Category Archives: The Character of God

When God told Job to "Man Up!"

Posted by Dan C. on

Most of us are familiar with the story of Job, a man considered righteous among the men of his time, and greatly blessed by God in terms of this world’s riches. Satan was allowed to take it all away and Job was counseled by four friends concerning why he was suffering and by his wife who recommended he curse God and die. If you haven’t read the account of Job for yourself, we recommend you do so, paying particular attention to the dialogue between Job and his friends.

After all of the dialogue, in itself interesting because it revealed the true character of everyone in the discussion, we finally have in Chapter 40, God speaking directly to Job and reminding him of exactly who he and his friends were dealing with:

Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:

“Dress for action like a man;

    I will question you, and you make it known to me.

Will you even put me in the wrong?

Will you condemn me that you may be in the right?

Have you an arm like God,

    and can you thunder with a voice like his?

“Adorn yourself with majesty and dignity;

    clothe yourself with glory and splendor.

Pour out the overflowings of your anger,

    and look on everyone who is proud and abase him.

Look on everyone who is proud and bring him low

    and tread down the wicked where they stand.

Hide them all in the dust together;

    bind their faces in the world below.

Then will I also acknowledge to you

    that your own right hand can save you.

     (Job 40:6-14 ESV)

What follows through the rest of Chapters 40 and 41 is a wondrous and awesome declaration of God’s sovereignty over all creation. At the end of God’s declaration and challenge, Job replies:

Then Job answered the LORD and said:

“I know that you can do all things,

    and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’

Therefore, I have uttered what I did not understand,

    things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.

‘Hear, and I will speak;

    I will question you, and you make it known to me.’

I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,

    but now my eye sees you;

therefore I despise myself,

    and repent in dust and ashes.”

     (Job 42:1-6 ESV)

Whatever self-righteousness Job might have had vanished completely as Job considered what God had spoken and his own stature compared to the sovereign Lord of the universe! As a result Job concludes the matter by saying to God:

I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” (Ch 42, vv. 5-6)

It is with that confession to God that Job provides us with what I consider to be a perfect definition of true humility before God; realizing exactly who God IS and who we are!

For Job to ‘man up’ before God turned out to be seeing God, realizing who he (Job) was compared to God, and finally assuming a posture of repentance and humility before Him.

What a lesson for us in today’s extremely self-centered culture! So I need to ask myself, “Dano, how’s your eyesight been lately?”

Be Blessed!

What is Needed Today. . . .

Posted by Dan C. on

image

“What is most needed today is a wide proclamation of those truths which are the least acceptable to the flesh.

What is needed today is a scriptural setting forth of the character of God—His absolute sovereignty, His ineffable holiness, His inflexible justice, His unchanging veracity.

What is needed today is a scriptural setting forth of the condition of the natural man—his total depravity, his spiritual insensibility, his inveterate hostility to God, the fact that he is “condemned already” and that the wrath of a sin-hating God is even now abiding upon him.

What is needed today is a scriptural setting forth of the alarming danger in which sinners are—the indescribably awful doom which awaits them, the fact that if they follow only a little further their present course they shall most certainly suffer the due reward of their iniquities.

What is needed today is a scriptural setting forth of the nature of that punishment which awaits the lost—the awfulness of it, the hopelessness of it, the unendurableness of it, the endlessness of it. It is because of these convictions that by pen as well as by voice we are seeking to raise the alarm.

A clearer vision of the awe-inspiring attributes of God would banish much of our levity and irreverence. A better understanding of our depravity by nature would humble us, and make us see our deep need of using the appointed means of grace. A facing of the alarming danger of the sinner would cause us to “consider our ways” and make us more diligent to make our “calling and election sure.” A realization of the unspeakable misery which awaits the lost (and which each, of us fully merited) would immeasurably deepen our gratitude, and bring us to thank God more fervently that we have been snatched as brands from the burning and delivered from the wrath to come; and too, it will make us far more earnest in our prayers as we supplicate God on behalf of the unsaved.

Remember that the ground must be plowed before it is ready to be sowed: and the truths mentioned above are needed to prepare the way for the Gospel.”

__________________________________________________

The above quotes were excerpted from the book Eternal Punishment by A.W. Pink, first published in 1940 and in the Public Domain.

Arthur Walkington Pink (1 April 1886 – 15 July 1952) was an English Bible teacher who sparked a renewed interest in the exposition of Calvinism or Reformed Theology. Little known in his own lifetime, Pink became “one of the most influential evangelical authors in the second half of the twentieth century.”