What Can We Learn from the Book of Job?

INTRODUCTION

Unlike any other sermon you’ve probably ever heard, this one is not from a single verse or a single story in the Bible but from a whole book—a book of 42 chapters—44 pages in my Bible—the book of Job—just before Psalms in the Old Testament.

Job is one of the most important books in the Bible because it considers the biggest question we all have to face when we believe in God.

That question is: Why do bad things happen to good people?

I. Job was a great man. We read, “This man was the greatest of all the people of the east” (1:1 and 3). And Job was a good man. God said of Job: “There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil” (1:8).

A. At the beginning of the story Job was rich, with thousands of sheep, camels, oxen, and donkeys, and many servants.

He had seven sons and three daughters. It was a loving family. The sons took turns holding parties in their houses and invited their sisters.

Job was supremely blessed by God, and Job gave God the credit for all he had.

B. The villain of the story enters. He is Satan--called in scripture, “The Accuser.”

Satan taunts God. He says, “Job worships you only because you bless him. Take away the blessings, and Job will curse you!”

So God gives him permission, and Satan goes to work.

First, bandits steal all of Job’s herds and kill his servants.

Then, when Job’s seven sons and three daughters are dining together in the oldest brother’s house, a sudden windstorm collapses the house and all Job’s children are killed.

C. But Job keeps his faith. He says, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (1:21).

We all know how hard it is to keep trusting God when everything goes wrong.

But worse is still to come.

Satan inflicts loathsome sores on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.

Job had what the ancients called “leprosy.” Leprosy made you an outcast from society. Lepers could no longer mix with well people.

Job goes and sits among the ashes and scratches his sores with a broken piece of pottery.

Job is as miserable as anyone can be.

Then another blow falls.

Job’s poor wife is at her wits’ end. In her despair she tells Job to go ahead and curse God—and let God take his life, too.

But Job is still faithful. He says, “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?”

The author tells us: “In all this Job still did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing” (2.10).

II. Three friends come from far countries to console Job in his sorrow. Their names are Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar.

A. “When they saw him, they did not recognize him, and they raised their voices and wept aloud; they tore their robes and threw dust in the air upon their heads. They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven night, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great” (Job 2:11-13).

B. Then poor Job cracked.

Some of you have experienced long, drawn-out suffering. At first you think: I can stick it out. I will keep my faith. I will not give up. But as the trouble only gets worse and worse, you feel, that, not only that you are going through the wringer, but you are stuck between the rollers.

That’s what happened with Job. We read that he opened his mouth and cursed the day he was born. Job wished he had been a stillborn child. He wished that he was in that dark and dreary place of the dead. His lament goes on for a whole chapter.

C. After the seven days of silence, Job’s friends begin to give him advice.

Eliphaz speaks first. At first, Eliphaz is gentle. He tells Job how good and kind Job had been: “See, you have instructed many; you have strengthened the weak hands. You have supported those who were stumbling…” (Job 4:3).

Eliphaz reminds Job that while no human is perfect before God, God is always good and righteous. He advises Job to pray hard and seek God.

Job answers with another lament. Job says, “The arrows of the Almighty are in me; my spirit drinks their poison; the terrors of God are arrayed against me....O that it would please God to crush me, that he would let loose his hand and cut me off!” (6:4-9).

Then Bildad takes his turn. He reminds Job that God is just; God must be punishing Job for his sins—or for his children’s sins.

Poor Job insists that he doesn’t deserve all this suffering. He wishes that God would come to him so that he could argue his case.

Next, the third friend, Zophar, tries to talk sense to Job. Zophar knows just why Job is suffering, and he tells him the remedy. “Just repent; confess your sins; God will forgive.”

As Job continues to talk back, the friends become more and more convinced that Job is hiding some dark sin. They accuse him, and Job calls them “miserable comforters” (16:2).

He tells them that though they can’t put themselves in his place, if the tables were turned, he could put himself in their place. He could speak the easy platitudes as well as they.

Bildad threatens Job with the terrors of Hell if he won’t repent. The three friends insist that Job is being punished for some dreadful sin. And Job continues to insist on his innocence.

They argue back and forth for 28 chapters.

D. Job never gives up. He clings to God. In the middle of all this back and forth, in chapter 19, Job says something remarkable. He says one of the most insightful things in the Old Testament.

Job says, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God” (19:25-26).

In this flash of insight, Job speaks more truth than he realizes.

Job has described the Land of the Dead as a dreary, desolate “land of gloom and deep darkness…gloom and chaos, where light is like darkness” (10:20-21)

There was no understanding in Job’s day of Resurrection or Heaven or a joy-filled life with God forever in eternity.

But in his pain, Job cries out that surely his Redeemer lives and on the other side of the grave he will somehow see God and be vindicated!

As we read this remarkable confession—“I know that my Redeemer lives!”—we think of Jesus, our Redeemer, who died and lives for us.

Job could not have imagined how much truth he was speaking. He was thinking that there must be some heavenly being who could be his advocate before God to argue his case.

III. Finally, God answers out of the whirlwind (chapters 35-38).

A. God quizzes Job. He asks, “Were you there when I laid the foundation of the earth?…when the morning stars sang together, and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?”

God speaks to Job in beautiful poetry for four long chapters.

God speaks of his creation—the rain, the snow, and the stars—and his wonderful creatures—the lions, mountain goats, wild oxen, the ostrich, the mighty hippopotamus and the fearsome crocodile.

God asks Job questions he can’t answer. He never answers Job’s questions. He never tells Job the meaning of his suffering, but now it doesn’t matter.

Job knows now that God has not forgotten him. God is not his enemy. God has spoken to him personally. Job is humbled; his faith is renewed.

B. Job cries out: “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (42:5-6).

God has come to Job—not to answer his questions but to reveal his glory and majesty.

And Job is convinced that God is with him and cares about him. Nothing has changed yet about Job’s circumstances, but God has spoken to him. That makes all the difference

Job has learned humility—and the greatness of God.

God has reminded Job that there are mysteries in nature that are beyond his understanding—and the reason for suffering is one of those mysteries.

Job never learns the reason for his suffering. But it doesn’t matter now. All that matters is that God has spoken to him! Job is in a personal relationship with the mighty Creator.

Job has learned—what some of us have learned—that we don’t need all the answers. What matters, is that God is with us in our dark valley.

A mother lost her teenage son in an automobile accident. She tells how, on the morning of his funeral, she rose early and reached for her Bible. She read to herself the speeches of God from the whirlwind. When someone asked her why she chose those chapters, she said, “I needed to know that my pain was not all there was in the world.” (Carol Newsom, in The New Interpreter’s Bible, p631)

C. God’s part in the story ends with God instructing the three friends to ask his servant Job to pray for them.

The friends had talked theology to defend God’s reputation, but God tells them: “You have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has” (42:7).

Job had said foolish things, but his heart was right. He had never given up on God.

D. And, in the end, Job’s fortunes are restored. His wife bears him more children. And what Job doesn’t know (but we know)—is that Job will see his children who have died, again in the Better Country.

Job served God in a way he never knew. He proved the falsity of Satan's taunt that no one serves God for nothing.

Job’s faithfulness had brought joy to the heart of God. Someday Job will know how pleased God was with him, for his faithfulness.

And that will be his reward.

CONCLUSION

We who live after Jesus came to earth have a great advantage over Job.

Jesus Christ has given us something that Job never had—the sure hope of a Glorious Homecoming beyond the grave.

Job’s perspective was this life—our perspective is eternity.

Whatever we suffer unjustly in this world, we know that God has all eternity to make it up to us.

We know the deeper meaning of Job’s inspired saying, “I know that my Redeemer lives…”

We know that God has sent his Son, our Lord Jesus, into the world to live among us and to die for us and to be raised and go ahead of us to prepare a place for us in the Father’s House—where all our sorrows will be forgotten and all our tears will be wiped away—and we will dwell with our Lord Jesus and the saints and angels for ever and ever in the joy of the Lord.