The End Comes at the End: Job: The Wisdom of the Cross [Job 42:7-17]

NOW WE COME TO the marvelous conclusion of the book of Job.

[stand for the reading of the word]

“After the LORD had spoken these words to Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite: “My anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. Now therefore take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and offer up a burnt offering for yourselves. And my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly. For you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went and did what the LORD had told them, and the LORD accepted Job’s prayer.

And the LORD restored the fortunes of Job, when he had prayed for his friends. And the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before. Then came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and ate bread with him in his house. And they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him. And each of them gave him a piece of money and a ring of gold.

And the LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning. And he had 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, 1,000 yoke of oxen, and 1,000 female donkeys. He had also seven sons and three daughters. And he called the name of the first daughter Jemimah, and the name of the second Keziah, and the name of the third Keren-happuch [ha-puk]. And in all the land there were no women so beautiful as Job’s daughters. And their father gave them an inheritance among their brothers. And after this Job lived 140 years, and saw his sons, and his sons’ sons, four generations. And Job died, an old man, and full of days.” (Job 42:7-17)

The end comes at the end. And this is important because although we have reached the end of the book of Job, in our lives we are not yet at the end. When we wake up in the morning, what do we expect our day to be like? We may have expectations for a particular day, the prospect of a promotion at work or apprehension about a visit to the dentist. But in general what do we expect of a normal day?

For a Christian, what ought to be our idea of the normal Christian life? This is important because our idea of normality will govern whether we end up delighted or disappointed at the end of the day.

The book of Job ought to shape our expectation of the normal Christian life. We may think that a perverse suggestion since Job is such an extreme book, and yet it is true. Although the book of Job paints in primary colors how God treats his friends and placards before us supremely how he treats a peculiarly blameless believer, nonetheless we have no reason to expect that he will treat us in any radically different way if we belong to Christ.

We ended our last study at a moment of high drama where the Lord himself spoke to Job and Job responded. To break off there was a bit like those ice cream vans that play part of a tune and then suddenly stop partway through, and we wait for the end, the resolution, some sense of closure, some rounding off of the tune so that we can relax and go home knowing it is finished. We want to know what happens next.

In 42:7–17 we have the closure to the story, the resolution, the conclusion, the end. But what are we to make of it? On the face of it, it is a bit of an anticlimax. It goes back from poetry to prose, and frankly it feels a bit lacking in imagination.

After the dramatic imagery and the soaring heights of the poetry, it feels like a bit of a comedown: the Lord has a quiet word of rebuke for the friends, Job prays for them, and they are forgiven (vv. 7–9). Then it all ends happily: Job is restored to greater prosperity, is given a new family, and generally rides off into the sunset (vv. 10–17). Is that not a bit flat, a bit sugary even? And yet there are depths in this conclusion that are neither shallow nor sugary.

Alongside this final prose section of Job, let us take for our text a verse in the letter of James. James is speaking to believers under pressure; he wants them to persevere, and he writes: “Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful” (James 5:11).

James focuses on two people: Job with his perseverance and the Lord with his compassion and mercy. Let us begin with Job.

The Perseverance of Job

Job’s perseverance or “steadfastness” or patience is an active quality, a pressing on, not a passive sitting back and letting it all wash over him (James 5:11). I want us to consider two aspects of Job’s perseverance—perseverance in warfare and perseverance while waiting.

Perseverance in Warfare

The book of Job is so refreshingly honest about this. Although Christians sometimes groan at the prospect of studying Job, again and again they are surprised and refreshed by the sheer honesty of this book. We have seen that Job the believer is fighting a battle.

There is a battle going on; the Lord has been challenged by Satan, the Leviathan, a monster masquerading as god. And as they war, it is not so much that Job is on the battlefield; Job is the battlefield. The battle for the soul of Job is fought out in his struggles as the monster tears at his life. It is a dark warfare. Satan fills Job’s mind with images of despair, darkness, death, and futility. Job is taken through the valley of the shadow of death.

He is taken there as a believer suffering for his faith; he is suffering because he is a believer. We saw this in Job 1, 2. God singles out Job and says in essence, “Look, there’s a believer.” Satan attacks Job for precisely that reason. Job is not about human suffering in general; it is about the suffering endured by a believer because he or she is a believer. Job is being persecuted not by human enemies but by Satan. He endures disaster, tragedy, and sickness because he fears God.

Supremely this dark warfare is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the blameless believer. And as we see in the Gospels, Satan focuses his attack on Jesus with an even greater ferocity than upon Job. From Herod’s attempt to have him slaughtered as a toddler through the temptations in the wilderness to the agony of the cross, Satan tears at Jesus—by temptation, discouragement, loneliness, betrayal, misunderstanding, and agony. Day by day the Lord Jesus awoke to dark warfare.

Indeed Job is fulfilled in Jesus, and every follower of Jesus is called to follow in the footsteps of Job. Job foreshadows Jesus, and the disciple cannot avoid the shadow. As Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you [plural], that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you [singular] that your faith may not fail” (Luke 22:31, 32).

Jesus did not pray that his disciples would be spared the sifting and that Satan would be forbidden his demand. Rather he expected the demand would be granted, as it had been for Job. And he prays that in this painful sifting Simon’s faith may not fail. We ought to expect this.

Every morning we ought to wake up and say to ourselves, “There is a vicious, dark spiritual battle being waged over me today.” Satan is very busy; wherever on earth there is a believer walking with God in loving fear, God says, “Look, there’s a believer,” and Satan says, “May I attack him/her? I want to prove whether this is a real believer.” And sometimes the Lord grants that terrible permission. When he does, we ought not to be surprised, “as though something strange were happening” to us (1 Peter 4:12).

So here is one inescapable element of the normal Christian life: spiritual warfare. That expectation relates to our circumstances. The second expectation relates to our attitude of heart.

Perseverance in Waiting

Job perseveres by waiting, an active prayer-filled waiting. In 42:7 God says to Eliphaz, “You have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” Now on the face of it this is a surprising thing for God to say. It is not surprising to us that God says the friends were wrong, but it ought to surprise us that the Lord says that in some way Job is right, for again and again Job says terrible things about God. And yet in spite of the fact that Job charges God with being a wrongdoer (which is both serious and untrue, and God has rebuked him for it), God can say at the end that Job has spoken rightly of him. How is this?

It is possible that God’s affirmation refers only to Job’s humble response to God’s speeches (40:3–5; 42:1–6), and it is true that this is “the simplest and clearest explanation” of what God says here. And yet I think there is a deeper truth here. It seems to me that God’s affirmation applies somehow not only to what Job has said but to who Job is.

The answer would seem to be this: the friends have a theological scheme, a tidy system, well-swept, well-defined, and entirely satisfying to them. But they have no relationship with the God behind their formulas. There is no wonder, no awe, no longing, no yearning, and no prayer to meet and speak with and hear and see the God of their formulas. They are content with the rules of The religious System they have invented.

Now some of their statements considered on their own are correct. For example, in 5:13 Eliphaz says that God “catches the wise in their own craftiness”; the clever person will be called to account by God. That is true, and we have seen that Paul quotes Eliphaz with approval in 1 Corinthians 3:19. But although the friends make some statements that are true, they do not as a whole speak rightly of God because they have no relationship with God, no seeking of God, and no longing for God. For them he is a dead doctrine and an abstract theory.

But Job does speak rightly. We have seen that one of the great motifs of Job’s laments is that he longs to bring his struggles to God himself. Job cannot be satisfied with any system: he must know God and speak to the living God. He must, for nothing else will satisfy him. This heart longing of Job is the core reason why the Lord says Job has spoken rightly of him. And of course it leads to Job’s speaking rightly of the Lord in his humble responses to the Lord’s speeches.

The rightness of Job’s heart throughout leads to the repentance of Job’s lips at the end. The unambiguously “right” thing he says is at the end, but all his words have sprung from the heart of a believer. While the friends want a system, Job wants God. The friends would not have been at church prayer meetings—they had no need. But Job would if he could: “Oh, that I knew where I might find him” (23:3).

The Lord’s response to Job is instructive. In his affirmation of Job, in spite of the terrible things Job says about God, “we are forcibly reminded that God, for all his rough handling of his servant’s rude demands, reads between the lines and listens to the heart.”

We ought to expect that the normal Christian life will be full of unresolved waiting and yearning for God. This is the mark of a believer, of real and personal religion. So we should never be fatalists. A fatalist looks at circumstances and says, “What will be, will be—there is some impersonal power up there sorting it all out.” Sometimes we Christians say that, but we ought not to.

We ought to say, “What is God doing, the God who is my maker and my friend? Where is this personal God in all this? If only I could speak to him; if only I might find him.” Such directed, prayer-filled, intentional waiting is the integrating arrow of hope that holds together the authentic Christian life.

So we learn from the perseverance of Job that we ought to expect warfare and waiting, struggle and prayer. Now let us move on from the perseverance of Job to the mercy of God.

The Compassion and Mercy of the Lord

James says, “You have … seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful” (James 5:11).

Few of us would have described God’s behavior in Job as “compassionate and merciful.” After all, was it not under God’s sovereignty that Satan was sent to destroy Job’s possessions, to kill Job’s children, and to ruin Job’s health? Yes, it was. The book is quite clear about that. Is that compassion and mercy? Not obviously. It would be more common to say of God that he never really cared about Job, that he is some kind of bitter and distant deity.

In the last sermon we considered the analogy of Satan as a fierce dog biting someone and yet held on a leash by its master. However, in normal life we hold the owner responsible for the violence inflicted by the dog, and the book of Job makes no attempt to dodge this objection.

We saw at the start that there is no hesitation both at start and finish in insisting that the Lord alone is the Sovereign God. That Satan is not an equal and opposite power, so that God says, “I’m doing my best to protect you, but I can’t win them all.” There is no dualism here. God is in control, and he is responsible for what happens.

So what does James mean when he says, “The Lord is compassionate and merciful” (5:11)? He says this because of “the purpose of the Lord,” referring to the end or goal for which God has been working. We see this end in Job 42. Here are three elements from Job 42 of the compassion and mercy of the Lord.

Humbling (42:1–6)

Let us go back to verses 1–6 for a moment and see how God loves Job enough to humble him. When God speaks, Job responds with few words and silent awe. In 42:1–6. Job says:

Therefore I despise myself,

and repent in dust and ashes. (42:6)

When Job says he repents, he does not mean the friends have been right all along, that Job has secret sins and finally has to admit them and repent. He maintains his integrity at the end as he has all along. But he realizes he has been presumptuous: he has spoken of things he does not understand and has overreached himself (42:3). Now in the presence of the living God he bows down in silent worship.

And that is a good thing! For Job to be brought low so that he despises himself and exalts God is not a bad thing. We understand that for us to go around thinking we are worms in relation to our fellow human beings is a destructive thing. That kind of inferiority complex, pathological low self-esteem, is not to be encouraged. In a sense it’s better to say, “I’m OK; you’re OK,” as the pop culture says it.

But in the presence of the living God, to bow down low and to grasp how great he is and how small I am is a healthy thing—because it is true. It is a mark of the love of God that he brings Job low, for this is where a creature ought to be in relations to his creator.

That is true for us as well. We often pray for success, both for us and for others; we pray for good exam results, for good job offers, etc. And yet so often success leads to pride, and pride to self-confidence, and self-confidence to independence from God, and independence from God leads to Hell.

The most deeply compassionate and merciful thing God can do is to humble us and bring us low so that we bow before him and lean on him and trust him. That is the first mark of the compassion of God: he loves enough to humble us, as he humbled Job, under his mighty hand.

Perhaps for some of us there has been, or there will be, a time in life when everything goes wrong. A time perhaps of pain and failure, even of disaster and misery. And it may be that God in his compassion is bringing us low so that we will lean on him alone. This was for Job a hard truth, but it was nonetheless a mark of the mercy of God that he would bring Job very low.

The second aspect of God’s compassion and mercy is...

Acceptance (42:7–9)

The technical term is justification. God vindicates Job; he declares him to be in the right. God acknowledges Job as one of his people. We saw earlier how desperately Job longs for this. God does this in three ways.

First, in verse 7 he says that Job has spoken rightly of him, whereas the friends have not.

Second, in verse 7 (once) and verse 8 (twice) God calls Job “my servant” exactly as he had done in Job 1, 2. This is a title of dignity; it is how God characteristically described Moses and the prophets. It is a word that speaks of covenant relationship.

Third, in an ironic reversal the friends are told that Job will pray for them. If we had been Job’s friends, we would have been stunned, for we would have expected God to take us to one side and say, “I want you three, because you are righteous and the prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects [James 5:16], to pray for that sinner Job.” But in fact God does the reverse.

Job, the intercessor and bearer of sacrifices at the start (1:5), now intercedes for those who offer sacrifices at the end (42:8). And this means it is Job who is righteous, justified, vindicated, in right relation with the Lord. Only people in right relationship with God can pray and expect their prayers to be answered.

The one who longed for a mediator, Job, (9:33; 16:19; 19:25) becomes the mediator and foreshadows the only mediator between God and people, the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5). Indeed, Job “has always been a man of prayer. Even his fiercest denunciations have been a determination not to let God go until he blesses him.”

So in these three ways God makes it clear that he accepts Job. “This man is mine; he belongs to me, and I will make sure he is mine forever.’ ” And this justification, this right relationship with God, is what Job has so deeply longed for throughout the drama. It is a mark of the mercy of God that he vindicates Job.

And if we are in Christ, God will vindicate us. At the end he will look on each of us and say, “This one is mine; they belong to me; he or she is my honored servant.” It is hard to think of a greater mark of God’s compassion and mercy than this, however hard the path we tread to get there may be.

The third aspect of God’s compassion and mercy is...

Blessing in the End (42:10–17)

God blesses Job. The end comes at the end. He gives him greater prosperity in a restoration of his fortunes (v. 10) that foreshadows the return of Judah from exile and ultimately foreshadows the resurrection, ascension, and heavenly rule of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Job receives sympathy and comfort that echoes the intention of his three friends (compare v. 11 with 2:11) but achieves that which they failed to achieve. God gives him renewed celebration (v. 11); this meal is the first celebration since 1:4. His isolation is replaced by a joyful return to life among others. Joy comes back into his life. God gives him a new and bigger family, with daughters of legendary beauty (v. 15). He gives him a long life, double the normal three score years and ten (v. 16).

What are we to make of this?

Let us note that God first restored Job to relationship and then blessed him. Job cried out, “now my eye sees you” (42:5) before he was blessed. This is important. Job proves he is a real believer because he bows down to God in a time of pain. It is not that God first blesses him and then Job says, “You seem to be a good God after all; I will worship you.” He worships because God is God, and then in the end he is blessed. And when he worships he has no proof or certainty that he will be blessed. Job lives by faith, not by sight.

Also let us note that the blessing is not a reward for worship. It is not that God says, “Well done, old chap. You’ve persevered jolly well; now you can have the sweets I promised you.” Not at all. In fact the doubling of his wealth points to grace; God is pouring out undeserved blessing. We must never see the sufferings of Job as undermining the grace of God. God is no man’s debtor.

But the most important thing about the blessing is that it happens at the end. James understands this perfectly: “Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord.… You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful” (James 5:7, 11).

The purpose of the Lord to show mercy and compassion will be seen finally only when the Lord Jesus returns in glory. Job 42 anticipates the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. Like all the Old Testament types of Christ, Job dies at the end of his story (v. 17); and his death proves he is not the one to come, but merely one in whose sufferings are foreshadowed that one whose sandals neither Job nor any Old Testament prophet nor even John the Baptist will be worthy to untie.

The end comes at the end. The normal Christian life is warfare and waiting and being loved and humbled by God and being justified by God, all in the here and now. But it is the expectation of blessing at the end. Often we do get blessed now. God graciously pours out all manner of blessings here and now. But the blessings we get now are just a tiny foretaste of the blessings to be poured out at the end.

And the blessings God will pour out on the believer at the end will be every bit as real as the blessings of Job. Job knew real prosperity, real joy and celebration, real fruitfulness and real beauty (his dazzling daughters).

The blessings of the new heavens and new earth will be rock-solid real. We look forward to beauty that makes the most beautiful thing in the world seem dull.

We look forward to fruitfulness that will make the most abundant family in the world seem barren.

We look forward to prosperity that will make the Forbes list of the world’s billionaires seem poor.

And we look forward to celebration that will make the best party in the world seem like a quiet glass of apple juice.

So as we end this study of the book of Job, let us remember what we ought to expect of the normal Christian life. Let us see what Job foreshadowed, now fulfilled in the sufferings, faith, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and heavenly reign of Jesus Christ. Let us expect to suffer with him if we will ultimately reign with him, for by grace we will.