I’ve
read the book of Job repeatedly, in multiple translations. I’ve studied commentaries on it. I made my iPad and my phone read it to me. I’ve preached on parts of it, but…I could
never see a satisfactory reason for God doing Job like He did him.
Yeah,
I know all the super-pious clichés about “mysterious ways” and what’s “not for
us to know,” but why, I’d always wondered, would God deliver a 42 chapter story
with more dialogue than the gospels (which contain Jesus’ dialogue) if the
moral of the story was, “None of your business”? That’s a loooot of space for “None of your
business.”
But this week in Sunday School at Miles Chapel CME Church, the Holy Spirit
showed us. It’s the difference
between CONFESSION and REPENTANCE.
In
the final chapter, after God had just verbally spanked Job, the Lord turned to the
head of the little delegation of friends who’d been arguing with Job since
chapter 4.
The Lord said to
Eliphaz the Temanite, “My wrath is aroused against you and your two friends (Job 42: 7)
Class,
how many friends came to visit Job?
The
answer is 4.
Four.
Eliphaz,
Bildad, and Zophar came over while Job was depressed and self-cutting in a pile
of burned trash. But somehere around
chapter 32, a guy named Elihu showed up.
He was late, but he was young. (Now, kids, being young is no excuse for
lack of punctuality.)
Elihu
thought of Job and the other 3 guys as mentors (Job 32: 6, 7), but he was seriously
disappointed that none of his role models had given a satisfactory answer to
Job or gotten one out of him (Job 32: 3).
In Elihu’s eyes, the 3 other dudes had condemned Job without a
conviction. And so Elihu went off on
Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, but mainly Job----- for 5 chapters straight.
Job
never replied to Elihu. He didn’t get
the chance, because the next voice we hear after Elihu’s argument is God
ripping Job a new one in chapter 37.
Oh,
here’s the thing. Remember, God rebuked
the THREE friends because their theology was wrong. The Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “My
wrath is aroused against you and your two friends, for you have not spoken of Me what is right (Job 42: 7) Chapters 37-41 was God rebuking Job for
coming at Him wrong. But God just let
Elihu-------- go.
Because
Elihu WAS RIGHT.
Eliphaz,
Bildad, and Zophar assumed that Job must have done some wrong thing for God to
send the tsunami of tragedy that had washed over his life. So, they argued and
argued trying to verbally beat a confession out of Job. A CONFESSION.
They
wanted Job to name the sin he had committed.
But
Job had not done any thing wrong. He had
no sins to confess. God Himself called
Job a blameless man like none on the
earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil (Job
1: 8)
Whatever
you and I may speculate Job used to be, by the time his book started, Job was living
right.
Period. Nope.
That’s what the Book says.
Job
didn’t need to confess. The 3 musketeers
were wrong.
Elihu
was the only one of the 4 friends to say the right thing about God. Elihu said:
For God is greater than man. (Job 33:
12)
Moreover Elihu
answered and said: “Do you think this is right? Do you say, ‘My righteousness
is more than God’s’? (Job 35: 1,2,)
Elihu
didn’t accuse Job of incurring God’s wrath for doing some wrong thing. Elihu simply said that compared to God, Job
wasn’t righteous. Elihu argued that regardless
of whether Job had or had not committed an explicit sin according to the
pre-Mosaic law, Job had developed a seriously over-inflated sense of his own goodness.
If you sin, what do
you accomplish against God? Or, if
your transgressions are multiplied, what do you do to Him? If you are
righteous, what do you give Him? Or what does He receive from your hand? (Job 35: 6-7)
I’ll
concede that Elihu was kinda iffy about whether Job really was as sin-free as
he insisted.
Take heed, do not turn
to iniquity, For you have chosen this rather than affliction. (Job 36: 21)
But
that was after Job had basically said that it didn’t matter whether he was good
or bad since God was gonna hurt him anyway (Job 10: 15).
Job’s
problem wasn’t the absence of CONFESSION.
Job’s problem was a lack of REPENTANCE.
The
Sunday school lesson for October 26, 2014 quoted C.S. Lewis’ explanation of
REPENTANCE.
“Lewis said that we are not simply
imperfect creatures who need improvement; we are rebels who must lay down our
arms:, ‘Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realizing
that you have been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again
from the gound floor.’
This process of surrender is what we
call repentance… ‘Repentance… is not something God demands of you before He
will take you back and which He could
let you off if He chose: it is simply a
description of what going back to Him is like.’ “
See?
Confession
is about our actions. Repentance is about
our selves: our status as human being born in sin, shaped in iniquity, and
prone to screw up at any moment; standing in the light of God who is holy and perfect
in every way. We confess because we’ve DONE
wrong. We repent because we ARE wrong.
When
an army loses a war, all the soldiers surrender, even the ones who were just
drafted and never got to fire a shot in combat. They all recognize their lost
state and lay down their arms.
Job
wanted to fight with God instead of lay down his arms and surrender.
Job
believed that if God would play fair, then he could argue the Lord into
submission.
For He is not a man, as I am, That I may answer Him, And that we should go to court
together. Nor is there any mediator between us, Who may lay his hand on us both. (Job 9: 32-33)
But I would speak to
the Almighty, and I desire to reason with God. (Job 13: 3)
That’s
not surrender. That’s not submission. That is UN-REPENTANCE.
In
chapter 29, Job described the one in whose presence,
the young men saw ..and
hid,
And the aged arose and stood;
…The voice of nobles
was hushed,
And their tongue stuck
to the roof of their mouth.
When the ear heard,
then it blessed …
And when the eye saw,
then it approved …
Because [that one ] delivered the poor who cried out,
The fatherless and the one who had no helper.
The blessing of a
perishing man came upon [him]
And caused the widow’s
heart to sing for joy.
[He] put on righteousness …
justice was like a robe and a turban.
[He] was eyes to the blind,
And was feet to the lame.
..a father to the poor,
…broke the fangs of
the wicked,
And plucked the victim
from his teeth. (verses 7-17,
edited)
Reads
like a Psalm to God, doesn’t it? Only,
Job wasn’t talking about God. Job was
talking about Job.
Yeah.
Isaiah
hadn’t been written at the time of Job’s story, but the principle was already
true. Compared to God, we are all like an unclean thing, And all
our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; We all fade as a leaf, And our
iniquities, like the wind, Have taken us away. (Isaiah 64: 6)
Job
wouldn’t have thought that verse applied to HIM. Job thought more of himself than he ought.
And
God knew it.
Why
did God let the devil reach into Job’s life---- this time? Satan had tried to get at Job before, but God’s
“hedge” kept him back. So why did God
let satan through--- this time?
God didn't just let the devil sneak through, God provoked satan to take another shot at Job.
And the Lord said to
Satan, “From where do you come?”
So Satan answered the Lord
and said, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking back and forth
on it.”
Then the Lord said to
Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright
man, one who fears God and shuns evil?” (Job 1: 7-8)
Apparently,
the devil had given up on Job and was looking for easier targets, but God basically
dared the devil to mess with the man who was blameless like no other.
It’s
like God saw something at that particular moment in Job’s life that required (pardon
the pun) a Hell of a response.
Never
forget that God understands us, our situation, and our needs better than we
do. And, never forget that God
understands us, our situation, and our needs better than the devil does.
While
satan was trying to get Job to abandon God, God was using the suffering satan
delivered to draw Job even closer.
The
devil meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.
Oh,
but what about all the other people who suffered? Job’s employees and children who were
killed. Job’s wife who experienced the
death of all her babies, the loss of all her money (her husband’s money was her
money, too--- at least according to my wife), and the sudden decline of her
husband’s health.
That
part, the Bible doesn’t answer directly. But the Bible does provide an answer in principle that’s a little better
than “none of your business.”
The
answer is: Faith.
Not
just saving faith but living faith.
Faith (as the examples in Hebrews 11 demonstrate) is trusting that God
knows what the crap He’s doing in our lives and in everyone else’s life,
too.
We
aren’t told the details of Job’s children’s lives. We don’t know their righteousness or
sinfulness. We know they were all adult
enough to be at a house party thrown by the oldest brother (Job 1: 18, 19),
and we know that Job was concerned enough about their lifestyles to worry that
they might curse God in their hearts.
Worried enough to do make that sacrifice EVERY DAY (Job 1: 5).
We
do know, by the testimony of God’s Word, which we believe by FAITH, that God God
knows and understands, and that He uses
even tragedy to make all things work together
for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His
purpose (Romans 8: 28).
Left
alone behind an unbroken hedge of favor and prosperity, Job would have
continued exalting himself in his heart until he began to justify himself to
himself. And that’s the point at which “good,
successful” believers begin to sin and think it’s all right.
Once
you think that you wear righteousness and
justice like a robe and a turban; you’re not very far away from using your
wealth, power, and religious cover to do something terrible.
Just
look around. “Preachers of L.A.” Catholic sex abuses. Pastoral scandals.
As
good as good Job was, how bad would a rich, evil Job with 10 grown, rich, and
evil children have been?
In
the end, from the very beginning of the story, God saved not only Job, but
countless others. BECAUSE GOD LOVED THEM.
God
loved Job, Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, Elihu, Job’s wife, Job’s relatives, and Job’s
community so much that He was willing to pick a fight with the devil to save
Job from the darkness of self-righteousness and bring him back to repentance.
For I am persuaded
that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor
things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other
created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in
Christ Jesus our Lord.
When
Job came to repentance, God restored and doubled his wealth, his influence, and his position in the community. God
restored Job’s relationships with his wife (cause they had 10 more children) and
his children (now with the hindsight to raise them better). Most importantly, God returned Job to a place
of spiritual favor, so that Job was God’s preferred intercessor on behalf of
the 3 theologically wrong-minded friends.
My servant Job shall
pray for you. For I will accept him, lest I deal with you according to your folly; because you
have not spoken of Me what is
right, as My servant Job has. (Job 42:8)
Job
finally spoke the thing of God that was right.
The last words of Job in his book are: I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You.
Therefore I abhor myself, And REPENT
in dust and ashes. (Job 42: 5-6)
Job
got it and now I finally get it.
REPENTANCE.
Trust
God, and never forget that God is God, and you and I are not.
p.s.
I bet that when the devil realized how God had played him, he was pissed.
---Anderson
T. Graves II is a writer, community organizer and
consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.
Rev.
Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield,
Alabama; executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking
Organization (SAYNO); and director
of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human
Development (NIHD).
Email atgravestwo2@aol.com
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