Month: June 2024

Job 6:24 Teach me, and I will hold my tongue, cause me to understand wherein I have erred.

Job’s response to his suffering is still a good one: he asks the Lord to teach him and he will shut up and accept it; he asks the Lord to help him understand his sin. He and his friends are still under the false impression that he is being punished for some sin. He was a God-fearing man; what did he do wrong? Job is trying here to maintain his innocence.

At the end of the book God does show up and teach him: God is God and he is the creature, and God is just and good and he is the sinner. He wouldn’t understand God’s ways even if He told him. Just repent and believe. Admit your human condition and trust Me. I know what I am doing, and it is for your good.

God’s goodness, righteousness, and love is powerfully revealed and taught to us in the New Testament story of the Son of God. OT believers are told to trust God and wait. NT believers in Jesus are told the same thing: trust God and wait for His promise to be fulfilled. Jesus is coming again to put all things to rights for those who believe Him.

We too ask to be taught. We want to understand “Why.”. The truth is we have been taught in the Word all we need to know concerning God and His relationship to us. He loves us, and that is enough. “The Bible tells me so.”

Job 6:8-9 Oh that I might have my request; and that God would grant me the thing that I long for! Even that it would please God to destroy me; that would let loose his hand and cut me off.

In his grief, Job wanted to respond by giving in, to be freed from his discomfort, and to die. But God had a greater plan for his life. His trouble and grief were so great that he thought death would be a relief.

At times we can have a similar tendency, to want to give up and get out when the going gets rough. To trust God during the difficult times tests us to our limits and exercises our faith. In our struggles, large or small, we need to trust that God is in control and that He will take care of us. Romans 8:28: “For those who love God all things work together for good.”

We may not have a death wish, but we do feel like giving up and getting out from under in tough times. When our faith is tested we are strengthened, and we come out stronger than before. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen [Hebrews 11:1].” Job’s end was better than his beginning, but he could not see it. He had to believe. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Through the Gospel we believe. Hang on to your God-given faith, learn the lessons, and be blessed.

Job 5:17-18 Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole.

Although Eliphaz was wrong in his assumption that God was doing the chastening to punish some sin, he spoke a basic truth: respond with happiness, count it all joy, when you are under the discipline of the Lord. Hebrews 11:6: “The Lord disciplines the one he loves.” The devil did the dirty work, but God allowed him.

We can rejoice, thank God, and count it joy when we suffer physical, emotional, and relational ills. For the Lord is always there, and He has a purpose in it all, and He will bind up the sore and make whole the wounded. When He goes with us through the experiences of life the end result will be better than it was before. God knows what He’ doing and He sees the end.

Because we believe that God is always good, therefore we can be happy when God corrects. Because of the Gospel of Christ, we can believe that He works out all things together for good.

Job 5:8 I would seek unto God, and unto him would I commit my cause.

The advice of Eliphaz, Job’s friend, may be flawed, but in this instance he advises a good, helpful, and true response to the troubles of life in a sinful world (v, 7: “Man is born unto trouble.”) In the midst of troubles we may seek God with us and find the help we need when in need. We may commit our cause, our problem, our hope, and our life unto Him.

However, truth be told, we often seek other things for good instead of God first. “What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer.” We can use troubles to remind us to turn to the Lord and seek Him and commit them to the Lord. Troubles are a fact of life, but the Lord Jesus Christ is the stronger truth. In weakness, humility, sorrow, pain, and trouble Jesus secured victory for us. Then in life power He conquered trouble and rose from the dead to give us His life. We, too, will be redeemed from trouble and resurrected to a new life. Therefore, we may confidently commit our cause to the Lord.

Job 4:17 Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall a man be more pure than his maker.

Although Eliphaz does not speak for God and he offers his own opinions, here he has touched on a basic truth and a major theme of the book. God is God, Lord, and Creator, and we are not. God is just and pure, and He always knows what He is doing, and what He is doing is always good. This is our sinful response to a just and good God: to think that we know better than God and that we would do things better. In pride and unbelief, we blame God, and accuse Him of being unfair, when it is we who are not just and do not know everything.

This kind of sinful pride, wanting to be God, was the downfall of Satan, and subsequently of Adam, and of us. The Gospel is the power of God to change our attitude and our response. We respond with submissive trust in our Lord and our God as our almighty and all-wise Creator and as our kind and loving Father. We know we can trust Him, for He already died for us. Therefore, we can pray, “Thy kingdom come and Thy will be done.” We need this prayer, for without the Spirit of God it is impossible to surrender our stubborn and selfish will to God’s perfect and loving will. Do we believe God will work it out for good, or do we think we are more just and more pure?

Job 4:8 Even as I have seen, they that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same.

Eliphaz opens the discussion about Job’s plight. He says Job has offered wisdom and strengthened the weak, but now trouble has come upon him. Then he implies that Job’s troubles have come about because of his sin. This is the conventional wisdom of the day: “You reap what you sow.” Retributive Justice punishes sin with troubles in this life. See Galatians 6:7-8, “Whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.”

This general principle, while true, doesn’t tell the whole story or apply in Job’s case. God’s ways are hidden from us, as they are from Job and Eliphaz, but His mysterious ways still have a good purpose and result. Nothing good comes from sin, but all good things come through the Gospel of Christ. We do reap what we sow, but the Lord has a greater purpose in mind for us through Jesus Christ. So we pay attention to God and His Word and His Spirit, we trust Him even if we do not understand, and we sow to the Spirit.

Job 3:20-21 Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul; which long for death, but it cometh not; and dig for it more than for hid treasure.

We see the depths of Job’s misery and suffering, and we understand his response of questioning “Why?” Asking Why is the first natural response to suffering and pain. His first response to the loss of family and wealth in 1:21 was “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” But after the devil’s second attempt, on his bodily health, his response was “Why me?” And he wished he was never born.

We mistakenly think that we can bear bad things better if we knew the reason why. But God doesn’t tell us, just like He never told Job what was going on behind the scenes with the Satan. He wants us to trust Him, that He knows what He is doing and that there is a reason and a purpose in His hands. And we know we can trust Him to be good to us and do what is right because of the Gospel. We believe the Gospel and so we know He loves us and He is working it all out for good.

In the end, God worked a blessing in his life after Job learned the lesson: God is God and I’m not; God is good and I’m not; repent and believe the Gospel. He never got his “why question” answered, but he did get God. And that’s all he needed.

Job 3:1, 8 After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day….Let them curse the day, who are ready to raise up their mourning.

Job’s suffering and misery was so great that he cursed the day he was born. It would have been better that he had never lived than to live like this. In Job’s day, people were hired to pronounce curses. He wanted these professional cursers to curse the day of his birth, and do it loudly. Though he did not curse God, as his wife told him to, he did curse himself. And he implied that God shouldn’t have created him.

It is our natural human, sinful reaction to want to curse something when things go wrong or when we are in pain. However, to use God’s name to do so is a sin against the Second Commandment. In Chapter 1, Job did not sin with his lips, but here he comes very close. He felt it would be better never to be born than to be forsaken by God. Job was struggling emotionally, physically, and spiritually. His misery was pervasive and deep.

We need to be careful not to underestimate our vulnerability during times of suffering and pain. We hold on to our faith, no matter what.

Job 2:11 Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that was come upon him, they came every one from his own place…for they had made an appointment together to come to mourn with him and to comfort him.

After Job suffered the loss of his family, his wealth, and his health, his three friends came to be with him and to comfort him. They just sat with him and didn’t open their mouths for seven days. The “ministry of presence” is sometimes all that can be done and all that is needed.

Issues arose when the four of them opened their mouths and continued a book-long theological discussion about the problem of evil and human suffering. The friends turned out to be of no comfort with their words. Job’s problem (why do bad things happen to good people?) was not resolved until God Himself showed up.

Meanwhile, it is a gift and blessing of God that He gives us Christian friends who will respond to our need by coming to be with us in distress. The fellowship of believers is often a comfort for us when we just need support. Words of advice are not always helpful, while presence can be comforting. Fellow believers respond in love as friends in time of need. Christian fellowship is mutual as believers help and comfort one another.

Job 1:20-22 Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, and said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.

God is good, all the time, no matter what. Job had lost his wealth and his family, and in the next chapter would lose his health. He did not at this time ask, “Why?” He did not get mad at God or disbelieve in despair. He resigned himself to God’s will, even though he could not understand it. He maintained his trust in the Lord and worshipped Him and blessed His name.

It takes a God-given faith to experience tragedy and loss and affirm that God is still good even if I am not. We do not see what God is doing during the worst of times, and He won’t tell us why. But we still believe that God is God and that God is good, all the time, no matter what it feels like. We can still worship Him and bless His name, all the time, whether things in this world are going well or not.

It takes faith to know that God knows what He is doing, and that what He is doing is always good, right, wise, just, loving, and kind. And He gave that faith when He gave us the Holy Spirit to believe that God sent His Son for us. This Gospel grants us the power to know His love and to trust Him always and to give thanks in all the circumstances of life on earth. Blessed be the Lord!