Job: Introduction

“I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth” Job 19:25

Keil-Delitzsch say it best when they suggest the problem with the Book of Job is...if we believe Job teaches that when earthly afflictions fall upon righteous people God is faithful to doubly restore that loss in the end...the answer is entirely unsatisfying. 

This answer cannot satisfy; since the double blessings Job received were of the same  kind as the ones he lost...earthly. So, how could the loss of our beloved children be assuaged simply because God blesses us with twice as many? And, on the other hand, we observe many faithful people who suffer losses that are never restored. I think of Mr and Mrs Hulus Key, who lost their beloved son in Vietnam fifty years ago. And then...lost their second son far too young. Their surviving daughter will surely say there is nothing, here on earth, God could have given them that would have mended their broken hearts.

Furthermore, the lesson cannot simply be that God brings affliction to refine and purify the righteous. We are sufficiently refined and purified by the blood of Christ. Indeed, there is a suffering of the righteous that exists, without any causal connection with our sin, not for our own sake, but for the sake of God. To be certain, God brings affliction as a means of guiding and correcting but...even if this was the lesson of Job, what moral flaw could corrupt a righteous person to the point where only total catastrophic loss could refine? 

Finally...this is not some macho contest between God and Satan, as some suggest, where the righteous are afflicted simply allowing God to prove a point. It brings us closer, but the truth is much deeper. Job portrays, in its deepest sense, the cosmic conflict between the seed of the woman with the seed of the serpent, which ends in the head of the serpent being trampled under foot by the Holy God.

Job is a prophetic account...of the ultimate solution for sin. So...herein lies the important truth; God acknowledged Job as His servant, which He was able to do, after Job in all his afflictions remained true to God. And, those whom God calls “His servants” remain so after evil assaults them with every weapon at his disposal. 

Whatever affliction we face today, we should remind ourselves it is common to mankind since the garden. Affliction is Satan’s attempt destroy our confidence in God. Our comfort is not found in that commonality but in the truth that the battle has already been fought and won...at Calvary. The real answer to the book of Job is the mystery of the Cross.

Live boldly out there today...