Job 28, Isaiah 54, The Fruit of the Spirit and the Redemptive Gifts

One of my favorite things to do is research, and yes, I do enjoy watching the light bulbs come on.
I am the sort of person who mines for the deep gems. It is my heart and hardwiring.  The personally deepest passage pair in Scripture in my experience is Job 28:1-11 and Isaiah 54. 
Now, I understand that Job 28 is talking about wisdom using the analogy of mining, but, lest we gloss over the treasures in the first eleven verses in running towards the purpose of the passage, consider some of these nuggets.
Man puts an end to darkness
And searches out the farthest limit
the ore in gloom and deep darkness
Job 28:3
He opens shafts in a valley away from where anyone lives;
they are forgotten by travelers;
they hand in the air far away from mankind; they swing to and fro
Job 28:4
As for the earth, out of it comes bread,
but underneath it is turned up as by fire.
Job 28:5
Its stones are the place of sapphires,
And it has dust of gold.
Job 28:6
Bread over, gems under. Stones where we find sapphire. Deep lapis lazuli. Surest azure. Deep as the ocean and expansive as the heart that dwells with wisdom.
Fire is lain to every root in search of these things.
The exquisite imagery portrayed here, yes, lades us with symbolism, and yes we consider that wisdom is the object of this passage. But the imagery itself just moves deeply the heart of the one hunting. Many times, we hunt for wisdom amidst the dirt. The precious among the self-described-common. The light among the heart full of darkness.
True, he who wins souls is wise, but that statement is not merely winning souls to saving knowledge, that is one that wins trust, and wins favor, and wins guile-free communication, and wins friendship, and wins the fullest expression of tenderness and affection in friendship. Not merely sexual, but a deep emotional transfer between trench buddies.
Jonathan, your love excelled that of women.
And before the dirty mind runs with that into the realms of homoeroticism, that is not what David is referring to. He is referring to comradeship. He is referring to the teamwork that results from a work history, a work history that involves warfare alongside someone with whom the heart is knitted.
I get that sentiment.
I have a deep and longstanding friendship with someone with whom I have fought the kingdom of darkness. I have known him for nearly 20 years. We have laughed together, wept together, mourned the loss of my first marriage together, prayed for wisdom and discernment, and ministered deliverance and emotional healing to one another, and for the last 16 years we have talked roughly once a week.
His funeral is not one to which I look forward. But I already have the comments I will make on that day of his passage from the one realm to the next.
There are bonds of affection that come and grow as you deepen a spiritual connection with spiritual friends.
Common causes breed love. Raw time spent together in a common direction breed depth.
And as Job searched for that sort of connection among his friends, and found it lacking, and looked for it in unvarnished fashion in the reality of G-d, he found a real and unvarnished connection with G-d in friendship that few see, and yet is available to all.
And there is intimacy with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in death, in testing, in trial, in the midst of false accusations of those we once counted friends and counselors. Few know that intimacy. Some would even cringe at the idea and notion that Father G-d would ever demonstrate a tenderness of affection, and yet isn’t that what John 3:17 is about, and even John 3:16. He loved us, so he sent. And not just because he made a choice of his will while refusing to admit he didn’t like us. That whole “G-d can’t stand in the presence of sin” teaching is often paired with the mentality that even though we are saved, we are still poor, old, miserable, bastard sinners barely saved by grace. This trite pair of statements is used to trot out a mentality that G-d holds his nose and treats us like trash cans that he washes out, spray-paints with white paint, and tosses a shot of bleach in just to kill the stench
And it is a lie from the pit of hell. It is a solution to a complex problem that is simple, neat, and wrong.
You and I are not some illegitimate trash can that has been washed out and bleached and painted. We are not some unholy lump of clay mixed with a holy lump of clay. Romans 8 tears that mentality apart 39 ways.
We are not dual-natured, for the double-minded man is what? And G-d did not create us to be unstable and leave us in that path of instability.
And then the mate of the pair in Isaiah 54 which speaks to our identity.
First, read this in the context of the following thought. We love to go straight to Isaiah 54:17 and laud how no weapon formed against us shall prosper. But when the weapons that are forged against us do begin to prosper, we wonder why. What weakness in us caused those weapons to prosper?
And one problem is that we forget to go through the process and sequence of the first 16 verses in order to get to the 17th verse, or we resist it. Tempering and refining hurts.
Which brings us to that sequence
Verse 1: Sing
Verse 2: Build a place where he is welcome to dwell
Verse 3: Spread
Verse 4: Fear not, be loosed of your shame and reproach, as you receive dignity
Verse 5: Remember your Husband, the L-rd
Verse 6: Hear His calling of you
Verse 7: Remember the brief moment of His real or apparent desertion
Verse 8: Remember that by seasons and by turns there will be times when he tests you and corrects you, and remember that the season of correction and anger is momentary compared to the season of compassion
Verse 9: Walk with G-d like Noah
Verse 10: Compare yourselves to the mountains, o crown of his creation
Verse 11: Remember in your affliction that your base identity is precious and good (Genesis 1 for those that want to fight this theology of redeemed humanity. We are tov in his sight, we are transformed according to 2 Cor 5:17)
Verse 12: He will build us
Verse 13: He will teach our children carefully and bring them ultimate wholeness
Verse 14: He will establish us as righteous
Verse 15: We will cause strife from the enemy to FAIL
Verse 16: The BLACKSMITH’S HAMMER SHALL FALL ON US AND TEMPER US
SO THAT…
Verse 17: No Weapon formed against us will prosper and the tongues aligned against us shall cease.
You are a gem, follower of Jesus.
In light of that, consider the following gem, mined out of Scripture.
There are seven gifts found in Romans 12:6-8, and these are the Motivational Gifts or Redemptive Gifts. They are the gifts of Prophet, Servant, Teacher, Exhorter, Giver, Ruler/Judge/Deliverer, and Mercy.
I was sitting in a place of meditation one day, listening to a teaching on the Fruit of the spirit one day, and had a thought.
Love applies to all, and self-control applies to all. We are held in place by self-control, rooted and grounded in the soil of the love of G-d. The fruit of love is the life-giving trunk of the tree, and the middle seven fruits of joy through gentleness are the strongest battle for each believer to possess and maintain.
1. Joy for the Prophet instead of his or her typical cranky attitude.
2. Peace for the Servant when they are being treated as a garbage can, or are being reviled. Important here is for the Servant to be a Peacemaker rather than a Peacekeeper. Expanding on the difference between the Peacemaker and the Peacekeeper, Servants in their authority must set the tone rather than letting the tone set them.
3. Patience for the Teacher who must be possessed of a patience to teach, when others are rejecting them in the revelations they receive.
4. Kindness for the Exhorter who in response to rejection must maintain their poise with mouthy people, especially believers.
5. Goodness for the Giver who despite their playing the system and looking for all the angles must continue to treat others after the design given to them by Father (tov, good).
6. Faithfulness for the Ruler/Judge/Deliverer who must learn to flow in faithfulness despite their desire to break off a relationship with people who act in real or perceived betrayal. Deep faithfulness must keep the RJD anchored and it is a fight.
7. Gentleness for the Mercy who must be gentle with themselves and others when their counsel or incomplete input is rejected by others.
These seven are benchmarks for the spirit of the strong and high-functioning of each gift.
So, consider your gift, and consider these things here. These will be your sharpest place of fight and the place where you will be tempted to throw in the towel, especially when your design is assaulted.
Be blessed, gang.