Locks Versus Keys

[Jim Watt]

"*TWO ARE BETTER THAN ONE" MINISTRIES*

*Jim & Marie Watt*

*PO Box 25116 – Federal Way WA 98093-2116*

*Tel: 253.874.4265 – Email: **jmbetter at gmail.com*

*Web: **www.2rbetter.org** *

  *2008.07.10 - "LOCKS VERSUS KEYS" - Job 42:1-6*

*(From: "Baffled to Fight Better" - Oswald Chambers)*

 Everything a man takes to be the key to a problem is apt to turn out
another lock. For instance, the theory of evolution was supposed to be the
key to the problem of the universe, but instead it has turned out a lock.
Again, the atomic theory was thought to be the key; then it was discovered
that the atom itself was composed of electrons, and each electron was found
to be a universe of its own, and that theory too becomes a lock and not a
key. Everything that man attempts as a simplification of life, other than a
personal relationship to God, turns out to be a lock, and we should be alert
to recognize when a thing turns from a key to a lock. The creed Job held,
which pretended to be a key to the character of God, turned out to be a
lock, and Job is realizing that the only key to life is not a statement of
faith in God, nor an intellectual conception of God, but a personal
relationship to Him. God Himself is the key to the riddle of the universe,
and the basis of things is to be found only in Him. If a man leaves out God
and takes any scientific explanation as the key, he only succeeds in finding
another lock.

 *(1) THE REHABILITATION OF FAITH IN GOD --*

* As the Source and Support of all Existence.*

 "*Then Job answered the Lord, and said, I know that You can do everything,
and that no thought can be withheld from You." (Job 42:1-2)*

 To rehabilitate means to reinstate, to restore to former rank. The problem
all through the Book of Job is that the teaching of the creed and Job's
implicit faith in God do not agree, and it looks as if he is a fool to hang
in to his belief in God. That is what will happen as the result of this war
(World War I) -- many a man's faith in God will be rehabilitated. The basis
of things must always be found in a personal relationship to a personal God,
never in thinking or feeling.

 Job says, 'I cannot find any rest in your reasonings or in my own, and I
refuse to blink the facts in order to make a rational statement'. Job had
perfect confidence in the character of God though he did not understand the
way He was taking. "*Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." *We
sometimes wrongly illustrate faith in God by the faith of a business man in
a cheque. Faith commercially is based on calculation, but religious faith
cannot be illustrated by the kind of faith we exhibit in life. Faith in God
is a terrific venture in the dark; I have to believe that God is good in
spite of all that contradicts it in my experience. It is not easy to say
that God is love when everything that happens actually gives the lie to it.
Everyone's soul represents some kind of battlefield. The point for each one
is whether we will hang in, as Job did, and say 'Though things look black, I
will trust in God'.

 "Then Job *answered* the Lord...." This does not mean that Job saw the Lord
standing before him as a man; but that he had a trained ear as the result of
his faith in God. The basis of a man's faith in God is that God is the
Source and Support of all existence, not that He *is* all existence. Job
recognizes this, and maintains that in the end everything will be explained
and made clear. Have I this kind of faith -- not faith in principle, but
faith *in God,* that He is just and true and right? Many of us have no faith
in God at all, but only faith in what He has done for us, and when these
things are not apparent we lose our faith and say, 'Why should this happen
to me? Why should there be a war? Why should I be wounded and sick? Why
should my "cobber" be killed? I am going to chuck up my faith in God'.

 *(2) THE RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF TRUTH IN LIFE AND PERSONALITY --*

 * As the source and Support of all Real Experience.*

 "*Who is he that hides counsel without knowledge? therefore have I uttered
that I understood not; things too wonderful for me which I knew not." (Job
42:3)*

 * *There is a great difference between Christian experience and Christian
faith. The danger of experience is that our faith is made to rest in it,
instead of seeing that our experience is simply a doorway to God Himself.
The reason many of us refuse to think and discover the basis of true
religion is because evangelical Christianity has been stated in such a
flimsy way. We get the Truth through life and personality, not by logic or
scientific statements. *"Therefore have I uttered that I understood not;
things too wonderful for me which I knew not." *In refusing to stand by what
was not true, Job uttered bigger things than he understood at the time. That
is the way God uses men when they are rightly related to Him; He conveys His
real presence as a sacrament through their commonplace lives. Our Lord
Himself becomes real in the same way that life and personality are real.
Intellect asks, 'What is truth?', as if truth were something that could be
stated in words. *"I am the Truth", *said Jesus. The only way we get at
Truth is by life and personality. When a man is up against things it is no
use for him to try and work it out logically, but let him obey, and
instantly he will see his way through. Truth is moral, not intellectual. We
perceive Truth by doing the right thing, not by thinking it out. *'If any
man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine ...'* Men have tried to
get at the truth of Christianity head-first, which is like saying you must
think how you will live before you are born. We instantly see the absurdity
of that, and yet we expect to reason out the Christian life before we have
been born into the realm of Jesus Christ. *"Except a man be born again, he
cannot see the kingdom of God." * If ever we are to see the domain where
Jesus lives and enter into it, we must be born again, become regenerated by
receiving the Holy Spirit; then we shall find that Truth is not in a creed
or a logical statement, but in Life and Personality. This is what Job is
realizing.

 *(3) THE RELIGIOUS BASIS OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY --*

 *As the Source and Support of all Abiding Exposition.*

"*Hear, I beseech You, and I will speak: I will demand of You, and You
declare unto me." (Job 42:4)*

 We have not to bring God into our system of philosophy but to found our
philosophy on God. The source and support of all abiding exposition is a
man's personal relationship to God. If we base our philosophy on reason, we
shall produce a false philosophy; but if we base it on faith in God, we can
begin to expound life rightly. Actual conditions come into account, but
underneath lies the Redemption.

 Sin is not man's problem, but God's. God has taken the problem of sin into
His own hands and solved it, and the proof that He has is the Cross of
Calvary. The Cross is the Cross of God. On the ground of the Redemption I
can *'wash my robes, and make them white in the blood of the Lamb'.
*Pseudo-evangelism
has twisted the revelation and made it mean -- 'Now that God has saved me, I
do not need to do anything'. The New Testament revelation is that now I am
saved by God's grace, I must work on that basis and keep myself clean. It
does not matter what a man's heredity is, or what tendencies there are in
him, on the basis of the Redemption he can become all that God's Book
indicates he should be. The essential truth of Christianity in thinking is
that I can *'wash my robes, and make them clean in the blood of the
Lamb'. *That
is the exposition of the Redemption in actual experience. Are we thinking
along this line, or on the pagan line which makes out that the basis of
things is rational, and leaves out God, and Jesus Christ, and the Redemption
altogether?

 *(4) REPENTANCE AND THE DAWN OF GOD'S HUMANITY --*

* As the Source and Support of a 'Second Chance'.*

"*I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees You.
Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." (Job 42:5-6)*

* *Because a man has altered his life it does not necessarily mean that he
has repented. A man may have lived a bad life and suddenly stop being bad,
not because he has repented, but because he is like an exhausted volcano.
The fact that he has become good is no sign of his having become a
Christian. The bedrock of Christianity is repentance. The apostle Paul never
forgot what he had been; when he speaks of *'forgetting those things which
are behind',* he is referring to what he has attained to; the Holy Spirit
never allowed him to forget what he had been (*see* 1 Corinthians 15:9,
Ephesians 3:8, 1 Timothy 1:13-15). Repentance means that I estimate exactly
what I am in God's sight and I am sorry for it, and on the basis of the
Redemption I become the opposite. The only repentant man is the holy man,
i.e., the one who becomes the opposite of what he was because something has
entered into him. Any man who knows himself knows that he cannot be holy,
therefore if he does become holy, it is because God has 'shipped' something
into him; he is now 'presented with Divinity', and can begin to bring forth
*'fruits meet for repentance'.*

 A man may know the plan of salvation, and preach like an archangel, and yet
not be a Christian (cf. Matthew 7:21-22) The test of Christianity is that a
man lives better than he preaches. The reality of the heredity of Jesus
Christ comes into us through regeneration, and if ever we are to exhibit a
family likeness to Him it must be because we have entered into repentance
and have received something from God. If the disposition of meanness and
lust and spite shows itself through my bodily life, when the disposition of
Jesus Christ is there, it will show through my bodily life too, and no one
need ever be afraid that he will be credited with the holiness he exhibits.
*"Now my eye sees You," said Job*, *"wherefore I abhor myself" *("I loathe
my words", R.V. marg.) *"and repent in dust and ashes." *When I enthrone
Jesus Christ I say the thing that is violently opposed to the old rule. I
deny my old ways as entirely as Peter denied his Lord.

 Jesus Christ's claim is that He can put a new disposition, His own
disposition, Holy Spirit, into any man, and it will be manifested in all
that he does. But the disposition of the Son of God can only enter my life
by the way of repentance.


 *NOTE;* This is perhaps one of the clearest expositions and explanations of
the true nature of Regeneration, the New Birth, and their basis in
repentance -- that I have come across.

 Oswald Chamber's notes on the Book of Job were prepared for British Armed
Forces especially from Australia and New Zealand stationed in Zei*toun*,
Egypt, just before going into battle in Gal*li*poli. These boys *knew* that
perhaps only 40% or less would return. It was a trying time, and Chambers as
their YMCA Chaplain wanted to leave them with words that would help them
prepare most likely for death.

 In the face of death -- nice words and pretty sermons would have been
completely out of order. So from the depths of his own vital relationship
with God, Jesus Christ and the Redemption -- he spoke and wrote words
appropriate to the desperate needs of these young soldiers.

 These notes are from the last chapter from his book on Job, "Baffled to
Fight Better!" What an appropriate title! It exactly describes what Job went
through in the preceding 41 chapters.

 Does this apply to you and me also -- though we are not facing almost
certain death such as these soldiers? I read the above words perhaps 3
decades ago, and applied them to my own life. I trust that many of you will
reread the Book of Job as I have just done -- and then take very special
note of the Chaplain's words to desperate soldiers, and apply them to your
life also. What Chambers thought of the church in his day and the
wishy-washy Gospel that came forth from it, might well apply to our
21stCentury Church also.

 Don't settle for a watered-down, pablum-oriented Gospel. Settle for a
manly, Truth-oriented, Realistic Gospel that can take you out of the
doldrums of mediocrity, and catapult you into the Glorious Possibility of a
life hid with God in Christ!

 Your friend -- Jim Watt


  *TO SUBSCRIBE – Please Email:
**jmbetter-subscribe at skagitattic.com<jmbetter-subscribe at skagitattic.no-ip.org>
*

*TO UNSUBSCRIBE – Please email:
**jmbetter-unsubscribe at skagitattic.com<jmbetter-unsubscribe at skagitattic.no-ip.org>
*

*FOR ARCHIVE ARTICLES – Web:**
**http://skagitattic.com/pipermail/jmbetter/<http://skagitattic.no-ip.org/pipermail/jmbetter/>
** *
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://2rbetter.org/pipermail/mailing/attachments/20080710/f541faa1/attachment.htm>