Reading… and Thinking

The LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite: “My anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. Now therefore take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and offer up a burnt offering for yourselves. And my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly. For you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.”

— Job 42:7-8 (ESV)

Last week we considered Job’s terrible sufferings. His friends concluded that Job must be suffering such great suffering because he was a great sinner. Well, that’s not the way God works, and in this passage God puts Eliphaz and the rest in their place: they are wrong and Job has been right.

Last week’s lesson was: Don’t superstitiously assume suffering is a punishment, for yourself or for anyone else. Eliphaz and company were dead wrong when they did this.

But the question remains, if it wasn’t a punishment, then why did Job suffer so greatly? It’s certainly not fair, and it seems downright unjust.

Job never went so far as to charge God with wrong, but he certainly did ask this question, and sometimes he got kind of bitter about it. What was going on?

When we wonder why God does something, we should always look at the results. His intention can be learned from what He ultimately brings about. In Job’s case, there are two major results:

• Job grows through the experience. He has his horizons greatly broadened as a result of what God says to him directly. And through the course of the dispute with the friends, we can see a clear progression in thinking. Job arrives at the conclusion that the only way this life makes sense, is if it isn’t the end. He finds that resurrection is the only answer, and is the way God will balance all accounts. The eternal end is what matters, not the circumstances of this life.
• Job’s friends are saved! Right after the passage quoted above, we’re told that the friends did what God said. They brought their offering to Job, who was their priest, Job prayed for them, and God accepted his prayer. The friends were reconciled to God.

So, from Job’s point of view, was it all worth it? I believe he thought so. I base this belief on the fact that Job is a very strong type of Christ. That is, he foreshadows the work of Jesus. Looking at the two results in Job’s life, we see the parallels in Jesus’s life. The writer to the Hebrews mentions both of them:

In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. (Hebrews 5:7-10)

First, he learned, as Job had. He learned obedience through what he suffered. This must be suffering before the cross, because by the time he was on the cross he was exercising the obedience he had learned.

And second, through his suffering he saved his friends, as Job had. But only if those friends humble themselves, as Job’s friends did, and come to the only priest who can reconcile them to God.

Was it worth it? Jesus thought so. We don’t have his own words, but we have the prophecy of Isaiah, quoted in the New Testament as applying to Jesus:

Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. (Isaiah 53:10-11)

Yes, it was worth it. He saw the offspring this would gain, that his days would be prolonged – forever! He saw that the anguish of his soul resulted in many being accounted righteous, and he was satisfied.