Dear Ones:
The ways of God are certainly not the ways of men, and in particular, our own. Nor can His infinite, and perfectly complete knowledge, be grasped by our little minds. It is here that we must defer to the written word to understand something of His dealings with us, and His purposes in doing so. The story of Job is certainly an prime example.
Beyond the evident spiritual conflict between God and Satan, with Job at the epicenter, there is an overarching theme, or subject, which needs to be grasped if we would understand God’s dealings with us in the difficulties, trials, and losses of life. Paul declared to the Philippians that he had suffered the loss of all things. What did he gain? It was the same thing that Job gained when he declared: “I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth Thee.” (Job 42:5) When Jesus prayed: “And this is life eternal, that they might KNOW Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent…,” He made it very clear that our highest purpose is to receive, obtain, grasp “the knowledge of the holy,” that knowledge of God which shall be fully realized in eternity. The great purpose of our union with Christ, and abiding in Him, is to KNOW Him. For it is as the fruit of His life is manifest in our own that this knowledge of His person increases, and the witness of His life, is known in this very dark world.
Why then do we speak of Job’s daughters, his six daughters? It has to do with the degrees of love, not with respect to sincerity, earnestness, nor realness. But it does have to do with the depths and magnitude of knowledge as it pertains to this love. Job’s first three daughters were lost to him by the catastrophe of a house falling upon them. There is no doubt that he loved them greatly, and his loss and that of his wife, was unbounded. At this point in the narrative that we enter the interlude between Job’s original blessing of God, and that of the latter. What will transpire in this interval will be God’s work to bring to the surface false ideas of Himself that Job entertained. Even the knowledge of God of Job’s friends, which was faulty and “not right”, was revealed. All of the difficulty, suffering, and loss, was preparatory to the revealing by God of the truth of his nature to Job. In essence, He calls Job to come up higher, and to grasp something of the eternal that he had never seen before.
Scripture tells us that God blessed Job after this, and gave him more than he had ever had before. What is interesting is that He gave to him three more daughters. Unlike the first three, their names are mentioned: Jemima, Kezia, and Keren-happuch. Also, “…in all the land were no women found so fair as the daughters of Job.” (42:15) Here is a picture of love…love for the first three daughters, whose loss was immeasurable. And then there is a picture of three other daughters, the object of the blessing of God in a particular way. The same love of Job was for all his daughters, but the last three were benefactors of the effects of “the increased knowledge of God,” a knowledge that amplified the love of a father’s heart. Why did God allow Job to lose so much, and to suffer so greatly? It was to bring him to a greater knowledge of Himself, that he would be able to love with a knowledge that he had never known before, and thus, be more conformed to the image of Christ. The result was the blessing of hundreds, thousands, and after all of these years since that time, millions. The personal, increasing knowledge of God results in the blessing of men, women, and children…This is God’s work, and it is marvelous in our eyes.
Love, Dad