Additional Lessons from the Book of Job

LESSON 1

In the midst of his sufferings, his close friends misunderstood and accused him. He also felt that God had made him His enemy and target. So Job cried for vindication since he was not aware of any wrongs that he had committed to deserve such pain.

Many believers, feeling that they have suffered unjustly, also cry out for immediate justice.

IMMEDIATE JUSTICE?

Why is it that God does not hearken to their cries for immediate justice? We need to note that evil and sin are so deeply ingrained in the human heart after the fall that if Christ were to come in power to destroy evil everywhere He found it, He would have had to destroy us too. Our cries for immediate justice may mean that we also become a casualty in God’s judgment.

Hence, God, in the person of Christ, went in weakness to the cross to pay for our sins so that someday He can come again to wipe out evil without having to judge all of us as well. At the cross, the requirement that evil be punished by death was met by the Lord Jesus who intervened in love to take our penalty; at the cross, evil was conquered by the supreme degree of love in the fulfilment of justice. God can then forgive our sins without compromising His justice. Jesus took the penalty we deserved so that we can be restored to a relationship of love with God.

Take note that if sin had to be punished immediately and the penalty does not involve death or hell, immediate retribution would completely strip obedience of any meaning. Obedience would then be a response to an anticipated pleasure and disobedience would just be a desire for pain. The motive for obedience would be corrupted and the motive to avoid disobedience would just be free from punishment, pain and discomfort. Obedience will no longer be an expression of love for God and His desires; it will be contaminated with self-love and God does not want such a development in the lives of His people. We need to trust God to work out His love and wisdom in our lives in the ways He orders our lives, including times of sufferings and in His perfect timing.

LESSON 2

During his sufferings, Job came to a point when he felt that God was hedging him in and was very cruel to him. Some of us may feel the same way in our despair and conclude that God does not care at all for our plight. This is far from the truth.

God is a suffering God

The Scriptures reveal that God can sympathise with us because He, in Christ, experienced our weakness as well as our pain (Hebrews 2:18; 4:15). Isaiah 53 highlights that Christ Jesus carried our grief and our sorrows. Not only does God know what our sufferings are like; He experiences our sufferings. Surely we can appreciate the fact that God in His Son had first hand experience of sufferings. Such a God cannot be indifferent to our plight. Indeed, such a God can empathise with us and be fully trusted to carry us through our difficult moments with love and understanding.

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem; you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing” (Matthew 23:37).

Here we hear the Lord Jesus expressing His longing for the unrepentant Jews to turn back to Him so that He could restore them in His love but they were not willing. Even at the point when judgment was imminent, God in Jesus felt such great love and pain in His heart for His people. It was grievous to Him to punish them for their sins and rebellion even though they thoroughly deserved it. Seeing this, can we ever doubt that God does not care for us in our sufferings? Can we ever doubt that He does not feel for us?

In our sufferings, even when we do not understand the ‘whys’ and the ‘hows’, we need not conclude that God is far off and indifferent. Our grief and sorrows should drive us more into God and the resources in Him; instead of looking for relief, we should enter into a deeper experience of His presence and enabling to see the light even in the thick of darkness. Like the apostle Paul, we must learn “to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need and I know what it is to have plenty…”(Philippians 4:11(b)-12).

That does not mean that we do not look to God for deliverance; we must rest in Him to do what He knows is best for us and be content to experience that His grace is always sufficient for us even though the dawn has not arisen.

God is a sovereign God

The Scriptures teach that God is in full control of human history. Indeed, God works through our actions, but we are never compelled by God to do anything..Thus, we are responsible to face the consequences of our actions. Nonetheless, God works out His will perfectly through our willing action and choice.

The life of Joseph in the Bible illustrates this well. Joseph’s brothers were fully responsible for their evil acts towards Joseph. Yet God works through their negative wilful actions to bring about good for Joseph and those around him. Joseph himself recognised this truth. For he said that God had sent him to Egypt to take a position of authority next to Pharaoh in order to save the lives of his people. But Joseph’s journey to influence in Egypt was through much sufferings. He was sold by his brothers, put into prison through wrongful accusations, and forgotten by those whose dreams he interpreted. All this suffering was in one sense due to the evil choices of men; but from another perspective this hardship was part of God’s plan. Thus, Joseph spoke rightly to his brothers, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Genesis 50:20).

If we see the sovereignty of God clearly, his children can rest assured that He is in control even though adverse circumstances enter our lives and threaten our well-being. God, in His perfect love and wisdom, will see to it that in all things He works for the good of those who love Him, those who have been called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28).

His sovereignty means that very often, God does not give us exactly what we ask for. Instead, He gives us what we would have requested if we had known everything that He knows. This implies that our knowledge and wisdom are limited. We ought to trust the One who has all knowledge and wisdom. Like the saying of an old saint who shared that God does not always give us what seems necessary, but He gives us what we really need. And sometimes what we truly need can only be received in the midst of sufferings and adversity.

LESSON 3

We have seen that the book of Job belongs to the genre of wisdom literature in the Bible. It uses suffering as a platform for a debate to decide who possesses ultimate wisdom. In the conclusion, the answer is clearly God. Although the Accuser seeks to use sufferings to cause God’s people to forsake loyalty to God, the Lord God, in His wisdom, uses sufferings to work for the good of His people. Accordingly, He has worked time and again. Through the negative actions of individuals he accomplishes the transformation of His people to become like His Son. In the case of Job we saw in the end how he was transformed positively through his sufferings.

So God employs sufferings to connect us to the Lord Jesus Christ, effecting our union with Him. Hebrews 5:8 states that “Although He was a son, He learned obedience from what He suffered.” Christ, as the perfect man, took on humanhood in His sufferings. We, as humans, take on Christhood in our suffering, in union with Him. This is perhaps what the Apostle Paul referred to in Philippians 3:10, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.”

Our sufferings as believers connect us to Christ. This connection with Christ makes our sufferings meaningful; it transforms our sufferings into something redemptive rather than destructive. The Apostle Paul understood that the connection or fellowship of sharing in Christ’s sufferings will lead to knowing Him more fully and experiencing more of the power of His resurrection life. In that sense, ‘death’ leads to ‘life’ if the ‘death’ is in line with faithfulness to Christ and the gospel, and this ‘life’ is not just for the one who suffers in Christ but ‘life’ is also transmitted to others spiritually. This is the paradox of losing our lives for Jesus’ sake and gaining true life in the process.

Suffering is also used by God as a wake-up call. It may not be discipline for something specific we have done wrong but it may be God’s way to wake us up from our lethargy and complacency in our Christian lives. C. S. Lewis made the wise observation that God whispers in our pleasures but shouts in our pains. “Pain is His megaphone to rouse a dulled world”. Believers may become as insensitive as unbelievers to God’s voice but it is very difficult to ignore God in the midst of sufferings.

LESSON 4

A great portion of the book of Job focuses on the dialogues between Job and his three friends. The interaction went on over three cycles. These three friends seemed to be among those known for their wisdom but we know that at the end of the book, they were rebuked by God for speaking wrongly about Him.

Notice that Eliphaz started off by basing his understanding upon a dream or a vision:-

“A word was secretly brought to me, my ears caught a whisper of it. Amid disquieting dreams in the night, when deep sleep falls on man, fear and trembling seized me and made all my bones shake. A spirit glided past my face, and the hair on my body stood on end. It stopped but I could not tell what it was. A form stood before my eyes and I heard a hushed voice” (Job 4:12-16).

As for Bildad, he referred to tradition as his basis to correct Job, “Ask the former generations and find out what their fathers learned, for we were born only yesterday and know nothing, and our days on earth are but a shadow. Will they not instruct you and tell you? Will they not bring forth words from their understanding?” (Job 8:8-10).

Zophar looked to ancient human wisdom to bring his case across to Job, “Surely you know how it has been from of old, ever since man was placed on the earth” (Job 20:4).

What is interesting is to find out that vision, experience, dream, tradition and even ancient human wisdom can be wrong in diagnosing a problem. In fact, in church history experience without the authority of Scriptures has caused God’s people to be led astray many a time, leading to sad consequences. Tradition which promoted unscriptural teachings and allowed corruption to seep into the Church was one main factor that led to the Reformation 500 years ago. One positive outcome was the affirmation that only Scriptures can claim the authority from God and every other teaching and tradition should be subject to the authority of the Bible. From the book of Job, we see that human wisdom, even ancient wisdom, is limited. Ultimate wisdom belongs to God alone.

J.C.Ryle brought home these truths very effectively and warned believers of the dangers which face the Church of God in this regard:

“The assaults of persecution from without have never done half as much harm to the Church as the rise of false doctrines within. False prophets and false teachers within the camp have done far more mischief in Christendom than all the bloody persecutions of the emperors of Rome. The sword of the foe has never done such damage to the cause of truth as the tongue and the pen..Let us no more trifle with a little false doctrine than we would trifle with a little immorality, or a little lie. Once admit it into our hearts, and we never know how far it may lead us astray. The beginning of departure from the pure truth is like the letting out of waters – first a drop, and at last a torrent” (Day by Day with J. C. Ryle – November 14 – edited by Eric Russell).

The problem of false teachings continues to plague the Church today. We must call to mind the words of the Lord Jesus, ‘Beware of false prophets’ (Matthew 7:15). Remember also the advice of the Apostle Paul and the Apostle John, ‘Test everything’ and ‘Test the spirits to see whether they are from God’ (1 Thessalonians 5:21; 1 John 4:1).