From the book Quiet Talks About The Healing Christ
by S.D. Gordon, first published in 1924.
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Quiet Talks about the Healing Christ 7. God's School Of Suffering: Can We Hasten Graduation Day?
It is Christ's first will that we should be made pure in heart, intelligent in understanding the Father's will, with a passion for doing it, clean out of touch with everything that doesn't help that way, in warm touch with our fellowmen, inflexibly set against every sort of evil, and always strong and healthful in body.
Guard Your Strong Points
Experience is the best teacher, and charges the biggest fee. It insists on being paid, day by day, as you go along. No book accounts allowed, nor credits.
You don't pay in cheap stuff like gold and engraved paper and checks. No, you pay in blood and sweat. You pay in your own life given slowly out, sometimes painfully out, under tense pressure.
But you get something. You get much. You get most. You get the one real thing, gold, real gold, the gold of character; you yourself, your changed self, that's what you get. You're never the same again.
Experience means what you go through, and what goes through you. Our knowledge is really limited to just that. We know only what we go through.
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What is woven into the fabric of actual life, that we really know, and only that. The rest we only know about. And there's a whole solar system of difference between the two.
Bodily pain bends the most stubborn will. And that is saying a great deal. For there is nothing harder to bend than a stubborn will.
The will is never broken. It can't be. It can only be bent, and that means bent from within. No man's will, however obstinate, can be bended, however slightly, except from within. That is to say, by his own choosing to bend it.
Every man is an absolute sovereign in his will, from his mother's breast until the breast of old mother-earth enfolds him at the last. This is the way God made him.
But bodily pain, cutting, eating in, and then getting sharper-toothed, and persisting, tirelessly persisting, day in and day out, by night and day, awake and asleep, and when you can't sleep, that is the sorest pressure that can be brought to bear on a man's will. It is the whip with the ugliest lash and sting.
This explains much bodily pain, not all, but much. For there is nothing more mulishly stubborn, in earth or heaven or the depths below, than a stubborn human will. Perhaps you know that. And there is nothing so relentlessly persistent as bodily pain can be. It is a fierce conflict, many a time.
Often it is stubborn self-will and Love in fierce competition. The self-will refuses to bend even when it knows it should, that it's right to, and best to. For stubbornness can become a habit gripping a man beyond his own heart's wish.
And Love, with a breaking heart over the pain being suffered by that stubborn will, yet keeps the fire burning more fiercely, to save the man's life.
One can be strong enough to be stubborn, but not strong enough to bend. The will is really strongest when it uses its strength in bending to a higher, better, wiser, will.
But Love wins out. The exceptions are rare. The heart, after all, wins in competition with the will. It kindles gentle fierce fires under the will, and keeps them burning, tender and hot, till the will yields, mellows, bends, capitulates.
The one thing greater than a stubborn will is a true, tender, hot heart. Love wins. This is the great lesson in God's School of Suffering.
A man's strong point is apt to become his weak point, when he's out of full touch with God. A man may come to have the possible weakness of his strongest qualities. Away from the steadying touch of God's presence the pendulum swings clear to the opposite limit. Abraham was called a friend of God because he believed Him. His faith in God staggered not at the humanly impossible. Yet he quite failed God, twice, in going to Egypt and so imperilling God's world plan; and in the Hagar incident.
Moses was the meekest man, and no one ever lost his temper so badly and completely. David was one of the saintliest of men, and no man has given more opportunity to men to revile because of that ugliest moral blot in his life.
Solomon was the wisest man, at the beginning. He became the stupidest moral fool, and so continued to the end.
Elijah's boldness and daring made a record, yet he ran away with cowardly swiftness from a woman's threat.
Job was esteemed the most patient of men, but was there ever a greater exhibition of hot, intolerant impatience than in his replies to his critics? He was the humblest of saints, and quite unconsciously showed how proud a man could be.
One should keep a keen eye on his strong points. And the eyesight is keenest here when the knees are bent.
There is simply no telling what may happen to any of us when we lose full touch with Christ. The Spirit of God is man's native air. Away from that he certainly gets into bad shape, and does the queerest unlikeliest things.
Man is free, utterly free, in his will. That's God's tenderest touch. In that he is most like God. He becomes a slave, a rank slave, shackled and chained, to his will. It's a bit of the ugly trail of sin, the getting out of touch with God.
It's Christ's first will that we should be strong and well in body. But what a time of it He has getting His first will done.
Some of the saintliest of people, so lovable and gentle personally, have such stubborn wills. Let us hope it can be said truly that it is quite unconsciously that they won't yield their will to God's, in some cherished particular.
We all seem to be a bit set in our own way. Some saintly folk are so sure they know better than God, in certain things.
One tries hard to believe it is always an unintentional stubbornness. Maybe putting it so baldly will help the truth break in through that same saintly stubbornness.
And so there has to be a term of school. Many a dear saint supplies the scholar and the entrance conditions for the school of suffering.
And the discipline seems stiff and stern. And the fees are very high. And they are payable daily, and collected too. And the lessons seem hard and the time long.
But then Love is always the schoolmaster, real Love, tender and true, honest and courageous, uncompromisingly insistent on the highest ideals.
One hand tenderly and patiently is underneath strengthening and sustaining, while the other guides and steadies, limits and lessens, the discipline when possible. And the Schoolmaster 's eye watches the calendar hoping for an early graduation. And His heart watches with deepest concern the scholar, who alone fixes the graduation date.
We learn best by stories and pictures. The story is the picture for the ear. The picture is the story for the eye. We learn most through the eye, with the ear a close second.
There are three stories in this solitary old Book of God, pictured stories with the warm, vivid colouring of real human life, that come in here.
There's Job at one end, Paul at the other, and Jacob in between. Any one of them is quite enough to tell the story of Love's schooling, all three together pile things up to the irresistible point.
Job the Scholar
There's an unusual fascination about the Job story. It is told so fully, and made so vivid, and is so human. It is the first of all these books to be written down. It is put at the gateway into this old Book of God.
There is purpose in all this. For it deals with the sorest question of human life through the ages, the problem of suffering. Here, simply told, put into men's hands at once, is God's own answer to the problem. And it proves an answer that answers. It is full and adequate.
It is striking that there are two parts to the story. The first has caught the eye of the Church; the second part has been strangely slighted, indeed ignored.
Yet the story is not complete, and the answer not understood, unless and until both parts are taken together. It is one story.
There are six chapters in the story, all told. In part one there are five chapters. In part two there is just one chapter.
But what a chapter this sixth, this last chapter, is. It fairly vibrates with bubbling-over joy. Music and exuberant singing fill the air. Laughter and congratulation, praise to God, and happy fellowship among men echo everywhere.
The sun is shining. The birds burst their throats with song. The very air is a-thrill with human gladness. And the music is now in the major key. The minor chording that swept and wept all through part one now becomes a blessed undertone to make the joyousness of the major stand out in bolder relief.
How strange that the last bit of the Job story has been so ignored. The graduation day exercises have been strangely pigeonholed out of sight. Did some one behind the scenes have a hand in that?
Look a bit, briefly, at the six chapters of the Job story. Chapter one is the scholar in school. The picture is drawn as men saw him. It tells his common reputation in the whole countryside. He was perfect and upright in all his dealings with his fellows.
There was more, he reverenced God, and earnestly sought to please Him. He was thought fully and intelligently deliberate in this.
When there had been a time of feasting and convivial enjoyment in the family he was careful to have a special time of prayer afterward, that if anything had been done or said displeasing or not-pleasing to God it might be forgiven, and so no unsuspected root of wrong-doing be allowed.
It was his conscientious habit to be pleasing to God in the whole habit of his life. And he was careful to guard the life of his growing family.
All this was commonly known. He was the leading citizen in the community. And this was his reputation. He was upright with others, a thoughtful father in his family, and saintly in his own personal life.
His very name suggests his character. Names grew up in those days, up out of a man's character. Here the name given has a distinctly spirit significance. That would be natural with such a man, for his saintliness, his spiritual habit of character, was the outstanding trait. He was called Job, that is, the man hated, hounded, persecuted to the utmost possible limit.
His character made him hated. He was heartily disliked by those of the opposite ilk. Especially he was hated by the unseen spirit prince of evil, whose personality in that early day was never questioned.
This is the picture men saw, a man so conscientious, so upright, so thoughtfully methodically righteous and saintly as to arouse opposition in some quarters.
There's another bit in the picture of the man that comes out later in the whole story. It was the side that God saw, the inside of his character.
He was so humble that, probably quite unconsciously, he was proud of it. There was a subtle unsuspected inner satisfaction with his spiritual attainments.
What a strange bit of irony, pride in being humble! But a snake may crawl noiselessly through the greenest grass, and among the most fragrant flowers.
He was so conscientious in planning the whole habit of his life as pleasing to God that he slipped a bit in the real thing.
Without being aware of it that very conscientiousness, and methodical care, and saintliness of habit, got in to his inner subconsciousness even more than God Himself.
He would have been the first to pull himself up had he recognized the tendency. He was quick as a flash on his face when God actually spoke to him, and things got straightened out.
But that's the man, the scholar in the school, the two men in one, the man his neighbours saw, and the man God saw.
That's chapter one (Job 1:1-5). Men saw a humble godly man. God saw a bit of dross in the rare fine gold of this man's character.
Job -- First Session of School
Chapter two is the first session of school. In the upper spirit realm there's a reviewing of things down on the earth.
Satan is spoken of for the first time in the Scriptures, and spoken of by that name, the Satan, the accuser, the hater, the hounder of men.
God takes the initiative regarding Job. This is significant. There's a purpose at work. God speaks of the well-known character of Job.
Satan maliciously slanders Job as an utterly selfish man who finds it to his advantage to be righteous. Satan is given permission to interfere in Job's affairs, but within strict limitation (Job 1:6-12).
Then the scene of the story shifts to the earth again. Job's opportunity has come. The door up-stairs is to open at his feet.
War, marauding bands, lightning, a terrific wind-storm, these come one after the other with a rush. And everything is swept away, children and possessions one after another in quick succession.
And there is a terribly dramatic piling up of the calamities as the story is told, by one breathless messenger after another, to Job.
And in this sore hour of bereavement, with torn and bleeding heart, Job never flinched in his simple trust in God, and his unfailing personal devotion to Him. Things have gone aw fully bad. But there's no reproach in Job's heart.
It is significant that the immediate origin of his trouble is quite unrecognized. He supposes that it is God Himself in action doing all this (Job 1:21). It gives emphasis to his humble, uncomplaining submission to God, though he can't understand why such things should happen to him.
Again the scene shifts to the upper realm, and again God speaks of the righteousness of Job, though so sorely tried. And again Satan slanders and imputes selfish motives. And now the restriction on Job 's person is withdrawn, within a strict limit (Job 2:1-6).
Then comes the touch on Job's person. One of the worst plagues known in that sub-tropical climate, ulcerous sores, known as the black leprosy of Egypt, this breaks out in Job's body. God's gracious protecting restraint is partially withdrawn, for a brief time (Job 2:7-13).
And poor saintly Job, sitting on an ash heap, scraping his itching sores with the sharp edge of a broken piece of crockery, quite takes hold of one's heart.
Then his wife loses heart, and incoherently, bitterly cries out against God. And that doesn't make things any better certainly. It's a bitter draft to swallow when a man doesn't feel his wife by his side, close up, steadying and believing in him.
His wife's unfailing touch and presence and atmosphere strengthens a man quite beyond words. Its absence is felt keenly now, even though the answering voice is still quiet and steady.
Then the three neighbours come. They are supposed to be comforters, deeply grieved over their old neighbour's sore plight. For seven silent days and seven yet more silent nights they sit looking.
Peering aslant and direct, at Job and at each other, with never a word spoken, but many a thought thought, they sit.
That was the decisive stroke. Job broke under that. His keen ear heard their unspoken thoughts. His sensitive spirit felt the cutting edge of those peering eyes.
Loss of property, loss of children, loss of health, loss of his wife's sympathetic fellowship, he stood up under these.
But, loss of his sacred privacy, and then the criticism all the keener and more cutting because unspoken, and all this continued unbroken seven full days and seven sleepless nights, that was a terrific climax. Job broke under that. Little wonder!
The time test is the hardest test. The patience of patient Job ran out. He was a cunning strategist that planned that campaign, devilishly, cruelly, heartlessly cunning. This is chapter two, the first session in school.
Job -- Inside
Then comes chapter three, the unsuspected man inside is revealed (Job 3:1 to 31:40). "After this," this sevenfold cunningly piled-up climax of attack, Job "cursed his day."
That is, tacitly, quite unintentionally in all probability, he cursed God who gave the creative touch that day of birth.
And for bitterness of spirit, biting sarcasm, persistent absorption in his own integrity and in the unfairness of all that's happening to him, for rebellion against God and God's dealings, it would be difficult to match Job in the flood of talk that is now loosened out.
How pain itself, with no touch of grace allowed in, sharpens the tongue, makes picturesque rhetoric, and puts acid in the spittle! It's immensely suggestive.
The three critics, called comforters, go at him in turn. And the burden of their talk is this: all these calamities mean that God is acting in judgment on Job for his wickedness.
They insist that all his godliness is a mere sham to cover up the utter selfishness and actual wickedness underneath. Their talk hangs well together. There's thorough consistency.
It is full of pious phraseology, inaccuracies, half-truths, and positive untruths. It's a queer tangle and mixture. It has a strangely familiar modern sound.
It is not difficult to understand who sent them, or which side they represent in this pathetic conflict going on, on the battlefield of Job's life.
It's the last stroke of that carefully planned attack. One should be careful with quotations from the Book of Job, to note whose words are being quoted.
But Job out-talks them. As the debate goes on their talks get shorter, his longer. He talks nine times, all three of them eight times. He says half as much more as they.
His bitterness increases. At last they quit. They are talked out. The case is hopeless to them because this man Job is so set in believing in his own righteousness. They give Job up as a hopeless incorrigible.
This is the first session of the school. The examinations show Job up in rather bad shape. Job lays himself bare. He is indeed a rare saint in the utter integrity of his heart and life.
But he doesn't understand. He is in the dark. And he blunders badly. That's why the story is put down here, so his spirit kinsfolk need not make the same blunders.
Job questioned God's love, which is always above question or suspicion. Because he doesn't understand he questions God 's love, which means he doubts it.
And in the sore experience, certain unsuspected things that were inside came out. They must have been in or they couldn't have come out. As you see them coming out you know that, all unsuspected, they were hidden away in side.
It's a strange sight indeed this. Saintly Job, rarest of saints in the purpose of his heart, and the uprightness of his conduct, unconsciously letting the seamy side stick out,
Sitting on the ash heap, talking, with the sharp-edged bit of broken crockery in rhythmic motion on his itching scabs, declaring his own righteousness, and reviling God and God's dealings. Cutting sarcastic flings intermingle with insistence on his faith in God.
The examinations go hard with Job. They show up something inside never suspected. He doesn't see it yet. Job's weakness is laid bare. His humility is the last thing in view now. Indeed it's clear out of view, lost sight of.
And where is the proverbial patience of patient Job? All this rebelliousness of spirit against God, this biting, burning sarcasm, this utter absence of the love spirit, this utter depressed absorption in himself, this exaggerated ego, this had all been in, quite unsuspected. Else it couldn't have gotten out.
One begins to understand now about that school of suffering. The graduate, with honours, of many schools is having a final post-graduate course. God wants him up higher, highest, with full honours, but forgetting all about the honours in thinking about his wondrous God.
Now comes chapter four, God's teacher comes (Job 32:1 to 37:24). The second session of school opens. God takes a hand in things indirectly. He sends a messenger, Elihu. Elihu is a teacher. And what poor saintly righteous Job needed above all things just now was a teacher.
His heart was all right, but his understanding of things was muddled. The teacher quietly, patiently, gently, plainly, teaches. Then Job's eyes begin to open. New soft light begins to break in.
First of all this teacher explains just why all this has happened to Job. He repudiates utterly what the three critics had been declaring so positively.
God had not been acting in judgment on Job. The whole thing is on a wholly higher level, a love level, a wooing level.
Elihu points out that Job had been insisting on his own integrity. He was rebelling bitterly because of what had happened to him, and against God's dealings with him, and so against God Himself (Job 33:8-12).
Job had been proud of his sanctity, the utter uprightness of his conduct, and the sincerity of his heart. He had become absorbed with himself, his saintliness. He was proud of being so humble, quite unconsciously (Job 33:17).
For pride is simply being taken up with yourself in any degree or any way, and not getting God in, in His own place.
Humility is simply letting God into one's thought and imagination and purpose as big as He really is. All we have is from God, a direct gift to be held in trust.
Talents, gifts, powers, possessions, everything is given by Him. It is a trust in the full legal meaning of that word, and then the higher love meaning.
All these gifts are at their best only as God's touch is upon them in full, which means, is upon you in full.
No one is true to himself, and to his powers, and to his neighbours, except as all is yielded up to God's touch, full constant touch.
And when that's so the mind, the imagination, the will are all absorbed with the thought of God Himself, His love so beyond words, and all that grows out of His love.
Pride is the assertion of one's self. Humility is being so taken up with some One else that one thinks of himself only in relation to that One.
Then in a simple, practical, wholesome way all one's powers, one's relation to his fellows and to the day's task, fall into right place. That's the touch upon you of this One you're so taken up with.
That absorption in God, in Christ, is a very practical thing. You have seen a babe watching intently the mother's face, utterly absorbed, conscious of nothing else. And the sight has caught your heart.
And so the mother with her babe, a lover with his lover, a husband with a wife. This thing of being absorbed in someone else is common enough to know about, blessedly so.
Job was being wooed from absorption in himself up to the higher level, forgetting himself in seeing God. If ever a man really sees God he loses himself at once. And yet he really gets hold of his true self in losing himself in God.
Elihu gently but firmly puts his finger on the sore spot. Job had been taken up with himself. His whole trouble at root was pride, thinking about himself (Job 33:13-18). That's the teacher's first point, tactfully, clearly made.
Then the teacher goes on. Something happens. Sickness comes. Elihu touches only one thing in Job's troubles. But that is enough, and makes things simpler to Job's understanding.
Elihu doesn't go into the matter of the process by which the disease came to Job, just now, as is told in the beginning of Job's story. There's a vivid description of a desperately sick man (Job 33:19-22). That's the teacher's second bit.
Then comes a teacher to make things clear to this sick man (Job 33:23). Elihu modestly speaks of himself only indirectly. A paraphrase helps make the thought clearer, a translation into simple English of the underneath thought.
Elihu says, "If there be with the sick man a messenger, a teacher, one in the close, confidential touch of personal love, to explain things to him patiently and gently and clearly..."
Then comes prayer, and the healing (Job 33:24-28). Now the healed man frankly says, "I have sinned." There's a vast difference between being told you are a sinner and actually confessing yourself that you are a sinner.
Now, healed, the man goes about singing. He is so absorbed with such a wondrous God as he has found all anew that he goes about telling his neighbours and friends about Him.
This is the heart of Elihu's teaching. There are six links in its chain, pride, disease, a teacher, prayer, healing, telling others about this wondrous God.
And the rest of Elihu's talk, by far the greater part, is taken up chiefly in talking about God. Unconsciously he becomes a fine illustration of what he is talking about.
I can imagine that already a bit of restful sigh escapes Job's lips. His thought is sharply changed. What fine psychology! He turns away from himself (what a relief!) to -- God (Job chapters 34-37). That's the close of the second session of school.
Job Sees God
Then the third session opens. This is the fifth chapter of the story, Job gets a sight of God (Job chapters 38-41). God speaks. Job hears, and gets down on his face at once. God picks up the thread where Elihu had dropped it, and goes on weaving the same fabric.
And what God does is this, simply this, but all of this: He looks into Job's face. Job never forgot the sight. God talks in a very simple, homely way about Himself.
Job gets a picture of God, the Creator, His intelligence that could think things out, His wis dom that could so skilfully adapt means to end, His power that could actually do what He did; and then above all, running through all and between the lines is this: His love; He did it, actually did what He did.
Job got a picture of God. He never got over it. He's down on his face in the dust. It's a remarkable face-about. "Mine eye seeth Thee: I abhor myself" (Job 42:1-9).
And then God graciously gives Job a rare opportunity. It is not a test to see if Job can stand it. It is Job's opportunity to reveal the wholly new spirit now in control. It is his opportunity to be like God.
He is to pray for these poor befogged critics. They certainly need it. And he gladly does it. He is so taken up now with God that everything is affected. The absorbing thought of such a God comes swamping in. It takes possession. It graciously grips him.
The bitter sarcasm toward these critics goes clean out. Love, that is to say, God, fills his heart. He is grateful for the outlet of this new passion. He gladly prays for these men that they, too, may see this wondrous God.
The real God-touch means a humaner human touch. Job is really humble now, but he doesn't know it. He's so absorbed with God that he quickly forgives and loves his bitter critics. Because that's being like God. That's the God touch.
When a man thinks he is humble he may know at once that he isn't. He's thinking about himself. When one thinks in his heart that he really is saintly, he may know for a truth that he isn't. He hasn't the real thing for he's taken up with himself.
The real thing of humility is being absorbed with God. Then you become unconsciously like Him. It becomes a passion, an intensely practical passion, to get others in touch, too. That's the God-touch
Humility is such a sensitive plant, when you think you have it, it withers up at once, and dies. This is the third session of school. Job sees God, and gets down on his face, and then reaches out to help others.
Then comes chapter six, Graduation Day (Job 42:10-17). School's out. Satan is heard of no more. He has slunk away. Resisted, he fled. The healing touch comes without being asked for. And it's a full healing. It includes body and family and circumstances and length of life.
And the striking thing that catches you at once is this: Job fixed the date for graduation day. The whole decision rested with him. His will had new strength now. It could bend, bend to the higher will.
And it did. That was the turning point. That fixed the date. All God's power and love wait on man's consent. We control the door through which God enters our lives.
How long did this school of suffering last? There were three sessions, then graduation day. But how much time did the whole take?
I don't know in actual days and weeks. It doesn't tell. But the story as told gives the impression that the whole thing could have occurred within a few weeks, from new moon to full.
How long did this school last? I do know. I know exactly. Just as long as it took Job to get down on his face; then graduation day.
Job could have made it last much longer. Any one can. Some are strong enough to talk humbly about themselves, and submissively. But they're not strong enough to bend, bend clear down.
You've got to get clear down to see God's face, and hear His voice. The best view of God is gotten on your face in the dust. Then the eyes of the spirit open.
And even the ash heap, and that broken piece of crockery, become fragrant memories. For they became the gateway into that blessed change of spirit. And through that the healing and all the rest came.
School fees were never so high. Ask Job. And payment of fees was never more cheerfully assented to, afterward, when school was out.
One is quick to note that there is a twofold purpose in this old Job school-story. There was a purpose for Job himself.
And there was a purpose through Job. Job has been a silent eloquent preacher to men ever since his story was lived in the plains and hills of Uz.
There was a distinct purpose of service in Job's experience. The whole Church, and some day the whole race, will be grateful to Job for being a good scholar in God's school.
  
This page Copyright © 1999 Peter Wade. The Bible text in this publication, except where otherwise indicated, is from the King James Version. This article appears on the site: http://www.peterwade.com/
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