WHAT VALUE DO YOU PLACE ON ME GOD?

THE DISCOVERY OF SELF

"Behold, I am of small account."—JOB 40:4

"What shall a man give in exchange for his life?"—MATTHEW 16:26

"God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son."—JOHN 3:16

At this point in the Book of Job we find our­selves beyond the controversy between himself and his three friends. Their voices are silent. Moreover, the voice of the last speaker, Elihu, whose address proved that he had a profounder understanding of life than the other three, had been suddenly disturbed, and so silenced. His speech was cut short abruptly by the satire of heaven, as the voice of God was heard speak­ing out of the whirlwind,

"Who is this that darkeneth counsel
By words without knowledge?"

Then immediately the Voice for which Job had been waiting, thus heard out of the whirl­wind, silencing the last of his philosopher friends, addressed itself directly to Job, and began thus,

"Gird up now thy loins like a man;

For I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto Me."

God addressed Job as an intelligent human personality, and in doing so ignored all the things of his circumstances. We can still picture Job sitting in his sorrow, stripped of everything upon which men naturally depend for the experiences and realizations of life; his wealth gone, his children swept out, his health gone, the partnership of his wife in faith gone; all his acquaintances absent; and the little group of friends having utterly mis­understood him. So far as circumstances were concerned, he is seen as a derelict, possessing nothing.

The first words of God to him remind him that he still had his own personality:

"Gird up now thy loins like a man."

Having thus called him to attention, the great Divine speech continued, and in it no reference was made to the sufferings of Job; no explanation was offered of anything that had transpired. God offered him no philosophy to account for his position. What He did was to bring Job face to face with the universe in which he lived; and then to ask him if he found himself able to govern that universe. That is a blunt summary of the speech of God, but it does give us the essential things thereof. Facing the universe, Job was brought to the consideration of inanimate life, and animate life; to the contemplation of the movements of seasons, currents of wind, of snow and storm. Then he was asked whether he were equal, either to the creation of what he saw, or to its government. The point of the argu­ment was a question, seeing he could not do these things, how could he be equal to perfect understanding of God, or argument with Him.

In the light of that unveiling there came to Job a discovery of himself by comparison, and this great cry escaped him:

"Behold, I am of small account."

It is as though he had said; by comparison, I am nothing. What right have I to have made the protestations which have escaped my lips, or to claim that the God of the universe should

do anything for me? It was by comparison a true vision of himself.

It is of the utmost importance that we under­stand correctly what Job really said. The Old Version rendered it:

"Behold, I am vile,"

Which was a perfectly correct translation in the time of King James, because then vile did not mean what it has come to mean in the process of the years. In the Hebrew word there is no suggestion of moral failure. Quite literally it means, of no weight. Job did not here in the presence of the majesty of God confess moral perversity, but comparative in­significance.

David in one of his great songs expressed the same sense of littleness:

"When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers,

The moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained;

What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?

And the son of man, that Thou visitest him?"

         In this song David revealed, in the very question he asked, his sense of the dignity of man, that he was one of whom God was mindful, and one whom He visited. Nevertheless it is the same sense of the greatness of God creating a con­sciousness of the comparative insignificance of personality.

The cry of Job was a great cry. God had called upon him to gird up his loins as a man, and he did so, and his greatness is seen in the fact that he was able to grasp in thought the greatness of God, and to make his comparison. When we say that we are unable to grasp the universe, the infinite, we really are showing that we have already done it. We cannot interpret all that lies within it; but man's greatness lies in the fact that he can conceive the universe. The man who can say, "I am of small account," is proving in the saying that intellectually he grasps the idea of the universe, and of the Divine relation thereto. It is im­possible to suggest the greatness of the universe to a dog. A dog has intelligence and emotion and will power. Indeed, it may be said that a dog has faith in his master; but no dog can believe in anything beyond his immediate consciousness. No animal can grasp the idea of a universe. Man is able so to do, and in the doing of it is revealing the greatness and dignity of personality in itself. Was it not Kepler who said that all scientific investigation was proof of man's ability to think the thoughts of God after Him? Nevertheless this unveiling of the majesty and power of God, while revealing the dignity of man in his ability to conceive of it, must inevitably produce in his mind the sense of his comparative insignificance. It was this that found expression in Job's declaration, "Behold, I am of small account."

We now turn to ask what Jesus has to say to that consciousness in man; and the first thing to be said is that never by any word He uttered did He agree that this declaration of Job is the final truth about man. He con­fronted men as He found them, with degraded conceptions of themselves, and He demanded that they deny, not the essential fact of their personality, but the sum-total of their thinking about themselves, resulting from their sin and rebellion against God. He did this, moreover, in order that they might discover the true majesty of their life according to Divine pur­pose. The mastery of Jesus which first humbles a man to the dust in denial lifts him, when yielded to, into the realm of the glory and majesty of his being. That is but to sum­marize.

From the teaching of our Lord we take two statements, separated as to time of their utter­ance, but united in a revelation of a funda­mental philosophy, as they give us two views which are complementary to each other. The first of these was His question:

"What shall a man give in exchange for his life?"

A question revealing His sense of the intrinsic value of a man. The other statement is that of the opening sentence of the great word of the Gospel:

"God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son."

In that word we find a revelation of the value of a man in the thought of God.

As to the first:

"What shall a man give in exchange for his life?"

That question followed another:

"What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and forfeit his life?"

In that question He employed the terms of the market-place. He said in effect, Strike a balance. On one side He placed the whole world, and as we watch, we seem to see the weight of the world, its values, its riches, heavily weighting the scales. Now into the other scale put a man; and in the thought of our Lord, the weight of the man is far more than that of the world. The measure in which men have at any time been able to possess the world demonstrates the absolute truth of the suggested comparison. Men have constantly been busy attempting to "corner" things. They have never been quite successful; but supposing, said Jesus in effect, that a man could "corner" everything, and lose his soul in the process, what would it profit him?

"Behold, I am of small account," said Job. The answer of Jesus is that taking a man, and putting him into the balances, he is worth more, and is weightier than the whole world.

The second question of our Lord in this connection emphasizes the truth:

"What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"

This question presumes that a man has sold himself, and so has lost his personality. The question is as to what a man shall give to regain that which has been lost. There is no answer to the question. The Lord left it as a question. If we face it, we discover its searching nature. If, perhaps, we have gained the world, and in the process lost our personality, what shall we give to regain that personality? If we say we will give the world back for it, we discover that the thing lost is too valuable to be repurchased in that way. If we say we will give ourselves to regain ourselves, we are arguing in a vicious circle, for are we not sold, and so lost?

It is interesting here to remind ourselves that before the controversy between Job and his friends, Satan uttered his opinion of a man, as he said:

"All that a man hath will he give for his life."

Here Jesus was corroborating that by asking a question, What will he give? "I am of small account," said this man in the long ago, as he gazed upon the majesty and the glory of God. Now the voice of God, speaking through His incarnate Son, says in effect, however true that may be, it is not all the truth.

Then when the question of Jesus has brought man face to face with the value of his own personality, and with the fact that if he have bartered it for anything, he has no means of buying it back, we hear Him declaring that:

"God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son."

That is God's vision of the worth of a man. The mystery of that is ineffable and unfathom­able, but it remains a clear declaration and statement. To save men from utterly perish­ing, God gave His only begotten Son.

Standing in the midst of the universe, a being conscious of the majesty and the might of the wisdom and the power of God, I say with perfect honesty and accuracy, "I am of small account." Standing in the presence of the Son of God, and listening to His teaching, I find that I am of greater value than the whole world, and to the heart of God of such value, that in order to my recovery He gave His only begotten Son.

All that is so full of light as to be blinding; but Faber expressed the sense of it marvelously when he wrote:

"How Thou cant think so well of us,

And be the God Thou art,

Is darkness to my intellect,

But sunshine to my heart."

Right daringly, I would write four lines to accompany those of Faber, and I would write them thus:

"And Thou dost think so well of us,

Because of what Thou art,

Thy love illumes my intellect,

And fills with fear my heart!"

We stand amid the beauty of the world and the glory of the sky and the majesty of the universe, and realize inevitably that, by com­parison, we are of small account.

Yet, as David saw, God is mindful of us, and visits us; and when He visited us in the Son of His love, He came to reveal the fact to us that each individual of us is worth more than all the world, and are so dear to Him, that for our deliverance He gave His only begotten Son.