Job’s suffering, testing, confronting, comforting and restoration By Rev. Katherine Liu Bruce

Job’s suffering, testing, confronting, comforting and restoration

By Rev. Katherine Liu Bruce

Christian Arts Ministries: Biblical precepts & Gospel music

 

The book of Job Theme

•      The book wrestles with the age-old question: Why do righteous men suffer, if God is a God of love and mercy? It clearly teaches the sovereignty of God and the need for man to acknowledge such. Job’s three friends gave essentially the same answer: all suffering is due to sin.  

•      Elihu, however, declared that suffering is often the means of purifying the righteous. God’s purpose, therefore, was to strip away all of Job’s self-righteousness and to bring him to the place of complete trust in Him.

Definition of Satan  

•      His name means “adversary” characterizing his basic nature, which is to oppose God’s person, His plan and His people. It is clear from this passage that Satan is a person, not just an evil influence. Consistently, throughout Scripture Satan is presented as both a real person and a spirit being.

 (1) He conversed with the Lord, which requires intellect.

(2) He was antagonistic toward Job (vv.9-110, showing that he has emotions.

(3) He purposed to destroy Job and disgrace God (1:11; 2:4-5,7), therefore demonstrating Satan has a will.

•      Satan’s activities, however, are limited by the sovereign control of God (1:12;2:6).

Satan’s first attack to Job

•      Satan was against Job’s possessions. It was designed to expose Job’s true motives for serving God, which Satan contended were selfish. This test took place only after God gave Satan permission to try Job.

•      Job recognized God’s hand in his affairs and evidenced a proper attitude toward his possessions. They were a gracious gift from God, not things he had earned and therefore had a right to keep.

•      Job said,

Satan’s second test to Job

Satan was against Job’s person.  “Skin for skin”

•      Job’s condition was characterized by several symptoms. The skin covering his entire body was affected (v.7),

•      He was itched intensely (v.8), and he was in acute pain (v.13).

•      His flesh attracted worms and became crusty and hard (7:5). It oozed serum and turned darker in color (7:5; 30:30).

•      Job also experienced fever and aching bones (30:17:30). He may have had elephantiasis or leukemia of the skin.

•      The good will of God included physical suffering for Job at this time, as it does for many today.

Chapter 3 the dialogues with Job; Job’s lament

•       Whereas the introductory two chapters the debate that follows. In it Job says some things that move his friends to break their long silence and suggest to him why he may be suffering.

•       Job speaks out of great physical and mental anguish. His own basic presupposition, that God always blesses the righteous and afflicts the wicked, has proven faulty. If he judges by his experience, he must conclude that his theology is wrong, for he cannot put what he believes to be true of God together with what is happening to him.

•      Though at times Job reacts with hostility, he always turns back to God. Much of what he says later is exaggerated, untrue, and virtually blasphemous, but he never renounces God.

•      Eliphaz’s speech

 

Bildad’s speech

 

Job’s prayer

Job’s faith in the Lord

 Job chapter 1-20 Implication/application

•      God use suffering to purify us and self-righteousness

•      We need to recognize God’s purpose

•      Submitting to God’s affliction in meekness

•      Repentance of sins, ask God to search our hearts, whether there is sin

•      Have faith in God, our redeemer living, he wounds, he also binds up, He injures, he also heals.   

Chapter 38-42 God spoke, Job’ repentance

Job Chapter 38 God confronts Job with mysteries of heavens, and earth

             Finally, God breaks His silence and speaks to Job directly and answered Job out of the storm. How absurd to think that a creature should become the critic of the Creator. God accepts Job’s challenge, urged him brace himself like a man (v.3) Heb., geber, denoting man in his strength as a combatant. God mentioned constellations in the heavens, a large bright stars and angels joined in praise when the earth was created. (v.7). Personified dawn is represented as taking the cover of darkness off the earth and shaking the wicked out of it like dust. (v.13). When dawn comes, the dark earth stands out in clear relief as shapeless clay does when stamped with a seal. (v.14). God speaks here with great irony in verse 21.

Job Chapter 38 God confronts Job with mysteries of heavens and earth

Job cannot understand even such common things as snow, hail, wind, rain, lightning, frost, and ice. (vv.22-30). Does Job determine the movements of the constellations in the heaven? (v.31) and the Bear, a large bright star or constellation? Can Job bring forth the constellations in their seasons? Can Job set up God’s dominion over the earth? Does Job send the lightning bolts on their way? God questions job in order to unveil God’s sovereignty who created the mysteries of heaven and earth. 

Chapter 39 God confronts Job with mysteries of the animal kingdom 

•      God now confronts Job (through 39:30) with mysteries of the animal kingdom in order to make him more aware of his ignorance and thus of his inability to be a competent judge of the works of God. The lion, raven, mountain goat, deer, wild donkey, wild ox, ostrich, horse, hawk, and eagle are all paraded before Job’s mind. Unlike the domestic donkey, it is fleet of foot and graceful. (v.5).

•       In verses 13-17, it appears to man that the ostrich is unconcerned about her young, leaving some of her eggs uncovered (though only by day when the heat of the sand helps incubate them) and unhitched (thereby serving as food for her young). Her seeming lack of wisdom is not apart from God’s plan, just as behind the trials of the godly, which seem so unreasonable to Job, lies the wise purpose of God. 

Chapter 40 Job’s silence and God continued his second speech about His power

            Though God challenges Job to answer, Job wisely declines. When Job criticized God’s ways, he was in effect trying to usurp God’s way as governor of the world. In this paragraph full of irony, God asks if Job can really perform those things that only God can do. (vv.6-14). Job is invited to consider the behemoth, usually considered to be the hippopotamus. The Lord’s point is this: Since I made both the behemoth and you, Job, and you cannot control even this fellow creature, how dare you think of usurping my place! (v.15).

Chapter 41 God used a second illustration, leviathan, (crocodile) as symbolical

 God used a second illustration, leviathan, usually identified as the crocodile (Though sometimes used symbolically, as in Isa.27:1), God makes the same point as in 40:15.  Dismay goes before him (v.22) better, fear dances before him. A graphic description of the terror that the presence of leviathan brings to other creatures including man. The crocodile’s scales leave an impression on the mud as if a threshing board had passed over it. (v.30). When he swims, he makes a commotion like boiling water or like the foaming from mixtures in a medicine bowl. (v.31)

Chapter 42 Job’s repentance and the deliverance

 Job repents of his pride and rebellion and finds contentment in the knowledge that he has God’s fellowship. This is the great lesson of the book:  If we know God, we do not need to know why He allows us to experience what we do. He is not only in control of the universe and all its facets but also of our lives; and He loves us. Though His ways are sometimes beyond our comprehension, we should not criticize Him for His dealings with us or with others. God is always in control of all things, even when He appears not to be.

      No form of God appeared in the whirlwind, but what God revealed about Himself enable Job to see Him. Four times in these verses God refers to Job as my servant a vindication of God’s confidence in Job when originally challenged by Satan (vv.7-8) (1:8). And God told Job’s three friends “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right.” (v.7). and told them to take seven bulls and seven rams and sacrifice a burnt offering for themselves. The Lord made Job prosperous again. Job’s family all comforted him, such presents were customarily given when visiting an important person, especially after a calamity (2Chron.32:23).

 Finally, God was given twice as many animals as he had originally owned (1:2-3) but only the same number of children, since the ten who died (1:19) he fully expected to see in the resurrection (19:26). Job gives his daughters a share in the inheritance was an unusual favor, grated later under the law only if there were no sons (Num.27:8) In that Job live to such a great age a hundred and forty years, he obviously fully recovered his health.

Job replied to the Lord as follows,

“I know that you can do all things; no plan of you can be thwarted. You asked, ‘who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?’ surely, I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’ My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore, I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” (vv.2-6).

The deliverance of Job; God was angry with Eliphaz and his two friends

 After the Lord had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Tasmanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer for you and not deal with you according to your folly. You have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” (vv.7-8). So Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite did what the Lord told them; and the Lord accepted Job’s prayer. (v.9).

 After Job had prayed for his friends, the Lord made him prosperous again and gave him twice as much as he had before. 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 upon him, and each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring. The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the first. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys. And he also had seven sons and three daughters. 

 Nowhere are all the lands were there found women as beautiful as Job’s daughters, and their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers. After this, Job lived a hundred and forty years; he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. And so, he died, old and full of years. (Vv.10-16).

Chapter 38-42 Implication/ Application

1)  If we know God, we do not need to know why He allows us to experience what we do. He is not only in control of the universe and all its facets but also of our lives; and He loves us. Though His ways are sometimes beyond our comprehension, we should not criticize Him for His dealings with us or with others. God is always in control of all things, even when He appears not to be.

2)   Be true and faithful for God’s calling, obey His words

3)   Keeping persistence, perseverance in proclamation of Jesus Christ, and Gospel.

4)  Friends or elders’ speech do not necessarily apply to us; listen to the voice of God, for no one knows what God talk to us. God answered Job in person and demanded his friends to apology and sacrifice a burnt offering for themselves and Job prayed for them.

5)  Keep upright heart, righteousness, fear the Lord and shun evil. in God’s timing. God will vindicate us, God gives us an unshakable kingdom, do not let Satan attempt you into shameful sin.     

6)  God allowed Satan to attempt Job, because God wanted to convince Satan to believe Job is upright heart, blameless, righteousness, a servant of God who practiced integrity, fear God and shun evil. God wanted to silent Satan’s mouth and ended accusation and persecution.