To discover:
As you read consider what the
conclusion tells us about all that’s gone before.
To ponder:
Having spoken, God challenges Job
to “answer” or even “correct” him. Of course Job has nothing to say (40v1-5).
How could he presume to correct the one who made, governs, understands and
cares for all things, according to his faultless wisdom (chs. 38-39). Indeed,
if we feel we might justify ourselves, when facing him on judgement day “every
mouth will be silenced” in an awareness of personal sin and God’s holy majesty
(Rom 3v19).
Despite
Job’s silence however, God has more questions for him. Job is prepared to
discredit God’s justice in order to justify himself (40v8). Knowing that he
himself is righteous, Job has been prepared to suggest God has done wrong by
causing him to suffer. Instead, he should have accepted God’s ways are
unfathomable yet always right, and that God must therefore have a reason. This
is the response to evil and suffering the book has led us to, and is affirmed
by Paul with respect to God’s justice in election too (Rom 9v19-21, 11v33-36).
In
what follows, God stresses that if Job shared his majesty and might by which he
humbles the proud and crushes the wicked, then he could “save” himself by
delivering himself from his sufferings (40v9-14). The sense is that power and
justice go together. So God’s power is expressed in punishing evil men and
thereby delivering the needy and oppressed. His point is probably that because
Job does not have God’s power, he does not have the authority or ability to
establish what is just in his own situation either. This is reserved for the
king of creation.
This
understanding seems confirmed by the rest of the speech. Building verse upon
verse, God beautifully describes two of his most mighty creations – “the
behemoth” (40v15-24), possibly an hippopotamus (40v21-24); and “the leviathan”
(41v1-34). God’s point is not made unless these are real creatures. However,
the language is poetic, portraying the leviathan as we would imagine a dragon.
Moreover, they are both probably symbols of chaos, showing that it too is part
of God’s creation yet under his control. It is the terrifying strength of the
two animals that is to the fore, and the fact that only God can tame them
(40v16, 19, 24, 41v1-8, 12). The lesson is that if no-one can stand against
these creatures, how much more can’t they stand against their creator (41v10).
Indeed, we should be fearful of doing so. Of course, as we will see in the
Psalms, we can be honest with God, expressing our struggles and calling on him
for help. But this is a warning against confronting him and seeking to bend him
to our will. God owns everything and so is not subject to our desires. No-one
therefore has a “claim” against him he is bound to pay (41v11, unless, of
course, it is to claim what he has promised in the gospel). Such reverent fear
seems alien to the modern believer in our informal culture. But it is the only
fitting way to approach God (Rev 4v9-11, 7v11-12).
This
is immediately seen in Job’s second response. The sense of 42v2 is probably
that having been faced with God’s power and wisdom as creator, Job now truly
knows that God has the right to do whatever he wants. And so he concludes that
in denying God’s justice to justify himself, Job had spoken of things he didn’t
“understand” and were “too wonderful” for him to know (42v3). Now his knowledge
of God has moved from simply hearing to a greater clarity described as
“seeing,” so Job repents of his presumptuous speech. Strikingly here, Job still
hasn’t been told the reason for his suffering. He simply has to trust God
recognising his ways are beyond his grasp. Certainly when we see God face to
face after death, we will acknowledge that whatever we have faced (and whatever
difficult doctrines we’ve struggled with), God has the right to do as he
pleases, and much within his purposes is too wonderful for us to grasp.
The
surprise of 42v7-16 is that despite God’s challenge of Job, he is not angry
with him. On the contrary, four times he calls Job his “servant” – a noble
title, saying that Job had spoken what was “right” of God. This probably refers
to the fact that throughout Job refused to condone a black and white view to
God’s dealings with the wicked and the righteous in which the former always
suffer and the latter always prosper. This would explain God’s anger at Job’s
three friends. His response therefore commends the importance of accepting that
his dealings with the world are mysterious and complex. And this may be why he
does not rebuke Elihu, who at least accepted that.
In
order to escape punishment, the friends have to offer seven burnt offerings
(symbolising devotion to God) and have Job pray for them. By contrast, God
simply restores all that Job lost and more, and in a way that stresses blessing
– in acknowledgement, wealth, complete numbers of children, beautiful
daughters, inheritance for all, and long life. Job is therefore like Christ. He
too suffered most terribly according to God’s sovereign purpose before being
raised to a place of blessing and acknowledgement before the universe. He
supremely proves that the righteous sometimes suffer, whilst also proving God’s
justice in requiring his death to satisfy his justice at sin. And Christ’s
submissive attitude, more than that of Job, is the model for how we handle
hardship.
Praying it home:
Praise God for the clarity the
cross brings to the message of Job in proving both that he has purpose in
suffering and that he is just. Pray that you would live in humble and reverent
fear before his majestic might.
Thinking
further:
None today.
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