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The Lord Restores Job
The Lord Restores Job Job 38:1-42:17 Key Verse: 42:10 “After Job had prayed for his friends, the Lord restored his fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before.” At long last, we have come to the conclusion of the book of Job. This book consists of four parts. A prologue where we have two conversations between God and Satan. In this section we find the reason that Job has to suffer so terribly. God is holding Job up as a blameless and upright man who would never curse God no matter what Satan did to him. God’s purpose and plan in allowing Job to suffer was to win a great victory over Satan. Job and his three friends never knew any of this and God does not reveal this even in today’s passage. The second part consists in a series of three dialogues between Job and his three friends in which Job maintains his innocence before God while his friends claim that his is suffering because God is punishing him for some hidden sin which he will not admit to. In these dialogues Job says some things that are fundamentally true about God, while his friends simply assume they know the heart and mind of God and say things that are just simply wrong. Both Job and his friends have made mistakes in what they say, but as we will see later on, Job was more correct than his three friends. The third part consists of a long, uninterrupted speech by a young man named Elihu. In that speech, Elihu showed that he had a very deep understanding of the heart and mind of God, but Elihu remains somewhat of a mystery because he is never mentioned before or after his speech. The fourth and final section of this book consists of God speaking, first to Job and then to his three friends. God speaks to Job for a long time, showing him two ways in which words were misguided. God only speaks to Eliphaz and his two friends for two verses, but twice he tells them that what they had said was wrong and what Job had said about him was right. At first I was confused, because God had taken four chapters to show Job the error he had made in what he had said in the first part of the book and then in two verses of the last chapter of the book he said twice that what Job had said about him was right while what his three friends who had come to comfort him had said was wrong. However, God showed me that Job could be both right and wrong in what he said. Are you curious as to how this could be? Well, let’s take a look at what God has to say. I pray that God may bless our study of these chapters and open our hearts so that we can be truly humble before Him and be a true blessing to our friends in this generation. God begins his speech to Job in chapter 38. God’s speech to Job consists of two parts. In the first part, found in chapters 38 and 39, God reveals to Job just how little he actually knows about God’s purposes and plans. The thing that struck me the most about this part of the speech was that God never revealed to Job His purpose and plan for having allow Satan to cause Job to suffer so unbearably. In fact, God never even reveals to Job that it was Satan and not Him that was causing Job to suffer. In the end, Job never found out why he had to suffer like he was suffering. In the second part, found in chapters 40 and 41, God reveals to Job just how much he needs God and God’s ultimate justice. In the end, Job sees his utter helplessness before God and his own lack of understanding of the ways of God. This causes him to make a firm decision to repent before God in dust and ashes, instead of complaining about his own innocence as he had been doing before. Look at 38:1. “Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:” I found this verse to be very interesting because of the words of Elihu. Elihu insisted that God did speak to man all the time, but men just didn’t perceive it (33:14), and in last week’s passage, Elihu went on to say that God majestic voice could be heard in the thunder of powerful storms. Chapter 37:2-5 say, “Listen! Listen to the roar of his voice, to the rumbling that comes from his mouth. He unleashes his lightning beneath the whole heaven and sends it to the ends of the earth. After that comes the sound of his roar; he thunders with his majestic voice. When his voice resounds, he holds nothing back. God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways; he does great things beyond our understanding.” Here we have God speaking to Job out a storm – the ESV and King James version call it a whirlwind, which can also be translated tornado. This is yet another reason why I think that Elihu’s words are so precious and indeed are the inspired word of God. Look at verse 2. “Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge?” This can be considered the key verse for the first part of God’s speech to Job. First of all, God asks who it was that was trying to obscure God’s plan. The word obscure means to keep from being seen or to conceal. But the really interesting part comes next when God says, “with words without knowledge.” The point here is that Job had no idea of God’s plan or purpose in his suffering. What Job did know was that God was absolutely sovereign (God is in complete control of everything that happens) and this is what God meant when he told Eliphaz twice that Job had spoken what was right about him (more on that later). However, Job knew nothing of why God permitted Satan to cause him to suffer, or, for that matter, that it was Satan that was causing Job’s suffering. Job kept insisting on his own innocence and that his suffering was unjustified. His speeches were without knowledge because he didn’t know what God was doing. To make this absolutely clear to Job God spends two chapters talking about his creation and asking Job if he knew how or why it was created that way. In 38:4-38 God talks about the “macro-creation.” That is, about creation of the great things like the earth, seas, rain, dew, light and even things like the star constellation that we all see in the night sky. Of course Job had no idea about how or why any of these things were created because he was not there when God created them. The same is true for us today. We may have a better scientific understanding of how all of these things work, but we have no idea how or why they came into existence. Furthermore, we don’t know why things should be the way they are. What we do know is that because things are the way they are, we can understand them and we can subdue nature and make it work for us. If scientists would just take a moment to reflect on this, they might realize that God created our universe the way he did so that we could obey and carry out the mission he gave us when he created us. Genesis 1:28 says, “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’” The problem is that most scientist and people of today think that because we know what we know about the universe we don’t need God. This simply is thinking without wisdom or knowledge. When I began studying God’s words in these chapters I was reading the ESV version of the Bible. In that version, verse 36 says, “Who has put wisdom in the inward parts or given understanding to the mind?” The King James version is the same. It turns out that the words for ‘ibis’ or ‘inner parts’ and ‘rooster’ or ‘mind’ are words that are not used that often and therefore linguists don’t know exactly how to translate them. I prefer the ESV and King James versions a little better here because it seems to fit in better in the context of God’s words here. Who gave man the ability to understand these things? For that matter, how can we understand these things – what is wisdom and knowledge. The people who think we don’t need God any longer have no answer for questions like this, but they don’t want to face this fact. Job didn’t want to face the fact that he didn’t know what God was planning or doing in his suffering, but God wanted him to see this. God knew that Job would have no answers when it came his “macro-creation,” so God turned to something much more mundane that Job thought he knew very well. God began asking Job about the animal kingdom. Why were the animals created the way that they were? Job was very familiar with all the animals that God mentioned here, but Job had no idea why God created them the way that he did. Do you have any idea why God created an ostrich the way he did – a bird that appears very stupid, even cruel to its own offspring, can’t fly and yet can run faster than a horse? I’ll bet you have no idea. I certainly don’t. At the end of this God demanded that Job answer him. Look at 40:2. “Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him? Let him who accuses God answer him!” Job couldn’t answer God because he had no idea how or why any of this was created so he said in verses 4 and 5, “I am unworthy—how can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth. I spoke once, but I have no answer— twice, but I will say no more.” I found it interesting that he said he would put his hand over his mouth, because in 29:9 he said this is exactly what the chief men would do out of respect for him when he approached them. I also found it funny that he says that he would say no more, because in 42:2-6 he does say more. He says more in chapter 42 because God wasn’t done with him yet. God had shown him that he had been speaking to his friends without any knowledge of God’s ultimate plan for him, but what God wanted to show him now was just how much Job needed God. Job needed God’s ultimate justice, because there was nothing that Job could do on his own that could save himself. God needed Job to understand this. So once again God told Job to brace himself like a man because God was going to continue to question him. Look at verses 8 and 9. “Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself? Do you have an arm like God’s, and can your voice thunder like his?” If Job had an arm like God then he could adorn or clothe himself with glory, splendor, honor and majesty. He could humble all the proud people and crush all the wicked. The problem was that Job didn’t have an arm like God so he couldn’t do any of these things. What’s even worse, Job couldn’t even do the basic thing which was to save himself. Think about it. Job was sitting in the dust like a beggar, suffering unbearably, and he could do nothing about it. What he tried to do about was to complain that he was innocent and therefore was suffering unjustly. But if he was suffering unjustly, then by his own reasoning God was being unjust. This was something God could not do, so God wanted Job to understand just how much Job needed God’s ultimate justice. Only God’s justice could save Job. So how did God go about teaching Job how much Job needed Him? God used the example of two of his creations, the Behemoth and the Leviathan. It is a little unclear what two animals these were, but many scholars think the Behemoth might be a hippopotamus and the Leviathan might be a crocodile. It doesn’t really matter what they were, the point was that Job could never hope to control either one of these creatures. However, in God’s sight they were easy to control because they were his creatures. If God wanted to take a crocodile home as a pet that would be no problem, but he challenged Job or any man to try and do the same thing. We can’t. The crocodile would eat us. This is why we all need God – what is impossible for us is very possible for God. In 42:2-6, Job accepted God’s wisdom and power, acknowledges his own lack of understanding and humbly decided to repent in dust and ashes before God instead of complaining about how unjust his suffering was. After finishing with Job, God turned his attention to Eliphaz and his two friends. God speaks only to Eliphaz, presumably because he was the oldest of the three. God uses only two verses to deal with them, but in those two verses he says the same thing twice, Eliphaz and his two friends did not say what was right about God but Job did. What did Job say that was right? Well, Job’s entire argument was based on the absolute sovereignty of God – meaning that if he was suffering, somehow God was letting it or making it happen. This was true. God was in charge of the situation. Without God’s permission, Satan could not lay a finger on Job. God permitted Satan to do this, but what Job didn’t know, and where he made his mistake in his speeches, was God’s purpose for doing this. Job wasn’t suffering because God was unjust, he was suffering because God had great faith in him that he could win a great victory over Satan by not cursing God no matter what circumstance he found himself in. Job was right in basing his argument on God’s absolute sovereignty, but Eliphaz and his two friends were completely wrong in what they said. They were wrong both about Job and about God. They were wrong about Job because he didn’t have any secret sin that he was hiding, and they were wrong about God because he was not punishing Job for that secret sin. Eliphaz and his two friends were claiming that they knew exactly what God was doing and why, but after listening to God questioning Job, they must have realized just how much they didn’t understand. God told them to take sacrifices to Job and ask Job to pray for them. This required them to really humble themselves before Job and basically ask for his forgiveness. As sinful human beings we all know how hard it is to admit that we are wrong and we need someone else’s forgiveness. Anyway, Job’s three friends did exactly what God told them to do and Job forgave them. Look at 10. “After Job had prayed for his friends, the Lord restored his fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before.” I found it very interesting that this verse began with the words “After Job had prayed for his friends.” God didn’t restore Job until he had forgiven his friends and they were reconciled. This is God’s way, and it is the way of the Gospel. We are blessed only when we receive God’s forgiveness, and when we receive his forgiveness we can forgive others and be reconciled to them as well. I love the way this book ends, because it ends with the gospel message. Look carefully at the last few verses. Verse 11 says, “All his brothers and sisters and everyone who had known him before came and ate with him in his house. They comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the Lord had brought on him, and each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring.” These are all the same people who abandoned Job when his time of trouble came around. Now they came back to him and blessed and comforted him. Verse 12 tells us that God did indeed double all of Job’s material wealth – go back to chapter one and compare the numbers there with the numbers here. Now look carefully at verse 13. “And he also had seven sons and three daughters.” God even doubled the number of Job’s children. Many people don’t see this because in chapter one we see that Job had seven sons and three daughters to begin with and Satan took them all away. So how can I say that God giving him seven sons and two daughters after his trial is doubling the amount of his children? Easy. Job had lived a blameless and upright life before God and the Bible tells us that he regularly sacrificed for his children just in case they might have sinned against God. I believe that his first seven sons and three daughters were waiting for him in heaven by God’s side and when we get there we will see Job together with his fourteen sons and six daughters. One final interesting note is the number of years Job lived after his trial. He lived 140 years, which according to Moses in psalm 90:10, is just about twice as long as the average man lives. God truly restored Job in the end. I pray that God may help each of us to carefully reflect on the words of this book so that we can always keep our hearts firmly focused on God and always trust in his goodness no matter what situation we might find ourselves in. |
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