Let us begin tonight by reading Exodus 33, the prayer of Moses. That is our theme for this weekend. We will read Exodus 33:12-14.
Then Moses said unto the Lord, “See, Thou sayest unto me, Bring up this people; but Thou Thyself hast not let me know whom Thou wilt send with me.
Moreover Thou hast said, I have known thee by name, and thou hast also found favor in My sight.
Now therefore, I pray Thee, if I have found favor in Thy sight, show me Thy ways, that I may know Thee, so that I may find favor in Thy sight. Consider, too, that this nation is Thy people.”
And He said, “My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.”
Then we want to look at Psalm 103:7.
He made known His ways unto Moses,
His acts unto the children of Israel.
And then Isaiah 55, beginning at verse 8.
For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts than your thoughts.
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
And return not thither, but water the earth,
And make it bring forth and bud,
That it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater;
So shall My word be that goeth forth out of My mouth:
It shall not return unto Me void,
But it shall accomplish that which I please,
And it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.
And then Romans 11, beginning at verse 33.
O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past tracing out!
For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been His counsellor?
Or who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again?
For of Him, and through Him, and unto Him, are all things. To Him be the glory for ever. Amen.
Father, we just amen our worship as we have gathered together tonight. We have exalted and rejoiced in Your beauty, Your majesty, and the greatness of Your grace and mercy. We would lay hold of that grace upon us tonight, taking that grace to energize, renew, and bring us into all that You have designed.
Thank You for all who are gathered here: some who have just recently come, and some who have been here from the start. Lord, bring us together under one living rhema by Your Holy Spirit tonight, we pray. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
This is a very exciting time to be alive. The Lord is shaking up a lot of things. The world is being shaken, even as we speak, in the Middle East.
But more wonderfully, as I tried to share on the first night, there has been revealed recently, through the efforts of those who have a burden to see God globally evangelized, just how immense has been the gathering of people into the kingdom of God in the last thirty years.
Most of us have lived during these thirty years. We were part of that gathering, but we do not really realize how global it has been. We know that the Jesus People movement in the sixties did a work here, and we have heard of the charismatic work expanding and bringing people into the kingdom here in the States. But perhaps we have not been entirely aware of what has gone on in the Third World and in places whose names we cannot even pronounce.
But as the record shows, there have been over 550 million people brought into the kingdom, and that is a conservative estimate. Most of those people, in an amazing way, have been gathered into assemblies and groups—not denominationally oriented, but little independent groups, loosely connected by servants of God who move from place to place, teach, share, and preach the gospel.
It is really quite an amazing thing. The landscape of Christianity has basically been, through the last centuries, pretty well defined denominationally. There have always been independent groups, but for the most part, when you counted heads, you counted denominational memberships.
But now, in the twenty-first century, they have had to come up with a whole new way of counting these things as best they can. And the half has not been told, because there are so many things going on that nobody is counting right now—except in heaven, where there is rejoicing going on.
According to the missiologists—that is, those who study missions in the evangelical seminaries of the United States—all of Christianity is going to be redefined.
Now, in light of that tremendous act of God in the last thirty years, the tremendous ingathering of God that has had no parallel in the history of the church, this is an act of God. I personally have a burden, and have tried to convey to you, that we as those who have been Christians and alive to the Word of God would come before the Lord in light of this tremendous miraculous act of ingathering and say, “Lord, show me Thy ways.”
Because there is a further bringing in of those who have been saved into fullness and maturity. But it takes those who have already been there, and those who have seen and understood, to bring them in. It is a tremendous need right now.
Not only can the Lord gather in millions of people, but the Lord in His wisdom can also bring them to maturity. In many places around the world, people are growing through persecution and trouble in a maturity that we do not even know about.
As I shared some of the statistics, some of the leading nations showing development in numbers of baptisms include three Islamic nations. Nepal is another example, a Hindu nation where Christianity is growing so rapidly that they cannot even keep the figures straight.
Every month there are new houses full of new converts, spilling over into another house, which becomes full of converts, despite the king of Nepal saying, “You cannot have Christianity in this country.”
Because of severe persecution, and because many of those 170,000 who were martyred last year were Nepalese, these people have been coming into a maturity and a reality where we could use some touch-ups.
Nevertheless, they need help. By that, I am not implying that all of us should go out like the Moravians, leave our jobs, and become slaves in Nepal or some such thing. But there is certainly a need at the start for intercession.
You see, this prayer of Moses—“Show me Thy ways, O Lord”—was the beginning of Moses’ intercessory relationship to the people of God. It was Moses who, in this prayer, somehow found the way to get the children from the base of the mountain and their idol worship to the edge of the Promised Land, where they could go into the promises of God.
In studying this simple prayer, we took note of three words that reveal God progressively:
First, He showed His acts to Israel. He has shown His acts to us. The living God reveals Himself by acting upon this earth. Praise God for His acts.
But then it takes those who are interested in looking behind the acts, discovering the God behind the acts, and discovering the ways behind the acts. It takes those willing to come up on the mountain and say, “Now, Lord, we have seen Your acts. Praise God for Your acts. Now show us Thy ways, that we may know how to serve You and please You.”
Then the third word, having had acts and ways, is to know Him—to know Him. “Show me Thy way, that I may know Thee.” That means a knowing by experience.
In contrast to Moses, there were the children of Israel at the bottom of the mountain. They saw His acts but never saw His ways, and in the end they were disqualified from entering into rest.
This became a warning to us in Hebrews, because the Bible clearly implies that those who are rebellious, flat selfish, and without burden will never know God’s ways. I cannot imagine somebody being a Christian, saved by grace, and not caring to go on with the Lord. I do not know how you do that kind of thing.
But surely, having seen the loving God who saved us, there must be some impetus to look further, to come back and return to God and say, “Lord, I want to see Your ways, know Your ways, and walk in Your ways. And as I walk in Your ways, I want to know You.”
The second time I spoke, I spoke about the sojourn. The Lord answers our prayer: “O Lord, show me Thy ways,” and then the Lord takes us on a sojourn.
Through this sojourn, our faith is proved, a cross is borne, and we are reduced. In the process of our reduction and discipline, we also discover a merciful God. All of these patriarchs that we briefly looked at, who went through the sojourn, in the end knew a merciful, compassionate God.
That is a God the world does not understand. They sometimes say they believe in a God of love, and by that they mean a God who is tolerant or a God who just allows anything. But that, of course, is not our Lord.
The world thinks God is kind of mean and a little arbitrary. You never quite know what He wants to do. He seems unfair sometimes. But the God we come to know as we walk in the sojourn is a God of mercy and compassion.
Some young people are here, and here is what God shows us. He shows us the God who acted: the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior. We see a vision of Him. Nobody can be saved without some basic revelation of who Jesus Christ is.
But not only have we seen Jesus our Savior; we have seen the end. We have seen something of God’s purpose. We have seen where He wants us to go. We have seen something of the bride, something of sonship, something of God’s eternal end.
We are standing in this gap between the beginning and the end, and our prayer should be, “Show me Thy way, O Lord.” Especially for young people: you have grown up in the church, heard about the Savior, and heard about God’s eternal purpose. How do you get there?
Well, I suppose somebody could write a book on it. But the only way you will discover it is for this matter to lay hold of you: that you want to get to that end, that you want to be part of that gathering at the end, and that you say, “Lord, show me Thy ways.”
Then it gets you going in a sojourn, which is God’s tailor-made program to teach you about Himself and His ways. Young people, I know it is tough when you grow up in the church and everything is handed to you secondhand. But praise God when a young person stands up and says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good. Show me Thy ways.”
The Lord will take that person through a blessed sojourn. All of us have this opportunity.
We have to acknowledge, and I read some Scriptures that show us, that when we pray, “Show me Thy ways, O Lord,” it takes us deeper than we are comfortable being.
There is a depth to His ways that we read of in these two Scriptures, along with Exodus 33, which makes us realize that when we say, “Show me Thy ways,” we are giving the Lord permission to take us places that we do not understand—places deeper than our experience, places deeper than shallow water.
Isaiah 55 says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts. My ways are not your ways. My ways are higher.” So how can we ever know these ways? When we get into those ways along that sojourn, we find that God’s ways are so much higher than ours.
What is the actual context of Isaiah 55 when it speaks about the high ways of God? Here is how it starts: “Everybody here who is thirsty, come drink. It is free, but you have got to buy it.” Ah, the mystery of grace.
Everybody on this earth, and unfortunately half the Christians on this earth, thinks that God has a basic payback policy. It is all payback stuff. You be good, and then you will have good karma. Good things will happen to you.
You know that saying, “No good deed goes unpunished”? The truth is that sometimes you will do the will of God and receive difficulty for it. When that happens, people say, “Hey, where is the karma? Where is the payback?”
Well, if you wait until you die, you will find the payback, for your reward is great in heaven. Did Jesus ever say, “Blessed are those who are persecuted because I will pay them back by persecuting them”? No. No, forget karma. Forget My Name Is Earl.
Here is the deal: you serve the Lord. Whether you go through blessings or difficult times, His ways are the high ways. His ways are grace ways.
Let us go back to Isaiah 55 and get to the end of that passage, because we stopped short of it. It is a marvelous chapter. We all know it about His Word going forth and accomplishing things.
For ye shall go out with joy,
And be led forth with peace:
The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing;
And all the trees of the fields shall clap their hands.
Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree;
And instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle-tree:
And it shall be to the Lord for a name,
For an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.
That is the high way of the Lord. In the end—maybe what you are going through right now, you have to say it by faith—in the end, when you are on sojourn with the Lord, it is a blessed life.
Sometimes you have to wait until everything gets sorted out, but it turns out to be true. It is a wonderful life. It is the highway.
If we understand His ways, and if our minds get renewed, we have to start living on higher ground when circumstances seem to have ruined everything.
I do not know where you have problems in your life. Sometimes it is family life. Many times it is assembly life, where things seem to go into dissipation and ruin, and we say, “Oh, all is lost. It is all over with. God started something that He cannot finish.”
What is our view? Do you see God’s highway? Do you see that the Lord is still in control? You confess it.
I like what T. Austin-Sparks said one time when somebody came to him and said, “Brother, what do you think about all those Christians who are against you?” He said, “Who? Who is against me?”
“Well, all those people criticizing you, and the media, and all this kind of stuff.”
He said, “They can draw me out of their circle, but I do not draw them out of mine. We are all one in the body of Christ.”
“But what about all the divisions?”
And do you know what he said? “I refuse to see the divisions.”
If you cannot see them from the heavenlies, I do not recognize them on earth. Woo! That is high ground. You know what I mean? That is high ground.
When we are on the sojourn and going through the cross, do we believe that in the end it will be blessing? In the end we will be shouting and clapping. Hold on to that high view when you come in your sojourn to something rough.
I declare, if we take the high ground, if we have the grace of God to take the highest ground we could possibly take in relating to our brothers and sisters, we still cannot get as high as God. His ways are higher than our ways—more full of grace, more full of mercy, and more full of confidence that when He sends out His Word, He is going to accomplish what He sent it out to do.
Do you believe that? Well, okay, take the high ground. Are you getting sleepy tonight? Take the high ground. Stay awake. All right—God’s ways: higher ways. Praise God.
Now let us go back to Romans 11, because we also have to say that God’s ways are deeper. Deeper takes us into the depths.
At the end of Romans 11, after a long dissertation regarding Israel, Paul lays before us verse 33:
O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable are His judgments, and unfathomable His ways!
When we are in the sojourn, according to Paul’s example, we are in a boat. Back on the Mississippi, anyway, when they had a steamboat, they had poles that you stuck in the water to find out how deep it was by the number of fathoms marked on the stick.
The problem is, when you are going in God’s ways, sometimes it gets a little deep. You stick the stick down there and never hit bottom. It is unfathomable. How many fathoms here? Whoops—down goes the stick. Still, it is deeper than that.
God’s ways are deep. Of course, this means that in His ways He takes us through the depths.
What is Paul talking about specifically in Romans 11? He is talking about God taking the Jews through the mill, through severity of discipline, even to this day.
Why? Because He will reclaim them, save them, and get their eyes open to the Messiah. He will be as severe as He has to be to get the job done. That is exactly what Paul is talking about.
His ways are deep. How deep? They are severe. Look at Romans 11:22:
Behold then the goodness and severity of God.
My Bible—I tried to rub out “severity,” because I like, “Behold the kindness of God.” Ah, but those who fell: severity. But to you, God’s kindness, if you continue in His kindness. Uh-oh.
This seems to imply that the same thing we can see going on in Israel right now—the constant pressure, constant trouble, constant persecution, constant oppression—is God’s severity upon them because He loves His people.
God will be just as severe on us to get us to His desired end. People do not like the severity side; they like the kindness side. But He has the left and the right hand, and He will use both hands to get us to His way and to His end.
A lot of people get offended by the depth. It is even in the Bible. Everybody says, “Oh yeah, I believe the whole Bible. I believe everything in it. I love the Bible. I love everything in it.”
Then you say, “Moses was not allowed to get into the Promised Land.”
“Ah, yeah, I know. I do not understand that. That bothers me too.”
“And how about that poor fellow, Uzzah, who just put his hand up there to steady the ark? Then he was struck dead.”
“I do not like that either. What is the matter with God, anyway?”
Then you see Paul, the most faithful servant, getting beaten, stoned, jailed, and carried on. Is God fair? Where is the karma?
Some people get offended by the Bible. It is just too tough. God says, “You know what I think of those people? Wipe them all out.” “No, no, no—that is the Old Testament God. That is not our God. That is some ancient God.”
Oh, we do not understand the depth of His ways sometimes. People become offended by all of this, and actually it is because we are afraid that if we say, “Show me Thy ways, O Lord,” He will send us surely into some great tragedy.
“All right, here is your reward. You want to know My ways?” He pulls the plug, down you go, and that is it. You never get out.
But I have to say that seems to be God’s strategy at times.
This little passage in Isaiah we all know is Isaiah 43. It is the one we are afraid to look at. That is the story of love. Look there in Isaiah 43: it is God’s love.
But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob,
And He that formed thee, O Israel: Fear not, for I have redeemed thee;
I have called thee by thy name, thou art Mine.
When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee;
And through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee:
When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned;
Neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.
For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour.
He says, “I love you so much, I am taking you through water. Yes, when you go through, do not worry. I am with you. I love you so much, I am taking you through the fire.” Wow, what a loving God.
Then Isaiah 43:15-16 says:
I am the Lord, your Holy One,
The Creator of Israel, your King.
Thus saith the Lord, who maketh a way in the sea,
And a path in the mighty waters.
His way for His children, of course, is through the sea. There is reference to the Red Sea, but also to something more—to depths of dealings.
When we think of the depths of His ways, of course, we realize that it is the way Jesus went. It is the way of the cross.
Therefore, every child of God who prays, “Show me Thy ways,” and goes on sojourn with God will be taken through the waters. Every child goes through the waters. Only some go through the depths.
We are now dealing, when we speak about the depths of His ways—or, as I am calling it tonight, the way through darkness—with something completely in the providential hand of God.
We do not want to put anybody into a way of darkness and depth. God does what He does. He takes us all through the waters, and we need to respect everyone who is on sojourn.
The degree of depth and the cross that everyone goes through is different. Yet, in one sense, it has the same effect. The Lord knows how to apply all the circumstances of our lives in order to bring us to perfection and to sonship.
We cannot say everybody goes through the depths, because it would not be true to history. When we look around, we do not see it that way. But we do see that there are some.
One person said, “Whom God loves most, He deals with most deeply.” Now, that happens to be a saint who went pretty deep through some dealings, so I do not know if it is just that He loves them more, so He sends them deep. Perhaps it is.
There are some, especially among the mystics, who have phrases such as “the dark night of the soul,” because in the midst of their pilgrimage they go into a place beyond their understanding. They go into something so deep sometimes that they are not even sure they can find God in that depth, though they cry out.
Many times, in God’s leading and in God’s ways, He takes some people through such a depth. I do not know about the mysticism of it all. I do not know if we all need to go do mystical things. I am not a mystic myself.
But I do know this: when the Lord takes us through the way of darkness, you can tell it is the Lord because of the end when you come out on the other side.
When you come out on the other side, you know the Lord much better. When you come out on the other side, something has been deposited in your life toward sonship that can be seen by others.
Every time somebody goes through the depths of dealings, they come out with the marks of Jesus on them. There is something there. There is also something that opens up by way of ministry, because they are made useful, having gone through those depths.
But once again, this is something in the sovereign hands of God. We need to respect what the Lord is doing in everybody’s life.
The Lord encourages us as we read the Word of God and see people who have gone through such a way in the depths. The Old Testament several times says that God’s way is through the sea, meaning again that there is a depth there.
When we look at the Old Testament record, we see people such as Joseph. I had a good time up in the Bay Area recently sharing on Joseph and his life. It meant a lot to me because you could see through all the dealings in Joseph’s life what the end was: sonship, authority, ruling, blessing, and the saving of a people.
God always has these things in mind, but Joseph had to go through a very deep dealing with God. In the New Testament, of course, Paul comes to mind immediately. What things he had to go through! But what he learned of the Lord has become comfort to us.
Paul’s words comfort us with the comfort he received as he went through various trials.
Tonight I want us to glance at the one fellow who was on a sojourn we all know about, who went really through the depths: Job. Job, our pal.
Actually, Job was also in the time of the patriarchs. Last night we looked at Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph going on their sojourn. Now here is Job, and he went through a sojourn in that same time.
Before we look at the depths of the sojourn, I am not going to deal in depth with the whole matter. You can read The Splendor of His Ways by our brother Stephen Kaung if you want a beautiful exposition of the book of Job. There are other great books around as well.
I just want us to see how wonderful the Lord is in the end through what Job goes through. Let us look at the end first, before we look at the tough way, so we can be encouraged.
James 5:11 shows us the end.
I know some fellow did not like to read books too often, so when he got a book, he read the end first. Then if he liked it, he would read the rest. I always thought that was pretty stupid. You know how things are going to turn out, and now you want to read the book?
There was an old gospel chorus a few years ago: “We win! Hallelujah! I know we win. I read the back of the Book, and we win.” That works.
In James 5, he is talking about saints going through various kinds of suffering. When he comes to verse 11, he says:
Behold, we call them blessed that endured:
Ye have heard of the patience of Job,
And have seen the end of the Lord,
How that the Lord is full of pity, and merciful.
Or, as I have in my translation, “the outcome of the Lord’s dealings.” But literally, you have seen the end of the Lord. What is it? The Lord is full of compassion and merciful. That is what Job discovered.
While he was going through the depths, God seemed anything but compassionate and merciful. That is why you have to wait until the end. But in the end, Job picked up a knowledge about God’s mercy and compassion that nobody could take away from him for the rest of his life.
That is the first thing we see in the end. Then, going to Job itself, and to the very end in Job 42, we see two other ends.
Job 42:10 says:
And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends:
And the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.
The Lord restored to him the sheep, the animals, and gave him seven more children, or whatever it was. God restored twofold to Job everything he had lost before.
We all know that this is a sign of sonship. The firstborn son receives twice the inheritance. What this shows is that by the time Job came through on the other side, God was saying, if I could put it this way, “That is Job. That is My friend.”
Not just, “Look at Job. He is a perfect and righteous man who turns away from evil.” No, that is My friend. That is Job, My son. That is a wonderful end to a dealing that was deep.
Notice the third part in verse 10, which I mentioned in relation to Moses, and here it comes up again with Job. When were Job’s fortunes restored? When he prayed for his friends.
What does that mean? There is this matter of intercession. As we go through the sojourn of the way, we come to a knowledge of God that enables us to intercede for people.
By that, I do not just mean we have a burden: “Oh God, please help so-and-so.” But like the ancients who have gone through the sojourn, we understand something about God that we can apply to people.
Abraham, when he was talking about Sodom with the Lord, knew how righteous and merciful God was. He said, “Now, what if there are only forty righteous people?” He based his intercession on a knowledge of God’s mercy.
He was not just saying, “Oh God, please have mercy on those people.” He was actually making a deal because he knew who God was.
When God said, “I am going to wipe out these rebellious people of Israel,” what did Moses say? “No, no, no, Lord, You cannot do that.” Imagine being so bold. “No, no, no, Lord, You cannot do that. That would hurt Your reputation. Forget the kids. The nations know You promised to take them in.”
And God said, “Okay, you got Me there.” Of course, the Lord knew Moses was going to say that. But this is the basis of intercession.
God said to Job’s friends, “You know what? You fellows were wrong—one hundred percent wrong. Every judgment you had was totally wrong. I am going to wipe you out unless Job prays for you. You had better bring sacrifices to Job and offer these sacrifices before Me, and then maybe Job can pray for you.”
But Job, who had been through the mill, knew the mercy and compassion of God. He said, “Forgive my friends.” In the end, he gathered with his friends and ate a meal together. Amen.
Ah, his intercession. He knew God, he forgave, and the Lord forgave. Intercession is a certain knowledge of God that enables us to take a position on something, and God moves because of that.
Now there is the end. But let us look at the way for just a second. Job 19:8.
Job is speaking in the midst of his agony:
He hath walled up my way that I cannot pass,
And hath set darkness in my paths.
His ways are ways of darkness. Job is in darkness because of all these things—a deep darkness. He is going the way in darkness.
As Job goes along, we come to Job 26:14:
Lo, these are but the outskirts of His ways.
In the midst of darkness, Job begins to see. God moves in so many mysterious ways, but we begin to see some kind of order in His ways.
Then, in the end, after Job sees the glory of God, he sees the splendor of His ways. From the darkness of His ways, to the fringes of His ways, to the splendor of His ways—this is the process Job goes through in his own sojourn unto sonship.
Now let us look at this book of Job. Has everybody here read it at least once? It has a lot of poetry in it, a lot of things going on, a lot of contradictory things, a lot of arguing back and forth. It is a very beautiful poetic book.
We have a twofold problem with the book of Job. The first problem is what we have already said: God is taking him deeper into uncharted territory than any of us have been. So who can expound on that?
Job has gone deeper. The submarine went down. They knew the submarine could go down thirty meters; now it is down two hundred meters. Nobody knows whether the ship is going to hold up or be pressed in. Our gauges do not even work that deep.
Job’s story is a story about going down so deep that man does not understand. That is one reason I like Oswald Chambers’ little book on Job called Baffled to Fight Better.
Basically, Oswald Chambers says that God completely baffled Job’s reason in order to make him a better servant—a servant who obeyed rather than questioned all the time. Well, that is a good start.
But the second problem I had with the book for a long time was that I had some commentaries, and they got in the way completely. I will tell you why.
The problem with understanding what God was doing with Job comes from our own background. If we are good evangelicals, this is what we think: whenever God really whacks somebody around, we know they must have done something wrong.
We cannot imagine that God could possibly do something this dreadful to a man unless he was bad about something. So most evangelical commentaries on Job have to find the fly in the ointment, the loophole in Job’s life.
Everybody waxes eloquent about his self-righteousness, pride, this, or that. But my problem is that I came to the place where I had to decide whether I wanted to believe that or the Word of God.
The Word of God says Job did not do anything wrong. Now, of course, Job was a sinner. The Bible is not saying he was perfect in the sinless sense. He was a perfect man before the Lord.
Job was God’s show-off piece on earth. God said, “Hey, Satan, have you looked at My servant Job?” Poor old Job was hiding in a hedge, having a wonderful blessed time. God pointed him out.
I just want to live in that hedge, do you not? All blessed with kids, money, family, and all this kind of stuff. Then God says, “Hey, Satan, look down there. That is a perfect guy.”
Satan says, “Yeah, let me have him.” And that is what the book of Job is all about.
Now come on: it is not about his sin. It is not about God dealing with his sinfulness because he deserved it. Nobody deserves what Job went through. Nobody. Please, do not dishonor him.
Job had no idea what was going on in the heavens, where God said, “Okay, take everything away from him, but do not touch him.” Then Satan came back and said, “I guess Job is so self-centered he does not care if You take everything away. But if You touch him, he will curse You.”
Satan was slandering Job right and left, and God was bragging about Job right and left. Of course, God knew Job could stand the depth. He was the only One who knew how deep the submarine could go.
Job went as deep as a human can go, and he held on to his testimony. In the end, in Job 42, God said to all his friends, “You whippersnappers, you were trying to charge him with all kinds of religious reasons why this was happening, and all of you were wrong. None of you spoke right about Me. Only Job spoke right about Me.”
Job stood the test. God won the victory. Satan went snarling away. That is what this whole thing is about.
Of course, Job had no idea what was going on. When all this trouble came his way, even Job started looking around for religious reasons and answers.
We are left with one conclusion: when we really look at what is going on here, we cannot fathom God’s ways. Can we get hold of that? We cannot fathom God’s ways.
Sometimes, when somebody is going through the way of darkness, we friends become enemies. We take out our little doctor’s prescription pad and start prescribing Scripture verses: “Now here, repeat this every day. This will take you right out of the mess.”
You see, because I have been in ankle-deep water, I am prescribing something to somebody who is in over his head. This is what Job’s friends were.
They did not really know the ache in his heart, the struggle, his prayer, his searching, his seeking, or the darkness he was going through.
Job was crying, “Oh God, at this point I do not care. It would improve things if You killed me. I want to know if I have done something wrong, God. I stand before You. Show me Your way. I do not understand it anymore. It has gone beyond me.”
His friends said, “You see, Job, you are deceiving yourself.” Job really went through it.
It is amazing how Job stood. In the first two chapters, no matter what Satan did, he stood. “Naked I came into the world; naked I shall return. Why should I curse God when He has been kind to me all this time?”
Even his wife said, “Curse God and die.” Woo! His wife became a trial to him. Through all of that, he stood.
But he could not stand the “yeah, yeah, yeah” of brothers and sisters. That is what began to undo him. He sat as long as he could through the sermons of his brothers, until finally he started lashing back.
Indeed, it was a deep thing he was going through. Through the whole thing, God was doing a perfecting work. It was not all for nothing.
Job came out on the other side a son, knowing that God is merciful and full of compassion, able to intercede even for these shallow religious people.
I want us to see how God dealt with three deepening levels of Job’s life in this way of perfecting him into sonship:
Mind, heart, and spirit all need to be the Lord’s. He sometimes takes us through the way of darkness to teach us about these things.
The first way He takes Job through darkness is until his reasonings are rendered futile. Job, as a servant of God, learned a lesson so basic and necessary that I can only say it at once: no matter how smart you are, no matter how well we may know the Bible, in the end we do not know anything until we see the face of God.
All of that learning and education, when somebody is going through a deep way, is futile until you see the face of God. Then suddenly it is all as clear as day.
That involves waiting. That involves taking our mind and just resting it on the bosom of our Lord until the Lord clears things up. But we do not come that way easily, do we?
What problems have resulted from the day Adam and Eve ate from the tree? Knowledge has become the one thing we must have. “I do not care what I go through as long as I understand.”
Well, that works when we are skiing on top of the water. But when we go down to depths beyond our understanding, this becomes very complicated.
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil has become the tree from which we eat. When we go through trouble, our temptation is to go for that tree rather than the tree of life.
When you go to that tree, you will find that you eat a lot of fruit from it, but it will not satisfy.
We have this wonderful book, and in its format you can see the whole problem with man’s mind. I hope you have a relatively modern Bible that distinguishes between prose and poetry.
The first two chapters are prose. Satan came before the Lord, and the Lord said, “Have you seen Job?” Satan touched him, and one by one Job lost his children, sheep, houses, and everything else. That is all prose. And Job did not curse God.
Then the very last chapter, chapter 42, is prose. But chapters 3 through 41 are poetry. That is man’s contribution to the question of pain: Why does man suffer? Why is Job going through this?
We have poetry trying to give us the answer. Of course, we do not get any answer from the poetry, but it is there for us. Poetry is an indication of man’s expression.
That is why liberals say that the book of Job was first written as a poem, and then somebody added the beginning and the end, or else nobody could understand it.
Some Jewish scholars say it originally started in chapter 3 and went to chapter 41, and the beginning and ending were left off. There was a big poem about, “Why, God? Why did You do this? Why was I born? Why did this happen?” Then a big debate on why, and it ends up—who knows?
But in fact, that is the meat of the book: the soul expressing its feelings, such feelings; the soul venting its reasonings; the soul making decisions. “Oh, I think it is this. Oh, I think it is this.”
Regarding these thirty-nine chapters, let us comment on what Job said during these times. He said many wonderful things. He had some true knowledge. He said many amazing things.
But if I understand what God says at the very end in chapter 42, regarding the fact that Job said things that were right, I am going to say this: when somebody is going through agony in the depths of the way, God in His mercy discounts what they say.
When people go through a great loss, when people go through a great trial, they sometimes say things, mumble things, and curse things. God says, “I know your heart regardless of what you are saying.”
Job was hurt so deeply. Can you imagine losing your children? Do you know what that does to you? Do you know how your soul gets shredded when you lose one of your children? Imagine losing all of your children.
Then you are going to hold him accountable for what he says in the next sentence? God does not, because God is full of mercy and compassion.
Please, if you know somebody going through the depths of darkness, they are going to say a lot of things. Job said some selfish things. Job made challenges to God. Job said some really nasty things to his brothers—his friends—who were trying to tell him what to do.
Forget about it.
You can see that even in your home. It does not have to be a real tragedy. A teenage daughter breaks up with her boyfriend, and she says some nasty, rotten things to you. I hope you do not take that too personally, because sometimes she is just crying, and that is the way she cries. You know what I am saying?
That is just a simple principle. But when somebody is going through something deep, obviously the Lord discounts a lot of what they say and holds on to those moments where, in some clarity, Job would say things like, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him,” and, “I know that my Redeemer liveth.”
Even in his crying out and anxiety, Job was saying some wonderful things. But those nasty things—let them go.
If your husband is crushed because he lost his job and says nasty things to his wife, can you let it go? Can you forgive him? And vice versa. Children to parents, parents to children.
I wish we could all be on top of our game. Sometimes we come home from a tough day’s work, something hits us, and we say something back that is so nasty. Somebody says, “You can never take something like that back.”
Well, it is true you cannot, but can you forgive them for that?
I am not talking about shallow things, like stepping on somebody’s toe while they are watching a football game and they yell at you. What we are seeing in Job is a deep, deep dealing of God underneath the water, where you can only see the bubbles and have no idea what is going on.
That is on Job’s side. On the other side, let me say this: we know things because God has opened our eyes to the truth of the Word of God. We know things that are true. We know principles that are true in the Bible.
I do not know how to put this without maybe twisting somebody’s nose out of shape a little: when somebody goes through a deep dealing, sometimes those prescriptive answers do not apply.
We have prescriptive answers given to us in the Word. We have the book of Proverbs, full of all kinds of wisdom. But sometimes, when you are going down below the surface, a simple proverb will not do the trick.
That is where Job’s friends went wrong. The best thing they could do was sit there and cry with him for seven days, which they did. That was a good start.
Then they went in there because—why is it that we have to fix somebody? We just want everybody back to normal, everybody in shallow happiness.
We see somebody in the corner, going through something, and we do not know what is going on. We say, “We have got to get them back to normal. We liked them when they were smiling and shallow.”
There has to be a way of embracing somebody going through the way of darkness. Sometimes it is in silence. Sometimes it is in a love that just says, “The only thing I will say for you, my sister, is that I see a sign over your head, and it says, ‘God is doing something in His mercy.’”
Pray for our brothers and sisters. I do not know this assembly here. I am sure there are probably, perhaps in an assembly this size, a half-dozen people going through a submarine experience.
We need to learn how to love them and hold on to them, even when they are not holding on through the difficult thing.
Nevertheless, in perfecting His servant, the Lord could not let Job get away with this. If you let the Lord deal with things, He can get people out of this.
Job was in a quandary. In his quandary, he was saying all kinds of things, and his friends did not know what to do. They were saying all kinds of useless things. But God decided, “Okay, now it is time for Me to teach Job a lesson.”
Do you know how God taught Job that his mind is useless until He shows up? God asked him seventy-eight questions he could not answer.
“Job, where were you when the earth was formed? Just how exactly did I throw the stars up, and in what order? Where were you when I created Leviathan?”
Job was saying, “Uh, um, uh, uh.” “Leviathan? The who?” “Leviathan.”
God asked him one question after another question after another question. The questions piled up. Finally Job said, “Stop.”
God said, “Do you know why I will not stop?” “No.” More questions. There were more questions. Seventy-nine questions he could not answer. He failed the test: zero, even on a curve.
He did not know anything. It taught Job a lesson. Job said, “Who am I to share wisdom with the Almighty? I do not know what I am doing, and I shut my mouth.”
If we could learn that lesson, we would be well on the way to sonship right now. But our minds are thickening. Even when God is doing something to us, we are trying to figure out how to get out of it and still be faithful to God.
We are trying to learn how to serve mammon and serve the kingdom. We have so many mechanisms going in our mind.
I am sorry; I have some friends here who are also like this, but I have to say that back in New York I fellowship with Chinese brothers and sisters. Their minds are in a different zone than me. I am pretty simple. They are very complex.
Even when it comes time for total commitment, they have a way of figuring that out. They are always figuring. Always figuring. I have never seen a Chinese person yet buy retail price.
They cannot do it. They cannot do it. They have got to figure an angle.
I know a fellow who brings the most exotic fruits from around the world. He loves to carve them up and serve them to the speakers and everybody. He always tells me, “You cannot believe how cheap I got these down in Chinatown.” That is what makes him happy.
Oh, the inscrutable Chinese. Who can understand such minds?
Ah, but the Lord has to do a lobotomy on the Chinese to make them sons, because they are too crafty. The Lord wants people who say, “I do not know, Lord, and I am not going to keep asking You until You show Yourself.”
Seventy-eight questions may start coming your way, but sooner or later you are going to say, “Okay, Lord, I am just going to shut my mouth. That is it.”
Have you ever had somebody call you for help? You go over to their house and they share their problem with you. Today we have a problem because of this poetry thing: some people like the poetry of their own problem more than they like ever listening to an answer.
Many people love to tell you their problems. You say, “Why do not we pray?” “No, no, no, I have some more. Wait, then there is this, and then there is that.”
It goes on and on. Then I start handing them a few prescriptions—things that come to mind—and I realize they are woefully inadequate. I say, “You know, we had better pray about this. I do not know what to do.”
Our brother Stephen Kaung is an amazing fellow, because I have gone to him over a hundred times asking him about something, and he always has the same answer: “Let us pray.”
What happened to his mind? Why does he not want to toss it around a little bit? “Let us just toss it around. What is going to happen here?” Oh, let us pray.
We have a lesson to learn there, do we not? Oh, how the Lord wants to deal with our minds. The only way is that He has to humiliate us. That is what it comes down to, as He did with Job.
Job ultimately repented and said, “God, I know nothing until You show up.” Ah, there you go.
The issue gets down to this: would you rather know the answer to the questions, or would you rather see His face?
Some people’s minds weigh so heavily upon them that they almost would rather have the answer to the question, “Why am I going through this?”
But this is where we learn one of the deeper mysteries of life: even if your question was answered, it would not satisfy your soul. God knows what you need is to see Him.
As soon as Job saw Him, he had no more questions.
Many times, that is the way God answers sorrow in your life and answers something when you are going through a dark spot. He shows up, and He never answers the question, because His presence becomes the healing answer for whatever you are going through.
So He deals with our mind. Then He has to deal with our heart. How did He deal with Job’s heart? Job’s heart needed some work.
When you go through a deep, dark time, it reveals your heart’s condition, does it not?
Some of our greatest hymns are written by people who went through dark times. William Cowper is an example of a great hymn writer who spent most of his life in depression. Great darkness was upon him.
Certain brothers helped him come out of those times, and then he would write hymns, and then he would go back into it. Did you know that? Through most of his life, he tried to commit suicide a few times.
It is a very deep and mysterious story. When we go through dark times of trouble, our heart’s condition eventually surfaces. When we see our hearts, we realize how little we love the Lord.
You go through a dark enough time, and your heart is going to get revealed. You can hide as long as possible, but it will be revealed.
Again, by the construction of the book, we see a clue to the test of Job’s heart as he went through dark times. The book of Job contains one very unique theological piece of biblical knowledge for us: it is in Job that we come to understand, in the experience of people, what El Shaddai means.
This one book has most of the references to El Shaddai, God Almighty. Thirty-one out of forty-eight occurrences in the Bible are in Job. El Shaddai, El Shaddai, El Shaddai: God of the mountain, God of the breast, God the Supplier, God who is sufficient.
What happened to Job through his trials is that his heart was brought to this test. Here is the test for somebody who would serve the Lord:
If you lose all your money, is Jesus enough?
If you lose all your family, is Jesus enough?
If your wife turns against you, is Jesus enough?
Is He El Shaddai? Is He the God of the breast? Can you lean on Him when all other things have turned away?
If your health is taken away, is Jesus enough? Or do you have to have Jesus plus good health? Do you see what I am saying?
If your reputation is ruined—ruined—is Jesus enough?
I cannot imagine anything more furious to a Type A personality than, for all of Paul’s faithfulness, to have people turn on him and ruin his reputation because they are out after their own motivations.
Oh, how a person with that kind of personality would seethe and seethe and seethe. But somehow Paul found forgiveness. As we see in his letter to the Philippians, he did not care what motive somebody had. He was not going to let it get to him. He rejoiced in the Lord.
But when you lose your reputation, for some people that is very important. When your friends love you by accusing you, is Jesus enough?
Every time a trial comes up—and for most of us, never a trial as deep as Job’s—the question is raised. Even if we went through a trial as deep as Job’s, do you know what we have that Job never had? The Bible.
If all else fails, we have the promises of God in the Word of God. He did not even have that. The question was: Is El Shaddai enough?
Job was brought right down to that one thing. That was all he had left. He did not have his health, money, flocks, future, or children. His wife had turned against him. His friends misunderstood him. He was standing on a pile with sores and boils, about to die.
Did he still think El Shaddai was enough?
We all love God when we have everything else besides.
Some dear saints serve the Lord wonderfully and faithfully for years, and now they are really struggling with their health. It is a new test: Is Jesus enough?
We go through all kinds of limitations, but our hearts are tested. Is Jesus enough, even if these other things do not pan out the way we hoped they would?
Remember what Jesus said in John 16. He came down to one thing, did He not?
Ye shall be scattered, every man to his own,
And shall leave Me alone:
And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me.
Jesus stood this same test and said, “My Father is enough. Take away all the disciples. Take Me away. Kill Me. Put Me up on the cross. My Father is enough.”
This is a test of our heart, a test that makes us and puts us on a firm foundation.
Then, of course, there is number three: how God dealt with Job’s spirit.
Through all the dialogue Job had with God and all the arguments he had with his friends, you could sense that something was missing in Job’s spiritual life. With all his righteousness, honesty, and everything he had, there was one thing he did not have: a broken and contrite spirit.
This is not a matter of sin or righteousness, but a matter of preference. It may sound a little strange, but God prefers people who have a contrite spirit.
God loves to speak to people who have a broken and contrite spirit. He resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
God owns this whole world, yet He looks down upon this earth for somebody with a contrite and broken spirit.
Through this whole process, through the deep darkness, the one thing missing was this broken and contrite spirit. When Job came out on the other side, he was God’s friend. God could talk to him anytime, night or day. He had a broken and contrite spirit.
That is all I have to say tonight, except especially to the men.
I believe that is where God is dealing with us right now. Look about the body of Christ and look for men really willing to serve—men who are really shepherds, not just in title or office, but really shepherds. I find so few.
It is usually because men are just proud. Even if they live a righteous life, read the Bible, and do various things, they are not broken before the Lord, and they are not broken before their brethren.
Oh, how we need those intercessors in this day. How we need people who can help us and lead us in the way.
In my heart, I am always praying that the Lord would raise up workers. But also in my heart, I am always praying that in the church the Lord would raise up humble, contrite men who could hear the voice of God.
We have much too much pride. We have people with ambition, people striving, and people fighting. But God loves a certain kind of person. Forgive me if I say God is prejudiced: He loves a broken and contrite spirit.
He can talk to such a person without argument, and the person says, “Yes, Lord,” whatever He says.
The Lord may take us through this way, the way through darkness. But when we come out on the other side like Job—and every time somebody goes through a truly dark time—there is always the mark of Jesus in that life.
You can just see that something has been stamped in their life. They have become sons on the way to sonship. They have become intercessors, more concerned with others than they are for themselves.
There is the sign of somebody who has been broken. When you are broken, you are no longer so obsessed with yourself: “How do I look? What do I think? What do people think of me?” All that kind of stuff is gone.
And Paul—it is gone. Read Philippians. It is gone. All he cares about is us.
There is a broken and contrite spirit. There is a son of God. There is an intercessor indeed. There is somebody God says, “That is My friend. I am going to communicate with him.”
May the Lord help us. We are in this age, and God is performing mighty acts, but He is looking for people willing to be broken before Him, even to go through the trials necessary in order to bring us into the depths.
We have precious brothers and sisters here with us tonight. The Lord really wants to take us all deeper, bring us to the place where we are really what He wants us to be. May the Lord help us.
We have asked tonight that we could have a time of prayer. Rather than my just praying and then having announcements, let us have a few brothers and sisters who have a burden in their heart for this deeper way, and that the Lord would bring us into His fullness.
Let us have a few prayers, and then our brother Mark will come up and close, and we will have some announcements as the Lord leads. All right? Let us pray.