What’s True and False in Job?

“It’s Job week on the podcast. The e book of Job is a supply of quite a lot of APJ questions, and the supply of quite a lot of solutions too on all kinds of subjects over time. We now have eighty episodes now mentioning Job — on each matter you may think about. I’m shocked how usually we return to this necessary e book, which isn’t straightforward to interpret. We’re studying the e book collectively in our Bible studying. At present we learn Job 16 collectively.

The entire e book is difficult to interpret as a result of it’s plagued by errors, Pastor John — errors about struggling, errors about windfall, and even false statements about God himself, a distortion on full show for us right here in our studying at present, within the early verses of chapter 16. There we discover a mixture of issues which are true and issues definitely false, most starkly in Job 16:7–9. Verse 7 is sovereignly true. God introduced the struggling into Job’s life by his plan and permission. Sure. However then verse 9 appears devilishly false. God didn’t deliver the struggling as a result of he hates Job. So, how can we parse truth from fiction as we learn Job’s phrases, alongside together with his spouse and all of his pals, attempting to interpret windfall?

Nicely, that’s the proper query to ask, I feel, as a result of maybe essentially the most placing factor in regards to the construction of the e book of Job is that from chapters 3 to 31 you have got 29 chapters of back-and-forth between Job and his three so-called comforters or pals, each of them talking a mix of fact and falsehood. It’s merely beautiful to me that the writer would dedicate 29 out of 42 chapters to a jumble of excellent and unhealthy statements about human struggling and God’s sovereignty. The writer appears to be particularly exercised that there’s a lot unhealthy theology in regards to the sovereignty of God and human struggling. That, it appears, is why he provides 29 chapters to it.

The Errors of Job and His Mates

We are able to summarize the simplistic theology of struggling and sovereignty within the mouth of the three pals with Job 4:7–8. They are saying, “Who that was harmless ever perished? Or the place had been the upright reduce off? As I’ve seen, those that plow iniquity and sow hassle reap the identical.” In different phrases, their reply to Job’s prolonged struggling is that it’s owing to his iniquity. The righteous prosper; the depraved endure. In chapter after chapter, they accuse Job of every kind of sin, from bribery to deceit to neglect of the poor. And for Job’s half, he despairs of being handled justly by God and says repeatedly, not less than 3 times, that God is treating him as an enemy (Job 13:24, for instance) and that God, actually, hates him (Job 16:9).

“We don’t know sufficient about God’s hidden methods and plans to cross any legitimate detrimental judgment about his methods.”

Now, what all of them agree on is that God is totally sovereign. That’s superb. They by no means query that. We moderns, we’re daring and brash sufficient to get in God’s face and say that he’s not sovereign. That’s by no means as soon as questioned by anyone within the e book of Job. What they’re scuffling with is why an individual like Job is enduring such lengthy and horrible struggling. The chums’ reply is, “His struggling correlates together with his sin.” Job’s reply is, “I don’t perceive what’s occurring, however all I can inform is that God is treating me as if he hated me.”

A Grid for the Guide of Job

I feel the way in which the writer intends for us to type out what’s true and what’s false in what Job and his pals say in these 29 chapters is by letting the remainder of the e book — what got here earlier than in chapters 1–2, and what comes after in chapters 32–42 — let all of that present the grid, the framework, the factors for separating fact and error in Job 3–31.

So, let me attempt to sketch very briefly what that grid is.

The purpose of chapters 1–2 is that Job was man, a God-fearing man: “innocent and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil” (Job 1:1). He proved that profoundly together with his godly response, blessing God, worshiping God (Job 1:20–21). Within the midst of the lack of his kids, the lack of his well being, he submitted to the sovereign knowledge, justice, and goodness of God, despite the fact that he couldn’t see all of it. In Job 2:10, he says, “Lets obtain good from God, and we could not obtain evil?” And the impressed writer places his approval on these phrases: “In all this Job didn’t sin together with his lips.”

The truth that we’re given a glimpse into heaven as Devil and God work together in regards to the lifetime of Job, which Job couldn’t see, is meant to point out that on earth, we don’t know sufficient about God’s hidden methods, his hidden plans, to cross any legitimate detrimental judgment about his methods. So, we’ve got a sign from the writer from the start that Job’s three pals will not be proper. They’re treating Job as if there’s sin in every single place in his life, which explains his struggling. And the purpose of chapters 1–2 is that that’s not true. There have to be one other clarification. However for Job, for 31 chapters, he can’t determine that out.

So, the following large unit is Elihu, the younger man who steps ahead, who I consider is talking the reality with a view to appropriate each Job and his pals. Right here’s Job 32:2–3: “Elihu . . . burned with anger at Job as a result of he justified himself reasonably than God. He burned with anger additionally at Job’s three pals as a result of that they had discovered no reply, though that they had declared Job to be within the improper.”

“Struggling, within the case of God’s kids, is a gracious means by which he exposes pleasure in our lives.”

What’s new about Elihu’s theology of struggling is that he doesn’t correlate struggling merely with a punitive act of God towards Job, however he introduces this new consider Job 33:14–19 that struggling, within the case of God’s kids, is a gracious means by which he exposes the sediment of pleasure on the backside of our lives, mendacity there undetected, and then you definately get bumped by struggling, and the sediment stirs up. He exposes that and mercifully leads us to repentance and belief. That’s what’s going to occur to Job.

Now, I don’t suppose that contradicts the assertion at first of the e book of Job — that Job was and God-fearing man. Nevertheless it clarifies that in the perfect of males, whom God regards nearly as good and God-fearing, there are remnants of indwelling sin. And a technique that God in his mercy cleanses us and humbles us and brings us to fuller, deeper repentance and deeper belief is thru struggling. He assessments us to see if we’ll maintain quick to him in love.

Then the following main unit within the e book is the phrase of God himself in chapters 38–41. And the essential message there may be, “Job, you simply don’t know sufficient to cross judgment on me. You could put away your accusations and belief me. You darken counsel with out data” (see Job 38:2).

The ultimate a part of the e book is Job’s confession of God’s sovereignty and his personal repentance for having spoken so badly about God. Job 42:5–6: “I had heard of you by the listening to of the ear, however now my eye sees you; subsequently I despise myself, and repent in mud and ashes.” So, the Lord assessments Job one final time now to see if he has the brand new, contemporary grace to hope for the forgiveness of his three pals who wounded him so badly. Job 42:10: “And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job, when he had prayed for his pals.”

So, I feel the writer intends for us to step again and see the God-fearing goodness of Job at first, and the refining of Job’s holiness and religion via struggling, and his rejection of the simplistic view of the three pals, and his repentance for having discovered fault with God, and the fantastic thing about his humility and love on the finish. And the writer expects us to take all of that because the grid via which we now will have the ability to type out what’s true and what’s false within the mouth of Job and his pals in chapters 3–31.” from the Transcript

John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and instructor of Wanting God and chancellor of Bethlehem School and Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He’s writer of greater than 50 books, together with Wanting God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most lately Foundations for Lifelong Studying: Training in Severe Pleasure.