Overview of the Book of Job by Amos Wilson (Part 2, 06 Jan 2019)

Jesus, the Perfect Fulfillment of Job’s Plight - and Ours

As this new year started, I found out that my 17-year-old cousin is dead. My grandmother found her lifeless body in her car on New Year's day. But that comes on the tail end of a longer string of deaths: over the Christmas Holidays, I worshiped at my in-laws’ church, Providence Community Church in Lenexa, KS. That whole church body was grieving as one of the member-families had just lost their 23 year-old son the Friday before. And before that, my in-laws grieved the death of Grandpère Laporte, who died in his sleep on the 15^th of December. Then there is my own Grandfather, who is still with us in body, but is already far gone with his Alzheimers, and we know that he may not have much time left on this earth. Too, we think of Mr. Brosius, as we found out not too long ago that his cancer is back with a vengeance, and the doctors see no earthly way to stop it.

This is certainly the closest I have ever been to so many deaths, and it's been a rather sober, heavy beginning to this year. To a certain extent, this seems appropriate as today is January 6^th, the traditional time to remember the coming of the Magi – which of course led to the murder of all of the children in Bethlehem: “A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentations and bitter weeping, Rachel is weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted for her children, because they are no more” (Jeremiah 31:15).

In my last sermon to y'all on the book of Job, I tried to tackle this problem of death and suffering in the world. I looked at God's justice in the face of Job's suffering, and I looked at how God told Job what Job needed to hear. To review in a single sentence, my conclusion in that sermon, was that the answer to all of Job's suffering was the person of Jesus Christ. A personal relationship with God is the answer to our suffering. In my last sermon, we saw how Job did not have a personal relationship with God before his troubles, and how God used this trial of Job to draw Job closer to Himself.

So that's great, I had studied all of this out, and come to that conclusion, and preached that sermon, and then all of this happened. I, of course, had studied the book of Job as an outsider looking in at Job's suffering without any suffering of my own. I hadn't felt the grief of a close family member dying, I had not felt the financial stresses of bankruptcy. I had always tried to be sympathetic with Job's plight, but the truth is, that what Job went through was completely beyond my experience. Even now, Job's sufferings are far worse than anything anyone of us has ever gone through.

So I could see on an academic level that a personal relationship with God is the answer to suffering, but I had not experienced it. Charlie Peacock, one of my parents’ favorite music artists, summed it up well when he sang: “The facts of theology are all together cold. Though true in every way they alone can't change me... You can only possess what you experience.” Needless to say, as I came back to Job to prepare for this sermon, in light of all of this tragedy that I have encountered, I have begun to see the book of Job in a different light.

Not that I disagree with my thesis statement from the last sermon. I still believe that the only answer to all of our sufferings is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. C. S. Lewis wrote in his book Till We Have Faces “ I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?”

Jesus is the answer. While often laughed at as a Christian cliché, is certainly one of the most profound statements of our faith. But it is one thing to say that your relationship with Jesus answers the problem of your suffering, but it's another thing entirely to see the difference that Jesus makes.

So that brings me to my thesis statement for this sermon: Jesus Christ perfectly fulfilled Job's plight. This morning I am going to go over Job's arguments, theme by theme, and dig into what he is saying – his complaints against God. Then I will compare each of Job's struggles with the rest of scripture to show you how Jesus Christ fulfilled all of Job's problems. I'll start in chapter 3 and work my way through each of Job's diatribes. Unfortunately I won't have enough time to get any farther than chapter 7, so we'll only cover Job's opening lamentation, and then his first rebuttal to Eliphaz. You'll have to wait on the rest of Job until I get to preach another sermon.

So then, for context, here's Job's perspective of things leading up to his opening lamentation. One day, while his children are feasting, Job receives word from his messengers that everything he owned has been either stolen or destroyed, and that all ten of his children have died suddenly. Then, Job comes down with a painful sickness which covers his skin in boils. Job sits down in an ash heap, with a broken piece of a pot to scrape his sores with. His wife – probably about mad from grief – tells Job to curse God and die.

So this is where we find Job right before he begins to speak. I would submit that Job may have suffered more pain than anyone else in the world. He is utterly dejected and comfortless, with the only thing left to him being his statement in 2:10, “Shall we indeed accept good from God and shall we not accept adversity?”

But now comes a little hope of comfort. Job's three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, come to him. And of course, we have a lot to say against these three gentlemen, but let's give them this. They were true friends to Job. In 2:12-13 it says, “And when they [Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar] raised their eyes from afar, and did not recognize him, they lifted their voices and wept: and each once tore his robe and sprinkled dust on his head toward heaven. So they sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his grief was very great.”

So before we start condemning Job's friends, we should all ask ourselves, “Would I go to a friend who was suffering (and had painful, grotesque – and possibly contagious – boils all over them), and would I then sit with them in an ash pile for seven days straight?”

So from Job's perspective, he's just gone through unspeakable grief, and even after declaring his trust and submission to God, he's sat in this ash pile for seven days, and God has not answered him. Surely, Job feels alienated, and is likely struggling with bitterness – and wouldn't you, too? Yet Job does have his friends, and they've clearly shown their solidarity towards him in sitting with him in silence for seven days and seven nights. So Job has had some time to calm down, and maybe was feeling comforted by his friends' presence. So he opens up to them, in this deeply emotive monologue on his grief, and that's where we will start:

3:3-4 “May the day perish on which I was born, and the night in which it was said, 'a male child is conceived.' May the day be darkness; may God above not seek it, Nor the light shine upon it.”

3:11-13 “Why did I not die at birth? Why did I not perish when I came from the womb? Why did the knees receive me? Or why did the breasts that I should nurse? For I would have lain still and been quiet, I would have been asleep; then I would have been at rest.”

3:20-22 “Why is light given to him who is in misery, and life to the bitter of soul, who long for death, but it does not come, and searches for it more than hidden treasure; who rejoices exceedingly, and are glad when they find the grave?”

3:26 “I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest, for trouble comes.”

So here we get a look into the darkness that Job is feeling, and never again in this book does he speak so frankly and openly about his grief (more on that later...). You can see a lot of parallels between Job's statements and Ecclesiastes 4:2-3, “Therefore I praised the dead who were already dead, more than the living who are still alive. Yet better than both is he who has never existed, who has not seen the evil work which is under the sun.”

Job's feelings in the face of so much suffering, are bordering on nihilism. He is saying in essence, “It is better not to live at all, than to live and suffer.” Of course, the great tragedy (in Job's mind) is that he had no choice in the matter. He did not choose to be born, anymore than he chose to suffer. And that's a very interesting point for us, who live in a day and age that idolizes freedom of choice. We want to be in control of our lives; we want to be able to choose for ourselves. Our culture has espoused this free-choice-worship to such an absurd level that it even claims that you can choose what gender you are, or what ethnicity you are. (As I was writing this sermon, I was on Kansas State campus, and I walked past a bathroom marked “Women,” but below that word were the symbols for both a woman and a man.)

But the fact is, when you come to a place of grief, like the place that Job came to, you have to admit, that you really have very little free choice. And now, with bitterness, Job says that if he had had the choice, he would have chosen to die at birth. But alas, that choice was not his. He was born, and that was the beginning of his sufferings.

But now, we begin to see how the person of Jesus Christ fulfills Job's plight. See, Jesus was the only man on this earth, who chose to be born. And unlike Job, or the rest of us, Jesus knew exactly what sufferings he would have to go through on this earth. But rather than make Job, or the Ecclesiastes Preacher's decision (“It would be better not to live then to live in suffering”), Jesus claimed the opposite.

Romans 8:18 “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”

Hebrews 2:17-18 “Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For in all that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted.”

Jesus was able to look beyond the sufferings of the present – and the sufferings of the future, even – and say, “It is better this way.” Now, of course, Job lived before the time of Jesus, so he could never know that Jesus – God Himself – would make the decision that Job never could, in order to suffer as man had suffered and “bring many sons to glory.”

Though Job seemed to possess a remarkable gift of foresight, he never foresaw this. So of course, the amount of faith he had to exercise in his trials is staggering. He could not see God as sympathetic to him, because he could not see God as a man. To Job, his only hope of sympathy was in his three human friends. Thank God, that you live in an age where we can look back, and see Jesus' glorious fulfillment. We, in the hind-sight of the New Testament, can see Jesus' incarnation and take comfort, knowing that Jesus sympathizes with us in our sufferings, because He has felt the same griefs.

Hebrews 4:15-16 “For we do not have a High Priest who can not sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

So, then, Job finishes his lamentation, and finally his friends begin to speak. This begins what is called the First Cycle. There are three cycles in the book of Job, each cycle consisting of each of Job's friends making a case against Job, and Job rebutting what they say. So the first cycle begins with Eliphaz – and this speech was quite likely supposed to comfort Job. I don't think Eliphaz had any ill intentions here; I think he honestly meant to encourage Job by this speech. His only short-coming was that he failed to empathize with Job in his suffering.

In a nutshell, Eliphaz says, “I can tell that you are suffering, Job, but you have to remember, nobody suffers who is innocent. Clearly, you have sinned. And don't feel bad about that, even the angels have sinned before God. After all, how could you expect to be perfect? So all that you have to do is repent and serve God, and he will restore everything to you again.”

Job 5:17 “Behold, happy is the man whom God corrects. Therefore, do not despise the chastening of the Almighty.”

What a thing to say to a man who has suffered so much loss! To Job's mind, this probably translates to, “I know all of your children died, and you're completely bankrupt, but cheer up! You should be happy that God thinks you worthy of correction.” And while this is spoken against Job, Job knows – and we know – that he did nothing wrong to warrant all of this tragedy, as Eliphaz claims.

So as you can imagine, Job feels a bit injured by this speech. Here he thought his friends had come to comfort him, and instead they start criticizing him. So, in Job's refutation of Eliphaz's argument, he compares his friends to a dessert wadi, which in the winter runs full of water, but in the summer – when men are thirsty and need water – they are dry. So now, on top of all of Job's previous griefs, he has to deal with the feelings of being betrayed by his close friends. And how does Job respond? He closes himself off. In chapter 3, Job's opening lament, we see Job being very frank and honest about his feelings. He is very vulnerable with his friends. But from here on, Job distances himself from his three friends. He is less open, and more and more defensive and antagonistic.

But again, Jesus is the perfect fulfillment of Job's plight. Jesus Himself suffered from the betrayal of close friends. On the night before his crucifixion, when he went into the garden of Gethsemane, he asked His disciples to sit up with Him and pray, but they all fell asleep. You can almost hear the great disappointment in Jesus' voice when he tells Peter in Matthew 26:40, “Could you not watch with Me one hour?” Jesus was suffering the terrors of hell, and His closest friends didn't care. Then, of course, Judas Iscariot betrays Jesus with a kiss, and all of His disciples flee in fear. Through Jesus' mock trial, even though Jesus had friends on the Sanhedrin (like Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus), no one spoke in his defense. Then, while Jesus was being beaten by the temple authorities, Peter, standing outside and probably watching the whole thing, denies that he even knows Jesus.

Can you try to imagine the feelings of abandonment and betrayal that Jesus must have been going through? Surely this was far worse than Job's feeling of betrayal at not being comforted by his friends. Yet how does Jesus respond to all of this? He takes up his cross, drags it to Golgotha, and then in the midst of the crucifixion-agony, he says, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Instead of closing Himself off, as Job had done to protect himself from being hurt again, Jesus opened himself up to the scorn of the world, and in one of the most intimate events in history, He took the punishment of those who had betrayed him, so that His betrayers might be forgiven by God.

Again, Job lived before the time of Jesus. He could not know that God Himself would open Himself up to the betrayal of His own friends, and therefore Job bitterly resents his own betrayal. Job feels as if the whole world, and God Himself, are arrayed against him. And therefore, he tries to justify his own grief:

Job 6:2-5 “Oh, that my grief were fully weighed, and my calamity laid with it on the scales! For then it would be heavier than the sand of the sea – Therefore my words have been rash. For the arrows of the Almighty are within me; My spirit drinks in their poison; the terrors of God are arrayed against me. Does the wild donkey bray when it has grass, or does the ox low over its fodder?”

The gist of Job's argument runs thus: “I would not be complaining if God had not abandoned me. In the same way that a farm animal only complains when they have been neglected, so I only complain because I have been neglected.” Here, Job does not seem to be complaining so much that he is suffering, but that he is suffering without cause. Why does he have to drink the cup of sorrow that God has given him? At the very least, he is justified to cry out in his affliction.

Of course, how could anyone of us condemn Job in this? We all do the same when we are suffering, and none of us have suffered so much as Job. Yet we have even less of an excuse to complain against God, because we can see what Job could never see. We can see how Jesus perfectly fulfilled Job's plight.

When Jesus was faced with torment and suffering – the cup of sorrow, as it were – what did He say? “Shall I not drink the cup which my Father has given Me?” (John 18:11) Even though Jesus was clearly conflicted about obeying God's will, and he clearly struggled with the idea of his crucifixion, he was still submissive to God.

Mark 14:36 “Abba, Father, all things are possible for You. Take this cup away from Me; nevertheless, not what I will but what You will.”

Jesus, did not even take this occasion of his suffering to justify his own diatribe against wickedness. He could have still submitted to the will of God but not been perfectly silent at his trial. Jesus might have said something witty and snarky before the Sanhedrin turned him over to Pontius Pilate – he certainly had never been at a loss for words before when he confronted the Pharisees in the temple! Jesus might have allowed Himself just one pithy statement - a mic-drop moment to shame and condemn all of His persecutors before they nailed Him to the cross - but He didn't. And why not? Because unlike Job, Jesus would not let His own suffering and torment justify a bitter complaint.

Isaiah 53:7 “He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth.”

Job's response, however, to all of his sufferings, is to declare, “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!” (6:8-9). What Job could never know, is that God did not plan to crush Job or cut him off; on the contrary, God planned to crush himself:

Isaiah 53:5 “But He was wounded for our transgression, He was crushed for our iniquities...”

Isaiah 53:8 “...For He was cut off from the land of the living.”

But now, as Job moves on from his pain over being accused by Eliphaz, we see Job turn away from his more bitter and emotional words, and he enters into a more rational debate. Again, in light of his friends’ betrayal of his frankness, openness, and honesty, Job is closing himself off, hiding his own emotions, and now Job seeks to reason with his friends.

First, Job notes the brevity of human life, comparing the days spent on earth with days of hard labor: “Is there not a time of hard service for a man on earth? Are not his days also like the days of a hired man?” (7:1) “Oh, remember that my life is a breath! My eye will never again see good” (7:7). Job clearly sees death as the ultimate end of this labor, and looks for death as a time of rest: “So he who goes down to the grave does not come up” (7:9).

Already, I'm sure you can see how Jesus fulfills this aspect of Job's struggles. Jesus, contrary to Job's claim, did go down to the grave, and He came back again. Job looks to death as the answer for his problems, thinking that once he is dead he will be beyond all suffering. And in a way he is right. After death, those who trust in Christ Jesus will no longer suffer, but in this he misses the point of life. Life is not just a breath, or a time of hard labor while we wait and yearn for death. How we spend our life determines what will come of us after death.

I Corinthians 3:13 “each one's work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one's work, of what sort it is.”

Instead of seeing the brevity of man's life and using it as an excuse to bemoan our short existence and wallow in self-pity, Jesus saw the brevity of his own life as a reason to be diligent and energetic in all that He did. He had to make every second of his life count.

Isaiah 40:7-8 “...Surely the people are grass. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.”

In light of our mortality, we must not – like Job – allow ourselves to be disheartened and discouraged by the nearness of death. Rather, like Jesus, we must focus our lives to glorify what really matters – the one thing that will ultimately endure: the Word of the Lord.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.”

Because God has made our hearts to long for eternity, it is easy to become discouraged by this finite and mortal world we live in. That is the pit that Job fell into. Rather, we must remind ourselves that we are destined for eternity but simply have not achieved it yet. It is our duty – like Jesus – to use our time wisely on this earth, committed to God's work. We can then trust in God through Jesus Christ to bring us into that eternity. We can take comfort in the fact that God will redeem our mortal life, and He will redeem this finite world. Also, we are not the only ones suffering, and longing for Christ's return: all of creation joins us:

Romans 8:19-25 “For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subject to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope: because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of the corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.”

Job was certainly feeling those birth pangs of creation. He was experiencing the full tragedy of the fall. How can we blame him for sinking into despair? Especially considering that he did not know what was to come. Job could not see that the eternity God had set in his heart was supposed to drive him towards the eternal God, and the final fulfillment of an eternal state of redemption apart from all sufferings. In hind-sight, we can see Job's suffering in light of God's redemptive plan. In our own suffering then, we can not allow ourselves to sink into Job's despondency. We have been given the hope which Paul talks about, a hope of future redemption, and eternal consummation of Jesus' grace in our adoption as sons of God.

But again, Job does not know that, so he turns now to end his first rebuttal with a despondent prayer to God:

Job 7:17-21 “What is man, that You should exalt him, that You should set Your heart on him, that You should visit him every morning, and test him every moment? How long? Will you not look away from me, and let me alone till I swallow my saliva? Have I sinned? What have I done to You, O watcher of men? Why have You set me as Your target, So that I am a burden to myself? Why then do You not pardon my transgression, and take away my iniquity? For now I will lie down in the dust, and you will seek me diligently, but I will no longer be.”

This is clearly the prayer of a desperate man. Job turns away from the hope of redemption (which would be fully revealed in the New Testament) and he is left with hopelessness. He has lost everything: his children are dead; his wife hates him, and his three friends have no empathy for his plight. Job feels as if the whole world is against him, so he turns to God and bitterly asks, “Why? What have I done?” And in that question, there seems to be a hidden rebuke toward God, as if all of these sufferings were God's fault. So Job says that if God will not crush him or kill him, if God will not pardon his iniquities and stop persecuting him, then why will God not at least turn away from him for a moment, and give Job enough time to himself so that he can swallow his own spit?

So we see here, that Job does not feel abandoned by God, rather he feels too close to God. He feels claustrophobic, like a lab rat, or a prisoner in a panopticon. God is constantly scrutinizing him, and will not look away for a moment (Jean Paul Sartre). Job feels as if God is just waiting for him to make a mistake so He can swoop down and damn him. Job calls God the “watcher of men,” and seems to impute to God all of the troubles he is having.

This also reveals that Job is reacting towards God the same way that he reacted to his three friends. Job is trying to shut himself off from God in the same way that he did with Eliphaz. However, Job is honest enough with himself to realize that he can not really hide from God, since God is omnipresent. Still, Job wishes that he could cease to exist, if only so that God would stop looking at him. Again, it is hard to judge Job here, because of everything he went through – you or I might be just as likely to say the same thing under the circumstances. However, here at least, we know that Job knew better. Why? Because he already reacted properly towards God at the beginning of his troubles.

Job 1:21 “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.”

It's the same Job who said that, who now says, “Will you not look away until I have swallowed my own saliva?” So what has changed since then? Nothing has changed; the only difference is that now Job has sat in an ash pile for seven days. It was those seven days on the ash pile that made all the difference. They turned Job from humble trust and faith in God, to bitterness at what God had done. After all, Job had said what was right about God at first; why hadn't God answered him? I think this makes sense of why Job rejects his three friends trite assertion that if you turn to God he will restore everything. Job might very well say, “But I did turn to God, and He didn't restore everything!”

How easy it is to trust God at first. But when God doesn't answer you right away, then the temptation to doubt creeps in. Waiting on God takes a lot of faith. And I think it was the waiting that eventually got to Job.

But again, Jesus is the perfect fulfillment of Job's plight. How was Job's impatience and frustration fulfilled in Jesus? Well think about what Jesus did when he was under the most pressure; He got alone with God in prayer. As opposed to Job who tried to push away from God, Jesus always drew nearer to God. Also unlike Job, Jesus basked in God's presence, and when God ultimately did turn his face away on the cross, Jesus cried out in despair, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

So, in conclusion, let me review these points with an eye for application:

First, remember this: Birth is a sacred gift from God. Even when we are suffering, we can take comfort in the knowledge that Jesus Christ was also born into this suffering world. But more than that, Jesus chose to be born into this world for the express reason to save us from endless suffering!

Second, we have a sympathetic God. Not only does He understand rationally how it feels to lose a loved one, or go bankrupt, or suffer personal pain, God understands it on an experiential level.

Third, we need not be dismayed when friends disappoint us, stab us in the back, or otherwise betray us, because we serve a God who will see us through. Our friends will never be good enough for us. We must always look to God as our comforter. Our friends – when they do comfort us – are simply means of God's greater comfort, not the comfort in-and-of themselves.

Fourth, pain is not an excuse to complain. There is an appropriate response to pain – grief certainly – but we can not cave to the temptation to complain when we are suffering. Our pain must always drive us towards God, never away from Him.

Fifth, when we are suffering, we can not look to our own pain, or our own death, as the answer to our problems. We can not seek pain or death as a way of escape. The only way that we can escape from our troubles is through Jesus' pain and death.

Sixth, we must take full advantage of our short life! Life is a precious gift of God, and we only have so much of it. We must commit our lives to propagating God's word, as that is the only thing that will last!

Seventh, and finally, we must recognize God's omnipresence, as a presence of love and comfort. God does not look at you as through a microscope, he is not Big Brother government spying on you 24-7 in case you might be a terrorist. God is watching over you with the eye of a loving father who knows your welfare better than you do. In fact, the most dreadful thing in the world would be God turning away from you!

In light of all of this, and to close, I'd like to skip ahead to the God Speeches, and point out a verse that I believe was God's answer to this part of Job's arguments. Job 40:8 “Would you indeed annul my judgments? Would you condemn me that you be justified?”

The question was obviously rhetorical, showing Job just how presumptuous he was being in accusing God of all of his sufferings. And, of course, it had it's desired effect on Job:

Job 42:6 “...I repent in dust and ashes.

Surely Job took this question at face value. He, as a man, had no right to question God's decisions. His duty was only to obey and submit to God in faith. No matter how much he wanted to be right, he could never prove his own righteousness at the price of God's righteousness. He could not paint God into a corner, and he could not accuse God of injustice.

However, the marvelous thing about this question from God, is that it was exactly what God did. Even though we as human beings had no right to justify ourselves at God's expense, that is exactly what God did. God condemned himself, suffering the death that we deserved, in order to justify us. Praise the Lord, that He has done what we could never do! In the midst of our wallowing in self pity, God pitied us, and clothed us in His righteousness, taking our dirty rags, and putting them on himself instead!