Scripture Reading: Job 1:1, 8; 2:3, 9; 27:5; 31:6; 42:5-6

DAY 1 Outline　MorningRevival

DAY 2 Outline　MorningRevival

DAY 3 Outline　MorningRevival

DAY 4 Outline　MorningRevival

DAY 5 Outline　MorningRevival

DAY 6 Outline　MorningRevival

«　WEEK 5　DAY 1　»

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

　　Eph. 3:9 And to enlighten all that they may see what the economy of the mystery is, which throughout the ages has been hidden in God, who created all things.

　　17 That Christ may make His home in your hearts through faith…

　　Job said to God, “Make known to me why You contend with me” (Job 10:2b). In verse 13 he went on to say, “You have hidden these things in Your heart; / I know that this is with You.” This indicates that Job could not find the reason for God’s treatment of him, but he believed that there had to be some reason hidden in God’s heart. Job was right; something was hidden in God’s heart. Ephesians 3:9 tells us of the mystery hidden in God. This is the mystery of the ages. (Life-study of Job, pp. 48-49)

　　According to Job 38:7, the angels of God (the sons of God) shouted for joy when God laid the foundations of the earth. The angels might have wondered what God’s purpose was in creating the earth and man. Adam himself did not know why God created him in His image, according to His likeness (Gen. 1:26)…The Creator did a lot in His creation, but before the New Testament time He did not unveil to anyone what His purpose was. The hidden mystery is that God in His Divine Trinity desires to be dispensed and wrought into His creation, man, to make man His duplication, to make man His expression. Not knowing this, Job misunderstood God and thought that God was angry with him and was judging him and punishing him. God’s intention was not to judge Job or to punish him but to tear him down and then rebuild him with Himself. God knew that after Job had passed through a time of suffering, he would be rebuilt and become another person—a new man in God’s new creation. This is the answer to Job, to the book of Job, and to Job’s vindication.

　　The Bible…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. In a practical way, it should be today’s tree of life for our enjoyment. The Bible is not mainly a book of prophecy, teaching, or types. The Bible is a book of God’s economy…The Bible is on Christ in God’s economy. God’s economy is to dispense Himself in His Divine Trinity in Christ by the Spirit into us that we may have Him as our life, nature, and everything. When we experience this, it is no longer we who live, but it is Christ who lives in us (Gal. 2:20). This is the tree of life.

　　Job was in the primitive stage of the divine revelation…God had many things within Himself, but He could not unveil them to Job. God could not speak to Job about these things. The word of the Lord Jesus to Nicodemus regarding regeneration can also be applied to Job’s situation: “If I told you of the things on earth and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you of the things in heaven?” (John 3:12). As John 16:12 and 13 reveal, the Lord Jesus was even limited in what He could say to His disciples: “I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of reality, comes, He will guide you into all the reality; for He will not speak from Himself, but what He hears He will speak; and He will declare to you the things that are coming.”…Today, following Paul, we speak of such matters as God’s economy, the divine dispensing, and the all-inclusive Spirit as the consummation of the processed and consummated Triune God.

　　God’s move from the incarnation to the consummation of the New Jerusalem involves many spiritual things, including regeneration, renewing, sanctification, transformation, glorification, and transfiguration. Because Job was in the primitive stage of the divine revelation, he could not understand any of these things. (Life-study of Job, pp. 49-50, 156)

　　Further Reading: Life-study of Job, msg. 30

«　WEEK 5　DAY 2　»

　　Job 2:3 …Have you considered My servant Job? For there is none like him on the earth, a perfect and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil. And he still holds fast his integrity…

　　1 John 3:2 Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not yet been manifested what we will be. We know that if He is manifested, we will be like Him because we will see Him even as He is.

　　“There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job; and this man was perfect and upright, and he feared God and turned away from evil” [Job 1:1]. Being perfect is related to the inner man, and being upright is related to the outer man. Furthermore, to be upright means that we are not crooked or biased. In addition to being perfect inwardly and upright outwardly, Job feared God positively and turned away from evil negatively…God did not create man merely to fear Him and not do anything wrong. The Bible tells us that God created man in His own image and according to His likeness that man may express Him (Gen. 1:26)…The most positive thing is to express God. To express God is higher than fearing God and turning away from evil. (Life-study of Job, p. 9)

　　Another word used in relation to Job the man is integrity [Job 2:3]… Job’s wife asked him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity?” [v. 9]. In 27:5 Job said to his friends, “Until I die, I will not put away my integrity from me.” Finally, in 31:6 Job declared, “Let God know my integrity.”…Integrity is the totality of being perfect and being upright; it is the totality of perfection plus uprightness. With respect to Job, integrity is the total expression of what he was. In character he was perfect and upright, and in his ethics he had a high standard of integrity.

　　What Job had attained was altogether vanity. It did not fulfill God’s purpose, and it did not satisfy God’s desire. Thus, God was lovingly concerned for Job and held two councils in heaven concerning how to deal with Job (1:6-8; 2:1-3). Ethically speaking, Job was very good. According to human eyes, there was no problem with Job. God even boasted to Satan regarding how good Job was (1:8; 2:3). Only God knew that Job had a need, that he was short of God. Because of His loving concern for Job, God held a council in the heavens to talk about Job. Eventually, God’s intention was to make Job a man of God (1 Tim. 6:11; 2 Tim. 3:17), filled with Christ, the embodiment of God, to be the fullness of God for the expression of God in Christ, not a man of the high standard of ethics in Job’s natural perfection, natural uprightness, and natural integrity, which Job attempted to maintain and hold (Job 2:3, 9a). (Life- study of Job, pp. 10, 17, 11, 29)

　　Christians should seek to gain God more than any other matter or thing… To gain God is deeper and more subjective than merely to believe in His existence or to fear Him. Many thoughtful people believe that God exists and even fear Him, but God is not in them…To believe in God is to gain Him subjectively in one’s spirit. When a person believes in God, he opens his heart to receive God and to let God enter into him and dwell in his spirit. Hence, he can be joined and mingled with God, and God can become his element. When we let God enter into us to be our life and nature and even our being, we are joined to Him as one. This is the meaning of being a Christian. Every Christian should know that God desires man to gain Him.

　　To gain God does not refer merely to believing in Him or fearing Him objectively. To gain God is to receive Him into us subjectively, that is, to let Him be our life and nature and to let Him mingle with us until He becomes our element. Then His thoughts will be our thoughts, His emotions will be our emotions, His preferences will be our preferences, and His inclinations will be our inclinations. This is what it means to gain God. (CWWL, 1950-1951, vol. 3, “The Operation of God and the Anointing,” pp. 405-406)

　　Further Reading: Life-study of Job, msgs. 2—4

«　WEEK 5　DAY 3　»

　　Job 42:5-6 I had heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye has seen You; therefore I abhor myself, and I repent in dust and ashes.

　　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. He was proud of what he had built up, and he trusted in that and glorified himself in that.

　　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…When everything is stripped away, then you will see God, and He will attract you to receive Him. Then you will have God’s nature, life, element, essence, and even His being. This will cause a metabolic change within you to transform you from the present form of your human being to another form, the form of the divine being. 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. Now you and God may be in two different realms. But God wants to transfer you from your present realm into His realm, not only to make you one with Him but even to make you a part of Him. (Life-study of Job, pp. 156-157)

　　Suppose someone had tried to talk to Job about all these things. If someone had done this, Job might have said, “What are you talking about? I have learned a lot about God from my forefathers, and I have been paying attention to what I have learned. Yet you say that I am in the wrong realm and that God intends to build up something of Himself in me. You speak to me about incarnation, regeneration, and transformation, but I do not know what any of these things mean.” Job simply did not have the capacity to receive such a revelation. He did not have these terms in his spiritual dictionary.

　　In principle, the situation is the same with many Christians today. The divine revelation has been given, it has been written, and it has been interpreted. Nevertheless, many believers have no understanding of the economy of God or of the divine dispensing according to the divine economy. They may think that being a Christian is simply a matter of believing that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is our Savior, who shed His blood for our sins and who has saved us through His death; that the Holy Spirit is now with us to help us to behave ourselves well and to do good that God may be glorified; and that we will go to heaven when we die. Those who hold this concept of the Christian life may not realize that being a Christian also involves sanctification, transformation, conformation, the divine dispensing of the divine economy, and the New Jerusalem as the enlargement of the processed and consummated Triune God.

　　We all need to realize that today there are two different realms—the realm of the old creation and the realm of the new creation. The realm of the old creation is the realm of natural things, and the realm of the new creation is the realm of divine things. We were born into the old creation, into the natural sphere, yet God wants us to be divine. For this, we need a great transfer: We need to be transferred out of Adam into Christ. The first aspect of this transfer is regeneration. We need to be regenerated, and then we need to be renewed. As we are renewed, certain parts of our being will be “peeled off” and replaced by a new element that will cause us to be transformed and eventually conformed to the image of Christ, who is the firstborn Son of God (Rom. 8:29).

　　We also need to learn how to talk to others about the spiritual things in the new creation…Suppose that you speak to a believer about being transformed into the image of Christ as the firstborn Son of God. That believer might say, “I have heard about the only begotten Son of God but not about the firstborn Son. Who is the firstborn Son of God?” I am concerned that you may not be able to explain this. (Life-study of Job, pp. 157-158)

　　Further Reading: Life-study of Job, msg. 31

«　WEEK 5　DAY 4　»

　　1 Tim. 6:11 But you, O man of God,…pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, meekness.

　　2 Tim. 3:17 That the man of God may be complete, fully equipped for every good work.

　　On the one hand, Job recognized that he was something rotten, something that would waste away [Job 13:28]. On the other hand, Job continued to feel that he was not wrong in anything. Realizing that God had watched his paths and had set limits for him (v. 27), Job wanted God to explain the situation to him.

　　We need to see the eternal economy of God, which is God’s eternal intention with His heart’s desire to dispense Himself in His Divine Trinity as the Father in the Son by the Spirit into His chosen people to be their life and nature that they may be the same as He is for His fullness, His expression.

　　God’s economy is God’s plan, God’s arrangement, for God to dispense Himself in His element, life, nature, and attributes, and all that He has achieved and attained into His chosen people that they may be rebuilt by being constituted with the divine essence in the divine element of the divine source to be something divine. Before receiving God’s dispensing, we were merely human. After God’s rebuilding with the divine constitution, we, like the Lord Jesus, become divinely human and humanly divine…Having been regenerated by Christ, we have become a part of Him, and now we are the same as He is—divinely human and humanly divine. (Life-study of Job, pp. 55-56)

　　The regenerated ones, who are divinely human and humanly divine, spontaneously become an organism, the Body of Christ, which is the church of God as the new man in God’s new creation to carry out God’s new “career,” that is, to build up the Body of Christ for the fullness, the expression, of the Triune God. This fullness as the organism of the Triune God will consummate in the New Jerusalem. The Bible begins with God in His creation as the initiation and ends with the New Jerusalem, which is the mingling of the Triune God and all His chosen, redeemed, regenerated, transformed, conformed, and glorified tripartite people. The New Jerusalem is thus a constitution of God with man to express God for eternity.

　　Christ is not only the center of the Bible but also the centrality and universality of God’s economy. It was in this economy that Christ became incarnated, that He went to the cross to pass through crucifixion, that He came out from death and entered into resurrection, and that in resurrection He was begotten of God to be God’s firstborn Son and as the last Adam became the life-giving Spirit to regenerate all His believers to make them the same as He is in life and nature that they might become His brothers and the sons of God. These sons plus the Firstborn all become a new man, with Him as the Head and with the church as His Body, to carry out God’s eternal purpose to consummate in the New Jerusalem.

　　If we see this revelation concerning God’s economy, then we will be able to understand the book of Job. Job suffered God’s stripping and consuming, but he did not understand what was happening to him…He knew that God had a purpose, but he did not know what God’s purpose was.

　　The main contents of the New Testament are that the Triune God has an eternal economy according to His good pleasure to dispense Himself into His chosen and redeemed people in His life and in His nature, to make all of them the same as He is in life and nature, to make them His duplication that they may express Him. This corporate expression will consummate in the New Jerusalem. Thus, the New Jerusalem is simply the enlarged, the increased, incarnation consummated in full, that is, the fullness of the Triune God for Him to express Himself in His divinity mingled with humanity. These are the contents of the New Testament, and this is the answer that Job needed. This is God’s answer concerning the purpose of Job’s suffering. (Life-study of Job, pp. 56-57, 62)

　　Further Reading: Life-study of Job, msg. 12

«　WEEK 5　DAY 5　»

　　John 12:24 Truly, truly, I say to you, Unless the grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

　　Rom. 8:29 Because those whom He foreknew, He also predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the Firstborn among many brothers.

　　The Bible reveals a wonderful, marvelous person—Jesus Christ, the God- man…This is the mystery of God becoming man to make man God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead. The two, God and man, are thus built together, constituted into each other. In Christ God has been constituted into man, man has been constituted into God, and God and man have been mingled together to be one entity, which is called the God-man.

　　God in Christ is constituting Himself into man, making Himself the element of man. Thus, we human beings are constituted with a divine element. This means that a divine element is built into our human element, and the two elements are mingled with each other. Not only is God’s divine element constituted into us—the human element is constituted into God. As the divine element is constituted into our humanity, we become God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead. As the human element is constituted into God, God becomes man. This is the building revealed in the New Testament. (Life-study of 1 & 2 Samuel, pp. 206-207)

　　Christ made Himself, the first God-man, a prototype for the mass reproduction of many brothers, the many God-men (Rom. 8:29)…God and man will become one entity, and that one entity is the mingling of divinity with humanity. This mingling will consummate in the New Jerusalem.

　　In Matthew 16:24 the Lord said, “If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.” This is to live a life of bearing the cross in the steps of Christ (1 Pet. 2:21b). Both 2 Corinthians 5:15 and Galatians 2:19 show that the believers in Christ should die to themselves and live to God. Paul says that he was crucified with Christ (v. 20) to be conformed to His death by the power of His resurrection (Phil. 3:10).

　　“If you live according to the flesh, you must die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the practices of the body, you will live” [Rom. 8:13]. You have to put to death by the Spirit in His resurrection whatever your body does. This is to be conformed to the death of Christ by the power of His resurrection. No one in his natural life can put everything that his body does to death. But we, the God-men, who are the reproduction of the prototype, can. We can know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.

　　Such a life of dying to ourselves and living to God is for Christ, the first God-man, to be formed in His many brothers, the many God-men, for the building up of His organic Body that the eternal economy of God might be carried out. The Christian life is not a matter of outwardly loving people or of being meek or patient in our human ethics. We need to die every day (1 Cor. 15:31). The married saints need to die to their spouse. The students need to die to their classmates and teachers. We need to die to live so that the many God-men can become the building material for the building up of the Body of Christ to carry out God’s eternal economy.

　　Thus, a number (not all) of His brothers, the many God-men, through His death and in His resurrection may be constituted to be His overcomers to close this age and to bring in His kingdom age. This is the real meaning of our being a Christian. It is a life of dying every day…God has opened up to us the high peak of His divine revelation. He also puts us in an environment of sufferings to force us to die to live [cf. Phil. 3:10]. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 2, “The Practical Way to Live a Life according to the High Peak of the Divine Revelation in the Holy Scriptures,” pp. 55-56)

　　Further Reading: Life-study of Job, msg. 29

«　WEEK 5　DAY 6　»

　　2 Tim. 3:16-17 All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for conviction, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, fully equipped for every good work.

　　In 2 Timothy 3:14-17 is a man of God with the breath of God. The Scripture, the Word of God, is the breath of God. God’s speaking is God’s breathing. Hence, His word is spirit (John 6:63), pneuma, or breath. Thus, the Scripture is the embodiment of God as the Spirit. The Spirit is therefore the very essence, the substance, of the Scripture, just as phosphorus is the essential substance in matches. We must strike the Spirit of the Scripture with our spirit to catch the divine fire. As the embodiment of God the Spirit, the Scripture is also the embodiment of Christ. Christ is God’s living Word (Rev. 19:13), and the Scripture is God’s written word (Matt. 4:4). This Scripture makes the man of God complete and equips him.

　　In caring for a local church,…the preaching of the word is vital. In 2 Timothy 3:14-17 God’s speaking is His breathing. We should be men of God with the breath of God. Our reading of the Scripture is our inhaling of God’s breath. God is breathing, and we are inhaling. Then we are able to proclaim the word in season and out of season. Our preaching is our exhaling. (CWWL, 1985, vol. 3, “Elders’ Training, Book 6: The Crucial Points of the Truth in Paul’s Epistles,” pp. 549-550)

　　In order for us to participate in the recovery of the proper church life, we need to enjoy the humanity of Jesus so that we may become proper persons…We need to apply the humanity of Jesus to every detail of our daily walk…We need to be strong to stand against the tide of this age by enjoying the humanity of Jesus. For instance, while people today are full of hatred and are without natural affection, we must be filled with the loving affection in the humanity of Jesus.

　　In 2 Timothy we see not only a picture of corrupted humanity on the negative side but also the way to enjoy the humanity of Jesus on the positive side. In order to enjoy the humanity of Jesus, we first need to call on the Lord (2:22). By calling upon the name of the Lord, we may partake of His humanity.

　　Second, we need to inhale the breath of God in the Bible [cf. 3:16]…Since the Bible is the breathing out of God, we may inhale the breath of God in the holy Word. We need to inhale what God has exhaled. Each time we come to the Bible, we need to freshly breathe in the divine breath.

　　Third, we need to exercise our God-given spirit…God has given us a spirit that is powerful in our will, loving in our emotion, and sober in our mind [cf. 1:7]. Apart from Christ, every human being is unbalanced in his thinking. However, because God has given us a spirit of sobermindedness, we may have a sober, sound, and healthy mind. We need to exercise our God-given spirit that is strong in our will, loving in our emotion, and sober, sound, and clear in our mind.

　　Fourth, we need to experience Christ who is in our spirit. Second Timothy 4:22 says, “The Lord be with your spirit.” We should enjoy Christ who dwells in our spirit.

　　Fifth, we need to pursue Christ in the church, the Body of Christ. Second Timothy 2:22 says that we need to pursue Christ “with those,” that is, with the saints. To pursue Christ is not an individualistic matter but a corporate matter. We must pursue Christ with the other members of the Body.

　　The recovery of the proper church life depends on the proper humanity. Today we can have such a humanity because we can partake of the humanity of Jesus by calling upon the name of the Lord, breathing in the breath of God in the Bible, exercising our spirit of power, love, and sobermindedness, experiencing Christ who dwells in our spirit, and pursuing Christ with many dear saints. In these difficult times, we must be not merely good men but God-men, men of God, in order that we may have the proper church life. (CWWL, 1971, vol. 2, pp. 245-246)

　　Further Reading: Life-study of Job, msgs. 33, 37