Overview on the Book of Job
A Sermon by Amos Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church, Manhattan, KS, 24 June 2018
Omitting greyed-out text was to bring delivery down to 45 minutes.
I am going to be giving a brief overview on the book of Job. Job isn't really a very common book of the Bible to hear a sermon on, and I think the reason for that is because the book of Job challenges us. The book of Job is the book that we can make no sense of. It is not the book we wanted it to be. It claims to be about the problem of suffering in the word, but of the few sermons I have heard on the book of Job, I have never heard two preachers give the same explanation of what the message of Job is – and rarely is it an encouraging message.
The book of Job challenges all of our expectations of a book. First off, it challenges classification, what is the book of Job? Is it part of the poetry of the Bible, or the history books, or is it a wisdom book, or is it all three?
The book of Job challenges our sense of story structure. It begins in 1:6 with this spiritual stand-off in heaven, between God – the ultimate source of all goodness – and Satan – the accuser of all who are good. It takes place in the courtroom of heaven, and you can just imagine the ranks on ranks of angels standing at attention before the Lord while Satan blasphemously challenges God. God, then, makes a bet with Satan: Satan can harm Job, kill his children, take all that he owns, and even make Job miserably sick, but God bets that Job will still stay faithful to Him. We expect that if the book begins with God and Satan making a bet together, then the book should end with them hashing it out after the bet is completed. We want to see that scene in the throne of heaven where God gets to have his mic-drop moment, and Satan has to crawl away in shame. So we expect this whole book to be about this cosmic bet between God and Satan, yet after the first two chapters, the bet is never mentioned again. So we're left wondering, “Who won the bet anyway?”
More importantly, the book of Job challenges our idea of who God is. If Max Lacado had written the book of Job, this is how it would go: after Job's sufferings, and after his 20 chapters of wrestling with God's goodness and justice in the midst of such unimaginable calamity, God speaks to Job in a still, small voice and says, “Don't worry Job, just trust in me. I have a plan. It breaks my heart to see you hurting like this, and I really feel your pain, but it will only last a little longer.”
But that's not how God speak to Job, is it? No, Job 38:1-3 “Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said: 'Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Now prepare yourself like a man: I will question you, and you shall answer me.” And we are left wondering, did God really have to use a whirlwind to speak to Job? Isn't that a little over-the-top after Job had lost literally everything he owns? And didn't Elijah say that God wasn't in the whirlwind? Where is the God of love in all of this?
For all of these reasons, the book of Job has always intrigued me. So in November of 2015, I was in the middle of reading straight through the Bible, and having just finished Esther, the book of Job confronted me. So I decided to camp in the book of Job for a while, and see if I could figure out answers to all of these questions I had about Job. I have been stuck in the book of Job ever since, with a couple-month interlude in the middle before I got married. It has been incredibly more rewarding than I could have imagined at first. I have found answers to half of my questions and answers to hosts of questions I hadn't thought to ask before. So, today, I am going to share with you my journey through the book of Job, what I discovered, and then I'll have a few points of application for y'all at the end of the sermon.
At the outset, we know that God is just - and that He is loving. So I did a little bit of presuppositional exegesis as I read through the book of Job. First, God was just in all of His dealings with Job – so I wanted to find out how he had been just. Second, God's answer to Job was exactly what Job needed to hear in order to bring about His loving and just redemption – so I wanted to find out why Job needed to hear what God told him.
So, to start out with, I wanted to ignore the cosmic bet in the introduction - for the moment, and just look at this scene with Job and his three friends, as they wrestle with the question of why good men suffer and evil men prosper. Really, in this scene you have a stellar cast:
First you have Job, the most successful businessman of his day, who has spent his entire life fighting for social justice. Now, he's reduced to sitting in an ash heap while he scrapes at his boils with shards of broken pots. This is a man who would give you the shirt off his back. In fact, he is so blameless, that not even Satan – the Accuser – can come up with a single accusation against him! Interestingly enough, if you do a word search of the name Satan, you only find two times in the Bible where Satan is at a loss for an accusation; once with Job, and the second time when he is tempting Jesus. In chapter 1 verse 1, The Bible introduces Job, saying, “...and that man was blameless and upright, and one who feared God and shunned evil.” I did a quick word search, and it turns out, that Job is the only person in the Bible described as both blameless and upright. So from the way the Bible describes Job, I would submit to you that Job was probably the most sinless man who ever lived, next to Jesus himself.
Then you have Job's three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, who is the quintessential Baptist preacher; he gets it into his head pretty early on that Job has sinned, so he threatens fire and brimstone if Job won’t repent. Then there's Bildad the Shuhite, who’s a much more soft-spoken man, speaking only when necessary - and even then only briefly and concisely. And then there's Zophar the Naamanthite, the most indirect and fatalistic of Job's friends. Finally, you have the mysterious, extraordinary, and almost prophetic Elihu the Buzite, who shows up out of nowhere, and then completely disappears after God speaks. He is the only person in the book that God does not rebuke, and his name literally means “God of Him.”
So as I studied this section of Job and his friends arguing, which spans from chapter 3 to 37, I noticed something interesting; not once does anyone quote from the Bible to explain who God is, and why he treats men the way he does. And that's when I realized that at the time of Job, God had not given his people any scripture yet. This was before Moses, so not even the book of Genesis was compiled yet. Can you imagine how difficult this must have been, to be confronted by this question of God's goodness and not have any scripture to go to for answers or comfort? We have that now, we can look back at Job and compare it to Romans, Psalms, or Matthew, and see God as a God of love, mercy, and justice, but Job and his friends can't. So what do they do? They look to the natural world and try to draw conclusions about who God is:
Eliphaz:
Job 4:8-11 “Even as I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same. By the blast of God they perish, and by the breath of His anger they are consumed. The roaring of the lion, the voice of the fierce lion and the teeth of the young lion are broken. The old lion perishes for lack of prey, and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.”
Job 5:8-10: But as for me, I would seek God, and to God I would commit my cause – Who does great things, and unsearchable, marvelous things without number. He gives rain on the earth, and sends water on the fields.”
Job 22:12 “Is not God in the heights of heaven? And see the highest stars, how lofty they are?”
Concluding: Job 4:18-19, “If He puts no trust in His servants, if He charges His angels with error, how much more those who dwell in the house of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed before a moth?”
Bildad:
Job 8:11-13 “Can the papyrus grow up without a marsh? Can the reeds flourish without water? While it is green and not cut down, it withers before any other plant. So are the paths of all who forget God; and the hope of the hypocrite shall perish.”
Job 25:5-6 “If even the moon does not shine, and the stars are not pure in His sight, how much less man, who is a maggot, and a son of man, who is a worm?”
Zophar:
Job 11:8-9 “[The deep things of God] are higher than heaven – what can you do? Deeper than Sheol – what can you know? Their measure is longer than the earth and broader than the sea.
Elihu:
Job 34:12-13: “Surely God will never do wickedly, nor will the Almighty pervert justice. Who gave Him charge over the earth? Or who appointed Him over the whole world?”
Job 35:5-6 “Look to the heavens and see; and behold the clouds – they are higher than you. If you sin, what do you accomplish against Him? Or, if your transgressions are multiplied, what do you do to Him?”
Job 36:26-33: “Behold, God is great, and we do not know Him; nor can the number of His years be discovered. For He draws up drops of water, which distill as rain from the mist, which the clouds drop down and pour abundantly on man. Indeed, can anyone understand the spreading of clouds, the thunder from His canopy? Look, He scatters His light upon it, and covers the depths of the sea. For by these He judges the peoples; He gives food in abundance. He covers His hands with lightning, and commands it to strike. His thunder declares it, the cattle also, concerning the rising storm.”
Job:
Job 9:5-14 “He removes mountains, and they do not know when He overturns them in His anger; He shakes the earth out of its place, and its pillars tremble; He commands the sun, and it does not rise; he seals off the stars; He alone spreads out the heavens, and treads on the waves of the sea; He made the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, and the chamber of the south; He does great things past finding out, Yes, wonders without number. If He goes by me, I do not see Him; if He moves past, I do not perceive Him; if He takes away, who can hinder Him? Who can say to Him, 'What are you doing?' God will not withdraw His anger, the allies of the proud lie prostrate beneath Him. How can I answer Him?...”
Job 10:8 “Your hands have made me and fashioned me, an intricate unity; yet You would destroy me.”
Job 12:7-10: “But now ask the beasts, and they will teach you; and the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you; and the fish of the sea will explain to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this, in whose hand is the life of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind?”
Job 26:7-14: “He stretches out the north over empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing. He binds up water in His thick clouds, yet the clouds are not broken under it. He covers the face of His throne, and spreads His cloud over it. He drew a circular horizon on the face of the waters, at the boundary of light and darkness. The pillars of heaven tremble, and are astonished at His power, He stirs up the sea with His power, and by His understanding He breaks up the storm. By His Spirit He adorned the heavens; His hand pierced the fleeing serpent. Indeed these are the mere edges of His ways, and how small a whisper we hear of Him! But the thunder of His power who can understand?”
The only things that these five men have to know God by is the natural world, and stories passed down from their ancestors. So what do they theorize about God based off of His creation? They all come to the conclusion of Romans 1:20 “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead...” So there you have it. God's eternal power, and His Godhead are the only two things that Job and his friends can determine about God, since the natural world is all that they have to know Him by!
This was about when I noticed something else interesting about the way the Bible describes Job, or rather, how the Bible does not describe Job. It says that Job was “Blameless and upright,” it does not say that Job was a man after God's own heart. David was a man after God's own heart. He sinned on many occasions, sometimes quite spectacularly, but his heart sought God; he had a close and intimate relationship with God. But what about Job? Take a look at this description of him in Job 1:5:
“So it was, when the days of feasting had run their course, that Job would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, ‘it may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.’ Thus Job did regularly.”
So Job would regularly make extra sacrifices “just in case.” Why would he do that? I believe it is because Job did not have a relationship with God. He obeyed God in everything, and he served and “feared God, and shunned evil” as Job 1:1 tells us. But Job didn't know God, nor did he love God. And so he was extra careful to make sure he always had his back covered, in case he hadn't offered enough sacrifices.
For further proof of Job's lack of a relationship with God, let's compare Job's prayers throughout the book of Job with prayers from David in the Psalms:
Job 6:8-9 “Oh, that I might have my request, that God would grant me the thing that I long for! That it would please God to crush me. That He would loose His hand and cut me off!”
Compare with Psalm 27:4 “One thing I have desired of the Lord, that I will seek; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple.”
Job's one request is that God will just kill him. David's one request is that he might see God.
Job 9:16 “If I called and He answered me, I would not believe that He was listening to my voice.”
Compare with: Psalm 34:4 “I sought the Lord, and He heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.”
Job sees God's actions in reference to his prayers as mere coincidence. David sees how God answers prayer.
Job 16:13,22 “His archers surround me. He pierces my heart and does not pity; He pours out my gall on the ground... For when a few years are finished, I shall go the way of no return.” or Job 19:20 “My bones cling to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.”
Compare with Psalm 22 “For dogs surrounded me; the congregation of the wicked enclosed me. They pierced my hands and feet. I can count all my bones. They look and stare at me... You have heard me. I will declare Your name to my brethren; In the midst of the assembly I will praise You.”
Job experiences suffering, and blames God for it. David experiences suffering, and prophetically realizes how his sufferings mirror the sufferings of Christ, and he praises God on account of it.
Job 29:14 “I broke the fangs of the wicked, and plucked the victim from his teeth.”
Compare with Psalm 3:7 “Arise, O Lord! Save me, O my God! For you have struck all my enemies on the cheekbone; You have broken the teeth of the ungodly.”
Job thinks that he must be the one to break the wicked men's teeth. David pleads with God to break the wicked men's teeth.
So now we see Job's fatal flaw. He obeys God, but he does not know God. He does not have an intimate relationship with God like David does. Now the story arc of the book of Job begins to make sense. God looks down and sees Job, a “blameless and upright man, who fears God and shuns evil.” God sees that Job isn't seeking a relationship with Him, Job is just serving God as if He were an impersonal force, or else a dangerous beast that must be appeased. So God says to Himself, “look at Job, he's the most righteous person that ever lived. He follows all of my laws and obeys Me in everything. But he does not love Me. He's so busy trying to keep his back covered, that he has never taken time to know who I am.”
So God decides He is going to humble Job, so that Job's insecurities about God come to the forefront, and so that Job will have to confront his lack of relationship with God. But at the same time, God will also lay the ground-work for one of the first books of the Bible, so that followers of God for thousands of years who read that book would be challenged in their perspectives about God in the same way Job was, and at the same time, God decides He's going to slight Satan while He's doing all of this.
So God instigates this bet with Satan. It's pretty clear that God is riling Satan up. Why? Because God is using Satan. This isn't about a bet, this scene demonstrates how God is working his divine will for Job's sanctification, and He's manipulating Satan into initiating it. I think that's the reason that Satan never comes back at the end of the book for a reckoning on the bet. Probably about chapter 38, Satan realized that God had been using him the whole time. He was probably so upset that the last thing he wanted to do was come in front of God to press his claims at winning the bet. Can you imagine how humiliating that must be for Satan to realize he's been helping God make a soul holier?
So then, Satan takes away all of Job's possessions, Job and his friends argue, Elihu tries to straighten them all out, and then God arrives. Job 38:1 “Then the LORD spoke to Job out of the whirlwind...”
But God's answer to Job seems rather enigmatic in-and-of itself. After all, a lot of the things He highlights, were already highlighted by Job and his three friends:
Eliphaz: Job 4:10-11: “The roaring of the lion, the voice of the fierce lion, and the teeth of the young lion are broken. The old lion perishes for lack of prey, and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.”
Compare to Job 38:39-40 “Can you hunt the prey for the lion, or satisfy the appetite of the young lions, when they crouch in their dens, or lurk in their lairs to lie in wait?”
Job 12:7-10: “But now ask the beasts, and they will teach you; and the birds of the air, and they will tell you...in whose hand is the life of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind?”
Compared with Job 39:26 “Does the hawk fly by your wisdom and spread its wings toward the south?”
Job 26:7 “He stretches out the north over empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing.”
Compared with Job 38:4-6 “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?...To what were its foundations fastened? Or who laid its cornerstone?”
Job 26:8 “He binds up the water in His thick clouds...”
Compare with Job 38:9 “...I made the clouds like a garment, and the thick darkness its swaddling band.”
Job 26:10 “He drew a circular horizon on the face of the waters, at the boundary of the light and darkness.”
Compare with Job 38:19 “Where is the way to the dwelling of light? And darkness, where is its place?”
Job 26:12 “He stirs up the sea with His power, and by His understanding He breaks up the storm.”
Compare with Job 38:34-35 “Can you lift up your voice to the clouds that an abundance of water may cover you? Can you send out lightnings, that they may go, and say to you, 'Here we are!'?”
Job 9:9: “He made the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, and the chambers of the south.”
Compare with Job 38:31-32 “Can you bring the cluster of the Pleiades, or loose the belt of Orion? Can you bring out the constellations in their season? Or can you guide the Great Bear with its cubs?”
It almost sounds like God is saying the same thing that Job and his friends already figured out. So what was God trying to tell Job? Remember, Job's problem is that he does not know God, and Job and his friends have been spending the whole book arguing about who God is based off of their observations of the natural world. So God is showing them the natural world – the world that He made – but the great answer to all of their questions isn't what God was saying, it's what God was doing. He was standing right there, comparing Himself to His creation, so that Job and his friends could look and see the difference.
God gives Job seven examples from the natural world as illustrations of the way people view Him. It's almost as if God is asking Job and his friends “Who do men say that I am?” (Matthew 16:13) “Do you look at me like the natural world: Like this intricate semi-predictable and impersonal force? Do you consider me in the same light as the wild donkey: a reclusive and unruly creature? Do you see me as a wild bull: an unpredictable and unmanageable beast that is best left alone? Do you think of me like you think of the ostrich: Swift and majestic, but never sees a task through to completion, starting something (like laying an egg) and then leaving it behind to random chance? Do you see me as the horse: a terrible and awesome adrenaline junkie, who can be easily managed if you only know the right words and hand motions? Do you see me as a hawk or an eagle: a majestic and awesome creature who you may see every now and then soaring above you, and you say, 'look at that! That's amazing!” and then you go on with your day to day life as if it no longer exists? Do you see me as the Behemoth, or Apatosaurus: this awesome and lumbering beast that mostly keeps to himself but could cause a great deal of damage if roused? Or else, do you view me as the Leviathan?”
I wondered why God goes on a whole chapter rant about this enigmatic creature which he calls Leviathan. But as I looked back on Job's complaints, I realized that Job has been approaching God as if he were 'the Leviathan.' Thomas Hobbs in his book Leviathan proposed that since man is inherently bent on wickedness, we had to create a 'Leviathan' to keep him in check: some group that was so large and so powerful that they could not be reckoned with. That's exactly how Job has been treating God. He is careful in all of his complaints never to say a bad word against God, and he rebukes his friends when he thinks they do. It's almost as if he's afraid of waking this sleeping dragon of God.
So as God is showing Job this creature Leviathan, He is challenging Job's way of thinking about God. He is saying, “this is how you have been treating me, like you would treat the Leviathan. Now look, and see the difference.”
And Job responds: Job 42:5-6 “I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you. Therefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.
So, there's my first point of application: how are you viewing God? Do you see God in the same light as you see the natural world, or the wild donkey, or the wild bull, or the ostrich, or the hawk, or the Behemoth, or the Leviathan? I find myself convicted of God's description of the hawk when compared with Him, as a majestic creature that you only pay attention to every now and then. I find that all too often that is the way I think of God, too. But perhaps for you, one of these other descriptions from creation sounds like the way you have been viewing God.
So what do we do when we realize that we have not been viewing or relating to God rightly? We do the same thing Job did, we repent, and turn to God, so that we might get to know God better on a more intimate level. But you may say, “That was easy for Job to do, after all, God was standing right there next to him!” But you forget, that you have something that Job never had, and in fact Job longed for: you have the Bible, God's personal word to man.
Job 31:35 “Oh, that I had one to hear me! Here is my mark. Oh, that the Almighty would answer me, that my Prosecutor had written a book!”
Job pretty much had to see God to fully understand Him, since that was all Job had to know God by, and that's probably why God appeared to Job, while He doesn't do that with us. However, we not only have the Bible, but we have the promise of Jesus as our mediator, again something that Job did not have:
Job 9:32-33 “For He is not a man, as I am, that I may answer Him, and that we should go to court together. Nor is there any mediator between us, who may lay his hands on us both.”
Job 19:25 “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth.”
So, in review, we see that Job's main problem was that while he obeyed God, he did not know God. All of Job's sufferings were therefore given to him by God in order to bring Job into an intimate relationship with God. As points of application for you to think about when this service is over:
1. Thank God for your Bible! It is hard to imagine what a precious gift that is. Do not take it for granted.
2. Ask God if there is any way in which you are viewing Him wrongly, and then seek Him in order to correct that flawed way of thinking of Him.
3. When you are suffering, recognize that God is using the suffering to draw you closer to Him. We, in our human way of thinking, tend to look for an answer to our problems. That is why so many of us are disappointed and frustrated with life. God's answer isn't really an answer: it is a person. His Word, isn't so much a word as it is a relationship.
4. In conjunction with that, praise God that he is a relational and a personal God, and that there is nothing impersonal about him!
Now, let’s go to the conclusion of Job's story, that part which is often overlooked. Usually we see the end of Job's story as him getting all of his possessions and children back, but I submit that this is not really the conclusion. Here is Job, this man who has not sought a personal relationship with God, and is now confronted with God in person. Job repents in dust and ashes, and how does God respond? After rebuking Job's three friends, God tells them:
Job 42:8 “Now therefore, take for yourselves seven bulls and seven rams, go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and My servant Job shall pray for you. For I will accept him, lest I deal with you according to your folly; because you have not spoken of Me what is right, as My servant Job has.”
Can you imagine how Job felt when God said those words? He's been struggling with feeling shut off, like God doesn't care about him, as if he does not know God, and there is no one to mediate between him and God; and then God says, “I will accept him.” He promises to hear Job's prayer, and then God makes Job the mediator between God and man.
That is a promise we can claim too. We know that God has accepted us. He has told us that when Jesus died, he accepted His blood for our guilt, and the righteousness of Christ He transferred to our account. So that same righteousness which made God say lovingly of Jesus: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” has been given to us! Romans 8:15 “...But you received a Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, 'Abba, Father!'” And we now are to serve as a new order of priest, who can intercede between God and man: I Peter 2:9 “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.”
So when you feel like your prayers are bouncing off of the ceiling, remember, just as surely as God promised to hear Job, He is hearing you. He has given you a Mediator, who is interceding for you before the throne of God despite Satan's accusations. Your redeemer lives! And after your flesh is destroyed, in the flesh, you shall see God (Job 19:26).
Chorus: By Amos Wilson
To the tune Mo Ghile Mear
Know that your redeemer lives,
See your sufferings as His boon,
He will intercede for His,
And in the flesh you'll see him soon.
Brothers see what God has done:
Though we are worms yet He has loved,
He gave for us His only son,
And He made us fellow heirs of grace.
See the world the Lord has made,
His majesty throughout displayed,
His power still not there contained,
But it is a shadow of his face.
Though He smite me, I'll obey,
With blessings when he takes away,
To better love Him day by day,
Even all His dealings I'll embrace.
God may send down pain to you
A call for your love to renew,
If you come not, then he'll pursue,
And his love will never cease His chase.
See He slays the fleeing snake,
The ancient dragon he now breaks,
Leviathan in terror quakes,
And He even shakes death from its place!
This great earth – this hollow mold,
Will soon fall off, and you'll behold,
God's person in the flesh you'll hold
In His marriage-consummated grace.