The Book of Job, Pt. 3 — A ‘Christian Growth’ Message

Transcript

There is an old Jewish book called The Talmud, some of you may have heard of this, it’s basically a book of Jewish laws and legends, and one of the legends in the book is the story of a young man who asks if he can travel with Elijah.

And the old prophet Elijah says you can you can travel with me on one condition, and that is that you don’t ask any questions. I don’t want to be pestered or interrupted.

And so the young man travels with the old man, and as they’re travelling along, they come to the home of a lovely couple who welcome them, give them great hospitality and during their stay, the cow in the backyard dies, the cow that they depend on dies.

They then move on to another house where a couple are living who are not particularly friendly and not particularly hospitable, and while they’re staying with them, Elijah notices that there is a hole in one of the walls, and he fixes the wall for the couple.

Then they move on and they come to a synagogue, which is a very godly synagogue, friendly, welcoming, faithful, and as they leave the synagogue after their stay, Elijah says, I wish you one ruler.

They then move on to another synagogue, which is ungodly, unfaithful and unfriendly, and as they leave, Elijah says to the synagogue, I wish you many rulers. And the young man at that stage, he’s had enough and he says, look, I can’t keep quiet any longer, what is going on? Why would you do this?

And Elijah says, well, the reason is that when we went to the first couple, it was destined that the wife was to die during our stay, but I prayed that the cow might take her place and that she might be spared. Then when we went to the second house, the unfriendly house, I noticed in our stay that there was quite a bit of treasure that had been hidden in one of the walls, and I sealed it up so the couple wouldn’t find it, but that the next occupants, who are a godly couple coming, would find that treasure.

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When we got to the faithful synagogue, I wished them well and one ruler at the end because one ruler will bring them unity and peace and purpose together. But when I left the ungodly synagogue, I wished them many rulers because many rulers will divide the place, bring it down, which is the purpose and the plan of God.

It’s an interesting story, you see, because it’s basically learning to trust someone though you may be in the dark as to what’s actually happening in their in their walk, and maybe that young man in that legend has to has to say something like this, I don’t know what’s happening as I travel with this guy. But I’m learning to trust him because he’s bigger than I am and he’s better than I am and he knows what’s going on. And I’m privileged to be his servant.

So it is with the Book of Job in the Old Testament. As I say, we come to the 3rd of a series of three this evening. Job, who suffers terribly, losing all his property, all his children, his reputation, his health. He suffers dreadfully.

But he comes to realise that he belongs to a very great God.

As we come to the end of the book, you can notice that if you are listening to those verses, he comes to the point where he can say to God – I’ve come to realise things that are too wonderful, too wonderful for me to get my head around. So he’s like a child learning to trust a parent. Does a child need to have everything explained? Does the child who’s in this service this evening need to have everything explained if that child is taken to the doctor?

It will be impossible.

But maybe the child will learn that the parents love them. And we’ll be with them every step of the way.

So by way of quick introduction tonight, we’ve seen in Job chapters 1 and 2, where we’re taken up into God’s headquarters, that a massive question is asked, and the question goes like this, is Job on the earth who is behaving in a godly way, is he playing a game?

And the question is even more searching, it goes like this, God, will Job stop honouring you if you take away all his blessings? Will he stop being so faithful?

If you take away everything he has, the reason this is such a sinister question as we saw a couple of weeks ago, is because he’s basically saying by his question, is it possible that God is just useful to us, not really worthy, but just useful.

And therefore, is it possible that faith in God is a human product which we basically invent. And is not really supernatural at all. It’s dependent on the conditions. Not on God Himself.

And as you know, a couple of weeks ago we saw that God acts to answer the question and to defend his honour, and Job loses everything. He loses his property, his children, his reputation and his health, and we know why he loses everything.

Because the question has been asked, will he keep going if he loses everything. And Job does keep going even though he doesn’t know why he’s lost everything.

He does begin to doubt God’s character.

And God of course remains perfect the whole way, loving, faithful, wise, powerful, sovereign, and he preserves Job’s faith from start to finish. And so we discover that not only is Job an authentic believer, but God is worthy to be praised. Now last week we saw Job’s three friends come, they’re kind of like boy scouts trying to push Job across a street that he doesn’t want to go across, and their agenda is, your suffering, Job, is because of your sin.

God preserves Job’s faith from start to finish

Now we know that all suffering goes back to the fall, Genesis 3, but a lot of suffering has got nothing to do with sin.

It could be just the testing of a loving God or something else. And Job, although he’s not perfect, we know he’s not suffering for sin. As we learn from chapters 1 and 2.

Well, we saw last week that the three friends are in the dark, they don’t really know what they’re talking about, although they pretend they know everything and they make everything worse until by the end of the 24 chapters, everybody is offside with everybody else.

We’re going to begin the process of being enlightened. We’re going to come out of the dark and it’s going to start with a young man called Elihu, and Elihu’s agenda is not to convict Job of sin, as the other friends did, his agenda is to honour God. And say God must not be dishonoured in this process. And then we’ll see how the Lord speaks at the end of the book, and he brings Job to the point of peace and joy.

Elihu’s intervention

So let’s look at the entry of a young man called Elihu, and you need to turn back if you want to, to chapter 32.

And in chapter 32, we begin a six-chapter speech, it’s the longest speech in the whole book. 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, and I think 37.

And you’ll see if you look at chapter 32, verse 2, that Elihu is very angry. Again, verse 3, he’s angry again, verse 5, he’s angry. He’s an angry young man. He’s angry with Job because Job has been saying I’m innocent and God has wronged me.

That makes Elihu angry.

Of course, what Job means by this is, look, I don’t deserve what I’m getting. I think God is being unfair, he’s paying out more trouble to me than I deserve. He’s not saying of course that he’s innocent.

And Elihu wants to make sure that God is not maligned. Because he’s certainly incapable of injustice.

And a lie who is concerned about this, he’s got a godly anger. The Bible says that there’s a time to be angry. But not sinful anger, godly anger, Jesus got angry. God is angry every day at sin. There is a time for anger.

Elihu angry because God is being dishonoured.

Someone was saying to me during the week that in their workplace, they said the language is terrible. All the four-letter words, but they kind of they don’t really make any big impact on this person, he said it’s the blasphemy that really upsets me. And the blasphemy does upset the believer more than four letter words.

Then Elihu is angry with the friends, chapter 32, verse 3, he’s angry with the friends because they didn’t answer Job, they didn’t satisfactorily answer Job. And therefore, they’ve just kind of condemned Job, and they’ve failed to honour God.

So Elihu says in chapter 32 verses 18 and 22, he’s absolutely bursting to say something. He’s been very patient, he’s been waiting a long time, and although he’s young and precocious, as I say, he has a righteous anger. And what’s interesting is that at the end of the book, when God comes back and speaks to Job. And rebukes the three friends he does not rebuke Elihu. So Elihu seems to have an honourable concern for the character of God, the reputation of God.

He also claims chapter 32, verse 8, to be prompted by God to speak. He says in verse 8, the breath of the Almighty, and the breath is the word spirit is prompting me to speak. And he says in verse 18, the spirit within me compels me.

So this is the very interesting detail is that it’s possible that Elihu is a prophet. That he is under the influence of the spirit of God, the breath of God.

Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar are just speaking for themselves. But it’s possible that Elihu is speaking for God. Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar are on their own mission. Elihu may be on the mission of God, and in these six chapters, I want to identify 3 things that Elihu raises, which are really worth thinking about.

The first is that the God who they’re thinking about, speaks.

There is a real voice of God. So Job has said, God won’t speak to me.

And if you’ve ever been in the really bad time of suffering, if you’ve ever lain in a hospital bed, if you’ve ever been on your own when somebody’s left you, if you’ve ever been depressed, there comes a point where you ask yourself the question, what is God saying? Why doesn’t he say something?

What’s his message?

And Job says in chapter 31:35, Let the Almighty answer me.

So Elihu, who’s very concerned about this in case God be maligned, says in chapter 33 verse 14, God does speak. And he introduces in this chapter, chapter 33, the fact that God speaks to wake people up.

So he says, look at chapter 33 verse 14. God does speak chapter 33 verse 14. Now one way, now another, in a dream he may speak in their ears and terrify them to turn man from wrongdoing, to preserve his soul from the pit and his life from perishing. In other words, God does speak, he speaks to warn people.

And he uses thousands of ways to do this, and sometimes it’s by suffering. You’ve heard me say this 100 times, I think, but I’ll just say it again that I’m sometimes sitting with somebody whose life is falling apart, and they assume that God is attacking them, and I will say to them, in the words of CS Lewis, that when God goes to speak to the average person in Sydney and knocks at the front door very gently, they don’t really respond to him. There’s a hardening of the heart. So what’s God going to do if he loves that person? He’s not going to ring the same doorbell, he’s not going to walk away because he loves them.

CS Lewis says he will take out the back wall or collapse the middle staircase. Not because he doesn’t love the person, but because he does love the person and he wants to bring them to the point of opening the door and having fellowship and friendship. Again, CS Lewis’s famous words, pain insists on being attended to. God whispers in our pleasures, he speaks in our conscience, but he shouts in our pain.

It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

So how many people do we know in churches today who’ve been saved because God took their world apart? In order to teach them that there is a better world to belong to.

We could multiply this story hundreds of times.

Maybe even this evening there are people who have come to Christ through illness or through a breakup of a relationship. Or a marriage trouble or a tragedy.

It’s God’s kindness, says Elihu to warn the person who’s running away. But remember friends, that warning has its limits.

Some people get warned and they hate God more. Some people get warned and they lose any interest they had in God at all. And if God’s warnings are able to stop people in their tracks, the really sad thing is that God’s warnings don’t start their faith in Christ by just warning.

Or to put it another way, if God’s warnings correct you and bring you to your senses, they don’t necessarily convert you. That’s why Romans 1 says that we can work things out about God from the creation. What’s called general revelation, we can work out that there’s a genius behind the world.

But in chapter 10 of Romans we discover that we need a messenger to gospel us and tell us what Jesus has done. You can’t work that out from looking at the creation, you can’t work that out from your television. Somebody has to come and bring you the gospel so that we can believe and live, and therefore Elihu is right when he says that God warns, because God’s voice is a very great warning voice.

He speaks to save people.

Jesus had to come in flesh to communicate, the scriptures had to be recorded so that we’d understand exactly what he’s done. God has thousands of ways of correcting somebody, but it’s the one way Jesus that converts.

Again, John Piper says in one of his books, pleasure says to us, God’s fellowship is like this, but better seek him. That’s what our pleasure says. Pleasure says, God’s fellowship is like this pleasure. But his fellowship is better.

And God’s and pain, according to John Piper says, God’s anger is like this, but worse. So seek Him. The pleasure points to God. The pain points to God.

And Elihu is very concerned that Job understands that God is a God who speaks.

The second thing that Elihu concerned about is that God is just.

It really angers him and shocks him and hurts him that Job has said that God has been unjust. Back in chapter 19 verse 6, Job said there is no justice. But the worst thing is in chapter 27, verse 2, where he very foolishly says God has denied me justice.

That’s a very serious thing. To accuse God of injustice or unfairness is immeasurably serious.

Remember Abraham’s question back in Genesis 18, will not the judge of all the earth do right? And of course the God of all the world will do right. He will always do right and he will unstoppably do right.

So Elihu is rightly angry. That Job would say God’s been unjust. He says Elihu says in chapter 34 verse 12, it’s unthinkable that God would be wrong. He says in chapter 36 verse 3, I will ascribe justice to my Maker.

And if you think this is a small issue at the end of the book, in chapter 40, when God is answering Job, he says, Job, you accused me of injustice.

Now why is it such a big issue to accuse God of injustice? Because it cuts to the character of God.

It suggests that he might do wrong, that he might be corrupt, that he might contemplate evil, that he might compromise his standards or stop caring, or be ungodly. That’s why Elihu says in chapter 34, it’s unthinkable that God would do wrong. Who put him in charge of the world? Can he who hates justice govern?

Obvious answer no. Will you condemn the just and mighty one, says Elihu to Job. He goes on to say his eyes are on the ways of men. There’s no dark place where evildoers can hide. God has no need to examine men further. Without inquiry, He shatters the mighty and sets up others in their place.

So he says, Job, you’ve spoken without knowledge, you clap your hands and you multiply words against God.

Well, we know today that people accuse God of everything.

People who’ve got some kind of desire to go left, accuse God of wanting them to go right, and the one who wants to go right when God says go left, we can accuse God so easily of getting in the way of our plans.

We saw Jesus in the Gospels accused of many things. And yet perfectly innocent. Absolutely perfect.

And when Job complains that his godliness should be getting a better deal from God, this is insulting. Because it’s accusing God of injustice, as if God is some kind of slot machine that we can manipulate. This is exactly what the devil was implying. God, you’re a slot machine. If Job puts the coins in, you’ll bring the cans down, and here is Job turning around and saying, I put the coins in.

So Elihu is right to exalt the justice of God.

And the third thing that a lie who is very concerned about is that Joby is accusing God of not being good.

Not being compassionate.

Elihu says in chapter 36 verse 16, I want you to know, Job, that God is wooing you like a lover. He’s trying to bring you to himself. He’s making sure that you don’t end up in the jaws of death. He’s not sending you away into some kind of darkness, he’s bringing you into the lights.

Spurgeon says bless God for the waves that wash you onto the rock of salvation. Bless God for the waves that wash you onto the rock of salvation.

Again, Spurgeon says in a remarkable passage which just shows what a creative preacher he was, he says, stormy seas have a multitude of fishes. The wild wood has beautiful flowers. The stormy wind sweeps away pestilence. The biting frost loosens the soil. Dark clouds distil bright drops, and black earth grows gay flowers.

He says sad hearts have peculiar skill in discovering the most disadvantaged point of view from which to gaze upon a trial.

If there were only one pit in the world, they would soon be up to their necks in it. Faith’s way of walking is to cast all care on the Lord and to anticipate good results from the worst calamities.

Out of the rough oyster shell of difficulty, she extracts the rare pearl of honour. From the deep ocean caves of distress she uplifts the priceless coral of experience. When her flood of prosperity ebbs, that is, the tide goes out.

She finds treasures hidden in the sands, and when her sun, SUN of delight goes down, she turns her telescope of hope to the starry promises of heaven. When death itself appears, faith points to the, the light of resurrection beyond the grave. So these are three doctrines that um Elihu recognises that Job is, basically, criticising, rejecting and blaspheming the voice of God, the justice of God and the goodness of God, and they do easily get lost in suffering.

And especially we forget that God might love us, but he does love us and he’s proved that in the giving of his Son at the cross, the promises that he’s made, and time will prove for many people going through tough times, that a very loving God was at work.

Now we come after Elihu to the Lord’s reply at the end of the book. If you look at chapter 36 verse 27, you’ll see that a storm is rising.

Rain is coming, thunder, lightning, a storm which can be terrifying but wonderful, destructive and productive, just like God, God can be terrifying but wonderful, destructive but productive.

And in chapter 38 verse 1, God speaks out of the storm, and he speaks directly to Job, and he speaks to him with a kind of a hailstorm of questions. It’s as if he hails down questions on Job from the storm, and he brings Job to the point of silence.

It’s as if he’s been he’s saying to Job something like this, look, Job, up until now you’ve had me in the dock. You’re acting like I’m guilty. I’m going to put you in the dock. And I’m going to show you that you can, you can’t answer 1000 questions which I’ve got for you.

Remember the Bible says that when everybody lands in God’s courtroom, Romans 3, every mouth will be silenced. All the people in our world who think that they’ll give God a piece of their mind, all the people who think that they’ll be able to answer him, all the people who think they’ll be able to worm their way out of judgement, all the people who think that they’ll be able to turn up to God and tell him why they did what they did and how God must now let them off and take them into glory. Everybody will be silenced. We’re just, we’re out of our league. He’s too great.

And so God says things to Job like this, where were you when I put the world in place?

And who did put the sea in its place? Do you organise the mornings, Job? Have you been to the floor of the oceans? Have you worked out where light begins? Can you lasso stars and get the constellations to cooperate? Can you arrange for rain to fall when you want it to? Do you look after the lion, do you look after the raven? Can you help mountain goats give birth?

Can you tame the wild ox, can you create the ostrich, can you give strength to the horse, can you give wings to the hawk or the eagle? Come on, can you do these things?

And Job is completely out of his league, and in chapter 40, verse 4, he puts his hand on his mouth. Now why does God do this to him? And part of the reason is that Job has completely lost perspective. He’s forgotten who he walks with.

Suffering so easily causes a loss of perspective. God is giving to Job a great, great perspective.

And Job needs to know that God works on a scale of love and power and wisdom, which is beyond anything that he could ever possibly imagine. So God is lifting up Job’s eyes.

There’s nothing wrong with asking questions of God. It’s healthy to ask questions, children ask questions.

As long as you’re not asking exactly the same question all the time, or asking the question as if God’s in the dock, we have to keep asking him as creatures to our Creator, as dependents to the independent.

We have to keep asking him as creatures to our Creator, as dependents to the independent.

I noticed one of the weather men during the week was describing the weather of the last few days, you know, sunny, sunny, sunny, sunny, sunny, and he said at the end, I’m proud of my work. I thought you didn’t do any of that. You just told us what God was going to do.

Then God brings Job to satisfaction in chapter 40-42.

How is God going to bring Job to satisfaction without telling him what happened?

I want God to tell Job what happened. I want God to say to Job, listen Job, come and sit over here, I want to tell you what happened. Up in the cosmic headquarters, Satan came in. And Satan said, Job is a fake. And you, God, are a fool. And the issues were so great that we had to settle the question.

And that’s why all the suffering took place, and I’m really sorry that it took place. But that’s what we had to do.

But God doesn’t do that.

And if he did do it, I think the book of Job would be much worse because it would teach us that God is good and fair if he explains everything to us, but God is good and fair, even if he doesn’t explain everything to us.

So this is how God brings Job to satisfaction. He teaches him a lesson in chapter 42 about power.

He says to him in chapter 42 verse 9, what sort of arm do you have? And then hold on to your seats, stay with me, he introduces Job to two beasts, chapter 40, verse 15, Behemoth. And chapter 41 verse 1, Leviathan. I gather there’s a new big movie out about Leviathan. I’m not recommending it to you, but I gather that whoever’s doing movies these days is aware of Leviathan, who appears a number of times in the Old Testament and here in the Book of Job.

Now why does God point to these two beasts, Behemoth and Leviathan, and it could be that he’s pointing to an animal which is like a hippo. And a crocodile.

And he’s basically saying something like this. He’s basically saying, Job, can you tame these two beasts? Can you get the hippo to cooperate, can you get the crocodile to cooperate, can you put the crocodile on a leash, can you get your little girls to walk with the leash and the crocodile?

You can’t even control these beasts. What makes you think you can control me?

It could be that he’s doing that.

But there is a Christian author called Bob Files who says something very interesting about Behemoth and Leviathan, and that is he says that behemoth is like a sort of a large silent devourer. He, he lies in the reeds, almost invisible and swallows.

And Bob Files suggests that he is really a great symbol of death.

And Leviathan, this sort of scaly, fiery monster. Is a good symbol of the devil.

So it could be on a small scale that the Lord is saying to Job, can you control the hippo and the crocodile, but it’s more likely, I think that God is saying to Job, can you control the two great enemies?

Death and devil.

Because you can’t. But God can. And we’ve already seen in the book of Job that God tells the devil what to do and what not to do, and he tells the devil to leave Job’s life alone. So God is giving Job a lesson in ultimate power over evil.

And what’s interesting is at the end of this that Job doesn’t just give in to God and say, OK, you’re much bigger than I am. I agree you’re much bigger. He says in chapter 42 verse 3, and this is the climax, you are wonderful.

You’re wonderful.

You’re wonderfully good, you’re wonderfully powerful. And he says, I despise myself. It’s not just your greatness, it’s your goodness, your wonderful.

Just as Peter in the New Testament, face to face with the holiness of Jesus, fell down in the boat and said, depart from me, Lord, I’m a sinful man.

You’re too good. You’re too great for me. And Job is coming to the point of seeing that God is so good and so great. He’s really beyond comprehension.

So Job is like a son who realises not just that his father is bigger than he is, but that his father loves him, and there’s nowhere better to be than in his father’s company.

So God satisfies Job like this, this is the climax of the climax. He satisfies Job with himself.

It’s as if Job comes to the point of saying, I have you. That’s enough.

Psalm 73, who do I have in heaven, who do I have but you? And Earth has nothing I desire but you.

Philippians 1, to live is Christ, to die is gain, I desire to depart and be with Christ. It’s as if Job comes to the point of seeing, I have you. That outweighs everything else.

And at that point, the Lord restores everything.

He restores everything to Job, not to teach us that he will restore everything in this world, but to teach us that he will restore.

And the three friends are prayed for because they’ve been sinful, sacrifice is offered.

The property of Job is restored twofold, so he gets more sheep, more goats, more camels than he ever had before, and the same number of sons and daughters, because I presume, some are in glory and some are in the world.

So he ends up with twice as many children.

And we learn from this remarkable book of Job that God has a right to do what he does. He is the king, he is the ruler, he’s allowed to do what he does.

We also learned that God has a reason for what he does. It’s a perfect reason, and we will discover it perhaps one day, but we may not discover it in this world, but he does have a perfect reason. And we also discover that God has a reward.

He has a reward for his people, and the New Testament tells us that the reward for God’s people, those who belong to Jesus Christ, the reward is so great as to be beyond this world, bought at great cost by Jesus. And beyond any attack or robbery or catastrophe or spoiling or fading.

So the book tells us that God preserves Job’s faith from the start to the finish.

He who began a good work in you will carry it through to the day of completion.

God is at work so that all things will work for the good of those who love Him.

And we also discover that God is worthy of honour. And Job is one who would tell us. How great God is, I want to just close by giving you one sentence which I’ve always found a wonderful sentence from a book by Oz Guinness on Doubt.

And you’ll need to say this to yourself a couple of times, but it’s very helpful, and I think it sums up, and it’s a good way to finish this little series on the book of Job. Oz Guinness says in the book:

Faith may not know why. But it knows why it trusts God who knows why.

Faith may not know why. But it knows why it trusts God. And He knows why.

And that’s where Job comes to contentment, rest and peace with God.

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