What’s True and False in Job?

Audio Transcript

It’s Job week on the podcast. The e-book of Job is a supply of quite a lot of APJ questions, and the supply of quite a lot of solutions too on all kinds of subjects over time. We’ve eighty episodes now mentioning Job — on each subject you may think about. I’m stunned how typically we return to this essential e-book, which isn’t straightforward to interpret. We’re studying the e-book collectively in our Bible studying. At the moment we learn Job 16 collectively.

The entire e-book is difficult to interpret as a result of it’s suffering from errors, Pastor John — errors about struggling, errors about windfall, and even false statements about God himself, a distortion on full show for us right here in our studying at this time, within the early verses of chapter 16. There we discover a mixture of issues which are true and issues actually false, most starkly in Job 16:7–9. Verse 7 is sovereignly true. God introduced the struggling into Job’s life by his plan and permission. Sure. However then verse 9 appears devilishly false. God didn’t convey the struggling as a result of he hates Job. So, how can we parse truth from fiction as we learn Job’s phrases, alongside together with his spouse and all of his buddies, making an attempt to interpret windfall?

Nicely, that’s the proper query to ask, I believe, as a result of maybe probably the most putting factor in regards to the construction of the e-book of Job is that from chapters 3 to 31 you’ve 29 chapters of back-and-forth between Job and his three so-called comforters or buddies, each of them talking a combination of reality and falsehood. It’s merely beautiful to me that the writer would commit 29 out of 42 chapters to a jumble of excellent and dangerous statements about human struggling and God’s sovereignty. The writer appears to be particularly exercised that there’s a lot dangerous theology in regards to the sovereignty of God and human struggling. That, it appears, is why he provides 29 chapters to it.

The Errors of Job and His Associates

We will summarize the simplistic theology of struggling and sovereignty within the mouth of the three buddies with Job 4:7–8. They are saying, “Who that was harmless ever perished? Or the place have been the upright lower off? As I’ve seen, those that plow iniquity and sow hassle reap the identical.” In different phrases, their reply to Job’s prolonged struggling is that it’s owing to his iniquity. The righteous prosper; the depraved undergo. In chapter after chapter, they accuse Job of every kind of sin, from bribery to deceit to neglect of the poor. And for Job’s half, he despairs of being handled justly by God and says repeatedly, not less than 3 times, that God is treating him as an enemy (Job 13:24, for instance) and that God, the truth is, hates him (Job 16:9).

“We don’t know sufficient about God’s hidden methods and plans to move any legitimate detrimental judgment about his methods.”

Now, what all of them agree on is that God is completely sovereign. That’s wonderful. They by no means query that. We moderns, we’re daring and brash sufficient to get in God’s face and say that he’s not sovereign. That’s by no means as soon as questioned by anyone within the e-book of Job. What they’re fighting is why an individual like Job is enduring such lengthy and horrible struggling. The buddies’ reply is, “His struggling correlates together with his sin.” Job’s reply is, “I don’t perceive what’s occurring, however all I can inform is that God is treating me as if he hated me.”

A Grid for the Ebook of Job

I believe the best way the writer intends for us to type out what’s true and what’s false in what Job and his buddies say in these 29 chapters is by letting the remainder of the e-book — what got here earlier than in chapters 1–2, and what comes after in chapters 32–42 — let all of that present the grid, the framework, the factors for separating reality and error in Job 3–31.

So, let me attempt to sketch very briefly what that grid is.

1. Job’s Goodness

The purpose of chapters 1–2 is that Job was a very good man, a God-fearing man: “innocent and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil” (Job 1:1). He proved that profoundly together with his godly response, blessing God, worshiping God (Job 1:20–21). Within the midst of the lack of his kids, the lack of his well being, he submitted to the sovereign knowledge, justice, and goodness of God, regardless that he couldn’t see all of it. In Job 2:10, he says, “We could obtain good from God, and we could not obtain evil?” And the impressed writer places his approval on these phrases: “In all this Job didn’t sin together with his lips.”

The truth that we’re given a glimpse into heaven as Devil and God work together in regards to the lifetime of Job, which Job couldn’t see, is meant to indicate that on earth, we don’t know sufficient about God’s hidden methods, his hidden plans, to move any legitimate detrimental judgment about his methods. So, we’ve got a sign from the writer from the start that Job’s three buddies should not proper. They’re treating Job as if there’s sin in every single place in his life, which explains his struggling. And the purpose of chapters 1–2 is that that’s not true. There have to be one other clarification. However for Job, for 31 chapters, he can’t determine that out.

2. Elihu’s Rationalization

So, the following huge unit is Elihu, the younger man who steps ahead, who I consider is talking the reality as a way to right each Job and his buddies. Right here’s Job 32:2–3: “Elihu . . . burned with anger at Job as a result of he justified himself reasonably than God. He burned with anger additionally at Job’s three buddies as a result of that they had discovered no reply, though that they had declared Job to be within the incorrect.”

“Struggling, within the case of God’s kids, is a gracious means by which he exposes delight in our lives.”

What’s new about Elihu’s theology of struggling is that he doesn’t correlate struggling merely with a punitive act of God in opposition to Job, however he introduces this new consider Job 33:14–19 that struggling, within the case of God’s kids, is a gracious means by which he exposes the sediment of delight on the backside of our lives, mendacity there undetected, and then you definately get bumped by struggling, and the sediment stirs up. He exposes that and mercifully leads us to repentance and belief. That’s what’s going to occur to Job.

Now, I don’t suppose that contradicts the assertion initially of the e-book of Job — that Job was a very good and God-fearing man. However it clarifies that in the very best of males, whom God regards pretty much as good and God-fearing, there are remnants of indwelling sin. And a technique that God in his mercy cleanses us and humbles us and brings us to fuller, deeper repentance and deeper belief is thru struggling. He checks us to see if we are going to maintain quick to him in love.

3. God’s Response

Then the following main unit within the e-book is the phrase of God himself in chapters 38–41. And the essential message there’s, “Job, you simply don’t know sufficient to move judgment on me. That you must put away your accusations and belief me. You darken counsel with out information” (see Job 38:2).

4. Job’s Repentance

The ultimate a part of the e-book is Job’s confession of God’s sovereignty and his personal repentance for having spoken so badly about God. Job 42:5–6: “I had heard of you by the listening to of the ear, however now my eye sees you; subsequently I despise myself, and repent in mud and ashes.” So, the Lord checks Job one final time now to see if he has the brand new, contemporary grace to wish for the forgiveness of his three buddies who wounded him so badly. Job 42:10: “And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job, when he had prayed for his buddies.”

So, I believe the writer intends for us to step again and see the God-fearing goodness of Job initially, and the refining of Job’s holiness and religion by way of struggling, and his rejection of the simplistic view of the three buddies, and his repentance for having discovered fault with God, and the fantastic thing about his humility and love on the finish. And the writer expects us to take all of that because the grid by way of which we now will be capable to type out what’s true and what’s false within the mouth of Job and his buddies in chapters 3–31.