The Patriarchs / Being Meditations upon Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Job; The Canticles, Heaven and Earth.

by J. G. Bellett

Such an one was our Patriarch. And such an one he had learnt himself to be. In the school of God he had now learnt his calling, as in the experience of his own soul. But a great lesson it is. A great difference, I am full sure, between having God in the midst of our circumstances, and God as Himself the first and great circumstance. The first was Job's way at the beginning. He would not have been without God. He owned Him, and gave Him an altar in the family scene. But he had not said to Him, Thou shalt choose our inheritance for us. He had not, as Abram did afterward, come out from circumstances with God, trusting Him to surround him with His own circumstances. The power to do this cries, "Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee." For such was the utterance of a saint when his soul had come forth from the tempest and temptation of seeing himself second to the wicked in the conditions and circumstances of life here. Ps. lxxiii.

What a voice this truth has for us! Some may listen to it for comfort, others of us of feebler faith for warning. The world and pride and selfishness form the circumstances out of which the call of God summons us; and religion, in a sense, may have brought God into them; but faith, in its simplicity, forms the other, and God has not to be brought into them, for He is there from the beginning, the great Framer or Artificer of them all.

One repeats this truth, for it is, as I judge, the great secret of this Book. Our Job at the end learnt the power of the call of God. And this, I may say, imparts a just and spiritual bearing to all he now does, as well as invests his whole estate with the beauty and stability of millennial days.

He was, at the beginning, as a prophet, priest, and king, and so is he again, at the end. But he is so after a new order, exercising his different functions more according to the mind of God. As a prophet, he had, at the beginning, too confidently assumed to be the interpreter of God and His ways; but now he says, "I will demand of Thee, and declare Thou unto me." He will be a disciple of the Lord, ere he teach others; he will have his ear opened, ere his tongue be loosed. Isa. 50. 4. Such is the purifying of his prophetic ministry. He will know nothing, save as he learns it from God. His doctrine is not his now. As a priest, at the beginning, he had stepped in between God and his children, to heal probable or dreaded breaches. But he does not seem to wash his own clothes, while sprinkling the purifying water on others. Num. xix. 21. He wanted to remember that he himself was also in the body, temptable like the weakest. Gal. vi. 1. But now he is accepted himself. Job xlii. 9; Ezek. xiv. 14, 20. As a king, his honours now come after his afflictions, his glories after his sufferings; and also after he prayed for his friends, is his captivity turned. He exercises grace, ere he is again entrusted with power--all this being according to the great originals. "Ye are they which have continued with Me in my temptations, and I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto Me."

In these ways, he is prophet, priest, and king, after a new order, and all is refined in the furnace, like gold tried in the fire.

And he is the father of a family again, a family also, as I may again say, of a new order--nothing has to be corrected among them, but all is in happy, holy fellowship, the heart of the father turned to the children, and the heart of the children to their father. At the beginning he had to watch their ways, and provide for the evil they might have committed. But at the end there is nothing of this; their father has only to see them with admiration and delight. They awakened fear at first, but now contentment.

And further, in this beautiful millennial or resurrection scene, which thus closes this story, the stormy wind is hushed, and the lightning of the thunder strikes no more. In this day of a second Noah, such as Job was (the lord of a new world), the waters which once "prevailed" are now "assuaged." And the Chaldeans and Sabeans no longer spoil the spoil, and prey the prey. There is "no adversary nor evil occurrent," no "Canaanite in the house of the Lord" now. Nothing hurts or destroys in all the holy mountain. The Lord delivers His people from those who served themselves of them.

All this is pledged and pictured for us here. And what may be said to be of still deeper value to us, the great enemy himself, the ready and wishful agent of all the mischief and sorrow that had come in, is gone likewise. At the beginning he is in the action, exercising himself as an accuser in heaven, and as a tormentor on earth. And it is for the comfort of the tried saint, that the hand of both God and the enemy are engaged in his trial; the enemy (as here with our patriarch) seeking to cast his crown to the ground, and to cast his fair memorial with God in the dust, the Lord purposing (and performing it) to brighten that crown, and still further to bless the heir of those dignities and joys. It is a comfort to the saint, in the day of trial, to remember this. But, at the end, the enemy is gone. The purpose, in the wisdom of God, for which he had been used, is answered, and he is gone. The discipline of Job had ceased as in his destruction.

Satan had understood Job. He knew the workings of that corrupt nature, which his own lie had formed in the garden of Eden. He had said, "Doth Job fear God for nought? Hast not Thou made an hedge about him?... Touch all that he hath, and he will curse Thee to Thy face.... Skin for skin; yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life." And serious and terrible is the thought, beloved, that he knows us so thoroughly, and understands the springs of thought and will within us. But though he thus understands Job, he did not understand God. The counsels of grace are above him. And by reason of this, he has been always, in the history of this world, defeating himself, while thinking that he was getting advantage of us; for he has to meet God in the very thing he does, and the purposes he plans, against us. When he interfered with Adam in the garden, he encountered God to his confusion, and the promise to Adam announced his own doom. When he provoked David to number the people, Ornan's threshing-floor was disclosed, and the spot where mercy rejoiced against judgment becomes the place of the temple. When he sifted the Apostles as wheat, he was answered by the prayer of Jesus, and, instead of faith failing, brethren were strengthened. And, above all, when he touched Jesus on the cross, the very death he inflicted was his own perfect and accomplished ruin. So, in every trouble which he brings on any of us, he finds, or is to find, sooner or later, that he has met the mighty God, and not the feeble saint. He entered Job's nest that he might spoil it, and leave it driven and wasted. He came into another garden then. But God was there as well as his servant Job, and in the end Satan is confounded.

Thus is it with the saints and their enemy. They shall take the kingdom, and in the kingdom Satan shall have no place. Out of the trials which he had raised around them and against them, they come forth to wear their crowns, and sing their songs. And, instead of his appearing again "among the sons of God," the mighty angel shall lay hold on him, and cast him into the bottomless pit.[³²]