After I spontaneously jotted down the final sentence on the last blog, our Father, stopped me in my tracks and had me read it again.
I realized that therein,“Sorry to leave you hanging….” did in fact lie…. the THIRD REVELATION!
Was Dad confirming in this riddle my revelation of these THREE REVELATIONS?
In verse 5 of the final chapter Job says, “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.”
Up until this point Job’s experience of God had actually been ‘second hand’. He had heard ‘about’ God. I believe what he now had been given to ‘see’ by God, was a vision of the cross. Hundreds of years in advance of the actual earthly event, he had been given to see someone
…....’left hanging.’…. on a cross.
As he gazed on that ‘suffering servant’ it dawned on him that this was none other than the Son of God.
Again in advance of it ever being written, he was given a profound understanding in his spirit,
“…. that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting people’s sins against them.” (2 Cor. 5:19)
I believe as he continued to gaze on that Holy One he then saw……. HIMSELF! – as one of the countless number of humanity that make up ‘the world’ that had been ‘put in’ the Christ, and whose sins had been taken away. (1 Cor.1:30).
He too had been,
…...’left hanging.’…..in Christ.
He had at last found the ‘Ransom’, that ‘gracious mediator’ he had been looking for in chapter 33.
Once again after being ‘gobsmacked’ by the GREATNESS OF THE SOVERIGN CREATOR and ‘undone’ by the GROTESQNESS OF THE SINFUL CREATURE he is completely ‘flummoxed’ at……
the GRACIOUSNESS of the SAVING CHRIST.
It is “the kindness of God that leads us to repentance.” and so Job responded, “I despise mySELF and repent.”
Note my handwritten note from 27 years ago beneath the scripture ……+ trust in Dad, for now he has come to understand first hand, ‘the gospel’ of ‘the New Covenant’ where his religious practices and virtuous behavior count for nothing, and that he can truly and fully trust the work of “Abba” God through his son Jesus Christ, on the cross, counts for everything.
And so he in repentance turns, as Paul writes to the Thessalonians, from the I DOLL, of self, to serve a God, who is now “living and true” in Job’s own personal experience.
And so Job does find true comfort, the comfort the prophet Isaiah declared, that we are reminded of at this time of year.
In my old bible it too is a well worn page,