From the Life-Study of Job - What was God's Intention with Job?

     If you look at the book of Job, you can see that it took a really long time for all of his friends to run out of things to say! Then it was God's turn. He obviously wasn't too impressed with how the conversation was going because the first thing He asked Job was:  "Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge?" (Job 38:2) It's obvious that nobody got what God was doing in Job's heart and life through all the devastating losses that God had permitted.

Hiking with my daughter

     I've always loved reading chapters 38 and 39 of Job. God asks Job question after question concerning the mysteries of creation with the specific purpose of showing Job how little he really knew. And because of that could he really be so sure that he knew why God had allowed so many unusual sufferings to befall him? It's almost like God was whittling him down to size--so you think you can tell Me not to do something?  God knew the whole time what He was doing. 

     I really like chapter 31 of the Life-Study of Job where Witness Lee points out God's intention in appearing to Job; this excerpt is on pages 161-163:

"God's intention in appearing to Job was to expose him, to show him that he really was nothing....Thus, God questioned Job again and again in order to silence him....Job was in the realm of building up something that was wrong. He was building up himself in his perfection, uprightness, and integrity. He thought that he was absolutely right....God in His eternal economy has no desire to build up these things. Rather, He considers all these things as frustrations and intends to strip them away from us, consuming them bit by bit. When everything is stripped away, then you will see God, and He will attract you to receive Him....As a result of this transformation, you will be a person reflecting God, that is expressing Him and dispensing Him to others. This was God's intention with Job, and this is His intention with us today" (Lee, Witness. Life-Study of Job. Anaheim: Living Stream Ministry, Print 1993).

     In this chapter Witness Lee also explains that Job's seeing God (Job 42:5) transformed him, and that this is similar to the truth Paul brings out in 2 Corinthians 3:18. In these chapters he states that because the divine revelation is progressive, God couldn't explain too much to Job.   To really get the book of Job he said you have to couple it with what the Lord and the apostles taught in the New Testament such as 2 Corinthians 4:8-11, 16:  

We are pressed on every side, yet not straightened;

perplexed, yet not unto despair;

 pursued, yet not forsaken;

 smitten down, yet not destroyed;

 always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus

 that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body.

 For we who live are always delivered unto death

[figuratively like hard situations] for Jesus' sake

that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.

...Wherefore we faint not; but though our outward man is decaying,

yet our inward man is renewed day by day.

For our light affliction, which is for the moment,

works for us more and more exceedingly an

eternal weight of glory:
 

 ~1901 American Standard Version

 

 You can listen to excerpts of Witness Lee's speaking the Life-Study of Job on the  Life Study of the Bible with Witness Lee.   You can also read the online Life-Studies of Job and check out other resources available to enhance your study of the Bible on Living Stream Ministry's website.

From the Life-Study of Job - Have you Ever Asked God Why?