Job
11“Therefore I will not keep silent. I will speak in the anguish of my spirit. I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. 12Am I a sea, or a sea monster, that you put a guard over me? 13When I say, ‘My bed shall comfort me. My couch shall ease my complaint;’ 14then you scare me with dreams, and terrify me through visions: 15so that my soul chooses strangling, death rather than my bones. 16I loathe my life. I don’t want to live forever. Leave me alone, for my days are but a breath. 17What is man, that you should magnify him, that you should set your mind on him, 18that you should visit him every morning, and test him every moment? 19How long will you not look away from me, nor leave me alone until I swallow down my spittle? 20If I have sinned, what do I do to you, you watcher of men? Why have you set me as a mark for you, so that I am a burden to myself? 21Why do you not pardon my disobedience, and take away my iniquity? For now shall I lie down in the dust. You will seek me diligently, but I shall not be.”
Believers may suffer while they live in this world, even after receiving Jesus Christ, and accepting that in faith is never easy. Look at Job’s life, and what comes through is this: Job served God and kept his faith, but that faith was not for God’s sake — it worked toward his own salvation.
Job enjoyed wealth and honor by God’s grace and could easily have grown proud, but his hope was set on heaven, which is why he did his utmost not to sin. He had a fine character and loved caring for the poor; people who saw the love he always handed out to strangers and to the needy respected him. On the days his children gathered for a feast he was an attentive father who offered sacrifices for them, worried that they might have sinned against God. And because Job knew this world does not last, he worked always at living by God’s law. God loved Job, who lived by faith, and kept him under his protection at all times.
People want to own a great deal of worldly power and property rather than hope for an eternal kingdom, and so their whole measure is this world. But look at the heavenly council recorded in Job, and you see that the holy believer in God’s mind is a believer like Job, one who has let go of human righteousness.
Angels were standing before God’s throne, and Satan came to that place. Yahweh asked Satan, “Where have you come from?” Satan, who had been going about like a roaring lion looking for people he could trip up, answered that he had been walking here and there in the world. Satan goes all around the world like this, looking for someone to trip, so believers must not let their guard down. Satan works hard. That is why your heart keeps slackening and losing hope even when you resolve to live by faith.
God asked Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and turns away from evil?” The phrase *my servant* here is spoken as a title of respect and honor. That God pays respect to a believer who keeps the faith is truly astonishing, and it shows what a noble character he has. The God of great love is the one who looks only at a heart that loves the living God, and who lifts believers up and gives them glory.
When God commended Job, Satan — whose whole aim is to trip souls up — said that Job feared God because God had given him material blessing and spiritual blessing, and that if he had received nothing he would not have served. What Satan was saying is that if God took away what Job owned in this world, he would certainly curse God and leave. When believers today think that trusting God ought to mean living well, and say that being poor means not having received God’s blessing, that is Satan’s thinking.
Job 1:9-11
9Then Satan answered Yahweh, and said, “Does Job fear God for nothing? 10Haven’t you made a hedge around him, and around his house, and around all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. 11But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will renounce you to your face.”
If the thought of blaming God comes to you when trouble strikes, you should know that Satan gave you that thought. Of course worldly wealth is needed to live; but serving God for the sake of this world is a shamanistic religion of blessing-seeking, and you must clean your heart out as Jesus cleaned out the temple. God knew this evil thinking of Satan’s and still went out of his way to boast about Job, because he knew Job’s faith was absolute. Satan, though, guaranteed that if what Job had were taken away he would certainly leave God.
Listening to what Satan says, I thought that Satan can never understand the relationship between Job, who was rooted in God, and the God who loves such a man. This is also the relationship between God and you right now, and it is the relationship between parents and a child they love however much the child rolls in the mud. The bond rests on a love that can never be cut, and so it does not break even when jealousy tries to drive a wedge into it.
I have made this love that Satan can never know into a story. A man grew spiteful looking at the tree next door, thick with leaves and heavy with fruit; he thought that if he simply stripped the leaves off the tree would die, and that is why he told the owner to test how weak his tree was. He stripped away every leaf, and the fruit only showed up more clearly. He thought that cutting off the branches with the fruit on them would kill it, and when he cut them, a thick, great tree he had not been able to see before stood there. The more leaves and branches he cut, the better grown the tree looked, and in his anger the man cut through the trunk at its base. When the tree vanished from his sight he rejoiced that it was dead at last. But as the years passed, the tree, whose roots ran deep, put out shoots again, grew, and became a tree that bore fruit. It was not the leaves or the fruit-bearing branches that had let the tree live. Its roots ran deep in good soil and reached the water, and that is why it could grow into a great trunk and put out fruit and leaves. So it is God, who is life, who supplied the water of life to a believer whose roots run deep; that is why the believer could mature and bear much fruit of faith.
As in that story, Job had much property, children, livestock and servants, but his faith did not come from those things — he met God by faith first. Satan did not know that, so he thought that taking away Job’s livestock and killing his children would bring Job’s faith down.
Job was a man who loved God sincerely, with a blameless and upright faith. If he had been the sort of man who curses God over lost leaves and lost fruit, God would not have commended him as an upright man who had turned away from evil. True faith does not change with the circumstances in front of it.
Could you keep your faith steadily even if your property shrank, or you fell ill, or your children did not succeed as much as you wanted? The question is whether, whatever suffering you meet, you can set your hope on God and drive off Satan’s temptation boldly. You must give God your pledge that however much suffering Satan brings, you will never blame him. Believers suffer because they have been recognized as God’s children; an illegitimate child would have no reason to suffer, so give thanks.
Satan is afraid of a believer whose faith rises above this world. Job did not know what was going on in heaven just then, but he was living, as he always did, with God at the center.
Job 1:21
21He said, “Naked I came out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there. Yahweh gave, and Yahweh has taken away. Blessed be Yahweh’s name.”
Job brought nothing with him when he came into the world, which is why he held the humility of a man who knows that what he owns now is on loan from God. In the grief of losing all his children and his property, the first thing Job did was to tear his robe, shave his head and worship God. He did not complain to God or say anything wicked; he tore his robe and worshiped the God who had let him enjoy everything up to that day. God was the one who had given him his children, and so he confessed that even when God took those children away, he wanted the name of Yahweh to be praised. How many people could make that confession after losing their property and their children?
All the suffering that came on Job happened in a single day. Job 1:16 says that while he was still speaking, another man came; verse 17, that while he was still speaking, another came; verse 18, that while he was still speaking, another came. You and I would complain and suffer over even a small problem, asking how God could send us a trial like this. We would complain, why must I alone go through such pain, what have I done wrong — and we would forget every grace God had given us until then.
Accidents came one after another in the space of a day and he lost his property and his children all at once; and still he fell down before God and worshiped, and confessed that Yahweh gave and Yahweh has taken away. Job’s faith is truly astonishing. Only a faith of that order draws God’s commendation as blameless and upright. What is yours like?
We say very easily that we will receive a reward from God. Sometimes we think that serving, giving offerings and praying ought naturally to be repaid with something in this world, and we close our hearts easily when a small difficulty comes. But the faith God recognizes is a faith like Job’s, which gives thanks and worships for having met God even when everything it owns in this world is lost. None of these disasters happened through any fault of Job’s, and yet you can see him repenting deeply.
You too will have had times in your life when difficulties came one after another. When they keep coming, you need to think spiritually about what God wants and what he is trying to make you understand by giving you this problem. Do not complain about why this keeps happening; the wind of suffering will only stop when you turn quickly in the direction God wants and obey. Among believers there are some who understand and turn after a single hardship, and others who do not understand for years, or for a lifetime. We urge such believers with the Word so that they will not have to go the long way around, but most of them will not let go of their own ideas, so the long way is what they take. Since disobedience only means being trained until the rough edges are worn down, the wisest choice is to break up your own habits and your own framework of righteousness quickly.
Even if, like Job, you suffer for a while and lose everything, you have lost nothing at all if your faith in God does not change. Job never betrayed God to the end, and later he received back all the property and all the children he had lost; look at that, and you see that Job won by faith. Suffering met by a believer is a very good opportunity to show a faithful faith. Believers who are in Jesus Christ have their hope in heaven, and so they know that suffering is a passing wind and a hill that must be climbed in this life. However hard the hill is to climb, it is easy enough if a wind of grace pushes from behind. Job, who showed us that mature faith, received a blessing that cannot be taken from him.
Job 3:1-3
1After this Job opened his mouth, and cursed the day of his birth. 2Job answered: 3“Let the day perish in which I was born, the night which said, ‘There is a boy conceived.’
Chapter 3 records Job’s lament that it would have been so much better if he had never been born. Listening to him curse the day of his birth, you might think he is complaining about the hard reality in front of him. But I took it, on the premise that Job is a man God has recognized, that he is grieved over this thing that happened on account of his own lack. Job’s faith is built on rock, and when he curses his own birth and laments, he is not blaming God; he is in anguish over what he lacks.
Job had lived his whole life by faith; but now that he has lost everything, he cannot preach the Word whole as he used to, and that reality is so painful before God that he curses his own birth. He can bear being mocked himself, but it torments him that God’s glory should seem to be veiled because of him.
Can you understand Job’s heart here, in agony because he thinks that had he done better he would not have been a burden to God? That pain — not being able to preach God boldly because of his own lack — was nothing like the pain of losing his property and his children. He found it wretched that when God had given him opportunity and time, he had not lived better by faith, and had come as far as this place where God is shamed.
Her husband kept his faith to the end through all this suffering, and Job’s wife shouted at him: after a disaster this size, are you still pathetically believing in God? — and she told him to curse God and die. Suffering met in this world can be a scale that weighs faith, and it can be a good tool brought in to file down rough edges quickly. Job’s wife had lost the property and the children too, and her pain is understandable; but knowing it was no fault of her husband’s and cursing God and her husband anyway is committing a sin that will never be forgiven. That woman would not take responsibility for what happened in her own life; she poured out violent feeling and sinned greatly against God. While she lived comfortably with plenty of property, everything she lost had been her boast; when it all disappeared she blamed God and her husband instead. So believers must be trained as the Holy Spirit teaches, and must learn to meet a problem with the Word rather than with their own feelings.
Job 4:6-7
6Isn’t your piety your confidence? Isn’t the integrity of your ways your hope? 7“Remember, now, whoever perished, being innocent? Or where were the upright cut off?
Job’s three friends came and told him this: you said you always feared God and lived by his word, but look at the suffering you are in — you lost your property and your children because you sinned. It does not seem like something a friend should say to a man in agony. I see believers saying to each other what these friends said to Job. Rather than comforting and encouraging a person in trouble, they think that the trouble itself proves a sin was committed. This is not a right faith. Reaping what you sow is a law of nature, and that the wicked suffer while the good are blessed is only what the people of the world hope for. You can sow hard and reap nothing; you can work hard and still be poor. A person can be wicked and own a great deal of property, and can live hard spiritually and still be poor. The conversation between God and Satan makes this plain enough.
I would like you to consider whether you have ever, when trouble came on a brother in faith, used your own judgment and experience, or ethics and morals and the Word, as a measure and made the pain worse. Job met suffering he did not want, and his friends, knowing his faith, condemn him by the measures of this world all the same. Behavior like this is people who would not have dared say a word while Job had plenty of property condemning him freely once they decided he had lost his strength. Judging a believer of faith without knowing the situation harms your own faith instead, and you should know that it can darken you spiritually.
When his friends pressed him that his suffering was because of sin, Job began to lay out in detail how he had kept his faith. He explained the faith he had lived by faithfully, and however much he explained they could not take it in; and so Job lamented, *he knows the way that I take. When he has tried me, I will come out like gold*.
You can live like Job, without your faith leaning to the left or the right, holding the Word precious, and still pass through a tunnel of suffering if God has determined it. God knows exactly what has to be cut and shaped in each believer, and sometimes he puts a person through the fire hard in order to use them as a spiritual soldier. If you mock the people being refined that way just because nothing like Job’s trouble has come to you, what will you say for yourself when your own suffering comes? Wisdom is to give thanks for the peaceful time and circumstances entrusted to you and to be a great comfort to a brother under the fire, rather than to judge and mock someone else’s pain.
Preaching a book as precious as Job in a single sermon is plainly asking too much. Read Job with the faith of Job at the center — a man alive in God and dead to the world, who never in the end blamed God — and you will see in detail why God loved him.
There was one thing about Job I found regrettable as I read. In the part where he is trying to persuade his friends, he keeps stressing his own acts of faith in order to explain that living well or badly is not decided by sin. That made him look proud, and it sounded like a man boasting of his own righteousness, and that is why his friends stressed sin all the harder. Job did not say those things to boast of what he had done; but he repeated them over and over to explain himself, so it looked as though he were putting his own righteousness on display.
It would have been far easier for Job to talk with his friends if, rather than trying to persuade them, he had lifted God up and said that everything he had come through was God’s grace. Believers keep their faith and still their lives twist and turn, which is why they meet glad days and sad days alike. Watching friends with no ears to hear, however much he explained what a thanksgiving it is to be able to live as a child of God in a life that vanishes like mist, he must have grasped how worthless a human being is before God.
God, who knew Job’s heart, began to speak of the history of creation in order to break the friends’ view of punishment as reward and retribution. Introducing his cosmic transcendence and his absolute sovereignty, he let them know that they were not qualified to judge God or the faith of Job, whose faith was whole.
Having heard the word of creation, Job came to see that in keeping his faith all this time he had only lived hard for his own salvation, and had not given glory to God. Job kept the Word because he needed it for himself, so that he could enter God’s kingdom later; it was not any great help to God’s work. He had thought that he had at least lived well by the Word; but hearing God’s vast word, he came to see how futile and empty a life is.
When he came to see how much like dust his own existence is in God’s sight, he was ashamed and began to repent sincerely. Until then he had served God through religious tradition and the teaching of his forefathers; now, through God’s direct revelation, he came to see how great God’s glory and authority are.
Believers, too, badly need to meet spiritually and directly, and understand deeply, the God they first met through knowledge of the Bible. Then you can thank the God who built a tunnel of suffering to save you — one person out of so many.
Job did suffer, but he came to hold a faith far more mature than the faith he had before the suffering, and he was able to meet the living God directly. Even before the suffering God delighted in Job’s upright faith; but the Job who had matured in faith was now like a jewel to God.
Whether you own much or little, anyone can pass through a tunnel of suffering in the course of a life, so perhaps life itself is suffering. The tunnel may be longer than you expect or shorter than you expect; but once you come out of it there is an accounting to be made with God for the road you have traveled, and so you must set your faith firmly while you are passing through. If the tunnel of suffering must be passed through anyway, then may you be humble as Job was, asking what you have to give God even if you are righteous, and what the great God could possibly receive from you.
When Job offered a burnt offering for the sin of the friends who had mocked him and tried to teach him, God accepted Job’s faith and forgave them. Job’s faith, which had always worked at overcoming sin, is what saved them. Job left behind fruit of love and faith every time he met suffering, and he received the astonishing blessing of having his children and his property given back to him just as they were. The worldly blessing and the spiritual blessing Job received again are an eternal blessing that Satan can no longer take away, whatever scheme he lays.
God spoke in detail of a history of creation that no one who had not created it himself could know. May you believe him as Job did, and take after Job’s faith, which never doubted the eternal kingdom of God, and may you receive great grace as he did.