As the Source and Support of All Existence There is a great difference between Christian experi-Then Job answered the Lo
82 Baffled to Fight Better
should there be a war? Why should I be wounded and sick? Why should my 'cobber' be killed? I am going to chuck up my faith in God."
out to be a lock, and Job is realising that the only key to life is not a statement of faith in God, nor an intellectual conception of God, but a personal relationship to Him. God Himself is the key to the riddle of the universe, and the basis of things is to be found only in Him. If a man leaves out God and takes any scientific explanation as the key, he only succeeds in finding another lock.
2. The Re-Establishment of Truth in Life and Personality As the Source and Support of All Real Experience Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? Therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not. ( Job 42:3)
1. The Rehabilitation of Faith in God As the Source and Support of All Existence Then Job answered the Lord, and said, I know that Thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from Thee. ( Job 42:1–2)
There is a great difference between Christian experience and Christian faith. The danger of experience is that our faith is made to rest in it, instead of seeing that our experience is simply a doorway to God Himself. The reason many of us refuse to think and discover the basis of true religion is because evangelical Christianity has been stated in such a flimsy way. We get at Truth through life and personality, not by logic or scientific statements. "Therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not." In refusing to stand by what was not true, Job uttered bigger things than he understood at the time. That is the way God uses men when they are rightly related to Him; He conveys His real presence as a sacrament through their commonplace lives. Our Lord Himself becomes real in the same way that life and personality are real. Intellect asks, "What is truth?" as if truth were something that could be stated in words. "I am . . . the Truth," said Jesus. The only way we get at Truth is by life and personality. When a man is up against things it is no use for him to try and work it out logically, but let him obey, and instantly he will see his way through. Truth is moral, not intellectual. We perceive Truth by doing the right thing, not by thinking it out. "If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine. . . ." Men have tried to get at the truth of Christianity head-first, which is like saying you must think how you will live before you are born. We instantly see the absurdity of that, and yet we expect to reason out the Christian life before we have been born into the realm of Jesus Christ. "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." If ever we are to see the domain where Jesus lives and enter into it, we must be born again, become regenerated by receiving the Holy Spirit; then we shall find that Truth is not in a creed or a logical statement, but in Life and Personality. This is what Job is realising.
To rehabilitate means to reinstate, to restore to former rank. The problem all through the Book of Job is that the teaching of the creed and Job's implicit faith in God do not agree, and it looks as if he is a fool to hang in to his belief in God. In this last chapter we see everything rehabilitated, put back into rank, by means of Job's personal relationship to God. That is what will happen as the result of this war—many a man's faith in God will be rehabilitated. The basis of things must always be found in a personal relationship to a personal God, never in thinking or feeling.
Job says, "I cannot find any rest in your reasonings or in my own, and I refuse to blink the facts in order to make a rational statement." Job had perfect confidence in the character of God though he did not understand the way He was taking. "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." We sometimes wrongly illustrate faith in God by the faith of a business man in a cheque. Faith commercially is based on calculation, but religious faith cannot be illustrated by the kind of faith we exhibit in life. Faith in God is a terrific venture in the dark; I have to believe that God is good in spite of all that contradicts it in my experience. It is not easy to say that God is love when everything that happens actually gives the lie to it. Everyone's soul represents some kind of battlefield. The point for each one is whether we will hang in, as Job did, and say "Though things look black, I will trust in God."
"Then Job answered the Lord. . . ." This does not mean that Job saw the Lord standing before him as a man; but that he had a trained ear as the result of his faith in God. The basis of a man's faith in God is that God is the Source and Support of all existence, not that He is all existence. Job recognises this, and maintains that in the end everything will be explained and made clear. Have I this kind of faith— not faith in a principle, but faith in God, that He is just and true and right? Many of us have no faith in God at all, but only faith in what He has done for us, and when these things are not apparent we lose our faith and say, "Why should this happen to me? Why
3. The Religious Basis of Science and Philosophy As the Source and Support of All Abiding
Exposition Hear, I beseech Thee, and I will speak: I will demand of Thee, and declare Thou unto me. ( Job 42:4)