The Story of Job

1-2 Job's Beginning and His Affliction
In the opening chapters of this book about suffering, grief, and hope, we are introduced to one of the greatest men of all time, Job. The Lord's assessment of this man is known to the reader from the beginning. In a two-stage heavenly dialogue with Satan, it is the Lord who brings up Job to this adversary, saying that “there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil.”

The contest between God and Satan is on. Satan attempts to prove that Job only loves and worships God because of the good things that God gives this man and because of the Lord's great protection of him from suffering. Job seems to lose almost everything in his life in these two dramatic visitations of wrenching loss. First Job loses his possessions and his descendants. Then his health is taken away from him. He is never told of the events that we know about from reading the opening chapters of the book. Though even his wife tells him to curse God and die, Job considers this a foolishness, and he refuses to sin against God.

3-31 Job and His Friends Speak
Perhaps the greatest trial in Job's life comes from the visit of three friends who would comfort Job. What follows for 29 chapters are three cycles of speeches where Job and each of the three would-be counselors offer their understanding of what has happened to Job.

Job is a man in great despair, sometimes seeming to describe an affliction beyond the facts of his own life. He calls out to God in his distress, and somehow reaches out of the abyss of despair, laying hold of a hope in the resurrection of the dead in his speech in the center of these three dialogues.

His friends display a low view of humanity (though they find room for too high a view of their own wisdom and righteousness). They claim that no man could ever be counted as righteous in God's sight. They also assert, more blatantly as their speeches continue, that God's providence in Job's life is proof of some secret sin for which he is being disciplined. Though there are various things that they say that may be technically true as Job himself grants, yet at the end of the book we are assured that these men did not speak rightly about God.

Job is unwilling to agree with his friends concerning their understanding of his sufferings. His response is very strong to their ears, and they show some sign of taking offense at the words that he directs toward them. They are unable to help Job, and allow themselves to take up absurd and presumptuous positions, accusing Job of horrible sin with no proof beyond the man's unusual suffering and his rejection of their counsel.

In the speeches of Job's friends we need to see unworthy ways of understanding God and of helping those who suffer, ways that are not recommended for our approval or imitation. On the other hand, though Job wants to die, though he longs to have his day in court with the Almighty, though he would seek for a mediator between him and the Lord who could make his case for him against God Himself, we should expect to find great wisdom concerning the Lord from Job, and much about what it means to be God's servant and to suffer as a righteous man.

32-41 God Speaks
After so many chapters of dialogue between Job and these three men, we are introduced to a mysterious young figure, Elihu, who seems to bring a prophetic message from God that would correct both Job and the men who presumed to accuse this great man. Where the three friends seemed to speak in their own strength and wisdom, Elihu is conscious that he has come as the mouthpiece of the Lord.

At the end of Elihu's words he seems to be describing the coming of a most terrible storm. Suddenly, with virtually no transition, this prophetic figure is gone, and out of the whirlwind, God Himself speaks.

The surpassing greatness and glory of God demands our attention as the Lord addresses Job directly in a flood of probing questions. These questions do not cause us to focus on the great man's grief, or the horrible losses that he has faced, but upon the God to whom He has been crying out with such honesty over the course of these many chapters. God is the answer for Job, and not any explanation concerning what has happened in his life. Through these frightening questions that can allow no real answers, a proper posture and relationship between the Lord and His beloved servant is finally confirmed.

Job is undone, and seeks to cut off these words of God, but the Lord continues. His great works of providence inspire awe in the one who hears His voice. We join Job in bowing humbly before the Almighty. We remember who we are, and with this great man of the east, we place our hands over our mouths and remember God in the midst of our own afflictions.

42 Job's End
Job asserts, at the end of this holy ordeal, that the Lord is the Almighty One, that He can do all things, and that no man can stop Him, in fact that no man has the right to judge Him. Job sees that his knowledge of God and God's ways is measured and very limited. He also sees the greatness and glory of the One who has honored him with this humbling visit. At least in some sense, Job hates himself for the way that he spoke in the earlier chapters of the book, and he repents of this. As the friends of Job had presumed to accuse a man more righteous than they, Job had presumed to accuse God based on evidence that he could not really see, and on a life story (his own) that he could not truly understand. For this offense, Job repents. Though these words of the Lord have been hard to hear, we know something from them about the goodness and severity of our Almighty God. He has visited His beloved suffering child and redirected him away from the horror of his losses and his shame toward the glory of our Redeemer, in whom Job had never stopped believing.

The book ends with the Lord's use of Job as an intercessor for his three friends. They are forgiven, and Job is greatly blessed. The trouble has passed, though surely there is yet loss that must remain. But Job has grown as a man, and as a worshiper of the Almighty God of heaven and earth. He is able to live a full life, where joy and sorrow can both exist, and where faith and hope can work themselves out in the great blessing of not only wisdom, but also love.

Job and the Story of the Bible
Since the day when sin entered into the world, man has experienced the misery that is a part of living here below. As servants of the Lord of heaven, we will suffer on earth. We cannot assume that our trials, however deep they may be, are a sign of the Lord's displeasure with us. We should expect that the sovereign God who loves us intends to accomplish great things through even his thundering providences, things that we could not possibly understand. Our answer in grief is God Himself, and only as a secondary matter the relief that God will surely bring to us, partially in this life, and most fully in the life to come.

Job's sufferings point beyond his own story. At some point he seems to be standing in for an even more righteous servant of the Lord who will suffer even more than Job did, but for a great purpose. That righteous Suffering Servant faced the greatest loss, and the hatred and accusations of enemies and friends, all of whom were far beneath Him in their wisdom and obedience to God. They presumed to be His advisers, but were following Satan when they would suggest that they could correct Him. He resisted the devil, and persevered through His appointed cross for our sake. He now has moved beyond the pain of loss to the glory of resurrection life in heaven. This Jesus is Job's Redeemer, the only Mediator between God and man. Through Him the great dignity of humanity has been affirmed and rescued. Through His righteousness and death, many have been counted as righteous in the presence of God.