Outline
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"Then Jehovah answered Job" (Job 38:1a); "then Job answered Jehovah" (42:1a); "and Jehovah turned the captivity of Job" (v. 10a):
A
The logic of Job's friends was according to the line of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in their thinking that Job's sufferings were a matter of God's judgment; however, Job's sufferings were God's consuming that God might gain Job so that he might gain God more—9:15; 11:12; 13:4; Phil. 3:8, 12-13:
１
God's intention with Job was to tear down the natural Job in his perfection and uprightness that He might build up a renewed Job in God's nature and attributes—Job 1:1; Titus 3:5.
２
God's intention was to usher Job into a deeper seeking after God that Job might realize that what he was short of in his human life was God Himself and that he might pursue God, gain God, and express God—Col. 2:19.
３
God's intention was to have a Job in the line of the tree of life and to make Job a man of God—Gen. 2:9; 1 Tim. 6:11; 2 Tim. 3:17; Eph. 3:14-21.
B
Job reveals that the Bible of sixty-six books is for only one thing: for God in Christ by the Spirit to dispense Himself into us to be our life, our nature, and our everything that we may live Christ and express Christ; this should be the principle that governs our life—Job 10:13; Eph. 3:9; Phil. 3:8-9; Eph. 1:22-23; 2:15; Rev. 21:2.
C
The way to live and work in this principle is to be and do everything by the Spirit, with the Spirit, in the Spirit, and through the Spirit by exercising our spirit—Gal. 5:25; Rom. 8:4; Phil. 3:3; Rev. 2:7; 22:17a.
Morning Nourishment
2 Cor. 3:18 But we all with unveiled face, beholding and reflecting like a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit.Gal. 5:25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.
Job’s experience was a step of the divine economy. In this situation God took a step to accomplish something with Job. Before Satan’s first attack, Job was a person of contentment…Eventually, Job’s possessions, health, and integrity were stripped away and consumed.
God’s intention was to usher Job into a deeper seeking after Him that he might gain Him instead of His blessings and his attainments in his perfection and integrity. Job was contented in the realm of success in his gaining of material things and in his ethical attainments, but he had nothing of God. Therefore, God ushered him into another realm that he might gain God. (Life- study of Job, p. 21)
Today’s Reading
Today’s Triune God is altogether consummated in the Spirit…As the all- inclusive Spirit, He is the consummation, the aggregate, of the Triune God. When we receive Him, we receive the Son and the Father…All three—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—are the all-inclusive Spirit. Our God is the consummated Spirit. Our Father, our Lord, our Master, our Redeemer, and our Savior is the life-giving Spirit. This life-giving Spirit is all-inclusive, compounded, and consummated. Even now He is within us.In the New Testament we are charged to be regenerated by this Spirit and to receive the divine life through this Spirit. Then we need to live, to walk, by this Spirit, and we need to experience Christ, to enjoy God the
Father, and even to enjoy the fullness of the Triune God by doing everything according to the Spirit. As long as we do everything according to the Spirit, we can experience Christ’s incarnation, human living, death, resurrection, and ascension with the outpouring of the Spirit. This will cause us to be the church of God, the Body of Christ, the new man, and the organism of the Triune God, which will consummate in the New Jerusalem.
In our daily living we should not be in the realm of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil but should be in the realm of the life-giving Spirit…We should do everything according to the Spirit by being one spirit with the Lord…Before I speak for the Lord, I pray one simple prayer: “Lord, be one spirit with me that I may be one spirit with You. Lord, speak in my speaking and make my speaking Your speaking.” This is to live in the dispensing of the eternal economy of God. When we live and speak in this way, we enjoy the divine dispensing, and Christ increases within us. Christ grows in us, and we grow in Christ.
Today in our Christian life we Christians should just deal with this Spirit… We should do everything and be everything by the Spirit, with the Spirit, in the Spirit, and through the Spirit. We should pray by the Spirit, read the Bible by the Spirit, love others by the Spirit, and preach the gospel by the Spirit.
We must treasure the two spirits in Galatians—the divine Spirit as the aggregate of the divine blessing to us and the human spirit as the receiver, the container, the keeper, of the divine Spirit. Thus, we need to take care of our spirit, doing everything by exercising our spirit. Then we will experience the divine Spirit living in us, making His home in us, and transforming us. The divine Spirit lives in us to pray, to read the Bible, to speak God’s word, to love our spouse, and to visit sinners for the preaching of the gospel. Such a living is the mingling of the processed Triune God with the regenerated tripartite man. This is the divine revelation in the New Testament as the answer to the sufferings of Job and to the great question concerning God’s purpose in His creation of man and in His dealing with His chosen people. (Life-study of Job, pp. 69-70, 90)
Further Reading: Life-study of Job, msgs. 3—4, 8—10, 12, 16, 30—31