Beloved, I am pleased to share with you today the above theme from Job 42:1-2 onwards. Indeed, we come to the outcome of the book, to the great lesson that Job, finally, understood. It is called emancipation, deliverance from the despicable self. As Jehovah spoke to him, all Job’s self-esteem gradually vanished. Gradually, he discovered with horror the wickedness of his heart. He, who had promised himself not to add anything more (Job 40:3-5), exclaims: “I hate myself and I repent…” This is what a man must say “upright and upright, fearing God and withdrawing from evil,” when he stands in the presence of God! Job was riddled like wheat. Hard work, but which, as for Peter later, rid him of self-confidence. He can now strengthen his brethren and pray for his friends (v. 10; Luke 22:31-34).
Jehovah calls him “my servant Job” four times and blames the three unfortunate comforters. He sends others to Job, who bring him real sympathy. And, not only does he restore the patriarch’s former state, but he gives him double what he previously possessed. However, Job has now acquired something more precious than anything: he has come to know himself, at the same time as he has come to know God.
Let’s now briefly consider the table of the final result of the test. “And Job answered the Lord and said, I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose is too difficult for you. Who is this one who, without knowledge, veils the advice? So I spoke, and without understanding, about things too wonderful for me, that I did not know.” He repeats the humiliating words that God had addressed to him, in order to apply them to himself. That was right; He admits they were “things too wonderful” for him and “that he didn’t know.” “Listen, I pray you, and I will speak; I will question you, and you will instruct me.” This is what Jehovah had told him before (Job 40:2) and Job repeated the same words, humiliating himself before Him. “My ear had heard of you, now my eye has seen you: therefore I hate myself, and I repent in dust and ashes.” There was nothing superficial about him anymore; It was no longer a distant rumor.
Do you think that by probing the organism and habits of the behemoth and leviathan, Job would have come to a similar conclusion? Certainly not. He had to do with God Himself, who had used these works of His power for the express purpose of bringing Job to His feet, and then turned Him away from all these things, by their very means, so that he would be entirely occupied with Him. “That’s why I hate myself, and I repent in dust and ashes.” Thus, in the New Testament, the Lord used the crow of a rooster to convict the great apostle of circumcision of sin.
“And it came to pass, after the Lord had spoken these words to Job, that the Lord said to Eliphaz, the Themanite, My anger was inflamed against you and against your two companions, for you have not spoken of me properly, as my servant Job.” God is addressing the eldest of the three friends who, after all, was the one who had spoken with the least acrimony, but nevertheless in a guilty way, for being the oldest, he should have been wiser than his companions. What was in what Job had said that God could point out as “what is suitable”? For, looking at the debate superficially, one might think that Job had spoken as many erroneous words about God as his friends. And even to such a reader, it might seem that Job had spoken of Him in a more reckless way than the latter. But the fact is that the grace of God endures much more tenderly than men suppose, the thoughtless words that can be uttered by the afflicted under the empire of a trial as terrible as this.
Let’s not think, however, that this fact in any way diminishes Job’s guilt: there was every conceivable difference between these three men who were not in the crucible and the one who was there. It is very easy for those who do not suffer to judge the bitter words of someone who is immersed in such a furnace. But God felt keenly the manner of men who, while pretending to speak according to Him, had completely failed, despite their appearance of gravity, in the application of divine truth to the soul of their friend. This is a point of great importance, for this work can only be done by the Spirit.
Abstract truth is utterly vain for God’s saints. Affirmations that are true in themselves, but misunderstood and misapplied, may result in greater damage than those that are positively erroneous, because a truth distorted in its application seems to give God’s authority to an error which carries all the more weight when it is presented as a true thing: If a foolish or manifestly false word is spoken, everyone rejects it, but no believer can despise God’s truth. If, therefore, the latter is misapplied, and in particular to crush someone who, at the very moment, is the object of the greatest solicitude on the part of God, how alien and offensive such a way of acting is to Him. How He abhors His name to be so distorted! This is what Job’s three friends were guilty of. How often the truth of God is now employed in the exaltation of the self; and yet how contrary such a way of acting is to his character and will! Had not the three friends made these two deviations?
Job’s mistakes are perfectly obvious. What, then, was the proper truth he had spoken? There was one that we can easily discern. He had certainly spoken according to righteousness, when he had completely humbled himself before God. It is not to say that it was the only right thing that was in Job, but no one can hesitate to accept and support the confession that came out of his lips. He had said the right thing in his last words in response to God’s call. It was then that he was brought into her presence. He spoke as a man who had proper feelings in his heart should; but, on the surface, what erroneous thoughts! But now Jehovah is revealing the depths of his soul. He is finally brought into the light. Everything else, everything that was only superficial, had been judged. So we can be assured that there was now in Job what God could say he enjoyed in it; he saw nothing else in him, for Job justified God at his own expense. He now confessed, not his own righteousness, but his nothingness in dust and ashes, and his filth before a God whom he declared unreservedly perfectly just in all his ways.
Then God commands Eliphaz to take for himself and his two friends “seven bulls and seven rams” and go, he says, “to my servant Job and offer a burnt offering for you.” It does not seem that there were still sacrifices for sin at that time. This fact is an important indication of the extremely remote time from which this book dates or rather the circumstances related therein. They must have been before the law. In the days of Leviticus, there would naturally have been a sacrifice for sin for Job’s friends. On the other hand, before the law had promulgated the strict and careful prescriptions as to what was required when the sin had been committed, it was burnt offerings that were regularly offered. Thus, in the beginning, we find in Noah’s time, for him as for others, these same burnt offerings. He commands them as to be the solemn confession of their sin: “That I may not act with you according to your foolishness; for you have not spoken of me, as belonged, as my servant Job.” So it was done, according to divine directions.
“And the Lord restored the old state of Job, when he had prayed for his friends.” This is a touching manifestation of the work of grace. Not only did God deliver them from their punishment, when Job had prayed for them, but “He restored Job’s old state” (or literally He “brought back his captivity”), when His heart was opened in favor of His friends. Job himself now had the consciousness that he was delivered. Hitherto he had felt as if he had been tight, so to speak, in a vice, but Jehovah delivered him from his captivity, when he had prayed for his friends. His heart could act in grace; He had experienced it for himself and now he is expressing it, and that to those who had hurt him most deeply. Job had never been more keenly offended by anyone in the world than by his three friends, and yet they were now the objects of his solicitude and those for whom he prayed. God reveled in this, and He restored His former state in answer to His prayer for them.
The following verses have been compiled for your edification and grouped for your better understanding.
Epilogue:
- Job, from the land of Uts
Job 1:1 There was a man in the land of Uts named Job. And this man was upright and upright; he feared God, and turned away from evil. Ezekiel 14:14 and if there were in his midst these three men, Noah, Daniel and Job, they would save their souls by their righteousness, says the Lord the Lord. James 5:11 Behold, we say blessed are those who have suffered patiently. You have heard of Job’s patience, and you have seen the end that the Lord bestowed upon him, for the Lord is full of mercy and compassion.
- Power of God, is infinite
Job 42:2 I recognize that you can do anything, and that nothing stands in the way of your thoughts. Psalm 115:3 Our God is in heaven, He does whatever He wants. Mt 19:26 Jesus looked at them, and said to them, “It is impossible for men, but for God all things are possible.” Luke 1:37 For nothing is impossible with God.
- Accepted by God
Ex 28:38 She will be on Aaron’s forehead; and Aaron will be charged with the iniquities committed by the children of Israel in making all their holy offerings; she will be constantly on her forehead before the Lord, that he may be favorable to them. Ez 20:40 Sanctify my Sabbaths, and let them be between me and you a sign that it is known that I am the Lord your God. Acts 10:35 but in every nation he who fears him and practices justice is pleasing to him. Eph 1:6 to the praise of the glory of His grace which He has bestowed upon us in His Beloved.
- Prosperity of the righteous
Gen 39:3 His master saw that Jehovah was with him, and that Jehovah prospered in his hands all that he undertook. Deuteronomy 29:9 Yet they are your people and your inheritance, whom you brought out of Egypt by your great power and by your outstretched arm. 1 Ch 22:13 Then you will prosper, if you take care to put into practice the laws and ordinances which Jehovah prescribed to Moses for Israel. Be strong and take courage, fear not and fear not. Psalm 1:3 He is like a tree planted near a stream of water, Which bears fruit in its season, And whose foliage does not wither: Everything he does succeeds him.
From all of the above, we note that Jehovah also gave Job twice as much goods as he had before, for the book could not end without a testimony of God’s goodness even in external circumstances. Although the time had not yet come for a complete righting of all that is tortuous here on earth, or to recall in memory all good and just deeds, Jehovah does not allow his beloved to leave the scene without having evidence of his interest and blessing. This is why Job then received this testimony of what God is. Jehovah did not forget the man who had gone through such a torment of tribulation and who had clung to him when He seemed to be against His servant. The latter, however, had to learn what he himself was, when the devil had withdrawn, and the first question had been resolved to the confusion of the enemy. But if Job had clung firmly to God, it was because God had held him by the right hand. That was the real secret of this whole ordeal. It is grace alone after all that gives integrity and keeps the soul in it. But God was not unjust in forgetting Job. He shows him the appreciation He had of all his piety, even before the day of remuneration came. Job received the fullest testimonies of respect and trust from all his relatives and even his acquaintances. “And all his brothers, and all his sisters, and all those who had known him before came to him, and ate the bread with him in his house; and they sympathized with him and consoled him with all the evil which the Lord had brought upon him, and each gave him a kesita, and each a ring of gold.” “And the Lord blessed the end of Job more than his beginning: and he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels and a thousand pairs of oxen, and a thousand donkeys; and he had seven sons and three daughters; and he called the name of the first Jemima, and the name of the second Ketsia, and the name of the third Keren-Happuc. And in all the land there were no beautiful women like Job’s daughters; and their father gave them an inheritance among their brothers. And after this Job lived one hundred and forty years, and he saw his sons, and the sons of his sons, four generations. And Job died old and full of days.” For God will put an end to all unjust suffering, even if it is not in this life. May the Lord bless his good Word and grant his saints the grace to cleave deeply to this holy Book which they so desperately need in these days of confusion and growing unbelief. Our prayers are with you all.
PRAYER OF ACCEPTANCE OF JESUS CHRIST AS PERSONAL LORD AND SAVIOR
I now invite anyone who wants to become a new creation by walking in truth to pray with me:
Lord Jesus, I have long walked in the lusts of the world ignoring your love for humans. I acknowledge that I have sinned against you and ask your forgiveness for all my sins, because today I have decided to give you my life by taking you as my personal Lord and Savior. I acknowledge that you died at the cross of Calvary and rose from the dead for me.
I am now saved and born again by the power of the Holy Spirit. Lead me every day to the eternal life you give to all who obey your Word. Reveal yourself to me and strengthen my heart and my faith, so that your light may shine in my life right now.
Thank you, Lord Jesus, for accepting me into your divine family, so that I too can contemplate the wonders of your kingdom by walking according to your ways.
I will now choose a nearby waterpoint to be baptized by immersion, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
To you all worship, power and glory, now and for ever and ever. Amen!
I would be happy to respond to any questions and comments you may have, before sharing with you tomorrow “God creates the universe and humanity.” (Gen 1)
May the Lord Jesus Christ bless you abundantly.
David Feze, Servant of the Almighty God.