DAY 1 Outline　MorningRevival

Scripture Reading: Job 10:13; 42:1-6; Eph. 3:9; John 1:1, 14; Matt. 1:23; 2 Cor. 3:18; 4:16-17; Rom. 8:29-30; Col. 1:12, 15-19; 3:4a, 10-11; Acts 26:16-18; Eph. 3:16-19

DAY 2 Outline　MorningRevival

DAY 3 Outline　MorningRevival

DAY 4 Outline　MorningRevival

DAY 5 Outline　MorningRevival

DAY 6 Outline　MorningRevival

«　WEEK 7　DAY 1　»

　　2 Cor. 5:17 So then if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away; behold, they have become new.

　　Gal. 6:15 For neither is circumcision anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creation is what matters.

　　God moved with men and among men in the Old Testament, but He never moved in man.

　　It was not until the age of the New Testament that God came to move on this earth in man. His first step to move in the New Testament age was to enter into man. God took a definite step to enter into man, and this laid a foundation for His move in man throughout the New Testament. God entered into the womb of a human virgin and stayed there for nine months to be born of that virgin.

　　When the New Testament age came, God’s entire way changed. He was in the Old Testament working all the time with men and among men but outside of men….The New Testament is different from the Old Testament in the one fact that God entered into man. God was born of man. Matthew 1:20 says that what was begotten in Mary was of the Holy Spirit. God was born in Mary. One day God came out of eternity with His divinity and entered into a human virgin’s womb to be born there. (CWWL, 1993, vol. 1, “The Move of God in Man,” p. 398)

　　Beginning from His incarnation, God moved mainly in man. In the New Testament whatever God did was mainly in man. The small preposition in may be considered as the greatest word in the New Testament. If you take this preposition away, the New Testament becomes empty. This is like taking the switch away from an electrical appliance. Without the switch, it will not work, because the electricity cannot flow into it. The phrase in Christ is repeated frequently in the New Testament. If we were not in Christ and Christ were not in us, there would be no Christian life or church life.

　　God moved in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy with Moses. Then God moved in the books of Joshua, Judges, and Samuel. Then He moved to a certain extent with all the kings of Israel and the prophets. But that was not God’s direct move to carry out His eternal economy for Christ and the church.

　　God’s move with men and among men was just the indirect move in His old creation for the preparation of His direct move in His new creation for His eternal economy. This is why the church is not mentioned in the Old Testament. The church was a hidden mystery. God’s eternal economy was never directly touched in the Old Testament. God’s economy in the New Testament is absolutely unique. In the Old Testament you cannot see God’s move for His eternal economy directly. God did a lot indirectly to prepare for the day when He could come to do the direct work. (CWWL, 1993, vol. 1, “The Move of God in Man,” p. 400)

　　God created man and wanted man to take Him as life that man might express Him, be transformed into precious materials for His building, and be built up to be His counterpart to match Him (Gen. 1:26-27; 2:9-12, 18-24). God took a rib out of Adam and built it up into a woman to match Adam to be his counterpart. This is a type showing how God in Christ is the Husband, needing a match, a counterpart. Therefore, in the fulfillment of this type, something came out of Christ—the divine life—to become the church, which is the bride to match Christ.

　　After man became fallen, God promised the fallen man that Christ would come as the seed of woman to destroy the “serpent,” Satan, for man and to redeem and justify man with the shed blood and the coats of the skins of the sacrifice, typifying Christ (3:8-9, 15, 21). These things are a part of God’s relationship with us. (Life-study of Job, pp. 169-170)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1993, vol. 1, “The Move of God in Man,” ch. 1

«　WEEK 7　DAY 2　»

　　Gen. 4:4 And Abel also brought an offering, from the firstlings of his flock, that is, from their fat portions. And Jehovah had regard for Abel and for his offering.

　　22:18 And in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.

　　God’s relationship with man in the Scriptures includes the dispensation, the section of time, before the law, part of which is the time from God’s creation of man to the calling of Abraham.

　　Genesis 4:4 and 8:20-22 speak of the burnt offering, a type of Christ. God regarded man, that is, respected man, and was pleased with man, not in man’s good doing, but in the burnt offering. This is why Abel came to offer the burnt offering to God, and God regarded both him and his offering.

　　The second dispensation covers the period of time from the calling of Abraham to the decree of the law through Moses.

　　As a continuation of the previous dispensation, God again regarded man in the burnt offering (12:7; 13:18; 22:13; 31:54; Job 1:5).

　　In addition, God promised Abraham that in his seed, the coming Christ, all the nations of the earth, including us, would be blessed (Gen. 22:18; Gal. 3:8, 16). Eventually this promise was absolutely fulfilled, as revealed in Galatians 3. (Life-study of Job, pp. 169-171)

　　As the man created by God in His image (Gen. 1:26), man needed to take God (symbolized by the tree of life) as his life that he might live God, express God, and represent God (2:9); and as such a one, he needed to be transformed into precious materials (vv. 10-12) and to be built up as a counterpart to God (vv. 18-24).

　　As a fallen man, man needed to receive Christ for his redemption (typified by the sacrifice with its shed blood) that he might be justified by God in Christ (typified by the coats of the sacrifice’s skins—3:21). Fallen man also needed to receive Christ as the seed of the woman that he might be delivered from Satan the “serpent’s” death-power (v. 15; Heb. 2:14).

　　All these matters—the sacrifice with its blood, the coats of skins, and the seed of the woman—are found in Genesis 3. I would encourage you all, even the young ones, to learn these things and then try to present them to others. For example, a young person may visit a younger relative and speak about the need of fallen man to be justified by God in Christ or about the need for Christ as the seed of woman. First, we should digest all these truths ourselves, and then we should learn how to present them to others.

　　As a redeemed person, man needed to offer Christ as the burnt offering that he might be regarded, respected, by God (Gen. 4:4). Man also needs to call on the name of Jehovah (v. 26), to walk with God (5:22), to work for God that he might be delivered from the corrupted and God-condemned world (6:11-18), and to live before God through Christ as the burnt offering that the earth could be kept in order (8:20-22).

　　As people chosen by God, we, the descendants of Abraham, the race chosen by God, need to receive and answer God’s call (Gen. 12:1-4), to live before God through Christ as our burnt offering (v. 7; 13:18; 22:13), to be exposed by the law that we might know that we are sinful and do not have the capacity to keep the law (Exo. 19:8, 21—20:21), and to live with God by taking Christ as the tabernacle, the priest, and the offerings that we may enter into God and enjoy all that God is with Christ and in Christ (Exo. 25—Lev. 27).

　　According to the way of Job’s nomadic living (Job 1:3) and the way he offered the burnt offering for his children, this book should have been written at the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (v. 5; Gen. 22:13; 31:54), about 2000 B.C. This means that Job was written five hundred years before Moses wrote the Pentateuch. (Life-study of Job, pp. 187-189, 2)

　　Further Reading: Life-study of Job, msg. 32

«　WEEK 7　DAY 3　»

　　Job 1:5 And when the days of feasting ran their course, Job…would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said, Perhaps my children have sinned and have cursed God in their heart. Job did this continually.

　　10:13 But You have hidden these things in Your heart; I know that this is with You.

　　Job and his friends probably lived in the age of Abraham. At that time the Pentateuch of Moses was not yet written. Surely they had received some divine revelation from their forefathers verbally. However, what they had received of their forefathers could reach, at most, only the level of the revelation in the age of Abraham. Hence, in their debates concerning God’s relationship with man, there was no hint that indicates that they had received divine revelation beyond the matters of God’s judgment and God’s regard for man in his burnt offering. And they did not speak any word that implies anything concerning Christ and the Spirit of God. They were in the primitive stage of the divine revelation. (Life-study of Job, pp. 172-173)

　　After all the speaking of Job, his three friends, and Elihu, we have God’s appearing to Job with the divine unveilings (Job 38:4—41:34). This is followed by a word concerning Job’s gaining God in his personal experience and his abhorring of himself (42:1-6). I am concerned that, by paying attention to so many other things, you may not see the central point of God’s appearing to Job. This central point concerns what God intended to do to Job by His appearing to him.

　　God appeared to Job in order to help him to realize that God is unlimited, unsearchable, and untraceable. God asked Job many questions about the universe and about the animals to impress him with the fact that He is unlimited. God seemed to be saying to him, “Job, you actually do not know who I am. You do not realize that I am unlimited. Also, you cannot imagine what I intend to give you. Job, I intend to give you Myself, making Myself your enjoyment so that you can become a part of Me. I am not satisfied that you have your own integrity, perfection, and uprightness. I want you to have Me. My intention is to give you nothing other than Myself.”

　　To understand God’s intention in His appearing to Job, we need the entire Bible, especially the New Testament. For God to give Himself to Job was not a simple matter. This involved a long process beginning with Christ’s incarnation and including His human living, His all-inclusive death on the cross, His resurrection, and His ascension. Because Job was in the primitive stage of the divine revelation, God could not have spoken to him about all these things. It would have been impossible for Job to understand them. All these matters were clearly defined and recorded in the New Testament two thousand years later. Even today, many believers do not have the proper understanding of these things.

　　Job and his friends were devoid of all the above divine revelations. God’s dealing with Job in all the disasters and His stripping him of all that he was, were to take away his contentment in his godly attainments and obtainments and to remove all the barriers and coverings so that he could be emptied for some further seeking after God and could realize that he was very short of something in his human life. At the end of the book of Job, after all, God came in, indicating that what Job was short of in his human life was God Himself. But up to the age of Job, there was not a revelation like what is positively, clearly, and fully unveiled in the New Testament. For this reason, the book of Job does not actually have a completed ending, which should be God fully gained in Christ by Job to make him one with God that he might enjoy God as his portion in Christ. Such a revelation can be fully found only in the New Testament. (Life-study of Job, pp. 175-176, 185)

　　Further Reading: Life-study of Job, msg. 33

«　WEEK 7　DAY 4　»

　　Psa. 42:1-2 As the hart pants after the streams of water, so my soul pants for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When will I come and appear before God?

　　The tabernacle in the Old Testament is a type of Christ’s incarnation (John 1:14). The real tabernacle is God Himself embodied in Christ. This tabernacle is a dwelling place not only for God but also for God’s chosen people. This means that, after the incarnation, God is enterable. To be in Christ means to enter into God to enjoy God…. Now through the redeeming blood we can have fellowship with God.

　　Such a man who is in the incarnated God as his tabernacle did not need to build up himself in human virtues, such as perfection, uprightness, and integrity, as Job did, but he needed to seek after God as a panting hart and to enjoy God with God’s people in God’s feasts (Psa. 42:1-5; 43:3-5) so that God could be everything to him to replace all that he had attained and obtained. This should be the answer to Job’s three friends and even to Elihu and Job. Once again we see that if we would understand the book of Job, we need the entire Bible.

　　The ones who have been chosen and called by God need to believe into Jesus Christ, who is the incarnated God, who died, resurrected, and ascended for us and with us, and who became the life-giving Spirit as the pneumatic Christ to us, that He may be our salvation, life, and everything. This is revealed in the New Testament, in the books from Matthew through Romans. (Life-study of Job, pp. 189-190)

　　The five steps…[of] incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension … are the steps that God took in His move in man on this earth. He was incarnated in man, and He lived in man. In incarnation He entered into the womb of Mary and remained there for nine months. After His birth He passed through a human living of thirty-three and a half years. Then He went to the cross to be crucified in man. Jesus was crucified on the cross as a man, but He was not just a man. He was God Himself. Then He was resurrected. He rose up from the dead in man and ascended to the heavens in man. These are the five steps of His move. The five issues of these steps are the church, the Body of Christ, the new man, the organism of the processed and consummated Triune God, and the New Jerusalem. These five steps and five issues cover the entire New Testament concerning the move of God in man. The first page of the New Testament is on incarnation, and the last page of the New Testament is on the New Jerusalem.

　　The move of God in man is unprecedented in history. Before the time of God’s incarnation in Matthew 1, there was not such a thing in history as God’s move in man. (CWWL, 1993, vol. 1, “The Move of God in Man,” p. 399)

　　The New Testament reveals that God came to be conceived in a human virgin to be born of her to be a man, thus bringing divinity into humanity and causing God and man to be mingled as one entity but not as a third substance (John 1:1, 14; Matt. 1:20, 23; 1 Tim. 3:16). This is the first step God took in order to give Himself to Job by the way of dispensing. (Life-study of Job, p. 181)

　　God’s move in His incarnation was to mingle divinity with humanity into one entity, keeping the two elements distinguishable in the one entity without producing a third element. A heretical teaching in the past said that when divinity and humanity were mingled together, a third element was produced.

　　In the Old Testament there is the marvelous type of the meal offering to show us the mingling of divinity with humanity in the person of Jesus Christ. Leviticus 2:4-5 says that the meal offering was of “fine flour mingled with oil.” The oil is a sign of the Holy Spirit, and the fine flour is a sign of humanity. The Holy Spirit mingles Himself with man to produce a meal offering that is good for food both to God and to His priests. (CWWL, 1993, vol. 1, “The Move of God in Man,” pp. 402-403)

　　Further Reading: Life-study of Job, msg. 34

«　WEEK 7　DAY 5　»

　　Acts 13:33 That God has fully fulfilled this promise to us their children in raising up Jesus, as it is also written in the second Psalm, “You are My Son; this day have I begotten You.”

　　5:31 This One God has exalted to His right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.

　　Jesus’ incarnation made Him a man, His human living on earth qualified Him to be man’s Savior, His crucifixion accomplished full redemption for man, His resurrection vindicated His redemptive work…(Heb. 2:10; 5:9). (Acts 5:31, footnote 1)

　　His sovereign ruling [as Leader and Savior] causes and leads God’s chosen people to repent, and His salvation, which is based on His redemption, affords them forgiveness of sins. (Acts 5:31, footnote 3)

　　Jesus Christ, as the incarnated God and as the embodiment of the Triune God (Col. 2:9), died in His humanity a vicarious and all-inclusive death to terminate all the negative things and to release the divine life from within Him for us.

　　Christ overcame death and entered into the all-producing resurrection and was begotten to be God’s firstborn Son, bringing humanity into divinity (Acts 13:33). In resurrection Christ also became the life-giving Spirit for the producing and the constituting of the Body of Christ (1 Cor. 15:45).

　　Next, Christ accomplished the all-transcending ascension to the heavens and was made Lord, Christ, Leader, and Savior (Acts 2:36; 5:31) for His propagation and for the building up of the church as His kingdom.

　　In His death, resurrection, and ascension Christ made all His believers one with Him…. His experiences have become their history.

　　God has put us into Christ and has made Him our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption (1 Cor. 1:30). By Christ as our righteousness (for our past) we have been justified by God that we might be reborn in our spirit to receive the divine life. By Christ as our sanctification (for our present) we are being sanctified in our soul, that is, transformed in our mind, emotion, and will, with the divine life. By Christ as our redemption (for our future), that is, the redemption of our body (Rom. 8:23), we will be transfigured in our body with the divine life to have His glorious likeness (Phil. 3:21).

　　God has regenerated us through the resurrection of Christ (1 Pet. 1:3), and now He renews us, transforms us, and conforms us to His image of glory, and ultimately He will glorify us in His glory (Titus 3:5;…Rom. 8:29-30).

　　In His renewing and transforming, God consumes us, putting us into Christ’s death for our fellowship of His sufferings, which work out for us an eternal weight of glory, that we may experience Him in His resurrection and gain Him in His unsearchable riches (2 Cor. 4:16-17, 10; Phil. 3:10, 8; Eph. 3:8).

　　As believers in Christ, we need to grow in the divine life of Christ that we may be transformed into what Christ is through the life-dispensing Spirit, that we may be built up with the saints to be the Body of Christ, the organism of the Triune God in Christ, and to be the new man as God’s new creation to carry out God’s eternal economy in the consummation of the New Jerusalem as the mingling of the processed Triune God with the glorified tripartite man, to be the corporate God-man’s manifestation in eternity.

　　Such a regenerated, transformed, and glorified saint in Christ has nothing to do with the natural man and does not need to build up himself with the natural human virtues. If Job and his friends had lived at the time to know this, they would have been saved from their time-wasting, pain-increasing, and vain debates in thirty-five chapters as a record of a group of blind persons groping in darkness. (Life-study of Job, pp. 182-183, 190)

　　Further Reading: Life-study of Job, msg. 35

«　WEEK 7　DAY 6　»

　　Eph. 4:4-6 One Body and one Spirit, even as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

　　John 14:16-20 reveals that God the Father is embodied in God the Son, that God the Son is realized as God the Spirit, and that God the Spirit comes to indwell us to be the reality of the Triune God. This is the gift that God intended to give Job, that is, Himself in His Divine Trinity embodied in the Son and realized as the Spirit.

　　Concerning the mystery of the Triune God being the reality in the believers, Christ had many things to tell His disciples, but they could not bear them until the Spirit of reality came to reveal these things to them (John 16:12-15). This was done by the Spirit of reality mainly with the apostle Paul, who completed the word of God, that is, the divine revelation (Col. 1:25-27) regarding Christ as the mystery of God (Col. 2:2b) and the church as the mystery of Christ (Eph. 3:4).

　　Ephesians 4:4-6 reveals that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit as the Triune God have become the source, the element, and the essence of the church as the Body of Christ. God the Father is the source, God the Son is the element, and God the Spirit is the essence. (Life-study of Job, pp. 183-184)

　　Christ as the divine portion allotted to the saints by God and as life to the believers has become all the members of the new man, which is His organic Body (Col. 1:12; 3:4a, 10-11; 1 Cor. 12:12-13).

　　God wants to make Christ, the embodiment of God, everything to us, the believers of Christ [Col. 1:15-19].

　　God in Christ will carry out His transforming work on us until His transformation consummates in the New Jerusalem, firstly with the overcomers in the millennial kingdom (Rev. 2:7) and consummately with all the saints in the new heaven and new earth, making all His chosen and redeemed people His corporate expression, manifesting Himself, not any kind of merely human virtues, to the fullest extent in eternity (Rev. 21:1—22:5). (Life-study of Job, pp. 184-185)

　　According to the New Testament record, God’s move on earth in man is always in the principle of incarnation. Our salvation is the move of God in man and is the move of God to be a part of man. If God had never become us in the sense of coming into us to be our very life, we could never have been saved…. What is salvation, or regeneration? It is God coming into a man in His divinity to make Himself a part of that man and to make that man a part of Him. Salvation brings God into man and brings man into God. Salvation makes God man so that man may be made God (but not the Godhead). This is incarnation, and this principle of incarnation should be applied to our entire Christian life.

　　In the Christian life the husbands and the wives should love each other, but in their natural life they are not capable of doing this. What husband can love his wife, and what wife can love her husband? If a Christian husband really loves his wife, that is not him. This means that he is living in the principle of Galatians 2:20—”I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” For a husband to love his wife in this way is in the principle of incarnation. Unless God is made you and you are made God, you can never really love your wife…. Every Christian virtue we have is a part of the incarnation. Every day as we live the Christian life, the Triune God is being incarnated by being made us and by making us Him. God is being made man, and man is being made God. When a brother really loves his wife, at that time he is God in God’s life and nature but not in His Godhead. In other words, God has been made him, and he has been made God. This is the move of God in man in the principle of incarnation. (CWWL, 1993, vol. 1, “The Move of God in Man,” pp. 405-406)

　　Further Reading: The Holy Word for Morning Revival: Job, pp. 44-49