…who have left. It is precious to be together with you for the planning meeting today, with the young people briefly last night, and this morning. It is always wonderful to get together and fellowship with the saints.
We want to come around the Word of God and study some things, asking the Lord to show us by His Spirit the truth of His Word and His very own presence. Let us bow in a word of prayer, and then we will look at a few Scriptures.
Father, as we come to You today singing songs of worship and praise, we also take this sober note from that last song we sang: “‘Tis the way of the cross. Are you willing for this?”
As we gather unto You this day, there is great joy and gladness in our hearts, as our brothers shared earlier, as the firstfruits of that promise to come. We nevertheless realize that the way You have before us has much dealing, much of the things of life that are difficult. Through these, we find Your presence so precious.
Now, as we study the Word of God this morning, we pray that Your Holy Spirit would make us aware of some of the signposts along the way, that we may know that we are in the living way prepared for us by our Master. So we pray together in the name of the Lord Jesus that You will be with us in our study together this morning. In Jesus’ name, amen.
I would like us to look at two portions in the Epistle of James. First, James 5:7-11.
It is interesting to me how, when you read different versions of the Bible, different things come to light. This last year, this whole year, I have been reading the King James for my own devotion and study, and I have really been blessed by the turn of phrase inspired in the translators years ago. So I will read this morning from the King James.
Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord.
Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until He receive the early and latter rain.
Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.
Grudge not one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned: behold, the Judge standeth before the door.
Take, my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering affliction, and of patience.
Behold, we count them happy which endure.
Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.
Then, in James 1:1-4, the very beginning of our epistle:
James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting.
My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;
Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.
But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.
I confess to you that I have had a struggle with the Book of James in years past. I was a young Christian when I paddled off to seminary to study for the ministry, and in the course of my studies I took a class—a complete semester on James in the Greek.
Well, we beat it to death. We looked at James upside down in two languages, found all kinds of commentaries, and I had a liberal teacher. By the time we got through, I never wanted to touch the book again. According to my teacher, it had no value at all anyway, except for the Jewish people. So I found myself more or less leaving it alone. You know, sometimes you can beat something to death.
Several years went by, and I came back to the Book of James. These two verses, by the Holy Spirit, the Lord put together for me and made this wonderful epistle come alive. The Lord never devalues His work.
As the Holy Spirit helped me to see these two portions—the beginning place and, more or less, the end of the epistle—brought together before my eyes at the same time, suddenly the door began to open to me. I began to understand what the Book of James was all about.
It is not a “right straw epistle,” as Martin Luther said. As I looked at these two passages—
Let patience have her perfect work.
Be patient until the coming of the Lord.
—I saw James’ burden. He was burdened for the perfecting work to be done among the saints in light of the Lord’s soon coming.
Suddenly, this book that I had been told was just a bunch of moral exhortations and outward matters of religion put on a whole new vista. There is a perfecting work that our brother was burdened to share with the saints, and in light of the soon coming of the Lord, that burden was even more intense upon him.
As the Book of James opened up for me, I saw the whole epistle as being concerned with matters of perfection. I do not know if you agree with me in this, but if you think about it, certainly you can understand what I am saying.
James takes the matter of faith and says that faith’s perfection is through the fruition of works. It is not enough to have some faith in our head, or even claim some great devotion in our heart, unless that faith bears fruit in a perfecting way.
He says that the love of the brethren needs to be perfected through equal treatment of all the saints, without showing partiality. He talks about wisdom’s perfection. If we want to attain to wisdom’s perfection, we have to have our motives exposed in our own hearts. It is our envy, lustings, and strivings that cause us to hold to a wisdom from beneath—earthly, fleshly, even demonic.
If we want to be perfected in wisdom, we have to have our motives dealt with so that we can become teachable before the Lord. Do you see what I am saying? If you take every line like this, suddenly you see that James is burdened about these matters of perfection.
He talks about the ministry of the Word. He says that the ministry of the Word can go so far, but if we go on to perfection, there must be a bridling of the tongue. There must be an exclusive source of fresh water, and not brackish confusion.
As he goes on to say, how can a brother stand up and teach? The context is teaching: “Be not many teachers.” Then he mentions this whole matter. It is a confusing thing to the saints to have a brother stand up and teach the wonderful celestial truths of heaven, and then, with the same mouth after the ministry time, speak with such carnality and such brackish talk.
You say, “Well, was that true that we heard before?” If we want to go on to perfection, there are these obediences, you see.
Even in drawing nigh to God, it is wonderful that we can claim our stand in grace and draw nigh to the Lord just as we are. Of course, this is true. But if we want to be perfected in our drawing nigh, we must realize that we are drawing nigh to the One whose name is Jealous. He is jealous for our spirit, and He wants no friendship with the world.
If we really want to draw nigh to Him, there is a cleansing involved, a repentance involved, and a purification involved, because our God is jealous and He is a holy God.
Even in the ingrafting of the Word, whenever we hear or study the Word, there is an appropriation of the Word. But if it would be fully and perfectly ingrafted in us, then we cannot only be hearers; we have to be doers.
How many of you could testify that there are portions of Scripture which remain a mystery to you until one day, in obedience, you look back and suddenly understand? The Word of God is not just something to be intellectually grasped. There is a doing that is a perfecting of this ingrafting work.
Well now, I have gotten myself somewhat singular in my vision regarding James—that he has this perfecting burden. I do not know if you agree with me about that, but certainly you can agree with me that when he comes to this matter of patience, he says:
Let patience have her perfect work.
Be patient until the coming of the Lord.
Our brother James is burdened about these things. The failure to understand the whole book, in one sense, is a failure to realize that the Lord is doing a deeper work of perfecting among His people.
Sometimes scholars and commentary writers do not seem to be aware of the deeper work that the Lord is doing through trials in order to bring us to perfection. In this perfecting work of God, there are, we might say, several levels of perfecting, but it is all of one piece.
We are perfected through the gospel. When we accept the gospel and see the Lord Jesus, whom the gospel preaches, and sense Him taking our lives over, this is a wonderful perfecting work. The gospel is a means unto perfection. From the moment we believe, we are sanctified, redeemed, and glorified by the wonderful gospel.
But we must go beyond the gospel in that perfecting work. Those who abide in the Word and allow the Word to cleanse them come, confess their sins, find cleansing, and find a new level of perfecting going on in their lives.
Some Christians seem content with these two things, and so we repeat the gospel and the cleansing of the Word—the teaching and cleansing, cleansing and teaching. Yet there are deeper levels, are there not?
Some Christians never seem to come to a full understanding of the blessing of being delivered from Sin in their lives—the capital “S,” singular sin, this principle, this thing that dogs us day and night because of our flesh and because of our old man. But there is a deeper perfecting work as the cross cuts us off, sanctifies us, and delivers us from sin. What a wonderful perfecting work that is.
Yet perfection goes deeper. There is a deeper perfecting work where the Lord takes His Word and reveals Himself to us. Every time the Lord reveals Himself to us, we must be aware that there is some perfecting work going on. As He reveals something to us, He leads us through some cross that makes these things real to us. Every revelation bears with it a further perfecting.
Then there is perfecting on another level: relationship. For a long time, I was a Lone Ranger as a Christian. I just rode in on my white horse, got a silver bullet, and got out of town. Then the Lord said, “No, no. There is a perfection through fellowship.”
Through being in the Body and accountable in the Body, by rubbing shoulders with brothers and sisters who cause you to deal with impatience, there is perfection. How can we ever come to perfection if we stand alone? “It is just me and Jesus and my Bible.” No, there is still a deeper work of perfection.
Then we come to things like this: the perfecting of patience. We find an even deeper level. This is a matter not primarily touching sin—although, let us be honest, we are never above the dealings with sin, the dealings of the cross with our flesh, the dealings in fellowship life, and the dealings that come through revelation.
Still, there is this deeper perfecting work where the Lord is building character within. There are some trials that come to us not because we have done something wrong, but because the Lord is after something in us, wanting to build a deposit of something. In fact, He wants to build the Lord Jesus Himself into us.
Now, I love this King James phrase, and I hope you young people can remember this little portion of James 1:4:
Let patience have her perfect work.
I like it in the King James. Do not tell me it means endurance or all these other things. I am not interested. I like this verse: “Let patience have her perfect work.”
I think the King James translators rightly came upon the fact that this matter of patience is so living that it is personified, as it were. It is called “her.” I suppose King James saw this patience as a sort of mother, perfecting the child every day and building character. This I would not deny.
However, the fact of the matter is that this is really talking about the perfecting of patience—specifically, the perfecting of the patience of Jesus in us. It is a Person, but it is not “her.”
Of course, there is no pronoun, “his” or “her,” in the original. If you see your King James Bible with the slanted, italicized words, it means they are not in the original. But I feel, imperfectly and honestly, that this says, really, “Let patience have His perfect work.”
Because, in fact, we are looking unto Jesus. As the Lord deals with us in this matter of patience, we are entering into something of a fraternity of those who, through suffering, have attained unto patience.
We all know Romans 5, where it says:
We rejoice in tribulation also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience;
And patience, experience; and experience, hope:
And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
Here we see there is a process where patience is always surrounded by two things: a promise and a very present trial. The promise is a little bit off in the future.
Here in James 5, we read that Job saw the end of the Lord. That was the promise. That is the basis of our patience. There is something there; there is a promise; there is an end to be gained if we remain in this patience.
The problem is that, along with the promise, patience is wrought out in the midst of tribulation and trial. These trials seem very present to us. In fact, the trial sometimes seems so contemporary that the future promise seems far off.
It is possible in a time like that to find ourselves surrendering and losing patience, as we find Scripture often warning us. There is a deeper work the Lord desires to do in this matter of patience, that we might enter into this characteristic of the Lord Himself through the sufferings we go through.
Remember this: patience is a deeper work, but it is a dealing of the cross. It is the way of the cross, but it is not necessarily because of sin. It is a pressing of our character into an abiding in Jesus that produces patience in us.
James was a man of patience. I am ashamed now that I ever had a low view of him. My Bible teachers were wrong. I am sorry.
Our brother James—we know at least three things about him. First, he was the Lord’s brother. We get a measure of his humility by seeing the beginning of this passage, where he says, “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ”—his very own Brother.
We also get the notion that James was a pillar in the church. He was steadfast and stable, although my Bible teacher said he was stodgy, legalistic, and Jewish.
We know from church tradition that his nickname was Camel Knees, because he had such calluses on his knees. He spent so much time praying.
Now, are you going to tell me that this pillar, this man devoted to prayer, is giving us merely some narrow exhortations? This man had been upon his knees learning patience before the Lord. He had been upon his knees until he had heard the hoofbeats of the soon coming of the Lord Jesus.
He had been on his knees in a devoted life of prayer. People say that someone who devotes himself to such prayer must be a totally unworldly, irrelevant person. But the fact of the matter is that James remained on his knees in prayer until he could see the issues of our perfection.
Brothers and sisters, we can talk of faith and shout our allegiance to the Lord Jesus, but the bride makes herself ready through little obediences such as those called for in the Book of James. James knew this from a practical wisdom that came from spending time on his knees.
This is not a strawy epistle. The problem with an exclusively evangelical perspective is that evangelicals and commentators sometimes put so much stock in the perfecting that comes from the ministry of the Word that they do not understand there is a deeper perfecting work that is done.
Not only Luther, but many theologians who follow in his school of thought, make a sacrament of the Word of God and say that it is the only means of perfection. The saints come to hear the ministry of the Word, and this is what perfects us.
I do not deny that when we hear the Word, there is a perfecting work. When we see a revelation, there is a perfecting work. When we hear the gospel, there is a perfecting work. But there are perfecting works done in fellowship, in deep places, in prayer, through dealings in our lives, and through other things.
The Lord’s way is comprehensive. He takes us even into such matters as this building of patience into our lives. We will not be perfected in patience simply by hearing a word on patience. The Lord will bring things to us—deeper things that are for our perfection.
As an aside, one of the things I think is special about the family conference is that we do not put all our chips on the ministry of the Word. There is a perfecting that comes in the fellowship meetings and a perfecting that comes by teaching the children.
There are some conferences where they say, “Do not think of the children. Let us come hear the Word morning, noon, and night—eight ministries a day.” If knowledge of the truth and ministry of the Word could bring us to perfection and the rapture, then the brethren would have gone out.
But there is more to perfecting than knowledge. There are things more deeply wrought within. These are the things James is talking about. Commentators who are so focused on the gospel read James and do not see the gospel, so they say, “Well, he is talking about works. This is not evangelical; this is not good teaching.”
They do not understand that there is a deeper work. When the cross comes to us in the spirit of Luke 9, where Jesus said, “If any man would come after Me,” He is not talking merely about the cross dealing with our sin life. That is one level of perfecting.
He is talking about the laying down of our redeemed lives and the crushing that ensues. Through that dealing and through those tribulations comes the perfecting of patience, as even our Lord Jesus had to go through.
Our Lord Jesus was not dealt with because of His sins, for He bore no sins. But He suffered to be perfected in patience. Hebrews 12 says so.
Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us,
And let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
For consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.
“Endured”—that is the word patience in verb form. I cannot imagine how the perfection of Jesus must have grated with the temptation to impatience in dealing with the sinful lives of His very own disciples.
Indeed, our Lord suffered in so many ways and had to take hold of patience to deal with such sinful men. Our Lord learned patience on every hand. He had to, in order to become our faithful High Priest, who could be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.
As a High Priest who understood us and had patience with us—oh, how a high priest had to have patience. Think of those Old Testament priests. Here comes somebody with an animal sacrifice, perhaps a young man, and he is so afraid that he is going to be struck dead at the tabernacle that he is afraid even to show up.
But the high priest has that patience: “Come on in. Come on in, Joe. It is all right. Give me the sacrifice. Here is the way we do it. We cut this up and put this over here. It is okay, as long as we do it the right way.”
Our High Priest is so patient with us.
Do you notice how, in the Book of Revelation, we see this character of Jesus portrayed again? John says in Revelation 1:9:
I John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ.
Those who are suffering are in a fraternity, and Jesus is the Head Brother—a fraternity of co-sufferers, a fraternity of those who know patience. John is saying that those who have joined together in tribulation and suffering have also joined together in the patience of Jesus Christ.
The church at Ephesus is commended because of its patience, as are the others. But in Revelation 3:10, it is said to the church of Philadelphia:
Because thou hast kept the word of My patience.
This patience is a very personal thing. It is a fellowship—an abiding fellowship—with Jesus Christ through trial. It is in trials that we realize this fellowship in suffering. We become those experienced in the patience of Jesus, with His character being built into our lives.
In the Book of Hebrews, we have exhortation in this matter of patience as well. Let us look at two passages, because we have almost sister epistles: James and Hebrews, both exhorting us to perfection, both asking us to press on to maturity.
In Hebrews 6:11-12, we find ample testimony to the need for patience:
And we desire that every one of you do show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end:
That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
There are always the promises. There are always the trials. And there is the patience for us to take hold of.
Again, Hebrews 10:35-37 says:
Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward.
For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.
For yet a little while, and He that shall come will come, and will not tarry.
How often we hear these exhortations to patience—not only in the context of trials and in the context of a promise, but in the context of the soon coming of the Lord.
This perfecting unto patience is a deep work. In fact, the Lord, before He comes, must perfect His bride in patience. She must learn to have the same patience that our Lord now has as He waits for His bride.
The Lord does this deep work in us all. It is a wonderful work, wrought by His cross and dealt with by the Spirit to produce patience in us. I do not know if any of you feel the need for that in your own life, but I certainly feel the Lord dealing with patience in mine.
The Lord brings us into this deep dealing, this dealing in mystery, as it were, by presenting to us in James 5 Job as an example of suffering and patience. Let us look at that passage one more time—James 5:10-11.
Take, my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering affliction, and of patience.
Behold, we count them happy which endure.
Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.
First, James says, “Look at all of the prophets,” because in the prophets you find an example of those who suffered, not just because of their own sinfulness. They suffered to bear testimony. They suffered for the sake of others.
They bore this burden before Israel, and Israel did not want to hear the prophecies, but these men came anyway. Hosea had to marry an adulterous, unfaithful woman and suffer in that relationship in order to bear the testimony of the Lord God and His suffering.
Ezekiel had to suffer through all kinds of parables—lying on one side and then the other, doing things that made him a laughingstock among people. But he suffered not because of his sin, but for the sake of the testimony of God.
Take these prophets as examples of those who learned patience in the midst of suffering. They held on to an end. They held on to a promise which Hebrews says they did not attain; they only saw it from afar.
Yet this promise, this end that they saw, this Messiah who would come, and these things they saw in prophetic vision were enough to keep them in patience even unto death. Take these as an example for our own lives.
But then, of course, James comes to this matter of Job. Job involves forty-two chapters. I am not going to try to deal with the whole thing, but I would like us to think about the Book of Job in light of this example of patience and suffering.
What is the Book of Job all about? I should know, because in front of my Book of Job—which I just happen to have open here—there is an introduction. The introduction in my Bible, which cannot be wrong because it is a Scofield, says that the subject of Job is, “Why do the righteous suffer?”
Now, the preponderance of material does in fact deal with that question. But again, I have a feeling that evangelical scholars have missed the point. Maybe I am oversimplistic, but I believe the Bible, which tells me in James 5 that the Book of Job is about the perfecting of patience.
Evangelical scholars join the ranks of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar in picking apart Job’s life and finding some secret sin. They have to make sense out of the tragedy he went through. “Well, he had secret pride. He had self-righteousness. He had this. He had that.”
But the interesting thing is that the Lord does not say he had any of that. All I see the Lord saying is, “Have you seen My servant Job? He is perfect.” That is what He said to the devil.
Then, when He showed up at the conclusion of the Book of Job—and those are hard words for New Yorkers to say—God speaks to Eliphaz and says everything Job said was right, and everything they said was wrong. Have you read what Job said? That is quite a miraculous statement to make.
I do not think this whole thing is about God digging around and getting back at Job because Job was sinning in some way. When Satan came back in Job 2 and said, “Does Job serve God for nothing? You just took care of him,” God said, “Okay, take away the hedge.” Still, Job did not curse God.
Then the devil came back and said, “If You touch his body, then he will curse You.” And God said, in effect, “You know My servant Job. Did you not learn how perfect he is? Even though you incited Me to do evil to him, still he was good.”
Now, I ask you a question: Do you really think the devil had one up on the Lord and incited Him to do something He did not want to do? Do you think the devil said, “I tricked God. I tempted Him to get His servant”?
No, no. Our Lord is many, many steps ahead of the devil. But the Lord determined to use this process for the perfecting of patience in our dear brother.
When this whole thing was over, the Lord had gained something in Job—a patience that no change of circumstances could take away. After he was dealt with in this way, you could have taken away his second set of children, and he would not have budged.
The Lord wants to build this patience into his heart, into our hearts, or, as James says, to “stablish your hearts.” James the pillar makes this exhortation. Let us listen to him.
There are two matters so obvious in the Book of Job that touch this matter of patience in our own lives. If we could learn these two lessons in Job, there is a whole bunch of other things in there for us to learn, but for now I will pass them over.
Lesson number one: through the whole ordeal recorded in the Book of Job, our precious brother, servant Job, learned something. This is it:
A man of God knows nothing until he comes before the face of God.
Now, he learned that lesson. We see in Job 1 and 2 the events of his tribulation, events born out of heaven—a controversy between God and Satan, if you want to put it that way. But Job knew nothing about these heavenly dealings. Nothing of them. His friends knew nothing of them.
There are religious clichés and normal prescriptions that are wholly inadequate for the deeper working of God. These friends came around him—Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. Even their names should tell us they were problems.
They came around with every wonderful religious prescription you could ever give anybody: high and normal moral notions, the deepest contemplations of religious men. All of them were totally inadequate to deal with the deep dealing God was doing in Job’s life.
You can see it graphically in the whole book itself. In chapters 1 and 2, there is God and Satan and the dealings that occur. In chapter 42, God speaks. In the middle are thirty-nine chapters of poetry—men’s poetry, verse that means nothing, couplets of irrelevant sayings.
This is the sum of our knowledge: man knows nothing until he comes before the face of God, and then he sees the end.
All the so-called friends who came around and gave answers said, “You must have sinned this way. I know you sinned in this way. You are sinning that way.” Oh, they were all pompous guys.
But according to the Lord, when He came there—look in Job 42. Let us read Job 42:5-7:
I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth Thee.
Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.
And it was so, that after the Lord had spoken these words unto Job, 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 which is right, as My servant Job hath.
He rebukes them for sharing things that were not right—things that were hurtful, shallow, and had no application. They had done a disservice.
Oh, if the Lord could just purge the whole Body of Christ of all the Eliphazes, Bildads, and Zophars, there would only be a couple of people left.
Rather than purging all, can we learn this deeper lesson? There are many things of sin and dealings of that kind for which we can give ready remedies. There are Scriptural prescriptions for such things. But when there is a deep dealing unto the perfecting of patience, we would do best just to sit there silently.
Along with our brother Job, who sat there in immobility and did not curse God. All the temptation, destruction, and trial of the devil could not get him out of that peace. But his friends blew his peace and thrust Job into a place of suffering and solitude where he was absolutely alone.
Even his wife had abandoned him, and all the friends looked and laughed at him. He looked like such a miserable fellow. As his friends talked, it collapsed him further inward. He was in agony, asking God questions and hearing no answer back.
There were soliloquies to the sky with the best that he knew, and nothing coming back except his friends’ condemnation, condemnation, condemnation. Oh, that we might learn: we know nothing until we see the face of God. Then we find out the end and the truth regarding the matter.
Now Job, according to James 5, remained patient. That is an amazing statement when you read what he said in the dialogue he had with God. But it teaches us about a wonderful, merciful, compassionate God.
The latitude of fellowship with God in the midst of suffering is amazing. Brothers and sisters, when we are in the midst of trial, why is that little word squeezed out of our heart? We cannot help it.
But though Job asked the question “Why?” and reasoned, and at times tried to provoke the Lord for an answer, still his heart was before the Lord. Look at Job 13:22-24:
Then call Thou, and I will answer: or let me speak, and answer Thou me.
How many are mine iniquities and sins? make me to know my transgression and my sin.
Wherefore hidest Thou Thy face, and holdest me for Thine enemy?
We can make our complaint if we make it before the Lord. There is such latitude and such reasoning. The Lord understands if your heart is aching and you are asking why and you cannot help it.
You know it is a foolish question, perhaps beyond your understanding, but you squeeze out “Why?” anyway. Have you known such suffering? It just comes out, and you cannot help it. But when it is given vertically, there is such latitude in it.
The Lord did rebuke His servant Job. He did it through the last man who spoke up, the younger Elihu. Job was rebuked, not for asking why before the Lord, but for whining among men.
“Why” becomes a whine when it gets horizontal. Then that dialogue of questioning and doubt caused Job almost to lose his peace. He became restless, angry, and defeated. Where was that immovable testimony he had at the start, where he just sat silent until the Lord showed up?
He said, in effect, “I do not know what is going on.” Those friends almost helped him lose it. But he kept his patience.
When we read other portions of Job, we wonder how a man under such intense suffering could say such wonderful things. Job 13:15 says:
Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him: but I will maintain mine own ways before Him.
Or Job 19:25-27:
For I know that my Redeemer liveth,
And that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:
And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.
Or Job 23:10:
But He knoweth the way that I take:
When He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.
Though Job did not know the situation, somehow he knew there was a deep dealing going on. There was a perfecting going on in his character. When God got through with the trying, there would be gold on the other side—something built in, something deposited for eternity, something of value in his life.
Job kept his patience, even with the dialogue, fears, anger, and self-inspection. Yet he did it before the Lord. Still, this basic lesson remains: brothers and sisters, we know nothing until we come before the face of God.
Actually, the Lord, in a very merciful way, came and dealt with this whole problem man has: we have to know the reason why. But patience will not allow it.
The Lord came and taught Job a lesson in this matter. He did it in a very loving way. You ask, “How?” Let us look in Job 40:3-8.
Then Job answered the Lord, and said,
Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer Thee?
I will lay mine hand upon my mouth.
Once have I spoken; but I will not answer: yea, twice; but I will proceed no further.
Then answered the Lord unto Job out of the whirlwind, and said,
Gird up thy loins now like a man: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto Me.
Wilt thou also disannul My judgment?
Basically, what God does is proceed to ask Job seventy-eight questions that he cannot answer.
In every man, because we have been so habitually trained before the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we think we have a right to know the reason why, or that we can even understand the reason why.
So God comes to him and asks him these questions: “Where were you when I framed the world? That bird flying in the sky—is he flying by My instinct or My wisdom?” Job says, “I do not know.” Seventy-eight questions, and Job says, “I do not know. You got me on that one. Oh, I do not know.”
Seventy-eight times. Finally, Job feels, “Why did I ever ask a question?” May the Lord only have to ask you sixty before you just fall into the hands of the living God.
As David says in Psalm 131, “I no longer deal in matters too deep for me. I rest my soul on the bosom of God.”
Deep things—man has no answer to them until we see the face of God. Then the end comes to pass. What was the end? We see it in Job 42:10:
And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.
What is the end? The Lord will never be indebted to you. The Lord is compassionate and full of mercy. You will find out that you can trust Him. When the end comes, you will see that everything He does is out of compassion for you.
When you see His face and see that, you will be ashamed that you doubted, that you slandered, that you asked, “Why, why, why, why, why?” A man knows nothing until he sees the face of God.
There is one lesson supplementary to that first lesson, but nevertheless precious for us to see. The Book of Job was not dealing primarily with Job’s sins, although he was a sinner. The Lord was doing a deep work in Job.
There was a deep test going on, a test deeper even than the questioning that goes on in our minds during suffering and trial. This was a question and testing of the heart.
We discover this by realizing an interesting fact, which I only lately came upon. It has to do with the word used for God in the Book of Job. There is a word used forty-eight times in the Old Testament for God. Thirty-one of those occurrences are in Job. Job defines what this name means, and the name is El Shaddai.
Thirty-one times in the Book of Job, God is mentioned as El Shaddai. El means God. Shaddai comes from the word for breast, with the connotation of a mother’s breast and full provision. It is the God of sufficiency—God Almighty, God All-Sufficient, God the full Provider.
This is the God who came to Abraham when he said, “I am too old to have a child.” God said, “I am El Shaddai. I can provide.”
Throughout Job, we find El Shaddai. Just in the name itself, we see the issue. The Lord and the devil are in heaven; Job is on earth, having been struck down. With every striking and every stripping away of the hedge that surrounded Job, there was this silent question:
Job, am I enough for you?
If I take away your hedge, is Jesus enough? If I take away your job, am I enough? If I take away your loved ones, am I enough? Your health—am I enough? Your reputation—am I enough? Your ministry—am I enough?
Job had a ministry at the gate, giving out charity, wisdom, and advice. People came from all around. But now there was no more ministry like that; they would not touch him. Job, am I enough?
That was the issue and the question of heaven, silently spoken, as down on this earth was worked out the life of a man who lost everything. Somehow, through his life, Job said, “You are enough.”
The devil folded his satanic wings. He lost. He got Job down to the lowest common denominator. He was on life support, and he still said, “El Shaddai is enough.”
Dear brothers and sisters, these are deep dealings. The Lord plunges deep into our soul to find our spirit and to constitute us along the line of patience.
Let patience have her perfect work.
Young people, I would like you to memorize that phrase: James 1:4, “Let patience have her perfect work.”
Could I give just one last verse to the young people, and to all of us, before we leave this matter? Let us turn to Luke 21.
This chapter speaks about what will happen in the time when we stand before trial and persecution, when parents and loved ones stand against us because of our religious convictions, when we are brought into court and have to speak up, and when we may even be called upon for the sake of the faith to be martyred.
Dear young people, we older people may go to be with the Lord, but you may face persecution where, if you tell them that Jesus is your Lord, you lose your life. There is only one prescription for such a time. Luke 21:19, in the King James, is such a precious verse:
In your patience possess ye your souls.
In your patience, possess ye your souls. If you are called upon to bear witness, if you are called upon to give your life, how can you possibly do that?
The Lord, by His foreknowledge, will have built into you a patience of character and an abiding in the Lord Jesus. If you allow that patience to enwrap your soul, it will keep you in perfect peace, even in a great time of testing.
Brothers and sisters, perhaps we all can apply this verse to our lives: “In your patience, possess ye your souls.” There is a testimony to be wrought here on earth, and many times it is wrought in the midst of suffering.
When you are suffering, what is your testimony? Is your testimony, “Where is God? He has abandoned me. What is He doing? What have I done? What is my sin?”
Or do we realize there is the possibility that the Lord is saying, “I have chosen you to suffer for My sake, that in the testimony in the heavens, the angels—both good and bad—would see that there is someone on earth who does not love Me for nothing, who loves Me for Myself and not merely for what I give”?
Maybe you will be called on to suffer in such a way. Maybe you will be called on to suffer for the sake of others. Maybe the Lord will call you to ministry, leadership, or something that involves a measure of suffering that cannot be borne without patience.
You say to yourself, “Why?” It is like Moses: “Why did You call me to lead these people?” Do not strike the rock. Moses is an example of one who came almost to the border of the Promised Land and struck the rock and lost the promise.
Dear brothers and sisters, it is possible for us to come short of the grace of God. Or, as James says in this passage, it is possible to grudge one another.
In the trial of the moment, it is easy to look around and blame the wife, blame the leaders, blame some brethren, blame this, or blame that, and begin to complain. There is a losing of patience in the midst of complaint.
It is as if James is saying, “Oh, my dear brother and sister, the time is too short for you to sit back and start criticizing and judging. God has not given you that gift. Maintain your longsuffering and your patience, and pray for one another.”
James goes on in this matter of the perfecting of patience, and the last two things he mentions in his epistle are body life and prayer. If you are weak or sick, confess your faults one to another. Oh, what patience is involved in all of that sort of thing.
Then, finally, prayer—just as Elijah prayed. What patience it takes to wait before the face of God, to have a word to say, and to speak the Word of God. All of these things are part of a perfecting process that the Lord is working in our lives.
He is El Shaddai to us, and He will produce the patience of Jesus in us.
I wonder how the saints felt who read the Book of Revelation after John had been given it and it was distributed. Perhaps they said, “Yes, I also know the patience of Jesus. Just when I was at the end of my tether, I felt this patience come into me, deep within.”
It is a matter deeper than sin, deeper than flesh—something in my spirit that was constituted, a union with God. When I sensed that, no circumstance could touch it.
May we find ourselves in that kind of perfect patience. Oh, let patience have her perfect work.
Let us pray.
Oh, Thou great El Shaddai, cognizant of the fact that there may be some people even in this room who are suffering with dealings too deep for easy remedy, things beyond explanation, help them resist the condemnation of well-intentioned friends and even the condemnations of their own conscience and heart.
O Lord, You are greater than our hearts and know all things. Those who are bearing under trial, we know You have also held out a promise, and in the end You will show that You were faithful.
O Lord, keep us in that patience of faith that, having gone through the trial, obtains the promise. As You did, doubly bless us with sonship and with fellowship with Yourself that is too deep to be snatched away by any circumstance in our lives.
O Lord, we thank You so much for the perfecting that has come through the gospel, through the Word, through Your dealings one with another, and through all of these different things in our lives. But also, Lord, as You touch the depth of our soul, reach into our spirit, and constitute a perfecting of our spirit, prepare us and perfect us—not only individually, but together as the bride.
When we find ourselves together, may our patience be squeezed out with that word: “Come, Lord Jesus. Come, Lord Jesus.” Give us the patience and clarity of the end in view that can keep us faithful to You in these last days.
Lord, do not allow us to fall into the prey of divisions or to lose our inheritance for some momentary comfort when You are calling us to stand and patiently wait for the salvation of the Lord.
O Lord, You are coming soon. In these final days, do this perfecting work deep within our character, that we may be a bride prepared for her patient Husband. We pray in the name of this precious Lord Jesus. Amen.