Saturday, August 10, 2013

Observations on Job

From Pleasure and Profit in Bible Study by D.L. Moody:

An Englishman once remarked to me: “Mr Moody, did you ever notice this, that the book of Job is the key to the whole Bible? If you understand Job you will understand the entire Bible!” “No,” I said, “I don’t comprehend that. Job the key to the whole Bible! How do make that out?” He said: “I divide Job into seven heads. 

The first head is: A perfect man untried. That is what God said about Job; that is Adam in Eden. He was perfect when God put him there. 

The second head is: Tried by adversity. Job fell, as Adam fell in Eden. 

The third head is: The wisdom of the world. The world tried to restore Job; the three wise men came to help him. That was the wisdom of the world centred in those three men. You can not,” said he, “find any such eloquent language or wisdom anywhere, in any part of the world, as those three men displayed, but they did not know anything about grace, and could not, therefore, help Job.” That is just what men are trying to do; and the result is that they fail; the wisdom of man never made man any better. These three men did not help Job; they made him more unhappy. Some one has said the first man took him, and gave him a good pull; then the second and third did the same; the three of them had three good pulls at Job, and then flat down they fell. 

“Then in the fourth place,” said he, “in comes the Daysman, that is Christ. 

In the fifth place, God speaks; 

and in the sixth, Job learns his lesson. ‘I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth Thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.’ And then down came Job flat on the dunghill. 

The seventh head is this, that God restores him.” Thank God, it is so with us, and our last state is better than our first. A friend of mine said to me: “Look here, Moody, God gave to Job double of everything.” He would not admit that Job had lost his children; God had taken them to heaven, and He gave Job ten more. So Job had ten in Heaven, and ten on earth—a goodly family. So when our children are taken from us, they are not lost to us, but merely gone before.

© Becky Laney of Operation Actually Read Bible

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