a word from the Lord. They don’t give you any answers because they don’t have any. They just point you to the One who IS the answer, and it’s to the Lord.
I think I gave this illustration but let me mention it again. I remember preaching with a brother in an Open Air Campaigners and there was a heckler out there, and the heckler cried out, “What do you do with your converts?”, in other words, do you follow up, do you teach them how to memorize scripture, do you meet with them, do you pray with them, to do you point them to a good church? I’ll never forget his answer, his name was Bron Carlyse. He said, “I do the same thing Philip did with his; I send them on their way rejoicing.” Acts 8:39, “The Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away, and the Eunuch no longer saw him but went on his way rejoicing.”
It reminds me of the Mount of Transfiguration, also, where Moses and Elijah appeared with the Lord Jesus in glory, and it’s a wonderful thing that they appear, but the greatest thing about their appearance was their disappearance. They disappeared, and I’ll tell you why that was great, because then the Bible says, “Then the disciples saw Jesus only.” So, praise God for someone who has a word from God, someone who points you in the right direction, and then suddenly disappears, and gets out of the way once you start hearing the Lord. The danger if they don’t disappear, like on the Mount of Transfiguration, is it’s going to come to your mind to build them a tabernacle, too. Or we don’t know what to say; we always want to build something. That’s what Peter did. He just said, “Let’s build,” and you’ll be looking to men instead of the Lord. Anway, Jesus used Elihu to turn Job’s heart toward the Lord.
That brings us to our new material. What we’re going to be doing for this week and next, we are going to be looking at Job 42:1-6, but especially our focus for this morning will be on part of verse 5&6, “I’ve heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you. Therefore, I retrack and I repent in dust and ashes.” What I want to focus on is what is meant by knowing of the Lord through the hearing of the ear? And then, what is meant by knowing the Lord by seeing Him with the eye, the eye of faith?
Before we get to the main point of what is meant by the hearing of the ear and the seeing of the eye, let me set it up by just giving you the scene. You can read it but try to enter into this. I was a little bit shocked (maybe too strong a word) but very, very surprised when I read this. What were the first words that Job heard when he stopped listening to Elihu and started to listen to God? What were the first words he heard God say, and then what was his response to those words? It’s in Job 38:1-3, “The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, ‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Now, gird up your loins like a man. I’ll ask you; you instruct Me.” Don’t read that la, la, la. At this time, Job was at the very heart of his suffering; he had lost his children, he lost his wealth, he lost his health, he lost the support of his life partner, he lost his acquaintances, he lost his friends, he lost his ministry, he lost the sense of God’s presence. He had lost everything, and if you only look at a small part of what he lost, his health, because we have seen sickness, and we know that especially when they are very sick what they look like.
Try to enter into this. Job at this point is at his worst condition; he is debilitated and he’s covered with boils from the top of his head to his toes. He’s skinny, Job 16:8, “You’ve shriveled me up; it’s become a witness; my leanness rises up against me; it testifies to my faith.” He hasn’t been able to sleep; he’s been tossing every night; he’s been having nightmares. Job 17:1, “My spirit is broken; my days are extinguished; the grave is ready for me.” He actually asks the Lord to take his life. Job 7:5, “My flesh is clothed with worms, a crust of dirt, my skin hardens and runs.” Job 19:20, “My clothes cling to my skin and my flesh; I’ve escaped only by the skin of my teeth.” Job is dying; he’s gasping for breath. That’s where God led him.
When God started to talk to him, they didn’t meet in a local diner; they didn’t meet in some office some place. Job is on his death bed, and that’s what he looks like. Then God says to Job in that condition, “Gird up your loins like a man.” Doesn’t that sound cruel? That sounded pretty cruel to me. When I read that I said, “What? How can you say that to a man who is so sick? He’s ready to die.” Job finally answers in Job 40:3, “Will a fault finder contend with the Almighty? Let him who reproves God answer. Then, Job answered the Lord and said, ’Behold, I’m insignificant. What can I reply to You? I lay my hand on my mouth. Once I’ve spoken I will not answer, even twice; I will add nothing more.’” There was a day when Job said, “If only God would listen, I’d fill my mouth with arguments,” and now he says, “Oh, I put my hand on my mouth; I’ve nothing more to say; I’m insignificant.” I think what he was saying is, “Okay, You made Your point, and I get it.” God says, “No, you don’t. You don’t get it, not yet.” He said, “I’m insignificant and I’m shutting up. I get it. Stop, stop. I get it.” God said, “No, I’m not going to stop.” God speaks again verse 6, “And the Lord answered Job out of the storm and said, ‘Now, gird up your loins like a man.’” He said it the second time, “I’ll ask you; you instruct Me. Will you really annul my judgments? Will you condemn Me?”
If you read the message of Elihu, 79 questions that the scientists are still trying to answer were peppered at Job in that condition. Think of this in terms of our experience. If there were a brother or sister and he was riddled with pain and chronic pain and in the hospital, skin and bones, ready to die, and I came to visit, and the first thing I said is, “Come on; man up; be a man; gird yourself like a man.” You’d say, “That’s inappropriate; that’s not right and he may smack you. It would sound cruel.”
What was God saying when He said, “Man up; gird up your loins like a man.” Why did God tell him to do that? In the questions that follow in between the two times He said, “Gird yourself like a man,” God asked him about the creation, about the sea, about the galaxies, about what’s beyond the grave, about where light dwells and where darkness dwells, about the weather, about rain, about lightning, about dew, about snow, about frost, about ice, about plant life, about animal life, and he asked him about the mountain goats and the wild donkey and the wild ox and the ostrich and the horse and the hawk and the eagle—one question after another. Is the Lord just trying to make Job look dumb? He’s addressing Job, and may God help us see this, as a man, as a man that God created him to be. He’s not now living as the man God created him to be.
God created him in the image of God and to reflect that image and to put it on demonstration for the world to see. That’s not what’s happening at this time. Job is not an animal, not created in the image of God. He’s not an ostrich. Listen to what He says about the ostrich, Job 39:17, “God made her forget wisdom; He’s not given her a share of understanding.” That’s the dumbest bird on the planet, the ostrich. Job in his self-pity and his profound sorrow, wanting to die, “I have nothing to live for; there’s nothing left.” He hasn’t seen himself for who he is. He said to the Lord, “I’m insignificant,” and God says, “No, you are not. You’re a man created in the image of God.” Job 7:7, “Remember,” this is Job, “my life is but a breath, my eye will not see again good. The eye of Him who sees me will behold me no longer. Your eyes will be on me and I will not be.” Job 14:10, “A man dies and lies prostrate, and man expired. Where is he?” He’s lost all hope. Job 12:7, now he’s putting himself on the level with the creatures not created in the image of God, “Ask a beast and let them teach you. The birds of the heaven, let them tell you. Speak to the earth; let it teach you. Let the fish of the sea declare to you. Who among all these does not know the hand of the Lord has done this?”
Job 38:36, “Who has put wisdom in the innermost being or given understanding to the mind?” God said, “Job, you are a man created in the image of God; I gave you a mind. As a man created in the image of God, you can think, you can reason, you can contemplate, you can imagine and I’m talking about the vast universe—Orion, Pleades, the galaxy; you know what I’m talking about. Now, you can’t understand creation, and you can’t rule it but you can conceive it; you can conceive about the planets and the stars. No animal, not created in the image of God can do that. No animal lives beyond its day. Now, a cayote or a dog might howl at the moon, but he doesn’t know anything about the moon. They can’t conceive it. Has an animal ever thought, ‘I wonder if I’m going to live after I die?’ Animals can’t think that. Does an animal think, ‘I wonder what the weather is going to be next week, or next month.’ He can’t think that. An animal can’t look up in the sky, “All of those stars declare the glory of God.” Only man can do that, and God said, “I created you to be a man, and Job, even in that condition, you are created in the image of God. Even a drunkard sitting on the side of the road out of his head, sitting in his own vomit is a man created in the image of God,” and He’s saying, “Go who you are because I want you to know who I am. Until you know who you are, you’re not going to know who I am.”
2 Corinthians 4:4, “Christ who is the image of God.” “I created you to put Christ on display.” Job responded, “I’m insignificant.” God said, “You don’t even begin to know how valuable you are.” Some people read Psalm 8 and take it out of context, verse 4, “What is man that you take thought of him, the son of man that you care for him?” They look at that and say, “That’s just talking about the insignificance of men; we’re nothing; what is man that you consider us?” Read the next verse, verse 5, “Yet You’ve made him a little lower than God; You crown him with glory and majesty and You make him rule over the work of Your hands; You put all things under his feet.” Psalm 8 is talking about the dignity of man, not the insignificance of man. “Man up and know who you are! Gird yourself, like the one created in the image of God!” If Job is going to see God, and he is, God says, “I want you to see who you are first.”
That’s the background, and now look at verse 5, “I’ve heard of You by the hearing of the ear.” Let me try to look at that expression. In Job 29 when Job reflects back in the days when he had fellowship with God, in verse 2, “Oh, that I were as in months gone by, as in days when God watched over me, where His lamp shown over my head. By His light I walked through darkness.” In the midst of his suffering, he lost the sense of God’s presence. Job 23:3, “Oh, that I knew where I might find Him, that I might come to His seat.” Verse 8, “I go forward and He’s not there, and backward I can’t perceive Him, when He acts on the left I can’t behold Him, and He turns to the right I can’t see Him.” Where’s God? He lost the sense of God’s presence; he never lost the fact of God’s presence.
I handed out a sheet today where I went through the book of Job and lifted out some of the verses on how much Job knew by the hearing of the ear. He hadn’t seen God yet, but he makes great profession of who God is. Job knew Him as the Creator, as the Sustainer, as Omniscient, as all-powerful, as sovereign, and he knew His justice, His mercy, His love. In those notes I also included the statements of his three friends because that was in Job’s hearing, “I heard about God through them, and they talked about His holiness, the fact that He was infinite, His eternity, His transcendence, and all of that Job knew of God is called, “the hearing of the ear,” and he called that Job 26:14, “These are the fringes of His wings. How faint a word we hear.” All that he knew of God, he just called, “That’s the fringes; I haven’t even begun to know God.” He knew more about God through the hearing of the ear; he could have been a seminary professor; they know God by the hearing of the ear, many of them, and that’s all, but they know a lot about God.
It’s possible to know much about the Lord, and still not experience whatever is meant by, “But now my eyes see You.” Job’s own confession was, “I knew of Him by the hearing of the ear. I knew about Him, but I didn’t know Him. I knew all about Him. I have good theology. I had sound creed. I even taught others what I knew about Him, but it was all academics. It’s all that I heard about God. My catechism was full of truth, but my knowledge of God was hearsay, just what I heard, what I was taught. I fell in love with His attributes, not Him. I fell in love with the love of God. I fell in love with the power of God and the wisdom of God, not the God whose love, wisdom and power it was.
Even when Job recalled his experience, “I’ve experienced the Lord,” but it was only feelings, only emotion, and when he lost the feeling, he thought He went away. God used Elihu now to point him to the Person, to the Lord. Again, I say, brothers and sisters in Christ, we read these things and this is a Bible study but there’s a great distance between knowing God by the hearing of the ear and seeing Him with the eye as there is between heaven and earth, between the east and the west.
In John 1:41, speaking about Andrew. Andrew was Peter’s brother, and he got all excited in verse 41, “He found first his own brother, Simon, and said to him, ‘I found Messiah, which is translated Christ.’” Peter knew Jesus was Messiah, by the hearing of the ear because his brother told him. More than three years later toward the end of the ministry of Christ, long after the Galilean ministry, long after many miracles, after the feeding of the five thousand, the Sermon on the Mount, in Caesarea Phillipi Jesus asked in Matthew 16:13, “He was asking His disciples, ‘Who do people say the Son of Man is?’” And then He asked this question in verse 15, “Who do you say that I am.” Peter answered, verse 16, “Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.’” Do you remember what Jesus said? Verse 17, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.” Andrew told Peter Jesus was Messiah; that’s the hearing of the ear, until God revealed it from heaven, Peter didn’t know it. You only have what God gives you. I only have that; I’m not going to challenge you, but privately go back over all that you believe about the Lord. How much of it is by revelation? How much of it is, “I read it in the Bible,” “Somebody told me,” “I heard it at a conference,” “I heard a tape,” “I heard it on a website.” How much do you know about the Lord because He has come to you and revealed it to your heart? That’s where Job is at this point.
Remember Romans 10:17 as this becomes very important, “Faith comes by hearing.” Did Job have faith? He surely did, and it came because of what he heard, not from seeing the Lord. The wonderful faith we read about was all faith that was produced because Job had heard about the Lord through the hearing of the ear. You’ll be familiar with these verses, but I’ll just quote them. When he lost his fortune and he lost his children, Job 1:21, he said, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” That faith came from hearing. And when his wife told him to curse God and die, he said in Job 2:10, “Shall we receive good from the Lord and not evil?” Tremendous faith that came from the hearing of the ear. And when he lost his health, his appetite, his rest, had hard thoughts about God, Job 13:15, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” What a faith! We say, “He’s pretty much in the millennium; he’s pretty much arrived to have faith like that!” But he’s got a long way to go; he hadn’t seen the Lord, yet. All of that faith, and faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word concerning Christ.
At the height of his suffering, he proclaimed in Job 23:10, “He knows the way I take, and when He’s tried me, I shall come forth as gold.” That’s marvelous faith, but it’s not his full heart. God wants Job to know Him intimately, not about Him, not that He’s sovereign, and not that He’s in control, not that He has a plan. He wants fellowship; He wants relationship; He wants union with Job. Job has exercised great faith because of the hearing of the ear, but at this point he had not demonstrated the theme of the book—God is enough when the hedge come down. He’s not there, yet. Even with all that wonderful faith, Job had not concluded that the Lord is enough even when the hedge comes down. It’s not going to happen until Job 42:5, “Now, my eye sees You.”
Knowing the Lord by the hearing of the ear, no matter how much faith it produces, and that can be deceptive because we can think, “If we have got that kind of faith, then we’re okay with the Lord.” Knowing the Lord and having that kind of faith falls short, very short, infinitely short of what God’s heart is, that we would know Him by the seeing of the eye. This is a tremendous truth. At this point, with all the faith that Job expressed, he had not yet proved Satan wrong. He will but he didn’t, yet. It’s important to see how this is going.
The insufficiency of the knowledge that comes by the hearing of the ear only is illustrated all through the Bible. Let me give a couple of other illustrations. Saul/Paul before he was converted, he knew about the Law of God. In fact, Philippians 3:6, he says, “As to the righteousness, which is in the Law, blameless.” You can’t get better than that; he knew the Law and he said, “My life was blameless.” He didn’t know the Law; he thought he did. Here is his testimony after God opened his eyes, Roman 7:9, “I was once alive apart from the Law, and when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died.” Paul of Tarsus could probably tell you more about the Law than anyone in his day, and yet looking back when he saw the Lord, he said, “I was actually apart from the Law; I didn’t know the Law. I thought I was blameless but I was living apart from the Law. I didn’t get to know the Law until after I came to know Jesus; that’s the hearing of the ear, but it must be followed by, ‘Now my eye sees Thee.’” Job 36:26, “God is exalted; we do not know Him. The number of His years is unsearchable. Job 37:23, “The Almighty, we can not find Him; He’s exalted in power.” Because Job, by the hearing of the ear, knew that God was Spirit, invisible, unknowable, when he said, “Now, my eye sees Thee,” he’s talking about the eye in here, not these eyes. He’s talking about seeing Him by faith, and that has to do with revelation. Only God can reveal God. There’s a wonderful illustration of this in Ephesians 4:14, “As a result, we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine.” Many people read that and they think that in the context he’s talking about false teaching, “False doctrine, carried about by every wind of doctrine.” No, that’s not false teaching; that’s true teaching. Every wind of doctrine is your creed, and they are carried about, and that’s all they know is doctrine, but listen to verse 20, “You did not learn Christ in this way. If, indeed, you’ve heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus.” I’ve got to know truth, not in doctrine; I’ve got to know truth in Jesus; that’s seeing Him.
In the gospel of John, let me give this final illustration, and then we’ll pick it up next time. We’ve got a lot to say about seeing Him with the eye of faith but let me give you this illustration. We just finished studying the gospel of John, and I hope one of things we saw was a full Christ. John wrote about Jesus. You are only one verse deep, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by Him; without Him there wasn’t anything made that was made.” John saw Christ, exalted Christ; he saw His eternity, His divinity, His power. He didn’t need anybody to testify of man; he knew what was in man, and all through the gospel we see His power, His majesty, His working of miracles, His authority over demons, over disease, over death. We see the mighty power of God; we hear Him proclaiming that He’s going to come as judge, He’s going to come as King and reign. John saw the truth and the whole gospel of John proves it, but one day he had an experience, Revelation 1, he’s on the Isle of Patmos, you know the story, and he hears a voice behind him (that would have scared me to death) like the sound of a trumpet (I get alarmed when somebody just says a word, I’ll jump). Imagine being in the Spirit and all of a sudden, you hear a trumpet behind you? I would have jumped out of my skin. But the point is that when he turned around, he saw somebody with white hair and His eyes were like a flame of fire and His feet were like glowing grass, and there was a two-edged sword coming out of His mouth, and the keys of death and Hades were swinging from His belt. In His right hand He held seven stars. He was robed with a priestly robe and a kingly robe.
John didn’t see anything that he hadn’t written about in the gospel of John; he saw the same thing, but this time he saw it in Jesus. Now watch, Revelation 1:17, “When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man. He placed His right hand on me saying, ‘Do not be afraid; I’m the first, the last, the Living One; I was dead, and behold I’m alive forevermore; I have the keys of death and Hades.’” What happened to John when he saw the truth as it is in Jesus, he just fell down and worshipped the Lord. What happened to Job when he saw the truth in Jesus, not just the hearing of the word, but when he saw the truth in Jesus, he falls down and says, “I repent in dust and ashes.”
When Isaiah saw the Lord, high and lifted up, he said, “I’m undone; I’m a man of unclean lips; I’m a leper; I live in a leper colony; I’m undone; my eyes have seen the King.” Once you, I mean we’re talking about moving from hearing of the Lord to seeing the Lord, I think every Christian, regardless of maturity, has heard of the Lord, and by that hearing, faith has been produced, and they are trusting in the Lord. That is a million light years away from the life that He has planned for us. He wants us to see Him with the eye of our heart and have a relationship. So, we’re going to look at how does God bring me from this to this, from just knowing God and responding in faith, to the place where I’m enjoying His presence and living in an unbroken fellowship with Him. We’ll stop there.
Father, thank You so much for Your word and for helping us see that we were created in the image of God to know You intimately, and put You on display. Thank You for Your dealing with Your servant, Job, so that we can learn Your dealings with us. We pray, Lord, that You would take us forward in this heart knowledge of our Lord Jesus. We commit this study to You and ask You to work in our hearts all that You know You intend it to mean and then prepare our hearts as we get ready to continue in Job and look at the rest of the book together. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
WHAT DID JOB KNOW “BY THE HEARING OF THE EAR?”
THE OMNIPOTENCE OF GOD
JOB 9:5-10 It is God who removes the mountains, they know not how, When He overturns them in His anger; Who shakes the earth out of its place, And its pillars tremble; Who commands the sun not to Shine, And sets a seal upon the stars; Who alone stretches out the heavens And tramples down the waves of the sea; Who makes the Bear, Orion and the Pleiades, And the chambers of the south; Who does great things, unfathomable, And wondrous works without number.
Job 10:8-9 ‘YOUR HANDS FASHIONED AND MADE ME ALTOGETHER, And would You destroy me? Remember now, that You have made me as clay; And would You turn me into dust again?
THE OMNISCIENCE OF GOD
Job 21:22 CAN ANYONE TEACH GOD KNOWLEDGE, IN THAT HE JUDGES THOSE ON HIGH?
Job 23:10 HE KNOWS THE WAY I take; When He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.
THE ETERNITY OF GOD
Job 19:25-26 As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, And at the last He will take His stand on the earth. Even after my skin is destroyed, Yet from my flesh I shall see God; Whom I myself shall behold, And whom my eyes will see and not another.
THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD
Job 23:13-14 BUT HE IS UNIQUE AND WHO CAN TURN HIM? AND WHAT HIS SOUL DESIRES, THAT HE DOES. For He performs what is appointed for me, And many such decrees are with Him.
Job 26:7-12 He stretches out the north over empty space And hangs the earth on nothing. He wraps up the waters in His clouds, And the cloud does not burst under them. He obscures the face of the full moon And spreads His cloud over it. He has inscribed a circle on the surface of the waters At the boundary of light and darkness. The pillars of heaven tremble And are amazed at His rebuke. He quieted the sea with His power, And by His understanding He shattered Rahab.
THE COMPASSION OF GOD
Job 10:12-13 You have granted me life and lovingkindness; And Your care has preserved my spirit. Yet these things You have concealed in Your heart; I know that this is within You:
THE INFINITY OF GOD
Job 26:14 BEHOLD, THESE ARE THE FRINGES OF HIS WAYS; AND HOW FAINT A WORD WE HEAR OF HIM! But His mighty thunder, who can understand?”
WHAT JOB HEARD FROM ELIPHAZ BY THE HEARING OF THE EAR
Job 5:9 Who does great and unsearchable things, Wonders without number. He gives rain on the earth And sends water on the fields,
Job 15:14-16 What is man, that he should be pure, Or he who is born of a woman, that he should be righteous? Behold, He puts no trust in His holy ones, And the heavens are not pure in His sight; How much less one who is detestable and corrupt, Man, who drinks iniquity like water!
WHAT JOB HEARD FROM BILDAD BY THE HEARING OF THE EAR
Job 25:4-6 How then can a man be just with God? Or how can he be clean who is born of woman? If even the moon has no brightness And the stars are not pure in His sight, How much less man, that maggot, And the son of man, that worm!”
WHAT JOB HEARD FROM ZOPHAR BY THE HEARING OF THE EAR
Job 11:7-10 “Can you discover the depths of God? Can you discover the limits of the Almighty? They are high as the heavens, what can you do? Deeper than Sheol, what can you know? Its measure is longer than the earth And broader than the sea. If He passes by or shuts up, Or calls an assembly, who can restrain Him? For He knows false men, And He sees iniquity without investigating.
WHAT JOB HEARD FROM ELIHU BEFORE GOD REVEALED HIMSELF TO JOB
Job 34:10 & 12 “Therefore, listen to me, you men of understanding. Far be it from God to do wickedness, And from the Almighty to do wrong. Surely, God will not act wickedly, And the Almighty will not pervert justice.
Job 36:26 Behold, God is exalted, and we do not know Him; The number of His years is unsearchable.
ALL OF JOB CHAPTER 37 (His majestic voice; His control of thunder, lightning, rain, snow, ice wind, mankind, universe)
Job 37:22 OUT OF THE NORTH COMES GOLDEN SPLENDOR; AROUND GOD IS AWESOME MAJESTY”