PERFECTING THE SAINTS

SERIES ONE
FELLOWSHIP FOR THE CHINESE-SPEAKING SERVING ONES IN NORTH AMERICA – 02.15.2026

Message Eight

I Had Heard of You by the Hearing of the Ear, but Now My Eye Sees You

Scripture reading: Job 42:5-6; John 1:14; 14:20-21; 1 Cor. 15:45; 2 Cor. 3:17-18; Eph. 3:16-17; 1 John 1:7

I.I had heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You; Therefore I abhor myself, and I repent in dust and ashes—Job 42:5-6:

A.Job gained God in his personal experience (apart from his knowledge of God according to traditional, vain knowledge) and abhorred himself—Job 42:5-6.

B.Although Job believed in God, feared God, and worshipped God, he was without God; “without God” means that he did not have God in him, that he did not have God’s element in his soul—42:5.

C.Spiritual things are gained once they are seen; for Job to see God was tantamount to gaining God; previously, God was merely a doctrine to Job, hence “the hearing of the ear”; now that he was enlightened by God, he saw God with his own eyes—42:5.

D.Once Job saw God, he did not confess any sin but abhorred himself and repented in dust and ashes; therefore, God was not dealing with his sin but with his self; the self is the soul—42:6.

II.Job’s problem was the lack of God’s element, not the problem of sin; God broke and enlightened him in order to work His element into him—Job 42:5-6:

A.Job was a perfect and upright man, but he was without God; this was the reason he was dealt with by God—1:1; 42:5.

B.When God’s light came, he knew how detestable he was; man’s words would not cause him to blame himself, but God’s light would cause him to be humbled—42:5-6.

C.Job’s opinion was the expression of his self; his opinion was his detestable self—42:3, 6.

D.God wanted Job to realize whether he was substituting his children for God or gaining God Himself—42:5.

III.To see God is to gain God; to gain God is to receive God in His element, life, and nature, so that we may be constituted with God—Job 42:5:

A.In Job 42:5 Job said, “I had heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You”; we can interpret Job’s seeing God as gaining God—42:5.

B.In the New Testament sense, to see God is to gain God; to gain God is to receive God in His element, life, and nature, so that we may be constituted with God—42:5.

C.God’s giving man a double portion of blessing prefigures God’s giving of Himself as The Spirit to man; the double portion of blessing must be God Himself—42:10.

D.God wants us to have more of God added into us—42:10.

IV.”I had heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You” is a turn from objective knowledge to subjective experience—Job 42:5:

A.We need to turn from merely having an objective knowledge of God to having a subjective experience of God—42:5.

B.Many Christians are still in Job’s age, having only an objective knowledge of God and lacking a subjective experience of God—42:5.

C.The clear, complete, and perfect revelation is in Paul’s writings, especially in the four books of Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians, which constitute the heart of the New Testament—Eph. 3:16-19.

D.If we read these four books, we will see clearly the meaning of gaining God—Eph. 3:16-19.

V.Today Christ as the life-giving Spirit dwells in our spirit to be our life, enabling us to subjectively experience Him—1 Cor. 15:45; 2 Cor. 3:17-18:

A.The Spirit is Christ Himself becoming the life-giving Spirit in resurrection—1 Cor. 15:45.

B.And the Lord is The Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom—2 Cor. 3:17.

C.But we all with unveiled face, beholding and reflecting like a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit—2 Cor. 3:18.

D.We need to exercise our spirit to contact this Christ who is the Spirit—2 Tim. 4:22; Rom. 8:4.

VI.We need to allow Christ to make His home in our hearts that we may enjoy all His riches, resulting in our being filled unto all the fullness of God—Eph. 3:16-19:

A.That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit into the inner man—Eph. 3:16.

B.That Christ may make His home in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love—Eph. 3:17.

C.May be full of strength to apprehend with all the saints what the breadth and length and height and depth are and to know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ—Eph. 3:18-19a.

D.That you may be filled unto all the fullness of God—Eph. 3:19b.

VII.If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from every sin—1 John 1:7:

A.The fellowship of life brings us into God’s presence and into God Himself; God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all—1 John 1:5.

B.When we are brought into the presence of God as light, our sins, transgressions, failures, and mistakes are exposed, and our daily life is regulated by this enlightening—1 John 1:7.

C.If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness—1 John 1:9.

D.Light is the presence of God; when we are brought into the presence of God as light, we can see God with our own eyes—1 John 1:5, 7.