19.12.1p - Job - Dust & Ashes

Job Is A Righteous Man

Probably, around the time of Abraham, we read of a man named Job. This man was very wealthy, and he had seven sons and three daughters. Job was a very righteous man. He fears God and lives his life trying to please God and do good for others. In Chapter 1 of the book of Job, we read that God recognized Job’s righteousness. He is the most upright man on the earth. He tells Satan about him, and Satan says, “You have put a hedge around him... You have blessed the work of his hands... touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.” So God lets Satan touch all that he has.

Satan Destroys Job’s Possessions

In one day, Job loses all of his possessions and all of his children. Job responded by saying, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job did not sin when Satan attacked him and took away all of his possessions. This is an amazing testimony to Job’s love for God and his perspective on the things of this world.

Satan Covers Job With Pain

Satan returned to God again and told God that Job would curse God to his face if he touched his bone and flesh. God allowed Job to be covered with boils from head to toe. To make matters worse, Job’s wife, seeing his torment and agony, tells Job to curse God and die. But Job resists this temptation and says, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” The text says, “In all this Job did not sin with his lips.” The temptation was even greater with his own wife tempting him to curse God, but he remains steadfast and faithful.

Three Friends “Comfort” Job

However, time is the ultimate test of one’s faithfulness. If we were to skip ahead, we would find in Chapter 7:3 that months have passed by, and Job is still in misery. Three of his closest friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, come to comfort him. When they show up, they didn’t even recognize the man they once knew. Immediately, they begin to weep and wail. They tear their clothes and sprinkle dust on their heads. Then, they sit in silence for seven days.

Finally, Job speaks up and tells them that he wishes that he had never been born. He wishes that he had died at birth and that he could die right now so that the misery would be over. Satan accused God of hedging Job in blessings, and in 3:23, Job accuses God of hedging him in suffering. This does not sit well with the three friends. Job’s words of distress begin a series of discourses where the friends try to find Job’s problems and solve them. People take these discourses in many different directions, but I will try to summarize my understanding of them.

Discourse 1

Eliphaz

The first discourse begins with Eliphaz pointing out the only cause that he can find for suffering like this. Surely, God has decided to punish Job for the sins he has committed (4:7-9). This is a common idea to us today. We all sin, and it is evident that the worst sinners will suffer as a result of their sins. Proverbs writes much about that. There is a lot of truth to what Eliphaz is saying. The wicked do suffer, but we know that Job is not wicked. We know that can’t be the reason behind his suffering because we have the first two chapters of this book. Eliphaz is convinced, so he tells Job to call out for God and see that he won’t answer because Job has sinned (5:1). Then, he self righteously tells Job that he should do like Eliphaz would do and seek God (5:8, 17-20). Again, these would be valid words if Job’s sin was the reason he suffers.

Job

Job responds to Eliphaz by saying that he wishes God would crush him (6:8-10). Eliphaz has not comforted Job at all. Job points out in verse 21 that everyone sees his fall and is afraid because the righteous aren’t supposed to suffer like this. In 6:24-26, Job says that Eliphaz should tell him what to repent of. He feels like life is hopeless, so he decides to speak without restraining what is on his mind (7:11). This is never a good idea. James tells us that the tongue is a fire that destroys. Opening his mouth like that is asking for trouble. He then accuses God of continually attacking him and wants to know why (7:19-21). This will only fuel the friends because they do not understand what Job is feeling.

Bildad

Bildad tells Job that God does not pervert justice. If Job will repent and seek God, he will be blessed again. Essentially, he believes Eliphaz over Job, and he attempts to encourage Job to repent.

Job

Job knows that God can see his sin, and he wishes God would wipe him out for it. Again he states that he is blameless, and he accuses God of destroying the innocent. In 9:32-35, Job says that he wants to argue his case before God, but he needs someone to stand as an arbiter between him and God. In Chapter 10, he starts to argue against God, saying that God does not understand what he is going through (10:4-5). At the end of this response, he asks God to leave him alone so he can die. He feels like God is keeping him alive to punish him (10:20-22).

Zophar

Zophar cannot take these words from Job. He claims to have the truth as he says, “God exacts of you less than your guilt deserves.” He claims that Job is a great sinner who deserves worse than all of this calamity. He needs to repent and find God’s blessings. At this point, these guys sound like a broken record player. They keep saying the same thing over and over.

Job

Job says that he knows all of these things are true. But he has not rebelled against God to provoke God to wrath. As he answers Zophar, we start to see Job slip off into faithlessness. He starts to point out the difficulty of this life beyond himself in an attempt to argue against his friends, and in the midst of this, we see that he is swelling up with pride as he accuses God of being unjust.

Job 12:1--6 (ESV) --- 1 Then Job answered and said: 2 “No doubt you are the people, and wisdom will die with you. 3 But I have understanding as well as you; I am not inferior to you. Who does not know such things as these? 4 I am a laughingstock to my friends; I, who called to God and he answered me, a just and blameless man, am a laughingstock. 5 In the thought of one who is at ease there is contempt for misfortune; it is ready for those whose feet slip. 6 The tents of robbers are at peace, and those who provoke God are secure, who bring their god in their hand.

This shows how Job is struggling to understand what God is doing. Apparently, he feels like God has been slipping and not protecting the blameless. From this point, he will continually wonder why the wicked are getting away with everything, and he suffers what they should receive.

Discourses 2 & 3

In Chapter 13, Job begins the second round of discourses. The second and third rounds sound a lot like the first, but we start to see a progression in Job and his friends. As the friends hear Job, they become more and more convinced that he is wicked. They double down on their accusations, saying that Job has “crushed and abandoned the poor; he has seized a house that he did not build” (20:19). They say all of the horrible judgments God will give to the wicked. Then, they conclude by saying, “So you better repent Job!”

Job Quiets His Friends

Job still feels like there is no hope, and he wishes that he could die, but eventually, he starts to get angry (18:4). He presses his friends more and more about why the wicked are blessed while the righteous suffer. He pushes them and pushes them, but they cannot answer him.

Job 21:23--26 (ESV) --- 23 One dies in his full vigor, being wholly at ease and secure, 24 his pails full of milk and the marrow of his bones moist. 25 Another dies in bitterness of soul, never having tasted of prosperity. 26 They lie down alike in the dust, and the worms cover them.

Job also accuses his friends of trying to defame him so that they can take his property legally. It certainly seems that way as they keep bringing up how God takes from the wicked and gives to the righteous. (20:10, 18, 29, 21:27-29). Job has no one to give his inheritance to, so he thinks they have come to take his land on top of everything else. Apparently, all of this argument by Job has had its effect. Bildad only gives a few short words in his defense, and this shames Zophar so much that he doesn’t even speak when it is his turn.

Job Wonders, “Can Man Live Again?”

One interesting thing does happen in the second discourse. Job starts to wonder about whether something could be possible. In 14:7, he says that a tree has more hope than he does because after it is cut down, it can sprout again at the scent of water. This seems like Job understands how God could renew him, but he ends up saying, “Man lies down and rises not again.” He even asks the question, “If a man dies, shall he live again?” If he knew this was true, he would wait for that time of renewal. He says that if that were true, then surely, God would cover his iniquity. But in the end, he concludes that God destroys man’s hope. There is no hope for Job until Chapter 19.

Job 19:25--27 (ESV) --- 25 For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. 26 And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, 27 whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!

Job is begging for someone to come and plead his case before God. He feels that even though he has suffered as a wicked person, he is not evil. He keeps asking for the court scene with God (23:3-7). At the end of Job’s final rant, he lays out his understanding that the wicked ought to suffer, and the righteous ought to be well off. But that is not the case with him. In Chapters 29 and 30, Job describes his greatness, his fall, and he tells of all the sins he has not committed. This section ends with Job once again calling for God to hear his case and give him an understanding of his sin.

Elihu’s Words of Wisdom

His three friends have nothing to say to Job. But then a new Character arrives on the scene. This character has been there all along and heard all of the conversations. The first thing that we read about Elihu is that he is burning with anger. He is angry with Job because Job was constantly justifying himself, and he was angry with Job’s friends because they have done all of this talking without answering Job’s questions.

The first thing Elihu does is explain his silence up until this point. Elihu is a young guy who wanted to be respectful of his elders. He wanted to let them have time to work it all out, but they have gone nowhere, and the conversation has gone from bad to worse with no comfort for Job. In Chapter 33, he commends himself as being on the side of God, and he states that he believes Job is as well (33:6-7). Even so, he points out Job’s failures.

Job 33:9--13 (ESV) --- 9 You say, ‘I am pure, without transgression; I am clean, and there is no iniquity in me. 10 Behold, he finds occasions against me, he counts me as his enemy, 11 he puts my feet in the stocks and watches all my paths.’ 12 “Behold, in this you are not right. I will answer you, for God is greater than man. 13 Why do you contend against him, saying, ‘He will answer none of man’s words’?

The next words out of Elihu’s mouth explain why Job has been suffering. He tells Job that there are two ways that God speaks to man. He speaks to man through visions (33:14-18), and he speaks through pain and suffering (33:19-22). Then, he says that the man who is in pain needs someone to come and show him what he is to learn from his suffering. He needs a mediator to tell him what is right. God provides this mediator so that man can live again and have the “light of life.” Then, Elihu says, “I desire to justify you.” He wants to be the man who helps him address God in a way that will profit him.

The next two chapters point out how Job has failed by claiming to be righteous and simultaneously falling into the sin of pride. In Chapter 36, Elihu wants Job to understand that the righteous and the wicked suffer differently. The wicked perish, but the righteous learn how they are failing. In verse 8-9, he says that they learn their transgressions. In verses 10 and 15, he says that their ears are opened to instruction. Elihu wants Job to learn that he thinks too much of himself and too little of God.

God Speaks

As Elihu is finishing his words, a storm is coming. In the midst of the storm, he tells Job that he has no idea what purpose God has in giving this storm. It could be for correction, or for his land, or for love (37:13). He says that men have no idea why God is doing what he is doing in the weather. Like the weather, thinking that we understand the purpose God has in suffering is arrogant and foolish.

Job 37:23--24 (ESV) --- 23 “The Almighty---we cannot find him; he is great in power; justice and abundant righteousness he will not violate. 24 Therefore men fear him; he does not regard any who are wise in their own conceit.”

As it turns out, this storm has come in to correct Job. The Lord speaks to him through the tornado that the storm produces. Can you imagine the fear that this would create? The first words from God

Job 38:2--5 (ESV) --- 2 “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? 3 Dress for action like a man; I will question you, and you make it known to me. 4 “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. 5 Who determined its measurements---surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it?

God goes on to ask Job what he knows about making this world work. He basically restates the words of Elihu. But God uses his infinite wisdom and knowledge to talk about how he created the world, how he maintains the universe, and how he created every living creature on earth. When he speaks about the creatures, he mentions explicitly the animals that Job and his friends have been talking about. He is trying to help them understand that they don’t know the first thing about these animals.

Then, in Chapter 40, he asks Job, what fault he finds with God since he is so wise. Job says, “I am of small account, what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth. I have spoken once, and I will not answer; twice, but I will proceed no further.” God is not done yet. He tells Job to dress for action like a man and put up a fight. If Job can bring down the proud as God does, then maybe he will stand a chance. If he can conquer Behemoth or Leviathan, perhaps then he can stand a chance.

Job repents saying, “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” Then, the book ends with God rebuking Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar and restoring the fortunes of Job’s by doubling his wealth and giving him the same number of sons and daughters. Job would go on to live another 140 years.

The Message

I think the message of this book is unmistakable. We cannot stand against God. His righteousness will always be beyond us. We cannot trust in our own wisdom and knowledge to comfort us when times get hard and when we suffer. We must humbly admit that we have no clue what God is doing. But as we look at this story, with the information of chapters 1 and 2, we see that God allows his righteous one to suffer so that he has an opportunity to receive glory. Satan sees through Job that God is worthy of praise and honor just for being God. It’s not about the blessings Job receives. It’s about honoring God for who he is and the mere fact that God has given us life on earth.

We also see that as our suffering goes on, it becomes hard to focus on God and give him the honor he deserves. Job’s righteous response to his suffering was only foiled when his friends tried to help him. His friends put him through a third test, which revealed his pride and arrogance. Fortunately, Elihu stepped in to serve as a mediator for him. This became a learning experience, and he humbled himself.

What About Us?

We all go through a lot in life. We all need someone to help us understand what God is doing and why this life is so hard. Jesus is our mediator. He is the one who steps in to help us approach the throne of God with humility and find acceptance with him. Whatever our suffering and whatever our trial, we can trust in Jesus to bring us out of it, and through his word, we can come to know how we ought to live and find God to be our Heavenly Father. This is a great book to help us deal with the difficult stages of life and overcome feelings of doubting God’s righteousness or of pride and self-reliance. We all need someone to justify us, to help set us on the path to glorifying God, and to receive his blessings.