Disguise of the actual - Chambers, Oswald
Job 42:7–17
That low man seeks a little thing to do,
sees it and does it:
this high man, with a great thing to pursue,
dies ere he knows it.
That low man goes on adding one to one,
his hundreds soon hit:
this high man, aiming at a million,
misses an unit.
That, has the world hereshould he need the next
let the world mind him!
This, throws himself on god, and unperplexed,
seeking shall find him.
Robert browning
Our actual life is a disguise, no one expresses what he really is. Job could not express actually, either before or after his suffering, what he really was. The great divine event to which we look forward is when the earth will actually express itself as the work of god, and saints will actually express themselves as the sons of god. Meanwhile, actual appearances do not express the real things. All through job has maintained his belief that god is honourable; he declares that the friends credal statement of god was not adequate because they have said things he could disprove from his own experience. Why i am suffering, i do not know; but your explana- tion does not satisfy me. Though he slay me, though i am knocked to pieces really, i believe that god is honourable, a god of love and justice, and i will wait for him, and one day it will be proved, that my faith was right. That is the sublime reach of jobs faith. Now god takes it in hand to deal with the friends.
1. The scourge of eternal reality
The lord said to eliphaz the temanite, my wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant job hath. ( job 42:7)
Everyone who poses as a religious teacher is faced sooner or later by eternal reality. The friends had posed as religious teachers, they said they knew god, and their criticism of job was along this line; but god says, ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant job hath. In reading what job says we should probably have come to the conclusion that a man who talked as he did could not be a good man, he said such wild, extravagant things; and yet in the end god, who is eternal reality, said that he had spoken rightly of him. A man may utter wild things which seem to us all wrong, but it will be a humiliation to find that he has spoken of god more truly than we have. When eternal reality strikes, pose is no good, religious hum- bug is no good. The voice of god is scathing eliphaz and the others, not because they had spoken untruths they had spoken what was logically true all the time, but because they had misrepresented him. Christianity does not consist in telling the truth, or walking in a conscientious way, or adhering to principles; Christianity is something other than all that, it is adhering in absolute surrender to a person, the lord Jesus Christ.
If the reality of god is a scourge to a man who has never pretended to be religious, it must be ten times more so to a man who has been a religious teacher, who has said to people, i can tell you why you suffer. I can tell you why god has allowed this war, and what he is doing with the british empire. When such a man comes up against eternal reali- ties and hears god say, you have not spoken the
Thing which is true of me, the scourge must be appalling (cf. John 15:26). Eliphaz had spoken the truth abstractly, but he had misrepresented god all through. God is not an abstract truth; he is the eternal reality, and is discerned only by means of a personal relationship. When one is found out by eternal reality the danger is to become defiant or despairing. When the friends were scourged by god they took the right attitude and did not get into despair. If the scourge of eternal reality comes, see that it leaves you face to face with god, not with yourself.
2. The surgery of events reacting
Therefore take unto you now seven bullocks and seven rams, and go to my servant job, and offer up for your- selves a burnt offering; and my servant job shall pray for you: for him will i accept. ( job 42:8a)
We only see along the line of our prejudicesour evangelical or un-evangelical prejudices, the preju- dices of our belief or of our agnosticism; we cannot see otherwise until events operate on us. The surgery of events is a most painful thing. It has taken a devilish thing like this war to root up the prejudices of men who were misrepresenting god to themselves. A prejudice is a foreclosed judgement without having sufficiently weighed the evidence. Not one of us is free from prejudices, and the way we reveal them most is by being full of objection to the prejudices of other people. If we stick obstinately to any line of prejudice, there will come the surgery of events that will shift us out of it. Watch that you do not make an issue with god; it is a dangerous thing to do.
The surgery of events brought the friends out of their prejudices. All along they had said to job, you are wrong, we can prove it, you are a bad man, and it is a wonder to us that god does not strike you dead. But the surgery of events brings them to their knees in utter humiliation. Go to my servant job, god says, and he shall pray for you. Go through the issue, or you will never get to me. Think of the humiliation of it!
. . . Lest i deal with you after your folly, in that ye have not spoken of me the thing which is right, like my servant job. ( job 42:8)
What is it to speak the thing that is right about god? I have never seen god; to call him omnipotent and omnipresent and omniscient means nothing to me; i do not care one bit for an almighty incomprehensible first cause. To speak the thing which is right about god, i must be in living personal relationship with him. God is riddling the friends because while preaching the right thing, they have misrepresented him and told a lie about the author of truth. If i preach the right thing but do not live it, i am telling an untruth about god. This is one of the cardinal truths of Christianity (see Romans 2:1723). But, a man says, how am i going to live the truth? The sermon on the mount says we must have a disposition which is never lustful or spiteful or evil; where are we going to begin? Unless Jesus Christ can put into us his own heredity, it is impossible. But that is just what he claims he can do. By regeneration Jesus Christ can put into any man the disposition that will make him the living example of what he preaches. The baptism of the holy ghost did not add anything to the apostles doctrine, it made them specimens of what they taught (see acts 1:8). 3. The sacrament of experimental repentance so eliphaz the temanite and bildad the shuhite and zophar the naamathite went, and did according as the lord commanded them. ( job 42:9) the friends accepted the humiliation, and did a repentant thing. Strictly speaking, repentance is a gift of god. No man can repent when he chooses. A man can be remorseful when he chooses, but remorse is a lesser thing than repentance. Repentance means that i show my sorrow for the wrong thing by becoming the opposite. The old puritans used to pray for the gift of tears. A man has the power to harden himself against one of gods greatest gifts. If in order to dis- solve a piece of ice, you take a hammer and smash it up, you simply break it into so many pieces of ice; but put the ice out in the sunshine and it quickly disap- pears. That is just the difference between mans han- dling of wrong and gods. Mans handling may cause it to crumble, but it is only so much crumbled-up wrong; when god handles it, it becomes repentance, and the man turns to god and his life becomes a sacrament of experimental repentance. These men did not say, no, we will not go to job; they did not attempt to justify themselves, they did exactly what god told them to, and in so doing they did a grand and noble thing, and took the only chance of getting to know god. 4. The supplication of emancipating religion and the lord turned the captivity of job, when he prayed for his friends. ( job 42:10a) have you come to when yet? If you are in the position of job and have shipped some trouble on board that makes you taken up with yourself, remember that when job prayed for his friends, god emancipated him. Pray for your friends, and god will turn your captivity also. The emancipation comes as you intercede for them; it is not a mere reaction, it is the way god works. It is not a question of getting time for bible study, but of spontaneous intercession as we go about our daily calling, and we shall see eman- cipation come all along, not because we understand the problems, but because we recognise that god has chosen the way of intercession to perform his moral miracles in lives. Then get to work and pray, and god will get his chance with other lives; you do not even need to speak to them. God has based the christian life on redemption, and as we pray on this basis gods honour is at stake to answer prayer.
5. The society of enlarged friendship ( job 42:1017)
. . . Also the lord gave job twice as much as he had before. ( job 42:10b)
Jobs actual life looked exactly the same after his suffering as before to anyone who does not know the inner history. That is the disguise of the actual. There is always this difference in the man who has been through real troublehis society is enlarged in every direction, he is much bigger minded, more generous and liberal, more capable of entertaining strang- ers. One of the greatest emancipators of personal life is sorrow. After the war there will be the society of enlarged friendship in many a life; men will never be as estranged from one another as they used to be. One thing which has gone by the board entirely is the conceit that we know men. Men do not live in types; there is always one fact more in every life that no one knows but god. The last thing to go is the religious category. A man will stick to his religious categories of men until he receives a shaking up from eternal reality, as these men did. Eliphaz and the others maintained the conception that unless a man held to the particular shibboleth of their religious creed, he was lost. The one thing that will cause the conceit that we know men to disappear is the surgery of events, the eternal reality of god shaking the nonsense out of us. This has happened in many a life through the cataclysm of war, and men find they have a different and a broader way of looking at things. There is no room for veneer and pretence in camp life.
Then came there unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and all they that had been of his acquaintance before, and did eat bread with him in his house: and they bemoaned him, and comforted him over all the evil that the lord had brought upon him. ( job 42:11a)
There was a larger, grander society in jobs actual life after his suffering. In his epistle peter refers to the people who have plenty of time for you, they are those who have been through suffering, but now seem full of joy (see 1 peter 4:1219). If a man has not been through suffering he will snub you unless you share his interests, he is no more concerned about you than the desert sand; but those who have been through things are not now taken up with their own sorrows, they are being made broken bread and poured-out wine for others. You can always be sure of the man who has been through suffering, but never of the man who has not.
. . . Every man also gave him a piece of money, and every one an earring of gold. ( job 42:11b)
Job accepted the gifts from his friends and brethren, which is an indication of a generous spirit. The majority of us prefer to give, but job was big enough to accept all that his friends brought him.
So the lord blessed the latter end of job more than his beginning. ( job 42:12)
